Page 40 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

I stir into consciousness, groggy and heavy and….

Not again, I think in dim exasperation.

“Not again,”

I complain aloud in a rasp as I sluggishly roll over.

But yes. I’m chilled for the…for the third time tonight? Is that right?

Yes, it is right. The first time wasn’t so bad and I got covered back up quickly. The second time was worse because he had pretty much put himself in a blanket burrito; he slept through me wrestling enough of it free that I could just barely cover myself.

Please let this be easier than that….

In the darkness, I feel out a slight edge of the blanket and pull—but once again, sleeping Luke has just about swaddled himself in it. It doesn’t come towards me worth a crap.

“Ugh. Luke.”

I curl in on myself and nudge at his back to wake him up like he told me to do if this happened again.

“Give me some blanket.”

He goes on sleeping, his breathing even and peaceful.

My fingers search for a different part of the comforter and try another pull there. Something moves, but not the way I want it to—I still can’t get enough to even begin to work with.

It brings my exasperation into clearer focus, out of the dimness of sleep. I cannot believe he can steal the blanket more than once in the same damn night. And how in the world is he this wrapped up in it?

“Luke,”

I groan. I try again to pull the comforter free, but I can’t, so I nudge him a bit more.

“Hey. I’m cold.”

I recall that I’m especially cold because I’m not wearing the sweatpants anymore and instead have on the thin night pants I brought from my place. We’re actually both in lighter night pants because right before we got in bed, we were in the bathroom and I accidentally bumped him while he was closing his bottle of mouthwash and he dropped it, splashing both of us. We weren’t about to put off sleep just to wait for our sweatpants to be washed and dried, so we donned these other pants, which are nowhere near as warm.

I would wonder if Luke has bundled himself up in the stolen blanket because he, too, is colder than usual, but I’ve already learned this is just how he sleeps.

I’m not happy about it.

After another fruitless attempt to either fight free some blanket or wake him up enough to give it to me, I’m even less happy.

I finally give him something of a shove.

“Luke! Please share the blanket!”

It has just occurred to me that I can go get the throw blanket off the couch when, at last, he inhales deeply and starts moving around.

Rolling my eyes, I take my chance to both tug on the blanket and say again.

“Hey, let me cover up.”

He starts stretching. I keep tugging until he gets the picture.

“Mmm, I’m sorry,”

he groans throatily. He rolls to face me and clumsily helps me unwrap the blanket from all around him.

“Sorry, sorry.”

Once we’re both covered up fairly, I feel one of his hands fumble along my body and land on my waist.

“C’mere. I’ll snuggle you warm again.”

“How does this even happen?”

I mumble, scooting close to his insane, solid warmth.

“Like this.”

He encloses me in his arms and slips our legs into a slight, easy tangle. With some adjustments, my head kind of ends up tucked under his chin.

I let out one quiet, dry laugh.

“No, not the cuddling. You taking all of the blanket.”

I burrow into him, situating my arms between our chests.

“Oh.”

His exhale is long and slow, causing his body to relax against mine.

Many moments pass in silence before he lets out a quiet noise of amusement too.

“What?” I ask.

“I guess the theft happens ’cause I’m not used to anyone else being in my bed. I never have to think about anyone else.”

Try as I do to hold back a truer laugh, it still escapes me.

“‘The theft,’” I repeat.

His arms around my shoulders give me a cozy squeeze.

“Probably never thought you’d have a thief for a boyfriend, hm? Not very rule-follow-y of you.”

I can’t help another hushed laugh.

He echoes it.

My annoyance is melting away.

Although…well, it really hadn’t been that substantial to begin with, all things considered.

I rub lightly at his chest for a moment, then move my head out from beneath his chin so I can rest it on the pillow, more level with him. In the darkness, I can’t tell exactly how close we are, but I know there can’t be more than a few inches between his face and mine.

I allow my voice to soften the way it wants to.

“It’s not my fault you’re irresistible.”

Swear I can sense a smile gracing his lips.

I add.

“But maybe I should just bring a second blanket in here and let you keep this one.”

“No way,”

he murmurs. He shifts a bit—shifts his face closer, I realize as his nose grazes mine.

“I like having you under this one with me.”

A sweet, somewhat sultry thing that I love hearing.

Still, I inform him in a whisper, like this is a secret.

“But I’m not under it with you all the time since you take it so often.”

A chuckle rises up through him, deep and gravelly from lingering sleep, as warm as all the rest of him. It radiates to me, slips along my spine, makes me shiver just a little bit.

Also makes me want to kiss him. I love Luke’s laughter. Love that I’ve gotten it in this way. And I want to hoard it.

His lips are still in a smile when I manage to clumsily seek them out with mine. I love, too, that he kisses me through it—at least, he does until his amusement dwindles so he can properly fit his mouth to mine. As comfortable as I am being held in his embrace, my top arm finally slips around him, my other hand going up between his neck and the pillow.

It doesn’t feel like enough, though.

Doesn’t feel like there’s enough of us touching each other while we share these kisses with his laughter and the blanket thing fading into the darkness, leaving us quiet and…intent and….

Moments and movements gently blend together,

My leg slips out of our little tangle and curls over his, and I feel his sigh on my lips, the downwards sweep of his arm from around me, his hand in the crook of my knee. He tugs and lifts until my knee is bent almost at his waist—and suddenly our hips are meeting, the contact bringing little pants of air out of us. I’ve drawn him in with my leg around him, too, and I didn’t intend that, but I’m glad I did it because it feels so….

His hand goes from my knee to the small of my back, firmly keeping me close with that sprawling, heated touch. A soft noise of liking escapes me as I pull him into another kiss, shifting in more yet, trying to cage him against me just like he’s doing.

I want to lose myself in his kisses. In his warmth. In how he makes me feel.

He makes it easy to do. Each exchanged kiss and breath, each small sound, each way he finds to move the tiniest bit closer to me tells me he wants to steal me away from everything that isn’t us as much as I want him to.

Knowing he’s with me on it brings a satisfaction and a sweetness and a greed that I don’t know how to handle. Shyness wisps through me as I duck my face out of our kisses and skip my own kisses down to his neck, but the shyness is woven with that confidence I started feeling recently, and it heightens when Luke speaks my name in the breathiest moan I’ve ever heard.

He sounds that way because of me.

What a dizzying, delicious truth.

That truth heightens, too, as the new press of our hips together gives away that he’s stiffening at the front of his night pants.

A whispery web of heat spreads through me from that point of contact.

I feel breathless as my kisses wander down his throat to his collarbone. I love having his skin under my lips, though I wish the angle was more…more….

Before I can finish the thought, he’s rolled me halfway onto my back. I take a soft breath against the hollow of his throat from this paused glimpse of his weight on me and I catch him doing the same near my ear. Then I take full advantage of being able to touch my tongue to this place on him and kiss it more ardently, which has him groaning and moving again—I shift with him until he’s fully above me, his body pressed warmly and strongly and solidly between my thighs, his arms bracketing my head, his chest close over mine.

And this is not a paused glimpse of his weight on me. This is purposeful and entire.

It sets the most welcome hum into every inch of me.

It hits me that this is so much more intimate than anything I’ve….

Because he’s Luke. Because this is us. This is a clothed version of what I was thinking about the other day, when I quietly knew being with him would feel better than it ever felt with anyone else.

I taste the dip in his collarbone only for one more slow moment before his fingers go under my chin and lift it, slanting my face up enough that it bumps his. Just like that, I, too, am aching for the kiss he clearly wants, and our search for it lands us on jaws and at the corners of mouths, but we find our way with the next press, which morphs into lips smoothly parting, tongues touching, shared moans coming on shared breaths. His hand unfolds up along the side of my face, fitting to it.

He.

Kisses me.

So.

Hotly.

That it overwhelms me, overwhelms my body—my lungs, all the little hairs on me, my ability to keep a hold on myself.

I grip one of his shoulders and the back of his shirt, kiss him back with something that feels sweet and desperate at once. Something that takes over my hips, too, and has them moving up on his. I damn near whimper as he rocks down against me in return.

The low sound of liking he makes into my mouth is sinful. My fingers dig into him from the shock of that, of how he feels better and better with me with each passing moment.

His fingertips tremble up to my scarred eyebrow, back down my cheek and neck scar and collarbone…. They only barely graze my breast through my shirt and bralette, but I’m feeling everything from him so sharply that I gasp into arching my back.

“Please,”

huffs out of me, weak yet unstoppable, before I’ve even actively thought of just how badly I….

His hand is under the hem of my shirt just as fast. His breath shudders over my jaw as he goes upwards over my stomach and waist—but now it’s slow—God, the settle of his hand on my breast comes so slowly. I somehow love it even though I feel like I’m dying for him to touch me; once he’s well and truly doing it with a warmly heavy sound and savoring certainty, it sends my hand up from his shoulder into his hair, has my other hand clutching the back of his shirt so much more than before that I’m pulling it up some. I feel flickers of fresh shyness and of desire to pull it up like I mean it so I can take it off him, but he’d have to stop touching me and I don’t want that.

His voice moves slowly, too, over my lips, deep and throaty.

“I’ll never get tired of the way you feel with me, love.”

‘Love.’

The word crashes into me like my mouth crashes into his, like his crashes back against mine.

‘Love.’

Another cascade of moments sweeps me away. Another blend of our movements together.

He’s an assault on my sense of touch in the best way. How he kisses me, how the squeeze of his strong hand feels on my soft flesh, how his body ebbs and flows with mine like there aren’t clothes between us, how his hardness keeps hitting the exact right place on me for tiny waves of sparks to move all throughout me.

Except with one slight shift of him over me, they suddenly aren’t tiny at all—all of a sudden, there’s a familiar hot swell awakening right there at the center of me where our steady pressing contact is, and—

“Oh my God,”

I say into a staggered gasp, grasping down to the bared dip in his back. The rapidly building pleasure guides my hips up against his like a plea.

“Luke, I’m—Luke, I—”

He’s sudden, too, in abandoning my breast for my thigh and clutching it to him and matching my intensifying movements. He consumes me with a kiss as fire licks up my spine and I feel his teeth take my bottom lip and feel the rolling muscles in his lower back as he urges me through my…my….

Oh my God.

Luke.

Oh my God.

It’s all I can think, even as my mind seems to slip away from me.

When it comes back, I’m shaking.

From that rush of bone-deep bliss I wasn’t expecting.

From how it’s quickly fading.

From the insane sense of perfection trickling through me.

And from embarrassment that contradicts it.

Was that real?

I realize I’m nearly panting since my breaths are hitting the quiet air instead of Luke’s lips because his lips aren’t on mine anymore, they’re pulling drawn-out kisses from my jawline. I went still at some point and so did he. I ease up the grip I’ve still had on his lower back—and in his hair. God, I’ve had my fingers tangled in his hair….

My embarrassment is heightening.

I don’t know when a flush came over me, but it’s here. Especially in my face.

Yet…he isn’t recoiling. His fingertips are still digging into my thigh, and his arousal is still notched against me, and the last kiss he takes from my jaw is as intent as any other before his mouth brushes towards my ear.

His quiet voice is still coarse when he asks.

“Did you just come?”

It isn’t so quiet that I don’t hear the undertone of knowing in it—he already knows.

He asked anyway, though, and even with my face burning, I can’t try to lie. I can’t pretend nothing happened when something very much did.

So I nod, an apology springing to my tongue.

But I can’t do anything with it before he inhales slowly, nudges my ear with his nose, shifts a hard press of his lips to my cheek.

“Fuck, Magnolia. That makes me wanna come.”

The air huffs out of my lungs.

His, too, as his hips go slowly against mine one single time, his hand squeezing my thigh.

Holy fu….

I don’t know when I once again started loving him calling me by my full name, but I love it so much now, spoken here with so much honesty, followed by him moving against me so hotly again.

“What?”

I finally ask in a heavy whisper.

“But it was an…. I didn’t mean to.”

His mouth is over mine again, touching in the barest graze of a kiss. “I know.”

“And you—you don’t think I’m embarrassing?”

“Fuck. No.”

The two short words are nearly growled.

I…can’t not believe him.

He likes that I lost control because of him.

My nerve endings have started to stir out of the calmness they’d been drifting towards. Something new stirs with them, spurred on by our melding breaths and his confession from moments ago—it’s a new kind of wanting that is damn near tangible. I swear I feel it like I feel him and the pillow beneath my head and the blanket around us.

I get my hands around his face and lift mine to it. He answers with a proper kiss to my lips.

‘Fuck, Magnolia,’ he had said.

I stutter one of my hands down his neck to his chest.

‘Love,’ he had called me before.

As we melt through kiss after kiss, I get chill bumps from the fresh memory of him carrying me through my accidental orgasm without hesitation or fumbling—him biting my lip, meeting my thrusts. He recognized what I needed and gave it to me, unquestioning.

I slide my hand down farther to below the waistband of his pants, straight to where it wants to be.

Luke gasps out of our kiss and arches into my touch. He drops his forehead against mine, then exhales, “Oh, God.”

That new desire is growing in me, and I’m going to listen to it. I know what he needs, and I want to give it to him right back. I want to steal him away to myself from everything else right back.

I want him to lose control because of me too.

The flush that’s all over my body isn’t the same as the one from before. My embarrassment has been dismissed. Now I feel warm only from him.

Still, my hand is tentative on his hardness through his pants, though only because….

I lick my dry lips and say through our heavy breaths.

“Tell me. Tell me what to do for you. What you want.”

“What I want?”

he asks in husky incredulity.

“I want anything you wanna give me. I’m living for anything you wanna give me, Maggie. Touch me like this, or touch me for real, or let me do what you did while you wrap your legs around me and kiss me senseless—I don’t care. I’m all yours.”

My heart swells in my ribcage so fast that it feels like something is going to burst.

I put my hands to his chest and push. There’s no need for me to tell him out loud to move because he already starts doing it; he sits up and I do, too, then shift around and nudge him again until he’s on his back and I can put my knees on either side of his hips.

I settle solidly on him. I slant forwards and put my chest close to his.

“I’m all yours,”

I promise him back.

He groans and moves my hair back from my face with both hands, taking my head in them so he can take my mouth in a kiss. As I meet every press and pull of his lips, something about this makes me shiver: maybe the way it feels to be on him like this, or the cool air of the room rushing over where I’d been trapped between him and the bed, or just how he’s kissing me with us being suspended in these moments. Maybe it’s all of it together. All I know is that little trembles are skipping through me and the only thing I can do about them is kiss him more, follow his lowered hands’ guide of me against him, and reach down to tug at the band of his pants.

It’s all quick: I have to adjust how I’m straddling him and prop myself up on one hand, and he helps me move the pants out of the way and his underwear goes with them, and then he’s in my grip and I can’t tell which one of us moans louder—I don’t even know why my moan is so closely matched to his.

Except of course I do, I realize as we rush into another smoldering kiss like there’s any threat of someone hearing us, like we have to quiet each other with our mouths. Of course I know why exploring his arousal pulls a low gasp out of my chest just like it pulls a sharp one out of his. Of course I know why this matters to me as much as it does to him.

Luke is my ten inside and out.

It’s heaven to touch him.

It’s electrifying to bring him pleasure.

It’s fulfilling to make him happy.

It’s incredible to love him.

My heartbeat stumbles.

My hand slips into a steady rhythm along his hard length to the tune of all his sounds of liking—even when our lips are pressed together, those sounds aren’t quite stifled, and I can’t get enough of that. The rest of him also does its best to show me what this is doing to him: his kisses are earnest, his hips are sending thrusts into my strokes, his hands are under my shirt and all over my body and in my hair.

He also keeps landing touches on my eyebrow—gentle and firm and fleeting and rapt—and every time, it twists up some new part of me.

It’s happening now as we sink into a deep kiss. One of his hands is low on my back and his other thumb is swiping as slowly over my scar as our tongues are dancing together, and each brush works to tie my heartstrings into knots.

They tighten when he breaks out of our kiss with breathless words.

“You’re the most beautiful thing in this entire world.”

A soft sound is wrenched from me. I mean to tell him that in return, but I only barely get out, “You,”

as my lips and tongue go down to the pounding pulse point on his neck.

He inhales tightly at the touch, and again from the languid kiss.

I feel new tension take over his body and the way he moves into my hand.

He rushes out.

“I’m gonna…. Baby, I can’t handle you. I already can’t do it.”

I can’t believe what that admission does to me.

Nodding in understanding and wanting, I start moving my mouth back to his just as his hands take urging hold of my head again. I advance as he pulls me and our kiss hits hot and heartfelt.

And his end hits him hard.

A moan fires out of him and one of his palms drops away from me and hits the mattress hard.

He stills as he comes, and I carry him through like he carried me, and we leave our kiss so our breaths can hit the air hard.

It truly is electrifying to me.

I’ve never felt anything like what I feel right now.

Once all is done and I’ve stilled, too, I’m so overwhelmed by him that I’m unable to keep from dropping my head into the curve of his shoulder. I try to prepare myself to only rest here for a second, but his trembly arms go around me, caging me into a hug; he doesn’t seem to mind my weight and closeness. And since he doesn’t let go again right away, I don’t try to pull back yet after all.

I just sigh and fumble to touch some part of him with my free hand, now that I’m not propped up on it. I end up holding his shoulder.

His lips find the first place he can reach too—my hair—and touch a lingering kiss there, and it…all of it, all of this…reminds me in a new way that I’m just….

The words leave me in a whisper.

“Luke, I’m so lost to you.”

His arms tighten around me. It makes breathing a little more difficult for both of us, but we don’t mind. We deal with it for many long moments before he loosens the embrace.

When he speaks, his tone is low and warm and unhurried.

“I’m lost to you, too, and I love it.”

I feel his throat bob with a swallow.

“It’s not scary. It’s like…coming home.”

I remember recently thinking about him feeling like home to me. Hearing him say it in his own way about me brings a little sting to the corners of my eyes.

“Yeah,”

I agree.

“You’re right.”

His lips are still against my hair, allowing me to feel his smile.

I want to taste it. I quit nuzzling his shoulder and make it happen.

After two stamping kisses, he unravels his hug of me and smooths his hands up and down my back.

“Thank you, by the way, for…all this.”

I swear my blush is instant.

“Thank you,”

I echo. Then, with a light laugh.

“I really didn’t mean for it to go this way when I woke you up.”

He chuckles hoarsely, and it’s a pleasant sound. His amusement actually settles me rather than making me blush more.

“I know,”

he says.

“and I didn’t mean for it to either, but I’m damn glad it did.”

No, I can’t hold on to too much shyness.

I exhale a quiet laugh of my own and tell him, “So am I.”

He seems to hesitate, and then his voice drops to a murmur on the word, “Yeah?”

A few fingertips come up and seek out my cheek, then my lips.

“No regrets?”

I shake my head lightly, not wanting to dislodge his touch. “None.”

I kiss one of his fingertips and check just because.

“None for you?”

“Not a single one.”

I feel his hand move, feel his lips fully graze mine again.

“I don’t regret you for a second,”

he whispers.

The words dive deeply into me.

Something tells me he means them beyond just what we found ourselves in over these last many minutes.

I mean mine beyond that, too, when I whisper back.

“Nor I you.”

I let go of his shoulder to brush a knuckle along his jawline, then repeat his.

“Not a single one.”

Our next kiss only lasts short moments, but it doesn’t feel small. It feels big in a different way from all our others. They held oceans of sincere emotion and desire, yes—they were not lacking in the least. This one just has something of its own in it.

I don’t ponder that further. We need to crawl out of this bed and see to some tidying up. And now we’re both yawning; tiredness is coming back to us.

But I do fail at holding in a giggle as I finally start extracting myself from his embrace.

My eyes have adjusted just enough to the darkness that I can make out the upwards turn of his lips. “What?”

Can’t hold the joke in either.

“I thought I was annoyed about you always stealing the blanket, but maybe you should do it even more often.”

His laughter pours into the deeply shadowed room.

In a sweet rush, I once again remember him calling me ‘love.’

It all makes my heart feel bright.

“Can I keep you?”

he asks easily.

“Please do,”

I say in kind.

“And please let me keep you.”

“Happily.”

After a smiling few moments, I echo in a whisper, “Happily.”

I sense one of his hands smacking around the bed in the dark until it lands on my arm and lightly squeezes. I find purchase on him, too, and copy him.

Then we help each other out of the bed, not letting go until the moment we absolutely have to.

And my life feels bright, actually, even now in the middle of the night.