“I miss you, too.” I run my fingers through her hair, like plunging through a silken waterfall. I used to spend hours doing just this while we watched TV, while we talked in bed, while I waited for her to fall asleep in my arms—and now here I am threading my fingers through her warm mane and yet nothing at all is how it used to be.
“I miss the way you taste in my mouth.” Her lips glide over me, smooth and hot in one slick motion until she hits the base, and I let out a roar that’s been bottled up in me for one year solid. Laney dives down over me again and again, and I writhe, grinding my shoes into the floor, twisting and turning, pulling her hair at the base of her neck and pushing her deeper into me. I’m spent. This is it. I’ve got another few good thrusts, and I’m going to explode, come for weeks, and there’s nothing either one of us can do about it. But I stop short because I don’t want this to be all about me.
“Come here.” I hoist her up and hold my breath when I see her eyes swelling with tears. “Hey.” I pull her in and my chest lurches because I’m this close to joining her in the tear-fest. “It’s okay.” I pepper her face with kisses, landing the sweetest one over her lips, and linger until her hot tears fall over my cheeks. I pull back and wipe them away. “You want me to take you home?” I touch my nose to hers a moment before bouncing back and taking in her beautiful features. Laney is as gorgeous as a runway model, and she doesn’t even know it. That’s part of her charm, she’s humble and sweet and sarcastic as hell, but I wouldn’t want her any other way.
She shakes her head and crashes her mouth over mine, violent and hungry. Laney very much wants this tonight, and as much as it breaks my heart, those tears reassure me that she still has feelings—that she’s felt just as much sorrow and pain as I have, and it’s all coming to a rolling boil tonight right here in my bedroom.
Something tells me, make-up sex at its finest is about to take place.
Laney rakes open my shirt and the buttons snap off as she rips it from my body. I pull off my clothes like stepping out of a fire. My fingers fumble with the back of her dress until I hit a zipper, and it snags about an inch of the way down.
I reach back and shut off the light, but she hits the switch and looks up at me with a renewed lust in her eyes.
“I want to watch.” Her lips curl, and I think it’s the first genuine smile I’ve seen all night—all year—and my heart sings at the sight of it.
“Then I’d better give you something to see.” I lift her skirt, and my fingers find her bare waist. I groan into her as our lips make their way to one another again. Laney gently swipes her tongue over mine, and it feels like home. It feels as if my mouth, my teeth, my fucking tonsils have had every single one of their prayers answered because Laney Sawyer is right where she belongs—with me—falling into my mouth with her hotter-than-hell kisses. Gingerly, I back her toward the bed, only the room is so damn big it’s turned into a moaning, loving, slow dance, and now, I’m about to write the builder a thank you letter for making the master bedroom so fantastically wide. My hands glide up her back, and I unhook her bra in some freshman maneuver I should be ashamed of, but this is Laney, and more than anything, I want her naked on my mattress so I can live out each and every fantasy I’ve had for the past three hundred and sixty-five days.
Laney reaches down and slowly unties her corset. Her eyes never leaving mine like a dare. She licks her lips before pulling her dress off in one Herculean move and leans against the bedpost, bearing herself to me in all her God-given glory. Her eyes widen as she licks the rim of her lips, flirting, tempting me to take a bite out of her in all the right places.
I cup her face and hold her like that while pouring my unspokenI’m sorriesinto her crystal cut eyes. I don’t dare say the words. I don’t dare bring up the past like the carcass it is. I don’t want to clog up the room with the stench of all our sorrow. We’re here now. I’m not so sure how we arrived, but there’s not one part of me that wants to contest the logic.
I bow into her and press a searing kiss over her lips. I pull back and examine her like this in the light. Laney’s dark hair falls across her shoulders, her perfect body expands and retracts in all the right places like an hourglass. I land a kiss in the hollow of her neck, lower still until I make my way to her nipple. My lips seal themselves over her, and I moan as her sweet, soft flesh conforms to my mouth. I roll my tongue over her nipple until she’s hard, and my teeth graze her ever so gently until she gives a strangled cry.
I pull back and take her in. Laney looks up at me with her eyes slit to nothing, her neck arched back as she waits for more.
“Get in my bed,” I whisper. “I’m going to love every last inch of you.”
3
Let’s Get it On
Laney
My legs clench as my body heaves with a little pre-orgasmic intent. Ryder has always held a cool command that drives women insane and makes them want toget in his bed—with me being the leader of the bed hopping bandwagon.
I glance down at his rock hard chest, then lower still and swallow hard. His erection is pointing at me as if picking me accusingly out of a line up as the perpetrator who tried to make off with his balls a moment ago. I’m sure his hard-on is screaming at the top of his testicles to get me to finish the job. I was more than ready and willing, but a very greedy part of me wants to extend the fun just a little bit longer.
My fingers fly up to his cut features, and I trace them out. I’ve known Ryder Capwell all my life, well, most of it. Roxy attended my mother’s dance school, and that’s how we met. Ryder went to the expensive private school on the hill, so our meet and greets were far and few between in the beginning, but the older and wiser we grew, the more inseparable we became. A flashback of all those endless nights we spent wrapped in one another’s arms gets caged in my mind, and I want to play them out on a loop more than I do relive them. It was so much simpler back then, and now, there’s a mile-wide heartache separating us emotionally. I’m not so sure falling into bed with him will ever fix that.
“Let’s do this.” He tightens his arms around my waist.
“Maybe I don’t want togetin yourbed,” I say, and every last inch of me that he threatened to love into oblivion protests the idea of straying from his mattress. I hardly think my feet would listen if I willed them to carry me out of here. My primal instincts are in control of this party, and they screamtriple orgasms all aroundas if they were buying. Clearly logic and reason aren’t invited tonight.
Ryder lowers his lids, rendering me defenseless to his bedroom eye superpowers. His features harden as if I’ve blatantly pissed him off and he was about to teach me a lesson. He dips his thumbs into my panties and hitches them below my hips until they voluntarily fall to the ground.
“Would you look at that?” he whispers over my lips without taking his eyes off mine. “Here we are, naked in my bedroom.”
“Hard to believe.” I run my finger over the length of him when I say it.
“I want you back, Laney.” His jaw redefines itself as his hand finds that tender part of me that’s been screaming out for him ever since that last night we were together. I let out a heated breath because I’m finding it impossible to focus on the finer details of our breakup while he rubs me into a sexual nirvana. Maybe a little revenge sex is what I really need. One wild night to work him out of my system—maybe then I’ll finally be free.
I wrap my arms around his neck and touch my forehead to his chest. My body writhes to the rhythm of his magical fingers. It’s obvious now that an entire suitcase full of vibrators could never replace the real deal.
I arch my neck back and let out a groan. “The thing I mourned most was the fact our bodies never had the chance to say a proper goodbye.” It sails from my lips in a hoarse whisper. “Maybe that’s what this is, one long, drawn out, carnal goodbye.” I look up at him because a small part of me wants him to refute the theory.
“Goodbye?” He presses out a dull smile while studying me with those dark unknowable eyes. “This isn’t goodbye.” He gravels it out with demonic intent. “What you’re about to experience is wild, savage make-up sex.”
“You’re forever the optimist.” My heart thumps because I sort of like the idea of make-up sex a whole hell of a lot better. For a moment I envision us snuggled up by the fire as we throw fistfuls of dildos into the flames because with Ryder around there’s no need to keep spare man parts hidden in my underwear drawer.
