Her hair spilt over the pillow in a dark waterfall, mussed where I’d tugged and twisted it. A faint flush lingered across her cheeks, her lips still pink and swollen from endless kisses. And other uses of her pretty mouth.
Looking at her made me ache. How could I be in bed with her and yet yearn for her so thoroughly? It was like she still lingered in the temporary, the end of her time at Bayview Maor quickly approaching. She wasn’t a fragile kind of beautiful. She was the type of beautiful you wanted to worship and tease, bite and kiss, pin and torment. The type that burrowed deep and left a lingering bitemark on your soul.
My finger brushed along her temple, dipping down over her jaw. She shifted, settling closer, seeking my warmth.
My chest tightened with a fierce tenderness I wasn't prepared for
Last night had been…
Christ.
There were no words for it.
She'd given herself to me in ways I'd only imagined in the quietest, most devious corners of my mind. She'd run from me, bit me, and finally surrender beneath me, taking pleasure like she was born for it. She'd trembled under my hands and whispered my name into the early hours, branding the night on my bones.
Was it a fling?
Fuck, no.
There existed no universe in which this woman was temporary. I couldn’t fathom it.
I wanted to keep her.
To love her.
To take her home every year, and build our own traditions. To build a life. Was it too fast? Maybe. But I no longer cared. How could you put a timescale on the feelings swelling in my chest?
I wanted her mornings and her evenings, to know her favourite things and her worst habits. I wanted her rolled eyes and bright laughter. I wanted to know every inch of the life she'd lived before she stepped into mine.
The weight of it hit me so swiftly that I leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her throat, right where her pulse beat beneath the skin.
She let out a small, sleepy noise that made my stomach clench.
Another kiss, along the curve of her chest.
Another, lower.
She stirred, eyelashes fluttering before she finally cracked one eye open, squinting at me with that half-conscious irritation she got when pulled from sleep.
‘What are you doing?' she said huskily. ‘Why are we waking up when we don’t need to?
I grinned. 'Because I'm very bored without you.'
She made a sound that was somewhere between a groan and a laugh, burying her face in the pillow as I grinned like an idiot.
'So, serious question,' I said, wrapping an arm around her waist and pulling her back flush to my chest. ’What’s your favourite food?'
‘What?'
'Favourite food,' I repeated, grazing my fingers over her hip. 'And your favourite colour. And an animal. And season. And book. And childhood toy. And smell. And?—'
'Oh my God.' She tried pulling the blanket over her head. ‘It’s too early for twenty bloody questions.'
‘No, it’s not. I want to learn everything about you. Right now. I'm starting from the basics. Favourite food. Go.’
She blinked at me, an edge of amusement and horror in her eyes. 'You’re so weird. '
'Thank you,' I said, leaning in to kiss her shoulder.
