“What?” My throat is raw and achy and I just want to get away so I can have a good, long cry, then wipe my eyes, put all this away, and then move on with my life.
“I don’t like you very much.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to forgive you.”
“I figured you wouldn’t.”
His grip tightens on my wrist. “But I still want to strip you down, push you to the floor, and bury myself in you so deep that I forget everything except how you feel around me.”
I suck in a sharp breath and quickly look into his eyes. They’re bright blue, burning like hot glass, and he’s watching me, like I’m the thing he wants most in the world. There’s also a vulnerability there. I feel it in the tremble of his fingers on my wrist and the softness of his lower lip.
I realize he’s offering me this.
He can’t give us a future.
He won’t give me forgiveness.
But he can give me this moment right now. The past and all its mistakes stretches in infinity behind us, and the future stretches just as long and just as lonely before us. But right here, right now, we can forget the past and not think of the future. We can have our first and only time.
I take his other hand and slowly set it over my beating heart.
Gavin lets out a relieved breath, and his hand curves over my breast. His lips rise into a smile, one that reminds me of how he looked yesterday morning, when he was making me my glass flower. His thumb grazes over my nipple and I let out a small whimper.
His eyes lock on mine and I couldn’t look away even if the cabin were falling around us. “Is that a yes?”
I tilt my chin. “Yes.”
He lets go of my wrist and immediately unhooks my overalls, letting them fall to my waist. Then he lifts my t-shirt and pulls it over my head and drops it to the floor. It lands next to me with a soft swish. He grazes his fingers over my breasts, his hands running over the fabric, pulling on my nipples. They bead, and ache, sending painful sparks down, down, down. I let out another moan, and he reaches behind and unclasps my bra, dragging the fabric over my skin and dropping it to the floor.
I reach up, almost hesitant, and run my hands over his abdomen, down the soft wool of his sweater. Through the fabric I can feel the tautness of his muscles, tense and straining. He makes an appreciative noise, so I continue to touch him everywhere I want. If this is the first and last time, I may as well touch him everywhere I dreamed.
I reach over his shoulders, drag my hands over his chest, feel his pounding heart. He bends down, the stubble on his jaw rubbing over my skin, and takes my nipple in his warm mouth. When he draws on it, I grip his shoulders and close my eyes. His teeth graze my sensitive skin and he drags his fingers along my breasts, over my ribs, down the slope of my waist.
I can’t take it. I have to touch him. I tug at his sweater, make a sound of frustration, so he takes his lips from my breast and pulls his sweater over his head, then the t-shirt under it, until he stands before me, an expanse of maleness.
I reach out and greedily stroke him everywhere. He groans low in his throat, his eyes half-closed, as he watches me hungrily touch him. Then he takes my overalls and pushes them down my legs, cupping my behind, grasping my hips. I sway toward him and he grins at me.
I kick off my shoes and socks, let my overalls fall away. I slip out of my underwear and stand before him naked.
I think…I think he’s as wrecked as I am.
He reaches out, puts his hand to my lips and runs his fingers over me. When he feels how wet I am, his pupils dilate and he breathes faster.
“Take them off,” I say, tugging at his pants.
He shakes his head. “No. I’ve been dreaming about kissing you, and I’m going to do it.”
Then he drops to his knees, takes my hips in a firm grip, and presses his mouth over me. To say that I was ready for what he does to me would be a lie. I could never be ready for how his hot mouth feels stroking me. I always wondered, and now I finally know what it feels like to be melted and reformed. I’m pliant, loose, completely at his mercy. He pulls on me, sucks, bites, forces me to stay in the heat of his mouth, while I grip his hair, his shoulders, while I call his name, and then as he’s sucking on me, he takes two fingers and slips them inside, bending at the perfect angle, so that before I can prepare, before I can think, I’m made, I’m whole, and then suddenly, I’m shattered. I cry out, and he holds on to me, keeps me together, still pulling on me, to extend the feeling so that it feels like I’m coming forever.
My knees give out and he lays me gently to the cold, wood floor. I fall boneless beneath him, and he rises over me. His mouth is swollen and wet from sucking on me, his eyes are wild, and he’s looking at me like he’s never going to let me go.
I reach out and tug at the button on his jeans. His eyes go dark and I shove them down his thighs. He kicks them off. Gavin, apparently, goes commando. Because once his jeans are off, he springs free.
Looking at him, I realize that I didn’t shatter, I only cooled, and just like glass, I just have to be heated again, molded anew.
I lean on my elbows and place a kiss on the tip of him, stroking my hand over him. He’s so silken, so hard, so…everything.