Page 55 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

Going by how time naturally works, it doesn’t take that long for me and Maggie to arrive at my apartment. To my body and mind, it’s felt like an hour has passed since I set up our ride away from the bar.

But it all balances out with every second spent walking to my front door. The night air is frigid, open, refreshing. We hold hands going up the stairs and it’s an even tighter grasp than what we had in the car. Everything is quiet except for our thudding steps, the vibrations of which are doing their part to root me in this reality we’ve been wanting and are getting at last.

It’s just us now.

I feel it in the way Maggie’s hand rests low on my back under my coat while I unlock the door.

It comes clearer still once we’re shut off from the world, secured inside the comfortable stillness of my place lit only by the glow above my kitchen sink.

And I swear it whispers around us as we wash our hands of the evening and go back and step out of our shoes in the living room and shed our coats standing so close together that our arms slip out of heavy fabric and right around each other.

The L of my name hits my lips with her huff of breath, the rest halted by the kiss we finally press into.

Sink into.

Moan into.

Inhale out of just to go back into with tender desperation.

It’s just us now.

The thought settles away, content to be overtaken by action. By our kiss going deep. By Maggie’s hands sliding into the back pockets of my jeans and bringing my hips to her. By one of my hands finding its way under the skirt of this damn dress, over the tights I like the smoothness of but want out of my way.

I want everything she’s wearing to be out of my way so I can fucking worship her.

My grasp of her thigh just below her ass makes her hips move pleadingly against me. Them doing that while her tongue grazes my bottom lip makes me lose my breath.

Still, I manage to ask her.

“You’re not in pain?”

“No,”

she says, softly short on breath herself.

“Please. I….”

When she kisses me instead of finishing her sentence, I kiss back long and slow and hot. But then I murmur.

“‘Please,’ what? I wanna do whatever you want. Tell me what you want and I’ll give it to you.”

Her hands on my lower back now. My free one framing the side of her face, feeling the warmth there, feeling her swallow.

“Touch me,”

she whispers unevenly. She fumbles for my hand on her back side and shyly drags it around to the front of her thigh, stopping short of going between her legs.

“Please—please do it, Luke. I want…I’ve wanted….”

Heat is spilling down my spine.

I know that desire damn well.

I’m hazily aware of a few things at once: me nodding, confessing to her that I’ve wanted it, too, and shuffling us to the skinny table against the wall near the front door. Our mouths meet again, and she holds on to the table with one hand while the other helps me start getting rid of her tights.

Then, after short moments, I break the kiss and kneel, realizing I want to watch these things come off of her.

I hear her light little breath as her hand stills and lets me take over. And despite how ready we both are to move past this particular barrier, I find I can’t help being slow about peeling the silklike fabric down—I can’t resist stealing kisses from the soft skin being revealed to me, even from around the smaller bandage she’s been able to wear on her knee. God, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen her legs, but I’ve never gotten to put my mouth on them, and her hand is in my hair now while her breaths slice through the air, and every second of it all makes my blood burn that much hotter.

The tights get tossed aside.

I close her bare ankles into a gentle grip, then slide it up her legs and over her knees to her thighs, meeting her eyes through the dimly lit shadows as I stand, my hands inching her dress up.

It’s not so shadowed in here that I can’t see exactly how much heated adoration is in her eyes.

The way she looks at me right now as she takes my face in her hands puts my heart and lungs in a vice grip that I don’t want to ever free them of.

As we kiss, my chest is full of all kinds of things I want to say, but the only one that gets out of me is, “Maggie,”

because her fingernails are pressing deliciously into my scalp and my fingertips are going just beneath the waistband of her underwear.

I live for the way my grazing touch makes her gasp against my lips, makes her fingers curl into my hair.

But I comprehend through the building swelter of these moments that we’re not quite right standing this way. I pull another kiss from her lips, then make my hands go up and pull hers off of me; I soothe her small noise of confused disapproval by moving my mouth to her jaw while I take her hips and urge her to turn around.

“Like this, love,”

I tell her with low warmth.

Now the sound she makes matches that; it’s understanding and wanting.

We get her fixed here between the table and me with her back against my chest, our faces turning towards each other. I kiss the corner of her mouth, slip my hand back under her dress to the front of her panties, then go all the way into them and glide a finger straight down—

Moans rush out of us both and.

“Oh my God,”

rushes out of her. I delve into the slick heat of her and she bends her arm up to grip the back of my neck, her other hand juddering to the wall above the table. “Luke.”

“Holy fuck,”

I exhale against her lips.

“You’re so fucking….”

I gather her against me just a little bit more. Then my other hand threads up through her hair, cradles her head. We meet in a fervent kiss.

But I don’t hurry through giving us what we want. I go slowly.

I’m going to memorize every second of how this feels and I want her to be able to do it too.

Our hums into our kisses are weak and breathy while I languidly, deliberately learn her, our hold on each other nearly trembling. Then, God, my whole body is set atremble as a soft yes slips out of her and her hips start matching the thrusts of my finger.

Dizzying.

“That’s it, Maggie,”

I urge her softly, too, before fitting our mouths back together.

Everything about her dizzies me.

Yet never in my life have I felt stability quite like this.

Her body is curved back against mine, soft and feminine, a wellspring of the most incredible noises of pleasure, and it’s crazy what it does to me. It makes me feel like I’m not just in charge of making her feel good, I’m also shielding her from the world.

Because I am—certain threats may have passed, but any other that ever arises will have to go through me to get to her. That hasn’t stopped being true just because times are quieter now, and it never will stop being true.

And it’s exactly right to be like this with her. To be guarding her, kissing her, touching her, cherishing her, loving her.

It’s where I belong.

No one else belongs where I’m standing.

No one else ever has.

Our kisses end on heavy breaths as she tilts her head around into my hand. I tongue my way down to her pulse point, the chaos of which only offers more proof of her loving this with me right back. It makes me groan. I savor the place with a kiss because it’s mine, then slip my finger from her only to push it back inside with another.

“Luke,”

comes again, drags rapturously through her breathless panting. “Yes.”

Can’t believe I’ve gone all these years without that. Can’t believe I’ve wasted so much time not making her say my name like that.

I remember how she said it that night in my bed, when she came just from having my hips on hers while we kissed. The memory moves like wildfire through me, sends the heel of my hand firmly against her while my fingers keep up their measured thrusting—I want to nudge at her most sensitive spot and I do and the moan that bursts out of her, the way her knees weaken for just a moment—fuck, it makes me even harder for her than I’ve already become.

I don’t know how I can want to touch her this way forever and also want so much more.

“You have any idea how perfect you are?”

I rumble against her warm skin.

“How perfect you feel to me inside and out? How fucking perfect my name is coming out of your mouth?”

She doesn’t answer except to gasp, to send her hand stumbling down the wall to the skinny table as her hips keep rolling against my hand, to snake her other fingers up from my neck and through my hair, holding my face near hers.

Another groan escapes me. I keep my touch unhurried and steadily pressing between her thighs despite how shaken up I am.

My lips brush up to her jaw. I taste it, earn a shiver from her, nearly shiver myself.

My voice falls to a hush as I tell her.

“You’re perfect for me, Magnolia.”

Just like that, she’s nodding. Again and again, she nods, gasping anew.

And my heart is blazing.

She all but whimpers.

“I know I am.”

My heart is blazing.

“I think I always—”

A soft noise catches in her throat.

“No, I know I always have been.”

My heart is blazing and about to explode from my chest.

God, I wasted so much time refusing to let myself feel this way over her, and it’s a shame because it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever known.

I love her so much.

I want her so badly.

Everything she is, everything she has, I love and I want.

Thinking about her words, how she feels on my fingers and against my body, the way she sounds—it’s got me so hot for her that I’m starting to sweat.

“You’re right,”

I say near her ear.

She whispers.

“And you’ve always been perfect for me.”

Her fingernails are against my scalp again. I do shiver now.

“Yes, I have.”

She turns her face around and up and takes my mouth in a kiss so sweet it burns.

I can’t name the sound I make as I kiss her back.

Then I can’t keep from stumbling out.

“Maggie, I wanna—I wanna feel you more than this. I’m fucking dying to feel you more than this. I want you in my bed and wrapped all around me. But is that something you want, too, or do you only—?”

Sincerity wrings at me as much as desire does.

“I swear to God, it’s okay if you don’t want more. I’m not gonna be—”

My words choke away as she unexpectedly turns around to face me, causing me to pull my fingers from her and out from under her dress. I splay my hands over her waist, losing heartbeats over how she’s going for the buttons on my shirt.

Her lips are still close to mine, and she sighs shakily against them.

“It is what I want,”

she says.

“You are what I…. Thank you, but I don’t wanna stop there. At touching. So damn good, Luke, but it’s not enough. I do want you. All of you. Please.”

My brain can’t make sense of how she’s bashful and confident at the same time while she undoes button after button—it can’t make sense of how she can feel so soft and so smoldering at the same time.

“Yeah?”

I ask huskily as my shirt gets pulled off.

Our gazes meet in the faint glow of that light through these shadows. She’s nodding again when I take her gold-touched face in my hands.

Our kiss is fire.

Her moan is kindle.

My restraint is ash.

I skate my hands down her body so I can start lifting her.

“Put your legs around me.”

She does it without a word of protest, her arms going around me too.

Once I have her picked up and held securely, we’re moving.