I don’t stop until waves of tremors rack her body. She comes apart for me with her hand fisted in my hair. Her release ignites something primitive in me. A satisfied heat uncoils low in my chest.
I come back up. Her hands skim my chest, my stomach, and find the line of me through my jeans. She unbuckles them in an instant and wraps her hand around my length. I have to closemy eyes for one full second because I have been holding this together since the overlook and she is not making it easy.
I get off the bed long enough to strip my boxers off. She watches me do it with her lip caught between her teeth and her hand splayed on her own stomach. I have never in my life been more aware of being looked at. I settle between her thighs. She pulls me down by the shoulders and wraps her legs around me. She looks up at me like I'm the only thing in the cabin.
My tip presses against her opening and she’s drenched. I ache, desperate for friction. Desperate for all of her. Then I sink into her in a single thrust.
She gasps and I still for a second because I have to, it takes everything in me to hold on. She’s warm and tight and perfect. I have to get my jaw to unclench before I move. She reaches up and puts her hand on my face. Cece says my name and her eyes stay open and locked on mine. It’s almost more than I can take. Every muscle I have clenches with anticipation.
"Mine," I say. I don't mean to. It comes out anyway. "Tell me you're mine."
"Yours." She breathes it. "Ryan.Yours."
"That's right."
I start to move. I rock slow at first, because I want to watch her face. She’s doing the thing she did on the overlook where she does not look away, she stays right here, with me, choosing every second of it. Then not slow, because she pulls me closer and saysmoreinto my mouth.
I give her more. I give her everything. I thrust all the way inside and she takes all of me. Her hips thrust up to meet mine. My fingers find her throat. I give her every quiet thing I have been waiting to offer someone and every part of me that has been keeping a light on for a woman I didn't know was coming.
I pound Cece into the mattress. I claim her with every thrust until everything around us disappears. She comes apart underme again and this time I follow. I fall over the edge with my face in her neck, her hand in my hair, and the wordminerepeating in my head like a fact.
Afterward she's tucked against my side with her cheek on my chest and one hand curled at my collarbone and her breathing is going slow and deep and the cabin is warm and still.
I look at the ceiling.
This one,I think.This one.
I have been practicing alone my whole life.
I am done practicing.
CHAPTER 7
CECE
I wakeup in his bed at three in the morning and my body knows what it did before my brain does. That's not the scary part.
The scary part is the thought that arrives about four seconds later. It’s the one I was not expecting at three a.m. in a stranger's cabin with his arm heavy around my waist and my cheek on his chest…I’m falling in love.
It’s immediately followed by an even scarier one…But I won’t because that is crazy and this is probably what people call a rebound.
Look at this gorgeous man asleep next to me. There’s no way this is new for him. This is dating. I can’t fall in love. I have a two year old child. I’m running from a barely done divorce. Ryan is an incredibly kind and sexy man. Also great in bed. All true. But also, this is just a rebound and I’ve got to keep it together.
I sit up when the voice in my head gets too loud. The movement is too fast.
Ryan makes a sound in his sleep and his arm reaches for me automatically. I slide out from under it before he wakes up. I stand in the middle of his bedroom in the dark in his T-shirt.
This can’t be a thing I do. I mean, what kind of mom leaves her kid overnight just to have sex? Stop it. Breathe.
But I can't breathe.
I walk to the kitchen on bare feet and get a glass of water. I stand at his counter in the dark and try to do the thing the therapist taught me before I stopped being able to afford her. I find the five things I can touch, but my eyes won't focus on anything except the fact that this kitchen is not set up for a toddler.
It's truly not.
The counters are clean. The corners are sharp. There is a single bowl on the kitchen island with car keys in it and a pair of sunglasses and that is it. No cabinet latches. No outlet covers. No rubber things on the corners of the coffee table that I can see through the doorway. The coffee table itself is glass.Glass.
Ryan has no idea… And how could he?
