Tears stung her nose again. Reaching up, she covered the backs of his hands with her palms where he was still cupping her cheeks. “Van…”
“Don’t,” he said gently, quietly. “Don’t beat yourself up, little one. There was no way any of us could know what kind of impact that weekend would have on us at the time.” Leaning his forehead against hers, she watched as he closed his eyes and rolled his forehead across hers again and again, their mouths nearly touching with each pass. “We can’t change what happened or how it happened or go back and erase the last six weeks. But I need you to know that I meant it when we said in Chicago that you’re ours. Ours, Hope.”
The emotion fraught words that poured from him were her undoing. Nothing made sense and all of it made sense all at the same time. They could figure this out, right? Because the thought of leaving them again was not only painful, but it threatened to kill her, slowly, agonizingly. Little by little until nothing was left of her save a shell of who she was before… before them.
“Will you stay with me, please?” he asked, still clutching her cheeks between his hands. He pressed a soft kiss to the corner of her mouth, not quite on her lips, and her mouth opened in a gasp as heat spread through her entire being. The sincerity andlonging in his voice nearly brought her to her knees. “Nothing has to happen, little one. I just… don’t want to let you go, yet.”
She nodded, brushing her lips across his. Breathing together. So close… touching, but not quite. “I don’t want to let go yet, either. But, Van…”
“Yes, little one?” he breathed, angling his head, his mouth settling against the corner of her mouth.
“I don’t want you to think that I don’t want to…” she whispered, her words choppy. She was struggling to concentrate with him so close, with his mouth nearly on hers. She could almost taste him. She bit her bottom lip. “I just… I want to wait. For Grant, too, I mean…”
She felt Van smile against the corner of her mouth and she sighed, a tightness in her chest easing that she hadn’t realized was making it so incredibly difficult to breathe. “We’ll wait for him, little one.” The hands on either side of her face tightened slightly, tilting her face up closer to his as he breathed directly against her lips, “I’m not, however, going to wait to taste you.”
She nodded as much as she could against the vise of his hands bracketing her jaw, and she moaned when his mouth settled on hers firmly. One of his hands fell away, and then his arm was wrapped around her lower back, hauling her closer against him. The fingers of his other hand gripped her jaw and turned her head as he leaned the opposite way, sending his tongue between her lips and tangling with hers.Finally.
Hope clutched at him—wanting, needing—to be closer. Pressed fully against him, they kissed and kissed until they were both breathless. Wetness pooled between her thighs and she ached from wanting him. Van shifted, stepping back just enough to slide his hand between their bodies, his hand dipping low to glide between her thighs, cupping her sex and making her knees nearly buckle.
“Fuck I can feel how wet you are through your jeans,” Van panted against her lips, dragging his mouth along her jaw and up to her temple. She gasped when his fingers moved against the seam of her jeans, right where she wanted to feel him the most, her thick thighs clenching around his hand. He chuckled against her hair and dipped his head to capture her mouth with his again. Fierce, brutal. Slow, gentle. He changed tempos constantly, keeping her guessing as to what was coming next. “I can’t tell you how often I dream of you, Hope. Of this. Feeling you. Tasting you. Wanting you.”
“I never stop thinking about you,” she whispered on a breathy sigh as his mouth dragged down her throat. Her head dropped back and she squeezed her eyes shut when his mouth settled on the curve of one breast. “I never should have left that morning.”
“I don’t want to talk about that right now,” he murmured throatily, palming her ass in the hand that wasn’t still between her thighs, making all rational thought processes nearly impossible. “I want to be in this moment, Hope. I just want to feel you. Fuck. I missed you. I’m not too proud to say it and I don’t care how crazy it sounds.”
“I missed you, too,” she breathed, sinking both hands into his boyishly long hair and gripping tight. His mouth was dragging across the fabric of her top, searching, and she moaned when he found his target; her nipple through her bra and material of her shirt. Electricity zinged from the place of contact all the way down to her core. He swore and tugged the neckline of her shirt down, revealing her sheer lace bra that did little to cover her. He returned his mouth to her nipple, flicking through the lacy material, making her back arch. “Oh, fuck.Van.”
“Say it again,” he mumbled around her breast, never removing his mouth from her nipple.
“Van,” she breathed reverently, sliding her fingers through his hair again, pushing it from his forehead. She stared down at him, watched as his mouth laved her nipple over and over again. “Van.”
“Hope,” he groaned gutturally, popping his mouth off of her nipple and straightening to his full height again, taking her mouth with his in a brutal, ferocious kiss. She could feel him, heavy and hard, against her middle, and she ground into him, making him growl into her mouth. “Be good, Hope. I promised we would wait, but if you keep rubbing against me like that—”
Dropping her hand between them, she closed her fingers around the hardness behind his fly and he made a garbled sound in the back of his throat, even as his hips bucked into her hand. She smiled against his lips, nipping his lower lip gently with her teeth, which made him growl darkly. Her face was bracketed with his palms again, forcing her mouth back to his in a punishing kiss as she continued to stroke him through his pants.
“You are the devil incarnate,” he groaned, tearing his mouth from hers, a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Pure evil, little one.”
“I am not,” she whispered sullenly, tugging at the waistband of his pants. He caught her hand with his to stop her. “Van…”
“Hope, if you touch me right now, I’m not going to be able to stop until I’m buried inside you,” he warned gruffly, his emerald green eyes luminous as he stared down at her. “I want you so badly, I feel like I’ve been dreaming about this moment for an entire lifetime… And I promised we will wait. But I’m no saint, and if you touch me, my good intentions will go straight to hell.”
“Oh,” she breathed, her mouth forming the nearly silent exclamation.
“When I’m inside you again, little one, I want to be able to go slow. I want to savor every single second in a way that we didn’t in Chicago,” he murmured softly, his eyes still searching hers.“We get a second chance and I’m not going to rush this time, Hope. I want to take my time like I have the rest of my lifetime to do so.”
“Van…” she whimpered, tears stinging her nose at his impassioned words. Fucking swoon.
Her libido was rioting, of course. She had waited nearly two months to find them… hadn’t had sex since Chicago and even her trusty vibrator wasn’t doing the trick lately. She had a rock-hard Van pressed up against her and a promise of multiple orgasms…and her dumb mouth had opened up and said ‘I want to wait for Grant’.Face palm.Nice going, Hope.
He pecked a kiss to her mouth. “Come to bed with me?”
“Do you really think sleeping in the same bed is a good idea?” she asked dryly as he stepped back, closing her hand in his large one.
“Absolutely not even a little bit,” he laughed lightly, leading her through the living room to the other side to a short hallway. “I’ll give you the formal tour tomorrow, but this is my floor of the condo.” He pointed back out into the living room. “There’s a bathroom back down the entry hallway, but I have an ensuite in my room as well. My office is down there—” he said and pointed toward the left side of the hall. He pushed open a door and stepped inside, flipping a light switch on that cast the room in a soft glow from two lamps suspended from the ceiling on either side of the king-sized bed set against the far wall. Wide windows looked out over the bay, dark and calm, just a hint of moonlight reflecting off the surface of the water. The room was lavish but sedately decorated in varying shades of gray and black. A dark, hunter green wall was the only color in the room, the wall and massive bed being the focal point of the room. Thick, luxurious carpet squished beneath her bare toes and she wiggled them against the softness.
“Where does Grant sleep?” she asked, glancing back out the bedroom door before he closed it behind them.
“Grant has the second floor,” he said, nodding toward the ceiling. “I’d be surprised if he even comes home tonight, to be honest.”
