Page 97 of Between Never and Forever

“You think you’re romantic?” That had me chuckling. I rolled my eyes and shoved him. He laughed at my question and fell on top of me, caging me under him. “You’re nowhere near as romantic as any of them.”

“Really?” He leaned over the side of the bed to grab his phone from his trousers and then handed it to me. “Show me.”

“Show you?”

“Yeah, I have a reading app. Pull up one of your favorite scenes in these romance books.”

He was so confident that I suddenly had something to prove. “You know every man could be better if they learned a bit of something from my book boyfriends.”

“He’s your boyfriend now?” Dex raised himself up on his forearm to glower over me, but he maneuvered his hips in a way that encouraged me to spread my thighs to let him settle where he wanted to be. His length, hard and big, rested against my sex. “You know you have a fiancé right here between your legs? A book boyfriend can’t do that.”

“A vibrator and a scene from this book can.” I waved the book on the app in front of his face.

“Okay, read me your favorite part.”

“What?” I asked.

Dex rolled to lie beside me and let one of his hands slide over my breast to knead it as he prompted me again. “Read me your favorite part, Kee. Let’s learn what you like. I’m not the teacher tonight. Read me my instructions.”

“Dex, come on.”

“Does he start by sliding his hand up her thigh?” His voice was full of gravel as his eyes focused with hunger on my body, like he was ready to ravage me and give me anything I asked for.

Dex had given me too much already, and I knew tomorrow everything would change. So, I scrolled fast through the book, suddenly wanting to read to him the part where the hero slept with the heroine on roses one night and then they sixty-nined. When I started skimming the section, though, I forgot how graphic the words were, how they pulled a reader in and made them escape so quickly.

“You’re blushing, heartbreaker.”

I gulped as my eyes flew to his, and I turned his phone off. “I’m not doing this tonight. Tonight, you get me in lilacs. You want it or not?”

He snatched the phone from my hands and threw it over his shoulder. Then he took a handful of the lilacs and sprinkled them over my chest and stomach. “I’ve been waiting for this for years.”

“You have not.” I laughed sadly. “I hurt you and you moved on with your ex and other women. Rightfully so.”

He stared at me for a second before he took my hand and dragged it over his ribs. It took me a second to see what he was doing, letting my fingers feather over his tattoo there. It was lilacs and a key, but on the key, etched in the side of it wasKee.

“Dex?” I whispered out his name. “What is this?”

“You were always a part of me, even when I didn’t want you to be.”

“But you… We… You left and moved on.”

“I left, but I didn’t move on. I got you tattooed on me because you were already permanently with me. Might as well have had the tattoo of your memory there too.”

He said it simply, but it impacted me catastrophically. He’d been broken without me too. I wrote songs because I couldn’t forget him. He tattooed me on himself because he couldn’t forget me.

It solidified something in my heart right then: our love was real, even if we’d tried to avoid it, even if we were kids, even if it was surrounded by trauma and wreckage. Our love was there and it survived. Love always somehow survived.

I leaned down to kiss his ribs and then looked up at him to kiss him tenderly. He took my lips in his gently, so gently that it felt just as soft as the petals over my skin. He leaned back after he’d tasted me to take more of the lilacs and sprinkle them one by one on top of me.

“Fuck, you’re beautiful like this.” I saw how he took his cock in his hand and squeezed as he stared at me. My mouth watered at how the head of his dick swelled just for me.

“Let me try,” I blurted out, and before I could stop myself, my hand drifted down to wrap around his hand and cock.

“Heartbreaker, not tonight.” He grunted but he didn’t completely stop me. “I won’t be able to last.”

“So what?” I shrugged and felt some of the petals fall from my body, all of me so sensitive to any touch. “Maybe we could—”

“We could what?”