There were a lot of ways I imagined this going.
Lola showing up and seeing me, turning on her heel and walking away. Demanding to know how I got her address. Calling the police. Throwing her bag at me.
Actually, most of my predictions for this moment involved Lola letting me know exactly how pissed off she was with me.
And none of them included her like this — falling into my arms, crying into my shoulder, her entire body shaking with the weight of the sobs.
“Hey, hey,” I murmur, running a hand over her hair, my eyes darting to the elevator as though whatever did this to her might be following her out. “What’s wrong?”
But she doesn’t answer. She just pulls back, shaking her head and dropping her keys in my hand. I take the cue, and the first key I try slides right into the lock, opening easily.
When we step inside, I want to look around, to take in this place that holds more of her than I’ve ever seen, but Lola doesn’t flipon the lights. Instead, she melts into me, rising up on her tiptoes to take my lips with hers.
Of course I want her.
“Lola,” I growl, pulling away from her and looking over her face, trying to tamp down the desire that’s unspooling inside me. Years I went without touch, without even wanting another person there, and now that I’ve had her, it’s like I don’t have the taste for anything else.
But, as much as I want to strip her down and touch her, I also don’t want to do anything that might hurt this delicate thing between us. “I’m worried about you, and… we should talk about everything.”
“We will,” she rasps, lifting her hands to either side of my face. Her fingers are cold, and tears are still sparkling in her eyes, but there’s also that determination I’ve seen many times before. She’s exactly the woman whom I forced to leave, still shining as bright as anyone I’ve seen. “But right now… I just want to feel better, okay?”
I can do that, and I accept the sentence as a sort of command. Lola is my girl, and the only task I have right now is to make her feel better.
Make her feel good.
Reaching down, I gather her into my arms and practically breathe her in, walking down the hallway. I move right past the closed door and stride into the open one, walking us over to the messy, unmade bed that I’m sure belongs to her.
That’s where I deposit her, with her legs hanging over the edge. The mattress is just at the height of my hips, stacked atop a box spring.
“How did you know this was my room?” she asks breathlessly, as she sits up and strips her shirt up over her head.
“Smells like lilacs,” I say, stripping mine off, too, and returning to her, even though the truth is that my body moves toward her like a homing beacon, and I could find her in any place. I knew this was her room the minute I saw the bra hanging from the doorknob, from the moment I saw the barely contained chaos beyond the opening.
I stand between her legs and start to kiss her damp face, running my lips along her jaw, along the bridge of her nose, over the gentle slope of her eyebrows. She hooks her legs around me and pulls me closer, closer.
Everything about her is lovely to me, and I can’t believe I have her in my arms again. Everything about this moment feels urgent, frenetic, and even though she said she just wants to feel better, I can’t stop myself from talking as I touch her.
I trace a finger down the line of her side, over the curve of her hip and into the hollow of her navel. “I never want you to leave again.”
She nods and nods, and I don’t know if it’s from the touch or what I said, but at this moment, they feel like one and the same.
“I would never have given you away,” she whispers, gasping out the last word as I kiss up her neck. “I— Ireallylike you, Rowan.”
“I know,” I whisper back, because I know it’s true, even if it took me a while to find that trust. “I really like you, too. It was my fault, Lola.”
“I liked being there with you.”
“Me, too.” I said I’d help her feel better. Maybe this is helping. “Next time, let’s do this at my place.”
There’s far more for us to talk about — like what made her cry before, and how exactly we’re going to go about this thing between us — but for now, it’s enough.
I slide her leggings down over her hips and a breath escapes me at how beautiful she is. I want to taste her, but she pulls me up by the shoulders, grabs my cock — which is already pulsing and hard — with her other hand, pumping once, her eyes meeting mine, her mouth dropping open.
Seeing her reaction to the weight of me in her hand nearly has me coming undone. I can see an entire future spooling out with her, a life of doingthisand more. Touching and tasting one another. I want to have her in every way I can.
When she guides me to her entrance, I do what she asks without question, mind narrowed in on the singular purpose of making her feel good. Her hand slips off my cock and slides up until she’s touching herself, arching up off the bed for me.
Standing at the end of the bed like this, I have the perfect view of her pleasure, of the way her fingers move against her clit, of the gentle, perfect swell of her breasts. When I slide inside her, it’s slow and purposeful, one inch at a time, and I savor the sight of her squirming at the sensation, taking me again.
