For a split second, I wished I was numb again because having all these feelings without a reason to have them was torment. Easily, I could get by here with my Emotional Detachment Disorder—with my walls. Free of heartache. Free of pain. Free of my past, which I now remembered.
But I had made a promise to Ollie, and I clung to my promise because it was my only attachment left to him.
It was the sound of my name that woke me. My eyes parted to see Ollie kneeling beside my bed with a finger held to his lips.
Great. I had gone mad.
I blinked a few times as his fingers brushed my forehead and ran over the top of my hair.
“Ollie?” Please be real.
A small grin appeared over his face. “Hi, love.”
In an instant, I sprang to my knees and swung my arms around his neck, breathing in his scent. He was real, and he was here. Running my fingers through his brown messy hair, I kissed his neck and cheek and lips. He wrapped his long arms around my waist as he dropped his head into my neck. “But how?”
“I told you I have connections,” he said and pulled away to see me. “You don’t belong here, Mia.” He looked around before his eyes met mine again. “Are you okay? Why were you in the hospital? What happened?”
All the questions seemed irrelevant at this point, and I brought my hand to Ollie’s face. He closed his eyes under my touch. He was so beautiful. My thumb grazed his bottom lip as his jaw relaxed. I had no chemicals in my body, nothing to influence or persuade me to feel for him. I just simply did. Our flame flickered, reminding me it was still there. As long as I had Ollie, it would continue to burn.
Softly, I pressed my lips to his and kneeled over the mattress. Ollie’s mouth was tender, his tongue soothing as he kissed away every doubt I’d had since I’d arrived at the Looney Bin.
“Oh god, I missed you, Mia,” he whispered with his forehead to mine. I slipped my hands under his shirt and over his warm and familiar skin. Ollie captured my lips with his momentarily before hesitantly pulling away again. “I came to make sure you were alright. Please, talk to me, Mia. Tell me what happened.”
Fighting the urge to tell him everything, I chewed on my lip. “I don’t want to waste our time with the hard stuff. I’ll tell you everything later. I need this”—I kissed his lips—”I need you” I kissed his lips again. “The thought of you is the only thing I’ve been holding on to through this.”
Ollie raised his brows at my confession. He’d never heard me say anything like that, because I never had. It was new to the both of us.
A small smile tugged on his lips, and then he gave in, surrendering himself to me. He wanted it, too. He tried to be the gentleman I knew he was, but the need for our physical connection was stronger.
Clothes came off quickly, one by one between breaths and tongues colliding before he melted over me. His warmth enveloped me immediately, and the bitterness from the Looney Bin vanished. It was only us. He moved the hair from my face and found my eyes. “I’m sorry.” He exhaled.
I shook my head and pulled my brows together. “What are you apologizing for?”
He dropped his head for a moment before looking back at me. “You told me not to fall, but I’ve fallen so fucking hard …” He wet his lips and scanned my face before his eyes returned to mine. “I’m so in love with you, Mia.”
Each word hit me like a clash of thunder, and I swallowed the stinging sensation behind my eyes as I looked into his. I’d never seen the look of love before, but it was staring right back at me. It wasn’t so much about how his eyes were transfixed on me, a firm grasp on my heart, his soul anchoring to mine, but how they made me feel.
And suddenly, I wasn’t falling anymore.
I was flying.
Ollie wasn’t expecting anything in return. Instead, he lowered his head, and his kiss was its own testimony. The calm in his lips, the slow caress of his tongue against mine, and the way it was so powerful yet tame transformed a heart of gray back to color. Ollie had that power—together, we had that power.
“I don’t know how much time we have, but I’m going to appreciate every second,” he said after he left my lips and moved to the end of the mattress. He brought my leg over his shoulder, and my bare body shivered without his warmth.
Starting from my knee, he ran a trail of kisses up my leg to my inner thigh as he watched me shudder.
“You’re no one’s property, but I can’t stand the thought of you being with anyone else. Do you understand what I’m saying?” A flash of insecurity set in his eyes. “It’s no one else, only you and I?”
Nodding, I sucked in a breath. “You and I. Always.”
And then his mouth was on my sex as his hands gripped my bottom. I leaned my hips into him, and suddenly, his tongue drove through my entrance, twirling and stroking. I searched for anything to grip, but there was no sheet over the mattress and no pillow to grab as I barely held on. I cried out, and Ollie shot a hand over my mouth to stifle it as he continued to do things, sending me into a whirlwind of ecstasy.
He crawled back up my torso and replaced his hand with his lips as I moved beneath him, begging to feel him inside me already as my body shook for release. He ran his hand down my center before dipping a finger inside me, and pressed in and out of me unhurriedly.
“Ollie,” I pleaded, every cell walking a tightrope over a sea of pure pleasure.
“Not yet, my love … patience.” He silenced me once more with a kiss. The combination of the kneading of his thumb and the pumping finger was earth-shattering, and when I fell through the cracks, Ollie brought me back every time.
He wrapped his arm under me and lifted me off the mattress to straddle him. Taking the length of him in my hand, I filled myself with his arousal slowly, just how he liked it. His eyes closed as his mouth made a perfect silent O.
Seeing his beautiful features react from the feeling of our connection magnified every other sensation. I dragged my nails through his messy hair as I took him deeper. Hands roamed everywhere, from my breasts, to my hair, and behind my back. A cold sweat built up between us as his teeth scraped along my jawline. He gripped my thighs to steady my shaking legs as the blessings of my name fell from his lips in gasps. I rolled my hips against him while my clit slid across his pelvis, sending me closer and closer to climax.
It only took one more thrust, one more “I love you, Mia,” one more graze of his tongue against mine before I cried out through our kiss. Ollie chased my orgasm with his. His muscles flexed as he gripped my hips, keeping me pinned against him with him deep inside.
Our chests rose and fell in unison as my head dropped into the curve of his neck. He wrapped his long arms around me, pulling me close as our heavy breathing gradually went back to normal. He ran his hand over my hair before lifting my chin to kiss him, and it was in that moment hot water spilled from the corner of my eye, and the taste of salt seeped onto our lips.