Page 40

CHAPTER 39

ABOUT DAMN TIME

WILDER

C ass is snoring.

With every rise of her bare chest, the softest little snore exits her parted lips. Her hair is wild and flaming, a tangled mess from drying on its own, and her face is bare, copper lashes nearly brushing her cheeks. The snoring is due to her position, which is flat on her back and too far away from me. But I can’t bring myself to disturb her, too amused and reverent for anything but appreciation.

My gaze trails the line of her profile to her long, extended neck. The hollow beneath her throat is a strange fascination—the memory of it filled with milky come last night sends an electric jolt down my spine and up my cock.

The sensation of déjà vu slips over me as I watch her snore, her nipples soft and pink, rising and falling, rising and falling.

I’ve imagined her in my bed a hundred million times. I’ve imagined us married, sharing this home. When I bought it, I wondered if she’d like it. Would she hate the kitchen or wish the bathroom was bigger? I’ve imagined that we had a family, that we were happy, that she was mine.

And now here she is, naked and snoring and splayed in my bed with a tiny sliver of drool in the corner of her pretty mouth. My smile spreads at the same pace as my heart, my cock chasing after.

A circle closed, the two ends snapping together the second she changed her mind.

This time, I’m not letting her go.

She doesn’t move when I slide down the bed toward her, bringing my lips to the soft flesh of her stomach. Her snore hitches, but she doesn’t wake, and so I lay delicate kisses with smiling lips from her hip to the crease where it meets her thigh. I trace the juncture with my tongue, watching her rouse slowly. First with a hum, then a moan, then the sliver of her eyes blinking open and the flush rising in her cheeks.

She smiles, raking her hand through my hair as her eyes close again. Her thighs part for me in offering.

You’ll find me dead before I refuse.

I grab her far hip and pull just enough to tilt her toward me, skating my lips across her hood, watching her, listening to the gasps and hums and whimpers she gives me when I close my mouth over her clit and suck.

Feverish at the sound of her pleasure, I latch, rolling and spreading her legs so I can lay between them. Her body fascinates me in a way I’ve never experienced, not even when we were young and exploring each other so long ago. Maybe it’s the waiting. The hoping. The fear that I somehow wouldn’t have the chance to love her again. Maybe it’s that I hate that motherfucker who didn’t love her like she deserves. Like it’s my sole purpose in life to prove to her how wrong he was with every lick and suck and flick of my tongue.

I should thank him—if it wasn’t for him, she might not be here with me now.

Never. I draw her clit into my mouth and suck viciously. I’d beat the shit out of him first.

The sheets tangle around her leg, and I have to let her go to kick them off the bed, gruff and impatient at the inconvenience. When I’m back between her thighs, I splay her legs so I can see every slick fold, every inch of pink flesh, the tight hole where my cock belongs. I want to taste all of her. I want to know every ripple in the dark. I thought I did, but now that I’m here, I realize I know nothing.

I’d tell her, but I’m busy touching her. The drag of my tongue against her silky heat sets her hips bucking, separating us. I watch her pussy clench and my need surges, sending a rush of blood to my cock as I descend with a moan. My cock flexes, hard and tight, squeezing a pearly drop of come that trails down the flushed tip.

My arms curl under her thighs and clamp onto her hips so I can hold her still enough that we won’t be separated again, and when I close my lips over her clit, she breathes a yes that sends a shiver of pleasure down my spine.

I need her. All of her. I need to take care of her, but I want to claim her as mine. I need to make her happy, but I want to take all of her too, my heart and my soul and my cock greedy for her. I wonder if she knows. I wonder if she can hear all the things I can’t say in the way I fuck her.

Like how I love her. How I’ve always loved her. How I want her to stay forever.

I won’t lose her again.

And I can’t tell her yet, not with words. Not until she’s ready. Not until she’s sure.

She cries out, panting and mewling, her breasts quivering and nipples tight and flushed and reaching. And I watch her come undone, watch the pleasure shake and tremble through her, taste the sweetness of it on my tongue.

Her pussy is still pulsing when I let her go to climb up her body, suckling her nipple to buy time. But I’m hungry. Starving. Desperate. Rough when I hook one knee and draw it up, turn her, straddle her other leg. The tip of my cock finds her dripping and drives into her.

Her mouth flies open in a gasp before her lids flutter closed. And for a timeless moment, I fuck her with determination and intent, feeling everything. The clench of her snug flesh around my cock, her skin so soft beneath my hands. The graze of her toes, her feet bouncing gently as I slam into her, the sound of slapping skin.

Does she know how much I need her?

Does she know all the ways I love her?

If I pour myself into her, if I give her everything, will she know?

She looks up at me, a flush climbing her chest to her neck, pussy tightening around me. She’s going to come again. And knowing that, I do what I know she wants, give her body what it needs to let go, begging my cock to wait, to obey, not to let go until she does.

Her pussy is so tight, I’m met with resistance, her face pinching as if in pain, then shooting open. She comes with a frenzied cry that serves as my permission. With a deep moan, the pressure I’ve been fighting rises, climbing up my cock to explode from me. I fuck and grunt and pump into her with the world far away. My arms give way, and I collapse onto her, burying my face in her neck, her hair stuck to my lips and riding my breath with every pant.

There, seated deep inside her, with her arms around my neck and fingers in my hair, with whispers of adoration licking my ears, the world is completely right. Everything is exactly where it should be, starting with me and her.

She strokes my hair as I find my way back to my body.

“I missed you,” I whisper against her skin.

“I missed you too.” Her voice is smoky and lush. “Every day you make me wish more and more that I never left. But if we’d stayed together, you’d never have had Cricket.”

“And you’d never have gone to Fiji.”

She laughs and kisses my temple. “You wouldn’t take me to Fiji, moneybags?”

“Alright, you might have gone to Fiji if you wanted to. Did you want to?”

“I mean, who wouldn’t want to go to Fiji?”

I push myself up, kissing her briefly as we separate. When I roll to my side, I prop my head on my hand, my leg hooking around hers, keeping her pressed against the length of my body.

“That’s not really an answer.”

Her mouth quirks, and she thinks about it. “It wasn’t my idea, if that’s what you mean.”

“How many trips were?”

Now she’s frowning. And I loathe that motherfucker all over again.

“I dunno,” she says. “There had to be at least one, right?”

“I don’t know, does there?”

Her frown deepens, and I hate everything about it.

“Where do you want to go?” I ask. “Anywhere in the world.”

“Yosemite,” she answers without hesitation.

It’s my turn to frown. “You’ve never been to Yosemite?”

“Nope. Always wanted to go, but Davis always had a ‘better’ idea.”

That dickhead carted her all over the world and wouldn’t even take her somewhere she wanted to go here? In America? What a thoughtless piece of shit. What absolute fucking trash.

“Let’s go.”

She laughs. “Right now? Sure, I’ll pack a bag.”

“I mean it. Let’s plan a trip. Any special Yosemite requests?”

Her eyes glitter, her smile small but excited. “You know what I really want to do?”

“Yes.”

“Promise not to laugh?”

My eyes narrow. “Did he laugh? No, you know what? I don’t want to know. I hate him enough.”

She giggles, but her eyes drift. “I want to do one of those glamping things. Like luxury camping in a yurt with like a spa and stuff. Because let’s be honest, I’m not built for tent camping.”

“Done. Pick a date and we’ll go.”

“Really?” she asks, excited.

“Fuck yeah. We can do whatever you want.”

“Have you been?”

“Twice. It’s incredible. But I bet it’s even better with you.”

She sighs, softening, her face falling in my direction. “I don’t deserve you.”

“No, you deserve somebody better than me. But I double fucking dare anybody to try.”

Laughing, she slips her hand into the curve of my neck, pulling me toward her with her lips angled for mine. So I give her those too. I meant it when I said anything she wants. As far as I’m concerned it’s already hers.

Her stomach makes a gnarly sound, and we look at her belly button like an alien might bust out.

“Hungry?” I ask on a laugh.

“Starving.”

“Put some clothes on while I cook breakfast. Or don’t and we’ll see if we get through breakfast.”

With a brief kiss, I roll out of bed and stride to the bathroom to clean up. I’m buzzing from head to toe, smiling from ear to ear, fighting the urge to whistle. That’s what she reduces me to. Whistling, for God’s sake.

She’s still lying in bed when I enter, all tangled up in the sheets but mostly naked. Her red hair is shocking against the creamy bedding, and when our eyes meet, something passes between us again. My gluttonous cock stirs in my pajama pants, and I shake my head at her, smiling as I turn for the door…

“Quit looking at me like that or we’ll starve to death.”

She laughs behind me as I walk into the kitchen and gather supplies for breakfast. I’ll admit it—I do whistle, but only a little and very quietly. Bacon is sizzling in the pan when she joins me, and boom, just like that I’m ready to starve to death.

Her hair is piled on top of her head like a pretty bird’s nest, exposing her long neck and the shape of her jaw. She’s wearing one of my old Dodgers tees with my last name and number thirteen on the breast and the back. I have no idea if she’s wearing shorts, but I am one hundred percent ready to find out.

I’m about to turn off the stove so I can do just that when a knock sounds at the door. She freezes, half on a bar stool at the island, as if to ask if she should get it. But I make for it, wiping my hands on the towel on my bare shoulder, wondering who the fuck is at my door on a Sunday morning when ninety percent of the town is at church.

I expect Jessa. Maybe her mom.

But not Davis.