Slowly, deliberately, he lowered his lips to mine. I could hardly breathe. My chest tightened, heart beating fiercely against my rib cage.
He stilled, just over my lips, and breathed me in. Anticipation and need wrestled between us. His chest moved faster, a quick rise and fall as he still kept his eyes fixed steadily on mine. He was making sure. He was making sure I saw only him, making sure I was okay.
And I was.
All I saw was him.
And then, his lips brushed softly over mine, and I melted into him.
"Amen," he whispered against my lips. "Charlie...been all over the world, seen so many places, but I swear my favorite place is against your lips."
A wild, breathless gasp escaped my lips as his hands pressed down around my face and his mouth crushed against mine. My hands flew up to his chest, fisting into his shirt, pulling him closer, greedily grasping, unable to get enough. There was so much sensation from such a simple kiss. It was staggering, disorienting. I hadn’t been kissed like that since the last time his lips were on mine. Whatever anybody else had offered me with their kisses was nothing more than a shadow of feeling compared to Jase’s.
Our lips moved hot and wet over one another's, his tongue dipping into my mouth, shooting fire across my chest.
His hands traveled up, threading his fingers through my hair and he broke away from our kiss. His hands fisted my strands of hair and pulled back until my face tilted up and our eyes were back to being fixed on each other. His warm breath blew across my cheeks; the rise and fall of his chest was wild as he gripped my hair in his fists. Sky blue eyes darted back and forth between my eyes and my mouth, and his jaw clenched tightly. I felt his chest shudder and inhale deeply against mine.
"Here’s the twist to your story, Charlie. You ready for it?" he growled and nipped at my lower lip. "Breathe me in deep. Hold your breath. Iwillmake you fall in love with me again. Because I sure as shit didn’t think I’d ever see you again, and I sure as shit didn’t think I could fall in love with you again, but I did." His hands gripped me tighter. "Like I was falling from a cliff, Charlie. Then...then…I realized when I hit the ground; I’ve been in love with you this whole time. It never stopped. I’ll never stop. I willneverstop, and I will never give up on you." His voice lowered, “It was you from the beginning, the minute you taped that skull and crossbones to your window wearing those baggy jeans, that Nirvana T-shirt, and those God-awful chucks, you were my horizon. Everything I could ever see."
The tone of his breathless words coiled heat through my belly. My heart went wild. God, I never thought I'd hear those words from him.
"Too much? Too soon?" he shrugged and smirked.
I shook my head. A few tears escaped down my cheeks. His fingers were quick to wipe them away.
"Way I see it, it's not about the time we spent away from each other. And it's not about the time that we have left. It's about the moments—the moments that we shared. Every moment with you was an adventure, Charlie. Every one. You are my moments. And I'm not spending any more without you."
I opened my mouth to speak but it got drowned away with a kiss–slow and languid, causing the slow burn in the center of my chest to ignite into an inferno.
"The rest of your moments belong to me,” he whispered between my lips. "From now on, we go through everything side-by-side. Together, like we were always supposed to." He tilted his lips away and held his right hand up to mine, threading our fingers together. The two broken halves of our tattooed hearts became one. "You have the other half of my heart. Can't live without it anymore."
I smiled back, and I swore my cheeks hurt. It was the first genuine smile I think I had in the last seven years.
"I like the ending of this story," I whispered. "But...there are a few pages left, and I'm hoping there's a heavy sex scene before I hit the end."
"Missed you so much, Charlie." His voice was soft, yet heady and gravelly. He slid his hands slowly up my arms and cupped the back of my neck, pressing his lips back against mine. A throaty growl tore past his lips as his tongue dipped past mine. Bursts of soft, sweet sensations filled my mouth. The taste of him, the feel, made me delirious.
I closed my eyes, letting the heavy drugging feeling of his lips pull me under. My hands pressed against his chest and his heart thundered beneath my fingertips.
My lips slid across his, our tongues slipping and dancing slowly, making me remember how he used to move deep inside my body.My God, I wanted him inside my body again.
His hands slid down my back and wrapped around my waist, pulling me in closer. He broke off the kiss with labored breathing and murmured, "Can I touch you?"
"God, yes.” My voice sounded raspy and breathless. An explosion of flames erupted low in my belly.
Please touch me.
Lowering his hands, he tugged at the hem of the shirt that had fallen off my shoulders. It fluttered down my arms and pooled into a wrinkled lump around my feet.
"So beautiful," he murmured, sliding his hands slowly up my sides. His fingers grasped softy at my skin, a touch that I fought years against remembering. The moment his fingertips met my bare skin, I sank into him, and all my emotions bubbled to the surface in tears from the perfect beauty of how it felt. Goose bumps spread like wildfire over my skin. My flesh only felt alive where his fingertips touched down; the rest of my body was just shadows and memories of us.
But God, his kisses were better than I'd ever remembered.
Then suddenly, his lips were gone, and he was sinking to his knees in front of me. His hands slid like silk over my breasts, across my hips, and around to the small of my back, drawing my body closer. I grabbed at his dark hair as he nipped and licked his way across the expanse of my breasts.
I choked back a gasp when his mouth closed over a nipple and sucked hard. A surge of warmth flushed down the center of my body and throbbed hard against the apex of my thighs.
His hands pressed at my back and finally, dropped to my hips, hooking his thumbs into the sides of my panties and twisting them tightly.
