“I missed you so much.” The words fell from her lips, raw and reckless, but so powerful.
“You never left me. Not for a single day. You lived here.” He took her wrist and lifted it so her palm sat over his heart.
And something inside her cracked. Maybe some armor. Maybe her last hold on the version of herself that thought she could live without him. “I spent so long, so many years wondering if I was enough for you.”
His brows drew together. He lowered his head, his mouth so close to hers she could feel his breath on her lips as he cupped her cheeks. “You were never just ‘enough.’ You were all the best parts of me.”
Her heart squeezed. And the next beat belonged to him. Only him.
His head lowered that final fraction, and he swiped his mouth against hers. A light graze of lips against lips. He did it again. The kiss was healing and soft and had a part of her aching for him that hadn’t ached for anyone in so long.
The third kiss was hers to initiate. She lifted to her toes, parted her lips, and slipped her tongue against his. His taste was so familiar that she felt eighteen again. That dizzy, first-time-love kind of dizzy, as if she was falling all over again.
She moved her hands up, sliding them into his hair and tugging at the locks.
He shifted her closer and gently pushed her against the shower wall, caging her in place. Everything about Ethan made her feel small and fragile against his large, powerful frame. But also safe.
He lowered a hand to her breast and cupped her.
She groaned, a long, deep groan that tore through the sound of the shower.
When he flicked the tight bud of her nipple back and forth, she arched, the sensation lighting a fire in her belly. Then his hand started to lower. To creep toward her core.
Her breathing shifted. Shortened. Tightened.
When he was between her thighs, he swiped her clit.
She threw her head back and cried out. His mouth only lifted from her body for a second before taking her nipple between his lips.
Suddenly, he was everywhere. Like he was touching every inch of her body, and she was incapable of moving or breathing or thinking.
All those colors,those shades that Ethan had lost when Maggie had disappeared, flickered back to life inside him. In her kiss. In the way she touched him. In the soft noises that filled the air, swelling into the previously hollowed spaces in his chest.
He switched to her other breast, taking her nipple between his lips and sucking. Rolling the bud with his tongue, tasting her like she was candy. Her entire body bowed, her fingers tangling with his hair, grabbing and pulling.
She was so damn responsive, like she was made for him.
When she’d left him, there had been moments so dark that he wasn’t sure he’d make it. It had felt like he might fade away. Cease to exist. But now, having her back, all the hard years almost disappeared.
He gripped her thigh and tugged it up around his waist, his other hand still between her thighs. Stroking and playing with her clit.
She cried out, louder this time. More breathless and unrestrained. It was all so fucking beautiful he wanted to bottle it up.
A few more strokes before he touched two fingers to her entrance. Then slowly, achingly so, he slipped inside. So deep, her walls clenched against him.
She gasped, and God, he’d missed that sound. Like his effect on her body still surprised her.
Gently, he ran his teeth over her nipple, and as he did, he pulled out of her before thrusting those two fingers back in.
She whimpered, the sound making him so fucking hard he felt like stone.
Shit. What did she do to him? She was the only woman who’d ever made him feel like he’d rather die than stop touching her.
“Ethan, I need to touch you.”
Her words had barely registered before she shimmied out of his hold. Then her mouth was on his chest, pressing kisses across his skin that felt like little sparks of electricity. When she wrapped her fingers around his cock, he damn near lost himself then and there.
His entire body froze, like for a moment, his muscles forgot how to function. She slid her palm up his length and rolled her thumb over his tip.
