Page 51

I watch him and realize how much it actually upsets him that he hurt me. “I know. It’s not just you. It’s sort of hard not to question who you are and what you’re worth when your own father has a lot to say about your looks. That adds up.”

A dark look crosses his face. “No parent should make their child feel unworthy. Even on my mother’s worst days, she never made me feel that way. Helpless, sure. But not that.”

All I can do is swallow.

Because I can’t defend my father. I used to try, until I realized it was pointless.

He had his opinions about me that I couldn’t change.

To this day, I don’t know if he believes them fully or if the women in his life help form those opinions of me for him.

It’s a tough call. The only thing that’s true at the end of the day is that my father may claim he loves me, but he has an awful way of showing it.

“One day, I’ll forgive him,” I murmur.

Maybe.

“It’s okay if you don’t,” he reassures. “If we only live once, shouldn’t we only keep people around if they’re going to make our lives better?”

Nibbling my inner cheek, I loosen a quiet breath. Because I know he’s got a point. But do I want to ice out my father completely? My parents are still alive. That should mean something.

“Strip.”

I gawk at him. “What?”

“Strip for me, baby girl.”

It’s hard to swallow. “Alex—”

He climbs out of bed and peels the blankets off of my body. “Do you remember what I told you earlier today about the things I first noticed about you?”

My throat bobs. “Yes.”

He climbs onto the bed on his knees, hovering over me. “Let me show you in detail what I notice about you. Take your shirt off.”

Nerves bubble under my skin. Why? I’ve been naked in front of him before. This is nothing new. It’s skin. Skin and…other things. Curves. Rolls. A blemish or two. But it’s nothing he hasn’t seen before.

So, I push past the nerves that threaten to tell him no and sit up. He watches with focus as I peel the shirt up over my head and deposit it on the floor, leaving me in a sports bra that I wear to bed because it’s more comfortable than letting my boobs hang out.

“Good girl. Now the bra.”

“Are you just going to watch or partake?”

His lips quirk up at the corners. “I’m enjoying the show a lot from here,” he tells me.

And I can see that.

He’s getting hard and my boobs aren’t even out yet.

I try taking off the bra with as much sexiness as I can, but it’s a sports bra. So God only knows how awkward it probably looks to him. If he thinks so, he doesn’t say. His eyes are too busy soaking in my bare breasts, pebbling my nipples with his keen attention.

He moves closer to me, reaching out to tweak one of them and earning a sharp gasp from my lips before I can suppress it. “These,” he says in appreciation, “are my favorite. I fucking love how they feel in my hands. And even better—”

His face dips down until his mouth is covering the opposite one. “I love the way they taste.”

I’m pretty sure I cuss.

Or praise God.

It’s an out of body experience as he flicks and pinches and sucks the sensitive nerves that have me clenching my thighs together.

“I love waking up in the morning with my hand on your tits,” he tells me, massaging them as his lips trail up to the nook of my neck. “I love falling asleep holding them too.”

When his mouth covers the other nipple, I definitely swear aloud. He chuckles, making the bud in his mouth vibrate which sends heat straight to my core. “Frankly, I love waking up to you .”

That four-letter word is going to get to me.

“Now take off your leggings,” he commands, nipping my breast one last time before pulling back.

I swallow. “My leggings?”

“You heard me. Take them off.”

I meet his eyes, which are dark with lust. They trail down to my hands as I slip them under the waistband of my bottoms and peel them down. He helps me when I arch up to get them past my butt, ripping them away from my feet and tossing them behind him.

He stares at my nakedness, completely out and open to him.

There’s no hiding that I have a lot going on.

I’ve got a stomach that’s bigger than I want it to be, and thighs that chafe in the summertime.

Finding the perfect pair of jeans that fit me right everywhere is annoying, and usually, nearly impossible.

It’s either too tight in the waist, weird around the butt, or lands at my shins instead of my ankles.

But it’s my body.

It’s gotten me through a lot. It has healed me after I broke my wrist playing basketball in middle school and healed after I got the swine flu in high school.

It has grown with me as I got older; it changed through puberty and all the different phases in my life.

It’s stretched and thinned and everything in between.

I have nothing to be ashamed of.

Nothing to hate.

I’m me.

Olive Henderson.

I’m overweight. Maybe even a little obese.

I have killer boobs.

A big butt.

And one hell of a personality.

“Get out of that pretty little head of yours,” Alex tells me, crawling over to me like a lion hunting his prey. It’s oddly…sexy.

He stops over me, hovering so we’re inches apart. His hand slowly moves up my leg that, thankfully, I remembered to shave. The only good thing about not having anybody in your life is the lack of need for razors. It made wintertime much warmer.

His palm stops at the apex of my thigh. “You know something else I fucking love? Feeling these legs close around my head.”

“Around your—”

The words get stuck in my throat when that devious smirk disappears when his mouth finds my center.

“Holy shit,” I breathe out, feeling his tongue drag along me and tease me in ways that make the floodgates open.

He was always too good at that.

Way too good.

It made me want to find all the other women he did this too and punch them for getting to experience the pure bliss that his lips and tongue create.

“Alex,” I gasp as he flicks my clit with his tongue and then sucks it between his lips.

That’s what does it.

Without any warning, my body breaks into spasms that coat my eyes with little black dots. Sparks shoot down my legs as they close around him, earning me a welcome groan that I feel deep in my soul.

And in other parts.

When he pulls back, I’m still in another world.

“Yeah,” I hear Alex say as I stare up at the ceiling. “I really love feeling them around my head.”

He’s going to end me.

“These legs are dangerous,” he states.

I can’t help but roll my eyes. “I think your mouth is what’s dangerous.”

He shakes his head, taking my hand and guiding it to his tented briefs.

“Do you feel that?” he asks, pressing my palm further against his cock.

“Do you feel what you’re doing to me? How fucking attracted to you I am?

Not just your body, Olive. Your mind. Your personality.

How you sass me. How you’re not afraid to tell me off when I’m wrong.

I’m so hard it’s painful. So do you get it now? ”

I can’t speak.

The words are crammed in my throat as need builds between my legs. I want him. Bad. And his hot, hard dick twitching in my palm only makes that tenfold.

“I need you inside me, Alex.”

“Then watch me.”

I blink, watching as he positions himself over me and slowly inches in. I’m still sensitive, so I gasp when he thrusts forward to seat himself fully.

“Your pussy was made for me,” he says against my mouth. “It was molded for me. Do you feel how goddamn perfect this feels? How right it is?”

How am I supposed to talk when he moves his hips back and pumps forward? The rhythm is smooth and slow and sultry. And when the mattress starts squeaking with each thrust of our bodies, I swear it’s music to my ears.

“Do you remember the first thing you ever said to me?” he asks, as if this is the perfect time for a stroll down memory lane.

“You told me that I’d have better stats if I pulled my head out of my ass and actually passed the puck instead of trying to prove to the world that I was the best person on that team. ”

I don’t remember that.

All I remember from the night of the bonfire was the way Alex’s eyes sparkled with mischief and maybe a little alcohol, and how good his mouth was when we wound up making out in his car when he drove me back to my dorm.

He’s not just a good kisser. He’s the best.

No matter how many times Sebastian got between us when he still went to Lindon, it never stopped me from finding Alex in the crowd. For some reason, he was always engraved in the back of my mind. We only gravitated toward each other more when Sebastian wasn’t an obstacle anymore.

“Nobody has ever told me that before,” he says, his hips meeting mine as his fingers run through my hair. “Nobody has been real with me. They see the potential of what I can be, not the person I already am.”

The way his eyes pierce mine makes this feel like so much more than sex. It’s not a causal lay or simply physical.

And that…that scares me a little.

Because I can feel my heart grow. I can feel it beating a little faster. Alex has always had the ability to make me react. Sometimes in good ways, and sometimes in bad ones. I’m incapable of being rational whenever he’s nearby.

“Look at me Olive,” he says, when I start to look away when his gaze is too much.

I meet his eyes and feel it —an invisible string attaching us together. The same feeling I had when I was naked in his apartment in Lindon right before he graduated. I’d been buzzing from the emotions that had built over our time together until I couldn’t keep them in anymore.

But I don’t tell him I love him this time.

I don’t tell him that I ache for him.

Burn for him.

That I see a future together, no matter how it turns out.

Because there are still so many things I don’t know. Too many uncertainties that make me swallow the words, and inevitably, my heart.

“You are the one thing in my life that has always made me feel like being myself is enough,” he tells me, brushing his lips against one corner of my mouth, then the other.

“You’ve made me feel like Alex O’Conner.

The boy, not the hockey player. And if I have to remind you every day that you’re Olive Henderson, the girl, not Sebastian Henderson’s little sister, not the daughter of an asshole who doesn’t see what he fucking has in front of him, then I’ll do it.

I’ll strip every piece of clothing off of you and show you how much I—”

He stops himself, burying his mouth into my neck and peppering kisses along my pulse.

He doesn’t need to tell me.

I know.

He knows I know.

And he knows I feel the same.

One day, those words will have to be spoken.

Maybe by then, neither of us will be too scared to speak them.

“Everything about you,” he concludes, “is what gets me by. Your pep talks. Your banter. Your honesty. Your brutal truths. All of it. Everything.”

The way he’s moving, the way he’s talking, is too much. It’s too intimate. Too…everything.

I can feel the orgasm building as he holds my attention, making sure I don’t look away. He’s close too. I see it in his eyes, in the way his lips form into a small O as his hips pick up.

We don’t fuck.

It’s not sloppy or fast or hard.

But we don’t call it what it is.

Alex cusses, claiming my mouth right before he lets go, and the sound of his drawn-out moan as he pulls out is what makes me come for a second time until my head is fuzzy, my body is buzzing, and my heart is at risk of exploding.

Right before we start drifting off with our hands interwoven, I hear his whisper, “You are everything I didn’t know I needed.”