Page 142 of The Backup Plan

“Do you think I still want to hurt you? That I’m purposely trying to crush your dreams? I can’t imagine what it feels like to hear those words, but do you know what it’s like to be the one to have to tell you?” I say, eyes welling with tears. “I love you.”

He stares at me like I’ve shattered something inside of him.

Then he’s moving.

His hands are on my face, and his mouth is crashing into mine in a kiss that’s unfettered anger and fear and need. It’s desperate. It’s messy. Like we’re both trying to hold on to something before it disappears.

I kiss him back just as hard, fingers digging into his shirt and heart pounding like it’s trying to break free.

“I don’t know what to do,” he says, lips meeting mine again. “I can’t walk away.” His hands pull my shirt over my head. “I’m so fucking angry, Em.”

I grab his face and pull back so I can meet his eyes. “Use me, Lucas. Use me for what you need right now. I’m here.” I press a kiss to his lips. “I’m here.”

Emery

For a second, neither of us moves. His breath is uneven against my mouth. Ragged. And mine feels like it’s trapped in my chest.

Use me.

This time when our lips meet, it’s changed.

The anger is gone. The urgency has shifted to something that I can only define as reverent. Soft. Intentional.

Like he’s afraid I might disappear, that this moment might vanish, if we move too fast. Like he wants to savor this moment of clarity that comes amid so much fury.

His hands slide from my face to my shoulders and then down my arms, mapping me like a memory. I feel the tremor in his fingers. The restraint in his touch.

He guides me toward the bedroom, slow and deliberate, until the backs of my knees hit the edge of the bed.

The mattress sighs beneath us as we lower onto it. He braces himself on one elbow while his weight slowly settles over me. Our lips meet again and again. Our tongues dance a slow ballet of want and desire. Our hearts beat out of sync.

We speak in quiet moans and satisfied sighs. We undress each other carefully, quietly, as if we know this time means something more.

Skin meets skin. His body’s warm and solid and real as our lips come back together again. His mouth traces my jaw. My throat. My collarbone.

Each kiss lingers. Not claiming. Not demanding. Promising. Pleasuring.

My hands slide over his shoulders and down his back, feeling the strength there, the tension. Feeling the man who claims he doesn’t know who he is without the grass beneath his cleats.

“I’m here,” I whisper again, not because he needs to hear it, but because I do.

His eyes, darkened with desire, with love, meet mine now as he pushes into me. It’s slow. Careful. Like he’s afraid of breaking something.

Our foreheads touch as we move, our noses brushing against one another’s with each thrust. Our lips meet with a softness that almost undoes me.

But it’s Lucas’s eyes that amaze me the most. The way they remain locked on mine as if this is the only thing keeping him anchored right now. Me.

We move with an unfrenzied need. It’s not wild. It’s intentional. It means so much more than the mounting orgasms.

Our quiet rhythm is the kind that lives in the space between heartbeats. Between everything we’ve lost and everything we’re afraid to want but still do.

His body trembles as the anger turns to desire and the confusion softens into something raw and honest and exposed. To the bare bones of the man I love. To the man I wish I could fix.

My world narrows to breath and skin and the ache of loving someone who’s breaking.

“Em,” he moans as our fingers link on both sides of my head. Our bodies join again and again until the physical overwhelms the emotional.

Our breaths grow harsher as our bodies build each other’s up. As our orgasms push their way into this space that feels so very ours. Bit by bit. Heartbeat after heartbeat. Sensation by sensation.