I’m too far gone to hear the implication of his words.
My legs stiffen, and I cry out in frustration as his fingers withdraw before I realise he’s slipping down my body, dragging my panties down my legs with him. The room falls quiet, but for the sound of my beating heart and my staccato breaths. I push up onto my elbows as his big hands slide my thighs wide, the look on his face more Lucifer than Adam as she shoots me a swift and wicked smile a moment before the flat of his tongue meets my inner thigh.
“So soft.” A bite follows the lick. “And you smell heavenly.”
Oh. My. Lord.
I want this so badly.
So badly that tears form in my eyes as he draws his tongue the length of my pussy.
Oh my God, yes.
I think I might . . .
My hands fist the sheets as though to hang on to the sensation as he repeats and repeats as though I’m the taste he craves as he absolutely savours me, drawing me closer and closer to the unseen edge as I cry and sob. As I moan for more.
“Please, Alexander,” I beg. And I plead as his tongue begins to circle my clit. Circle, pet, tease until I’m pressing up into his face, my fingers twisted in his hair.
Until.
Until . . .
My body bleeds sensation, and I’m melting into the bed.
Spent and empty, I scarcely have time to come down before he’s over me, his broad shoulders crowding out the light. His lashes flutter closed as my body accepts him, and as he fills me, my responding cry as tender as his thrust.
“I never . . .” Words go unfinished as he undulates above me, pressing up on his hands, his expression a mix of pleasure and pain. Of agony and ecstasy as he stretches out, throwing back his head and baring the strong column of his neck.
To watch on is almost bittersweet, yet to feel him so hard and long inside me is everything.
“I have imagined . . .” Alexander swallows thickly, then blesses me with a small stab of his hips. “My imagination could never conjure anything close to you. You feel like velvet, and I will never have enough.” He punctuates his words with his thrusts, his eyes dark and his expression so fierce. His fingers tighten as he begins to impale me again and again. And I love every second of it.
So close, I slide my legs around his waist, desperate to hang on to every perfect snap of his hips as, with each thrust, I rock up to meet him until I’m not sure where I end and where Alexander begins.
“You are mine, Holland,” he grates out, burying his face in my neck. “Body and soul. I love you, and I’m never going to let you go.”
Everything inside me draws tight, my orgasm springing to life almost at his words. I want to watch, watch him reach his peak. Want to see the truth of him.
But I can’t.
I can do nothing but give. Give myself over to this moment. Give myself over to him as he begins to come undone.
46
Alexander
Idiot. You told her you loved her while you were coming inside her.
Talk about making things hard for myself.
Difficult, I mean.
It’s not quite morning, and Holland is still in my bed, lying beside me. Asleep, I think. Meanwhile, I haven’t slept properly for the fear that I might wake, and she’d be gone. I have so much to say, and we’re not leaving this room until we’re done.
I trail my hand down her back as something swells inside me, too strong to be ignored. Love. I know now what that feeling is called.
I want to be the first person she sees when she wakes and the last person to hold her attention before sleep carries her away. When she trembles, I want it to be from my touch or from some joke I’ve told or even, goddammit, from the anger I’ve caused her. I want to be the author of her joy and the banisher of her sorrows.
I want to hold our children—if she wants them—but that’s a conversation for another day. I want to hold her hand always and make her blush daily for the next forty years. And if she’s the last face I see as I leave this world, I know I’ll go with a smile on my face. Because there’s never been another woman like her, and I know I’ll love her always.
Her arms curled beneath her chest, Holland kicks her leg out from under the sheet in a wild sort of abandon. My hand lifts to her hair like a magnet to metal, my fingers beginning to sift through the silky strands.
I’m nervous. The kind of nervous I’ve never been before. I want to wake her and spill my guts, yet I’m afraid to. What if she still says no? What if she refuses me?
Then I guess the Duffys will be entertaining siege-style houseguests for longer than they anticipated.
My hand follows the path of her narrow back, my fingers tracing the bumps and indents in her spine. Next to me, Holland releases a breathy whisper, the noise not quite a moan as I fit my fingers to the dimples above the upside-down heart shape of her backside. I rest the meat of my palm against its rise. Rest. Settle. Press. Until she begins to move with it, grinding herself against the mattress.
An intensity washes through me as she begins to stir, the ripple of her body’s pleasure making my heart trip and my throat burn. I slide my arm under her waist, gathering her to me as, with my other hand, I lift her thigh over mine and nudge my rigid cock between her legs.
Nudge? The thing behaves like a heat-seeking missile.
But I can’t. Not yet
“Holland, darling. Wake up.”
She purrs, pushing her arse against me, and my God, she’s so wet. Wet from want. Sticky with cum. She feels heavenly as my cock glides against her. As I press my nose in her hair and inhale the scent of her.
“Holland, what are you doing to me?” I move the hair from her neck, pressing my mouth to her nape. My gut tightens, a seismic ripple of want travelling through me as she reaches down, her dainty fingers caressing the crown of my cock.
“Please,” she whispers, pushing back against me, the angle of her body changing as she presses the crown of my cock to her opening.
“Wait.” I can’t quite believe that I do, but I lift her hand away, pressing it flat to the mattress. “Not yet.” My tongue slips across the line of her shoulder as I push my fingers between hers. A scrape of teeth. A press of my lips before I bring my mouth to the shell of her ear and whisper, “You want me.”
“Yes.” Her admission is barely a breath.
“How much, my darling.”
“I need you, Alexander.” She tries to lift her head, but I continue my sensual assault, kissing her neck and shoulders as though it’s my fetish. “Please.” She pulls against my hands, tries to twist from under me.
“Do you want me enough to spend a lifetime with me?” I rest my head against hers as she inhales a gasp. “I love you, Holland. I’ve loved you for weeks. Forgive me. I just didn’t know it was meant to feel like this.”
I feel the moment she gives in. The moment she takes me at my word. The moment she stops denying.
And as I slide myself inside her, it’s the beginning of everything.
HOLLY
“I love you.” Alexander’s knees are snug behind mine, his arms banded tight around my ribs. And I feel . . . happy. Like a girl on cloud nine. Like a girl who is loved.
“I know.” There’s a tremor of laughter in my words. “I heard you the first hundred times.”