Page 121

“It’s where I wanted. My favorite place.AndI’d still like to show you my favorite place.”
“’Kay.” Maybe he and Locke needed to gel better. They were two new guys working together, and perhaps that had been the problem. Defenses down because, other than the parking lot, they’d been in the wide-open park.
“I’m serious. I’d like to take you there. Maybe tomorrow. There’s a little hut, and it looks like nothing, but somehow it’severything. If what it’s seen and been through—”
He wished he had that spark she held onto despite everything that had happened. “You know what is so great about you?”
“Hmm?”
“You get so damn excited about whatever you’re passionate about.” A hut? It was probably cool, in some nature-walk way, but had anyone else on earth gone on about how badass it was? Likely not. Bishop pulled her close. “Your turn. What’s on your mind?”
Ella placed her hand on his bare stomach. “Well…”
It wasn’t a sexual move, but they were in bed together, and he didn’t have a shirt on. Hell, he was a guy. Everything in life could be construed as a sexual move. But that wasn’t an excuse he’d ever used before. Her simple move pushed at his sanity. Good thing the lights were off, because if he’d been watching her casually tease the shit out of him, the suffering would have been unbearable.
“I should’ve listened when you pressed me on Jay.” Her fingers spread. “I don’t know. It’s weird to think that he would do this.”
“People are weird.” Jay was likely weird before all this, but that was another conversation.
“All of a sudden, it hit me likewhoa.”
“Gotta trust your gut.”
“I just don’t get why.” As if her tone hadn’t punctuated her frustration enough, Ella dropped her weight against his arm.
He wanted to wrap her tight, peel her shirt away, and hug them together until she didn’t care about Jay’s reasons. Bishop wished there wasn’t that hurt in her voice or the tinge of confusion in her words. But fuck it, what he really wanted was the scent of her shampoo in his nose, her hair dangling around his head. Instead, he contained an urge to taste her skin. The woman needed comfort, not the start of the erection he was trying to ignore.
Ella’s fingers flexed, her nails lightly grazing above his belly button, and he sucked in his cheeks, ignoring his groan… or trying to.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “I can scoot.”
He tightened his arm around her, refusing to let a micrometer of space come between them. “Don’t.”
She rested her chin on his shoulder. “Good. I didn’t want to.”
The tickle of her warm breath in the dark could drive a man mad. She turned her hand over, letting her knuckles softly drift over his abdomen, and it was too much. His dick jumped at the barely-there touch. His lungfuls were slow, deep, and purposeful. He couldn’t stop how turned on she made him. “El…”
Her hand drifted down, grazing the waist of his boxer briefs. “You smell good.” Her lips hovered next to his cheek.
It was a lethal combination that couldn’t be ignored. He turned his head and took command of her mouth in the dark. Voltage as hot as she was rushed down his spine, igniting in his fingertips as he lifted her on top of him. This is what he was made to do—be with this woman.
Electrified and alive, it was as though emotions existed only when they connected. Everything amplified. Intensified. Wordlessly, he found a way to make everything better. “This. This is what we needed.”
Nodding into his mouth, kissing and moaning, she agreed. “Yes.”
Her knees pinched to his sides and her hands gripped him as though she had been drowning. Bishop flipped them over, sliding her under him and caging her head to his pillow with his forearms. “Everything will be okay.”
“It will.”
He reached over and turned on the light. A low, easy light was cast over his bedroom, and when he looked down, all was as it should be. The most beautiful woman he’d ever held, the only woman he had ever loved, stared up, trusting, with hair spread over his pillow, while she wore his favorite shirt. This was the kind of thing that made the world go round.
He dropped a kiss to her forehead, her cheek, slid his lips to hers, and sank his tongue deep into the hot cavern of her mouth. She came alive, wrapping her legs around him, rubbing her hands against his chest, flicking her thumbs against the discs of his nipples, and tugging at his chest hair.
“Your heartbeat feels like mine,” she whispered.
He agreed with every gasping word. “How’s that?”
“Needing.”