Page 24 of Ruin Me Sweetly

I’d missed this. Not just the physical touching, but the quiet after. Someone to hold, someone to be held by, once the world went silent each night.

“Luke,” I sighed his name, but couldn’t quite find the words to follow it.

My mind and heart waged a war inside my chest, neither one willing to concede ground.

His lips curled a fraction. He said nothing. Maybe he felt some version of what I was feeling too—that strange, unbearable tenderness that had no business existing after what we’d just done.

“March. Let’s get married in the first week of March,” he murmured, and my mouth fell open.

I scrambled to sit up, and he helped me upright before his weight pressed me back into the mattress, warm and solid and impossible to argue with.

“That’s nine weeks away,” I gasped.

“I’m getting on, Bella,” he said, bottom lip jutting out in mock offence. “I don’t have the luxury of waiting.”

I was still turning over the mammoth task ahead of us when he began kissing the soft spot just below my ear, trailing his lips slowly along my jaw, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world despite everything he’d just said.

“Bella, I found you, and I’m never letting go,” he whispered against my mouth.

I ran my hands down his shoulders—broad, the muscles beneath taut and warm, his skin impossibly smooth as my palms travelled the length of his back, memorising the shape of him.

My lips parted, and his tongue flicked against them before he kissed me properly. His tongue delved deeper, and I met it with mine, chasing the same hunger. My muscles tightened low in my abdomen, then lower still, that familiar ache stirring back to life like it had never truly left.

I traced my hands back up his body until I reached his face, cupping his cheeks, feeling the line of his jaw and then the rasp of stubble beneath my fingertips. Our breath mingled, hot and unsteady, and I arched my chest, dragging my sensitive nipples against hard muscle.

His eyes opened. Dark lashes fluttered for a beat, longer than I’d noticed before. I traced the stubble along his jaw, loving the silver threading through the darker hairs, proof of every year he’d lived before he found me.

“I don’t want you to let go of me,” I whispered, barely catching my breath as the words left me, sparking a fear I hadn’t expected to feel.

Mark had been too immature to stay. The virus had eaten away at Clive’s blood vessels until his organs simply gave out, taking him from me piece by piece. We were supposed to grow old together, complete our lives and our families side by side. Someone to share the weight of the world with, so I never had to carry it alone again.

“You have my vow, Bella. Even if you wanted to walk away, I won’t allow it.”

I blinked.

What did he just say?

The weight of him lifted, and he flipped me onto my stomach in one smooth motion. It knocked the air clean from my lungs, and before I could catch my breath, he’d already dragged me to the edge of the bed.

“You’ve waited long enough,” he murmured, pulling my hips into the air and spreading my legs like I was some twenty-year-old gymnast, not a woman who’d have to ice her hip afterward.

All thought disappeared the second I felt his cock against my pussy. He dragged it between my folds, back and forth, teasing. I groaned and tried to push back against him, but a hand landed on the nape of my neck, pressing my face into the quilt.

“I love feeling how wet you are for me, Bella. Do you know how unbelievably sexy you look right now?”

Sir, you have my face buried in a twenty-tog quilt. How exactly did he expect me to answer that?

“I want to see this pussy stuffed full of cock.”

I managed to turn my head to the side, just enough to speak.

“What are you waiting for? Christmas has been and gone.”

Silence.

A deep, dark chuckle rumbled up from his chest—one that probably didn’t bode well for me.

“Ah, Bella. You do surprise me, from time to time,” he said, drawing the tip of his cock back and lining himself up again.