Page 72 of The Hometown Heartbreaker

“You bought it,” I said, willing the words to make sense.

He nodded.

“When?” The question sounded almost accusatory, but I couldn’t help it. For years I’d scrolled the online real estate listings every few months, checking to see if the place had sold, and never come up with any answers, although it had been a while.

“About five years ago.” Dawson’s jaw flexed, the old tic of discomfort that came out when he had to talk about himself for more than eight seconds at a time.

“Five years?!” I repeated, and it came out shrill and bright. Five years ago I was in New York, working eighty-hour weeks and sleepwalking through a relationship that, like Peter’s, I already knew was doomed.

I walked around trying not to read too much into the fact that he’d bought the home we’d always talked about living in. He probably just wanted to live here because it was an amazing house. It most likely had nothing to do with me or our relationship. As that thought drifted through my mind, I saw the view out of the window over the sink of the ocean.

Anyone would want to live here.

“It was the only thing I had of you,” he said behind me.

“What?” I turned around and found Dawson standing less than a foot in front of me.

He lifted his hand and brushed a stray strand of hair off my face. “You were my future. When you left, you took that future with you. This was a little part of the life we’d planned together I could still have. Maybe that wasn’t the healthiest way to look at things, but that was the truth.”

Hearing him say that, knowing that he’d thought of me all these years, just like I’d thought of him, erased any lingering doubts that his feelings weren’t real. What we had was real.

I felt tears forming in my eyes and one slid down my cheek.

He noticed and instantly tensed as he lifted his hand, cupped my face, and wiped it. “I’m sorry, don’t cry.”

Dawson had never done well with me crying. In fairness to him, I’d done a lot of it when we were first together since I was grieving the loss of my mom. I could always see how helpless it made him feel.

“They’re not sad tears.” I sniffed.

“They’re not?” he questioned.

“No,” I assured him as I tilted my head, pressing my cheek into the warmth of his palm before kissing the heel of his hand.

His eyes closed as my lips brushed his skin and his jaw tensed. He must have taken my nuzzle and peck as a green light because in the next breath his fingers speared into my hair as he lowered his head and claimed me in an all-consuming kiss.

I melted against him as his tongue explored my mouth. His lips were the perfect combination of firm and soft as one hand held my head in place and the other wrapped around my body.

He tightened his hold and I felt my feet being lifted off the floor before I was, set down on the counter. He stepped between my open legs and continued kissing down my neck, then he pulled my shirt up and began to feast on my breasts through the lace cups covering them. My hands fisted in his hair as he sucked and nipped my nipples. The roughness of his tongue licking me through the material sent shocks of bliss exploding between my legs.

Wanting more of him, I worked as fast as I could to unbutton his shirt, then peel it off his body. When he was down to an undershirt, I grabbed at the material and attempted to tug it over his head. He exhaled through his nose in what sounded like frustration as he broke the contact of our mouths and reached behind his back, peeling off the material in one swift movement, leaving his chest bare. While he did that, I fumbled with his pants, quickly unbuttoning and unzipping them. Once I had, I slid my hand into the waistband of his boxer-briefs and wrapped my fingers around his straining cock.

I massaged his shaft as he pushed the material of my skirt up my thighs and his hand slid between my legs. He kissed me with a hunger that was both familiar and foreign—the kind of hunger that made me forget all the time and pain and distance, as if he could inhale those years straight from my mouth. His tongue tangled with mine and I met him stroke for stroke, greedy, desperate. I fisted his hair, tugging him closer, and when his fingers began to move over my feminine folds, the jolt of sensation nearly separated me from my own body.

He pressed the heel of his palm against my sex, slow and deliberate, and I moaned, the sound muffled by his lips. I stroked him, felt him thick and straining, and tugged the elastic down over his hips so I could have better access. He gasped, biting off the noise as if he was on the edge of losing control. The thought that Dawson needed to keep it together made me want to unravel him all the more.

His dick jerked in my hand as I closed my fingers around him, stroking with purpose. He shuddered, mouth pressed to the hinge of my jaw, stubble scraping my skin in a way that made me want to crawl inside of him.

He slid two fingers under the hem of my panties, his knuckles rough and warm, and circled me until my thighs trembled. I tried to arch away from the pressure, but he just followed me, pinning me to the counter with his body so I had nowhere to go. He nipped my throat, then my collarbone, then let his tongue trail down to the edge of my bra. With one hand, he unhooked the clasp behind my back and pulled the straps down my arms, exposing my breasts to the cool kitchen air and his stare.

“Fuck, Sadie,” he whispered, voice ragged as he cupped my breast, thumb flicking over the nipple until it pebbled. He sucked it into his mouth, biting just shy of pain, and I gasped, the sound echoing in the cavernous quiet of the kitchen.

I squeezed him harder, stroking faster, and he groaned. The sound sent a spark of heat through me, straight to where his fingers were working me open, slick and insistent. He teased my entrance, not quite entering me before pulling back to rub slow, relentless circles over my clit. The sensation was so sharp, so overwhelming, that I lost the rhythm of my hand for a moment, but then he pinched my nipple again, and I was back in the moment, matching his pace with my own.

His lips left a wet trail across my chest, down my ribs, and then he knelt so fast the world tilted. He pulled my underwear down my legs, spread my knees wide, hands braced on the insides of my thighs, and looked up at me with that old, smug, unbreakable confidence.

“Keep your eyes on me,” he commanded, and then he buried his mouth on me.

The first stroke of his tongue made my whole body seize. He’d always known exactly how to eat me, how to alternate pressure and speed until I couldn’t see straight, but this was somehow worse, better, more. He licked me like he was starved, like nothing else in the world mattered but my taste and the way my hips bucked helplessly into his face. His fingers circled my opening and then slipped inside, curling in a way that made me see stars behind my eyelids.