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Chapter Seventeen

Dallas

Fuck.

I am way more satisfied by that statement than I should be.

My whole body is buzzing. I’m still in disbelief that it even happened.

Sarah. My Sarah. I take her hand and lead her out into the living room, and I let myself enjoy how cute I think she is in my sweatpants.

How sexy I think the white T-shirt is. Especially with nothing on underneath.

I allow myself to really let myself call it what it is.

I want her. I want her, and I think she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

I sit her down on the couch, and I frown. I go back into my room and grab a blanket. I wrap her up in it, making it tight, like I’m securing a burrito.

“What are you doing?”

“I want to take care of you,” I say. “And I didn’t go get dinner, so you have to suffer through whatever I have on hand.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of girl dinner?”

I frown. “No.”

“Girl dinner is the fine art of piecing together a meal out of seemingly unrelated things. Since I’m incapacitated, I’ll give you directions if you tell me what you have.”

“Okay.”

A truly hilarious series of events ensues after that. But we end up with the platter with cheese, crackers, cold cuts, some grapes, half a loaf of sourdough bread, artichokes and olives, and a mason jar full of M&Ms.

“Perfect,” she says as she works her arm out of the blanket, and I begin the process of starting the movie.

She snuggles up against me, reaching for a piece of bread and taking a fierce bite of it. “I’m starving,” she says. “Who knew that orgasms burned so many calories?”

“I don’t know what to say to that.”

“Just say you’ll do it again.”

She looks up at me, her eyes hopeful. I hadn’t actually thought about what was going to happen next, but now that she says that, I of course know for sure that there’s no way it won’t happen again.

I suddenly feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of her.

I have to keep her safe. I can’t hurt her.

And I’m… I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to have a relationship like this.

The stakes feel so high, it feels so overwhelming.

It’s stupid, because I know without a shadow of a doubt that I would kill for her.

I’ve already told her I would. If Chris were here right now, I would take him out.

If I thought that he would harm one hair on her head, I would destroy him.

I don’t feel overwhelmed by that. I don’t feel uncertain about it.

I would die for her. I feel certain about that too.

But living with her, making a relationship with her, trying to bundle up all this intensity and figure out how to make it something real, something that will last, something that won’t blow up and hurt us both, that feels much more uncertain, and it makes me feel unsteady.

“I’m not letting you go,” I say, touching her hair, brushing it out of her face. There’s a soft smile on her face after that. She leans back against the couch, clutching her bread against her chest like a talisman.

I want to believe that I can fix her. That I can help her be the one to cast the ring into the fire. I guess I do want to be her Samwise Gamgee. I just don’t have any confidence in my ability to do that.

She leans against me, and I run my fingers through her hair, smiling as I do. I remember driving into town and touching her like this while she slept. My heart feels sore.

And then my phone buzzes in my pocket. I reach in and take it out, and see that I have a message from my dad.

Busted on doorbell camera.

“Fuck,” I say.

“What?” She asks, twisting her neck to look over at me.

“We got caught making out on the doorbell camera,” I say.

She blinks, looking shocked for a moment, then a crack of laughter escapes, and she covers her mouth. “Oh. That’s… Oh well, I guess. But is that… Uncomfortable for you?”

“No,” I say.” I try to think about whether or not that changes anything. If that makes a difference. No. It doesn’t. All right, I spent a minute trying to explain to my family that it wasn’t sexual between the two of us, but what does it matter if it is ?

My relationship with Sarah is different than any other relationship I’ve ever had. Different from any relationship I will ever have.

It’s fitting, honestly, that we did this.

Because we belong to each other. She’s mine.

If she was ever going to work all this out, it was going to be with me.

She trusts me. And I felt a lot of guilt about whether or not it was all right for me to want her while protecting her, but she wants me.

The minute she changed things, the minute she flipped the script and ran into my arms, it became all right. It became more than all right.

Meant to be, even. Because this is where I need to be, I can feel it. As close to her as possible.

I relate, very suddenly, to the dragon in the movie. Guarding my treasure. Protecting it at all costs, and in order to do that, I need to be as close to her as possible. So no, I don’t care if my family knows. I don’t care if everybody knows.

We’ve never been able to define what we are, so why start now?

She wiggles against me, and I tighten my hold on her, tossing my phone down onto one of the couch cushions that we wiggled onto the floor when we were getting settled. I don’t need to deal with my family right now. I don’t need to deal with anything outside this room.

The movie is still playing, but she angles her head upward, and I can’t resist, so I lean in and kiss her. I kiss her, deep and long, slick as her tongue finds mine and tangles with it.

I push my fingers through her hair, and I drink her in.

All that she is. All the desire that I feel for her.

Then I lift her up from where I have her wrapped in the blanket, struggling to unwind her as I move her onto my lap.

She giggles, freeing herself from the blanket and settling herself so that her thighs are on either side of mine.

I’m getting hard, and can’t hide it in these sweats, but I don’t really care.

I need her to know how badly I want her.

She strips my shirt off, quickly, and runs her hands over my chest, down my stomach. “Can I… I want to explore you,” she says, her voice shy, her cheeks pink.

Sarah really isn’t shy, and there’s something so endearing about me being on the receiving end of this bashfulness. That pretty blush.

I reach up and touch her cheek. “My body belongs to you.”

I didn’t realize how true that was before this moment. My body is hers. I’m hers.

That simple truth has existed between us from the moment we first set eyes on each other. It’s true now, even more than it was then.

She smiles softly, leaning in and kissing my neck, down my chest, becoming more and more bold as she strikes a trail from my pectoral muscles down my abs. She stops at the waistband of my sweatpants, and presses her hand over my hardening cock.

“God damn,” she says. “You are so big. So beautiful.”

I grit my teeth, my hips practically coming up off the couch.

Am I that basic? Yeah. I’m this fucking basic.

Her saying that to me is enough to nearly send me over the edge.

God, I want her. I want to grab her and strip those ridiculous sweats off her, bury myself inside her, hard, fast, no more exploration, no more teasing.

But she wants this, so I’m going to give it to her.

Because whatever Sarah wants, she can have. At least, whatever I have to give. And she can have my body. Hell, she can devour it if she wants .

She pulls the waistband of my sweats out, down so that my cock is free, and she curls her fingers around my hard legs, squeezing.

“I really don’t know what I’m doing,” she says, large golden eyes staring into mine.

“I don’t need you to know what you’re doing,” I say, my voice a desperate rasp. I cup her chin, and she bites her lip as she looks away from my gaze, down at the most intimate part of me.

“I want…” She leans in, flicking her tongue lightly across the broad head of my cock.

It’s like heat lightning in the mountains.

A flash of fire and danger that threatens to spark a whole conflagration inside my body.

I reach out, grabbing hold of her hair, and this time, when I sift her hair through my fingers, I stop and make a fist. Then I tug, hard.

She gasps, letting her head fall back for a moment as I hold her steady, because I don’t want to come all over her face without clearing that first. I don’t want to come this fast.

I want this to go on forever.

My spirit is willing, but my flesh is very, very weak.

We both pause for a moment, and she looks at me, our breathing erratic, but in sync somehow.

“Please,” she says.

That she’s pleading to take me into her mouth kills me, and I release my hold on her, let her bring her delicate mouth back down onto my aching flesh.

Then she sucks me in deep, and the combination of swear words that come out of my mouth is so creative, so filthy, I think even Uncle Wyatt would be a little bit disappointed in me.

Then I’m lost. In her .

I know that it’s Sarah. The entire time.

I’m captivated by the fact that she’s been everything I’ve needed for so many years.

Suddenly I feel hollowed out, aching and bitter about the ten years we were apart. But maybe we needed those years apart. So that we could come back together like this.

I let my head fall back, luxuriating in the wet suction of her mouth, the way that her hands are skimming over my body as she teases me, torments me.

“Fuck,” I say, my hips rocking up off the couch, and this time I grab hold of her hair and pull her away for me for good this time. My body hates me for it, but it’ll thank me later.

“I don’t want to finish like that,” I say.

“What if I want to. What if I want to swallow you?”