My fingernails scraped up his sides. "Would it make it better if I took off my shirt?"
Sam smiled, nodding, while I pulled the fabric over my head and unclasped my bra. He growled, and that wasit—the single sound that plucked a chord deep inside me and roused all those dormant desires into frenetic awareness.
"I love you," he said as he lowered his head to my chest. "I love you." His lips moved to my nipple, drawing it into his mouth gently, softly. "I love you."
I dragged my fingers through his shaggy hair as I tangled my legs around his waist. "I love you, too."
His fingers trailed down my belly and flipped open the buttons on my jeans. His hand slipped inside, cupping me just enough that I felt bliss curling around my nerves and muscles.
"Sam? Sam?Sam!"
I heard sounds but couldn't place them in a rational order. The only things I cared about were Sam and the orgasm that was a second away from unraveling. It was a sensation I almost didn't recognize after spending the past three months drowning in coffee and music therapy research, but one I was damn pleased to encounter.
"Are you fucking serious? You come home and don't bother to fucking tell—oh shit."
Suddenly, Sam's mouth left my breast and he was dragging the blanket over me. "Don't you ever knock, Riley?"
"Can you show me a door to knock, Sam?" Riley gestured around him.
This old firehouse was one wide-open space after another, with the only form of room division coming from brick archways. One hundred years ago, the area Sam used as his bedroom housed thirty sets of bunk beds for the men who faced countless fires on the docks and nearby mills. I didn't have to know much more about the history or architecture of this odd building that Sam and Riley called home to know that constructing walls wouldn't feel right.
He jerked his chin in my direction, and despite his obvious exasperation with Sam, a sweet smile was tugging at his lips. "Hi, Tiel."
"Hi, Riley," I said, waving from under the blanket. "It's good to see you."
"You betternothave seen anything!" Sam yelled.
"I didn't," Riley said. "And can we get back to the matter of you showing up here without so much as a text? What the fuck?"
Sam hauled me into his arms, his back to Riley. "I was ready," he said, gazing at me with a warm smile. Then he glanced to Riley. "Are you just getting home?"
"I crashed at Matt and Lauren's," he said. He leaned against the brick column, his ankles crossed and his arms folded over his chest as if he intended to stay and chat. "They've been inviting me over for dinner since you've been gone, and sometimes I've stayed there. Matt left for a run with Nick, and Lauren was going to yoga…but we're all having a cookout at Patrick and Andy's place tonight. You two should come."
He shifted his weight to his forearms, and shot a glance over his shoulder. "Listen, Ri. I haven't talked to more than one person at a time in three months. I need a slow reintroduction to society. A big event might short-circuit my brain."
"But sangria," Riley sang, his fingers splayed in the manliest version of jazz hands I'd ever seen. "Everyone loves sangria. Andy puts something in it that's voodoo-magic good."
Sam shifted, bringing me closer to him and blocking everything from my line of sight except his body. And mother of pearls, there was a lot to love. He'd always tended toward lean and strong, but now he wasfit. Thick in all the right spots, trim in others. A tan lingered around his shoulders and arms, and his once perfectly sculpted hair was wild and overgrown. But it wasn't the outside that stirred me. It was the complex mind and tender heart, and I wanted to own a spot in both.
"I haven't had a drink since that night at Alibi," he said, turning a meaningful stare in my direction. That must have been the scene of the dick-petting-and-vomiting incident, and yeah, we'd be avoiding that venue for a bit. "I want to see everyone, but we also need some time today, just the two of us."
"I'm gonna leave now because I'm pretty sure I'm not one of the two you have in mind," Riley called, but I couldn't see over Sam's obscenely broad shoulders and only murmured in response. "But I want you both washed, clothed, and ready to roll by seven tonight. We're going to this fucking barbeque, and you're going to enjoy it, too."
"That will be interesting, Sunshine." Sam turned to me, a quiet laugh bubbling up from his chest.
"I'm walking away," Riley shouted.
"Walk faster," Sam yelled.
"All of this is going to be interesting, Sam," I said. "All of it."
He burrowed into the crook of my neck and his mouth found my skin, and I pulled him to me, craving more, wanting his weight pressing down on me. I needed to lick him, bite him, kiss him, hold him, claim him. I needed to fill my hands with every little thing I could offer, and beg him to take me as I came and promise to give him anything, everything.
"We're going to make it work. We're going to figure it out," he said, and he was close enough for me to feel each word on my skin. He pushed my jeans over my hips, and together we shoved them down my legs. I was nodding, humming and murmuring in agreement, fuckingtremblingfor him as I attacked his belt buckle. "Tell me, Tiel. Tell me we're gonna last because I can't have you right now if this isn't real."
"It's real," I said. "We're real."
It was such a damn victory to get his jeans off that I flung them clear across the room. There was a shuffle for condoms, detaching his glucose monitor, tossing extraneous pillows to the floor, but then,finally, he was inside me. He was moving and wrapping me up in his arms, anchoring himself while he spoke in broken pleas and demands against my skin.
