“It is.” Their mouths collided in a series of hard, moaning kisses. “It’s yours.”
“I feel like yours, too?”
“Yes. Oh my God, yes.”
Possessiveness had his teeth snapping at the pulse in her neck, had him throwing her legs back down and open on the mattress, his lower body pistoning, his mouth everywhere he could reach. Raking her neck, sucking at her nipples, on her mouth.
“What was that shit you used to worry about?” He licked a path between her bouncing tits. “Is the guy present during sex? Fuck yes I am. So are you. Your lighting makes me want to eat you alive. And I don’t have a dog.”
At the way he repeated back the words she’d spoken to him at the wedding, her eyes flared and he saw love in them. He saw it, goddammit, and he reeled it into his chest, braiding it with the love he felt for her. The amazing weight of it made him weak for a split second and Bethany used it to her advantage, rolling him onto his back without breaking their connection.
“You really do listen when I speak,” she said breathily. “Now you’re in trouble.”
He lifted his hips and watched in awe as Bethany stripped off her dress, giving him the view of the fucking century. Bethany Castle, beautifully naked, sitting on his dick. Not to mention looking at him as if he’d been a very good boy. Someone up in heaven loved him. “I don’t mind this kind of trouble.” He rolled his lower back, lurching her up and back. “Ride it, darlin’. Make us come.”
Using his shoulders for balance, she slid her sex up and down his shaft, testing the pressure, once, twice, oh . . . fuck. And then she fell onto his chest and started bucking her hips, stirring up that final kind of pressure at the base of his spine. “Ah, Christ. I’m not long for this world.” He slapped his hands down on her ass cheeks and aided her movements roughly. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop.”
Bethany, ever the overachiever, did that thing he’d only ever seen in porn. She curved the tops of her feet around his knees and worked him like a fucking pogo stick—and he couldn’t last longer than ten seconds. Not with her mouth open with pleasure, her breasts shaking, and her pussy quickening around him, like she was going to come agai—
There she went, her fingernails scoring his chest, her body dropping down to rub and grind its way through her climax. It was too much, seeing her get outside of her head and take. Take from him.
He went hurtling through the sky, though he couldn’t see any of his surroundings with blind eyes. Only knew he was wrapped in never-ending vastness and his body was a slave to relief. Fuck. Fuck. God. The draining of his need seemed to go on forever, ripping at his muscles and throat. Was that him growling like an animal?
Yes. And that was Bethany moaning brokenly into his neck, her sweaty body depleted on top of him. He was back down on earth again, but he was somehow still in heaven, too. Because she was there.
They lay there like that for long minutes, their breathing and heartbeats synced, bodies reshaping to fit each other. Finally, responsibility knocked and Wes eased Bethany onto her side, kissing her shoulder before disposing of the condom.
Moments later, he returned to the bedroom to join Bethany, wondering how fast she’d climbed back into her head and already eager to help her crawl back out.
She was on her side, watching him with wide, unblinking eyes. “Hey.”
Wes got into bed, pulled the woman into his chest, and kissed her hard on the forehead. “Hey. You were incredible. I’m a ruined man. I’ve never come that hard in my goddamn life. And you can go back to overthinking everything in the morning.”
Her tension remained for another six seconds, then she wrapped herself up in Wes, like he was her favorite blanket, and passed out cold.
Afraid to shatter the perfection of the moment, the night, he whispered, “I love you,” into the darkness.
Chapter Twenty-One
For the first time in her adult life, Bethany woke to the sound of a child’s voice. It was distant at first, kind of muffled—and then it was very loud and right in her ear.
“Elsa!” shrieked the child. “Uncle Wes, did you have a sleepover?”
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
Bethany’s eyes flew open, determining from the shafts of sunlight painting the wall that it was well past her usual wake-up time of six A.M. Morning yoga: missed. She’d fallen asleep last night in Wes’s bed. No, wait. What was that? An arm draped over her hip. Her naked hip? Those fingertips were dangerously close to the Promised Land and there was a child in the room. His niece. How were they going to explain this to her? How was she going to explain this to herself?
Wes set loose a smoky laugh in her ear, and abruptly, the building funnel cloud inside of her disintegrated. She let herself feel the flannel sheets—such a male choice—against her skin. She let herself enjoy the protective way his chest pressed to her back and the waft of pleasure that traveled up her spine when his fingertips brushed her tummy. One by one, her muscles relaxed and her pulse slowed.
“Before you turn over,” he whispered into her ear, “I don’t care about your smeared mascara and morning breath.”
A smile had only begun to curve her mouth when Laura demanded her presence be acknowledged—by jumping on the edge of the bed.
“Uncle Wes, can we get a cat? Megan and Danielle have two cats and we don’t have any. What are we doing today? What did you do at the sleepover?”
Wes’s body vibrated against Bethany’s, his low, scratchy morning laughter instantly becoming one of her favorite things about him. A thing she never would have known about unless she’d taken a leap. “Kid, can you do me a favor? There’s a lollipop in the kitchen junk drawer. If you can find it, you can have it.”
She was already sprinting down the hallway.
Bethany rolled over onto her back and got her first glimpse of sleep-mussed Wes. Wowza. Definitely worth missing yoga. Talk about a feast for her feminine senses. His strong, rangy body was outlined by sunlight, leaving his face shadowed but highlighting the pop of his shoulder muscles and triceps, the out-of-place hair. In a word, he was glorious. Perhaps the best part of all was Wes cataloguing the sight of her, the same way she was doing with him. “Lollipops for breakfast?” she managed.
He kissed her shoulder with a delicious scrape of morning beard. “I don’t want to rush you, darlin’, but we have about forty-five seconds to get dressed before she comes back.”
They both sprung out of bed in a flurry of single-footed hopping and limbs thrown through openings in their clothes. They laughed when their eyes met across the bed and they were still laughing when Laura walked back into the room with a Dum Dums stick poking out of her mouth. “What?”
Wes sighed. “Bethany tooted.”
She sputtered. “I did not!”
“What’s the rule, Laura?”
“If you denied it, you supplied it,” she said, giggling around her sucker. “Elsa tooted.” The little girl sobered, whispering, “Did ice come out?”
Wes collapsed backward onto the bed in stitches and his niece took that as her cue to climb onto his shaking form. He immediately turned the tables, tossing the child sideways and tickling her ribs until she screamed.