A relaxed laugh slips out of me. “I’m not the one who’s gonna be the problem.”
Her cheeks flush deep, heat blooming across her skin. “I resent that.”
“We’ll see,” I murmur, already taking her hand, knowing I’ve stepped over the line I swore I wouldn’t cross.
Her room is dim, the small lamp on the nightstand throwing out a warm, amber glow that softly catches the edges of everything. I close the door behind us, she turns to face me, and the second the latch clicks, we both feel it, the shift, the permission of it, two years of distance finally run out, and nothing stands between us anymore. She reaches for me at the same moment I reach for her, and then there is nothing careful about it at all.
The kiss is hungry, a little desperate, her hands fisting in my shirt and mine finding her waist and pulling her flush against me, and she makes a sound that is gratifying and entirely her.
Two years.The thought keeps crashing through me like a wave. Two years of turning away, two years of choosing carefully, and now Millie is in my hands, and I cannot seem to get close enough fast enough.
We break the kiss long enough for me to pull my club cut over my shoulders, placing it on the nightstand, then yank my shirt over my head, and she reaches for the hem of hers at the same moment. For a half-second, we both fumble, knocking elbows. She laughs, bright and breathless. I laugh too, then the shirts are gone, I’m pulling her back to me, she’s pressing her palms flat to my chest, and we’re kissing again, urgent and uncoordinated in the best possible way.
Her fingers rush to my belt as mine go for the button of her jeans, both of us moving too fast, getting in each other’s way.
She laughs softly against my mouth. “Wait, wait.”
We slow just enough to make it work, shedding the rest, and then we’re standing there in the low light with nothing between us… and the frenzy stops.
I go still.
She goes still.
I look at her, and something happens inside my chest that I can’t explain. She is so beautiful it sits in me like an ache, and she looks up at me with her eyes wide and her hands resting lightly on my forearms like she’s steadying herself. And I understand, suddenly and completely, that I have been in too much of a hurry. That she deserves better than frantic. That this moment has been two years in the making, and I am not going to rush through it now that I’vefinallyarrived here.
My grip on her loosens while I reach up and brush the hair from her face, my thumb grazing her cheek, and I watch her eyes soften at the change in register.
“Will,” she whispers.
“I’ve got you,” I say. “We’ve got time.”
I ease her back onto the bed, and she settles against the pillows, her hair fanning out, her eyes watching me with that soft, open expression that makes something in me go quiet and awed all at once. I move over her, keeping my weight on my forearms, and I start at her throat.
My lips press to the pulse point just below her jaw, and I feel it, the quick flutter of her heartbeat against my mouth, and I stay there a moment, just feeling it, letting her feel me feeling it. Her heart is racing. So is mine, though I’m keeping that to myself for now. Two years of wanting this, wanting her, and now I’m here, and she is here, and Ineedto be worthy of it. Ineedto be everything she deserves in this moment, and she deserves a hell of a lot more than a man in a hurry.
She exhales, long and slow, her chin tipping back to give me more room, and I take it.
I trace my mouth down the line of her throat, unhurried, following the soft slope to her collarbone, where I press an open kiss to the ridge of it. Then I drag my lips along the length to her shoulder, and she makes a small sound, not quite a sigh or a word, just something that escapes her before she can think tohold it back. Her fingers come up and slide into my hair, not pulling, just resting there, like she needs something to hold onto.
I know the feeling.
I work my way down, my mouth moving over the swell of her breast, and I give my full attention to her nipple, my hands and my mouth learning her in the slow, deliberate way she deserves, reading every breath, shift, and unconscious arch of her body toward me. I have thought about this more times than I’d ever admit out loud, more times than was probably good for me during the long stretch of months where I was supposed to be keeping a respectful distance. I imagined it would feel urgent, frantic, all that pent-up wanting finally let loose. And it did, for those first few minutes in the dark. But now that I’m here, now that she’s real, warm, and trusting me with this, something in me has gone deeply, almost fiercely calm.
I want to know her.
All of it.
Every sound, every place that makes her breath stutter, every small thing that is uniquely and completely Millie.
When she gasps, and her fingers tighten in my hair, I take note. When she turns her face to the side and bites down on her own lip to keep quiet, I take note of that too.
My hands travel the soft skin of her stomach, palms flat, feeling the way her muscles flutter under my touch, the way she sucks in a breath when my thumb traces the curve of her hip. She is so soft here, and the trust in how she lets me touch her, unhesitating, unguarded, sits in my chest like something almost too big to hold. I press my lips to the jut of her hip bone, feeling her stomach dip sharply inward with a sharp inhale, and I smile against her skin.
This…
This is what I was waiting for.
Not the ceremony, not the patch, not the moment I became a full brother. This right here, her and me, and no more careful distance between us. This is the thing I didn’t let myself name until I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
