Page 60 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

I would tell him that I made this collage after I found his notebook in the park and that even before we’d ever met, he inspired my art in the same way I inspired his music, and that it made me feel like we belonged together, like our souls were tethered.

But his dexterous fingers unclasped my bra with one hand and he slid a finger over the slope of my shoulder and dragged the strap down my arm and then the other, and I was temporarily at a loss for words.

With every touch, every brush of his lips on my skin, every lingering glance, my body felt electrified, buzzing with energy and lit up from within like a switch had been flipped on.

I couldn’t believe this was finally happening.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

We never even made itpast the hallway.

“Your turn,” I said, reaching for the hem of his Jimi Hendrix T-shirt and ripping it off his body. We came together, hands roaming, and pulled apart long enough for him to take off my jeans.

He laughed into my mouth when we kissed. “I’ve been thinking about this forever. Notthis.You. In my mind, we’ve already done this a thousand times.”

“Me too. I thought about it even when I wasn’t supposed to,” I admitted, running my hands over his taut abs and the muscles in his back, trying to touch every inch of his warm skin.

I kissed his throat. Sank my teeth into his shoulder. Licked the salt off his chest while my fingers fumbled with the buttons of his jeans. Frantic now and too impatient to wait, I reached into his boxers and wrapped my hand around him, gripping him tight.

“Jesus,” he rasped, his chest rapidly rising and falling against mine, his breath hot on my neck, his hand gripping my waist, thumb brushing over my hip bone as I circled the head and brushed my thumb over the slit.

He was hard. Hot. Swollen.

My mouth watered. I wanted to taste him.

His hand slid between my thighs, his fingers stroking, light as a feather, and my knees buckled.

“I need to be inside you,” he said, his voice strained as I squeezed the base and stroked, the skin so silky, his dick so impossibly hard in my hand.

“God, yes,” I said, breathlessly.

My center was soaked, aching.

I tried to shove his jeans and boxers down at the same time he was toeing off his boots, and in the next instant we crashed to the floor, laughing, with his jeans and boxers around his knees.

“I’m not usually this smooth,” he said, which made me laugh even harder.

As I lay on the oriental runner in the hallway laughing, with only the light from the living room I’d left on illuminating the shadows, I thought about how ridiculous and messy and awkward sex could be. And how in the past, I would have felt self-conscious if David had looked at my body with so much open adoration as Gabriel was doing right now. But with him, I felt like I was basking in his glow.

“Shit,” he said after he’d kicked off his jeans and sat up. I sat up too and covered my breasts, thinking he’d suddenly changed his mind. “I don’t have a condom.”

I lowered my arms, the relief sharp and sudden. “That’s okay. I mean, we don’t need one. I’m on birth control,” I said even as my mind scrambled, trying to remember if I had any condoms in my bedroom. “And I’m clean. Unless…” I left the words hanging in the air.

“No, I’m clean, too.” He kissed my shoulder. “I’ve never had sex without a condom,” he assured me and then he was kneeling over me, pulling my panties down my legs as I fell back on my elbows and his hands climbed up my legs. Heat radiated from his touch and I thought I might die if I couldn’t have him rightthis minute but he lifted his head, his mouth hovering above the crease in my thigh and his brows knitted. “But are yousure?”

My thighs cradled his hips, giving him permission. “Yes, I’msure. Absolutely, positively?—”

That was all he needed. His thumbs spread me wide and he dipped his head. I inhaled sharply as he drove his tongue into me. My head fell back on a groan, and I forgot everything, including my own name.

I didn’t care that the floor was hard or that the rug was rough beneath my bare skin. This was pure heaven. His mouth, his tongue, his fingers, a Hallelujah choir.

My muscles drew taut and my legs quaked, my fingers digging into his scalp. I came so hard I might have blacked out for a few seconds. When I opened my eyes, he was looking down at me with a big smile on his face.

“You’re loud,” he said, his smile growing wider as if that thrilled him. He licked his lips then pressed them together. “I love the taste of you. Kiss me, lover.”

I kissed him, hard. He pushed into me and I choked on the fullness.

He sighed, one hand in my hair, the other gripping my ass. “I could die happy right here and now.”