“That too.”
He nuzzles my neck again. I toss my last dart, and I don’t even care where it landed, because now I can turn in Wyatt’s arms and kiss him.
I know this might be a mistake, but if I don’t have Wyatt, I’m going to die.
So I’ll either die because the universe is a dick and doesn’t like us together, or I’ll die because I can’t have him.
I’d rather go out happy, thank you very much.
“Want—you,” I whimper into Wyatt’s kiss.
“Never knew—needed you—so bad,” he gasps between kisses as he tugs at the zipper on the back of my dress.
And I get a sudden chill, because this is where it started.
In a basement.
Without thought.
“Ellie?” Wyatt murmurs, his hand stilling.
“Can we really do this?”
“Yes.”
“But should we?”
He threads his fingers through my hair and presses that thick bulge into my belly. “What are you afraid of?”
He asks it like whatever it is, he’s going to leap onto his magical unicorn and ride it into battle and slay my fears. “That we’ll break,” I whisper.
“Or maybe we’ll finally get it right.”
“What if the house burns down?”
I feel his smile against my lips. “The house is not going to burn down.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Neither one of us were in the right headspace for this six months ago. But now? Today? You didn’t look at your ex once during the reception. I wasn’t there for him. I was there for you. Deny it.”
I open my lips to do just that, but I realize he’s right.
I forgot Patrick was even there.
“I just didn’t want you to feel self-conscious.”
He chuckle-snorts, and I giggle, because we both know I wouldn’t stroke his ego.
However, my fingers are trailing down his pecs and abs looking for something else to stroke.
“Do I need to get a bullseye to get this dress off you?” he asks.
“No, you need to pull the damn zipper down.”
“Now?”
“Yes, please.”
“Look at you, using your manners and everything.” He tugs on the zipper once again, and cool air hits my back.
I push his shirt up, revealing that chest that I could spend days exploring, and my nipples pull so tight I feel it in my clit when he reaches behind himself with one hand to pull the shirt over his head and the rest of the way off.
He brushes my dress off my shoulders, and then I’m standing there, in just my panties, while he whispers my name in sheer reverence.
I step out of the puddle of fabric, and he snags it, tosses it on the pool table, then scoops me into his arms and lays me on it.
I tip my head back and laugh, because my brother would kill me if he knew what we were doing.
Wyatt hooks his thumbs in his boxers and pulls them off in one smooth motion, and all thoughts of anything except him flee my mind. He disappears, ducking beside the table, and I whimper.
“Condom,” he says, returning to crawl onto the pool table with a foil packet in his hand.
“This thing won’t break, will it? That would be awesome. Death by sex on a pool table.”
“I got a private Bro Code show with this as their stage once,” he replies. “It’s solid.”
“Ew. Maybe we should move to the foosball table. It’s clean, right? Bumpy, but clean?”
“Have you met your brother? He licks his players for luck.”
We both crack up.
But only until he dips his head to tease my nipple with his tongue.
Then nothing’s funny.
But everything’s perfect.
Right.
Glorious.
“My turn,” I gasp when he pinches my other nipple. “Roll over.”
“No.”
“Wyatt—”
“I love that irritated note in your voice. It makes me so fucking hard.”
I look down as he pushes up onto all fours, and whoa.
He’s definitely hard.
“C’mon, Calamity Ellie. Tease me.”
I push him onto his back and twist, and my stupid leg twinges. But before I can moan, Wyatt kisses me and gently caresses my leg and hip. “What’s more comfortable for you? A bed?”
I shake my head, because dammit, I still want to be the kind of crazy that has sex on pool tables. And it’s not the table. “I don’t know. Just—I don’t know how I bend best.”
He grins like that’s a challenge. “Then let’s start with what we know works.” He leans me back again and kisses me, and his long fingers trace a path over my hip to my panties.
I gasp as his knuckles graze the cotton over my clit.
“But you—haven’t—not—”
“I have a few years of taunting you to make up for,” he says as he moves to kiss a path down my jaw to that sweet, sensitive spot at the base of my throat.
“I was—you were—oh, god, Wyatt.”
“I’m going to take your panties off.”
My yes comes out garbled as he peels the waistband down over my hips, taking special care around my scars, kissing my breasts, my belly, all the way down until he’s nipping at my inner thigh.
My pussy’s aching. “Touch me,” I gasp, widening my right leg.
“Soon,” he says, still pressing soft kisses on my sensitive skin.
“Now.”
He kisses lower on my leg, heading for my knee. “If you’re in that much of a hurry, maybe you should touch yourself.”
He lifts hooded eyes to mine. Touch yourself, Ellie. Turn me on by touching yourself.
I hold his gaze while my fingers drift between my legs to stroke my slick folds. “Like this?” Oh, god, that feels good, but it’s not enough.
“More,” he rasps out.
I flick at my clit, and my legs open wider, because it’s not enough. “I want you,” I tell him.
“Say it again.”
“I want you.”
“Say my name.”
“Wyatt, I want you.”
Finally, finally, he crawls back up my body until his sheathed length is pressing at my entrance. “Here?”
“Yes.”
“What about tomorrow?” he’s teasing me, gliding his thick head along my seam. “Will you want me tomorrow?”
I grasp his cock and stroke him, and oh, so hard, like iron, and I can feel his pulse in the thick veins circling him. “Tomorrow—argue with you—at breakfast—over toast,” I gasp. “Next week—fighting—who pays for dinner.”
“And next month?” he asks, finally, finally inching inside me toward that needy emptiness that might be in my pussy or that might be in my soul, spreading me and teasing at how well he’ll fill me when he gives me everything.
“Next month—surprise you—on a Tuesday—on my knees.”
“Fuck, Ellie.” He shoves deep inside me, and I cry out in relief at being connected to him. “I don’t want to let you go.”
“Then don’t.”
“You feel so damn perfect.”
He slowly pulls almost all the way out, then pushes back in again, hitting that oh so perfect sensitive spot deep inside me.
“Again,” I gasp.
“Want you every day,” he says as he thrusts into me again.
Every day. No one wants me every day. “You’re craz—aaaah, oh god, Wyatt, more.”
He thrusts again, not too gentle, not too hard, and the anticipation is building, the tension tightening, my pussy swelling and going hypersensitive with every stroke inside me.
“In my bed,” he says.
“On the kitchen table.”
“In the shower.”
“In the backseat of your car.”
“Under the stars.”
“On top of the Eiffel Tower.”
“In your parents’ linen closet.”
I laugh as he thrusts in
again, and everything swirls out of focus while my climax hits hard. “Ellie,” he cries, his dick pulsing inside me in time with my pussy squeezing and spasming around him.
“Wyatt,” I gasp when he pumps once, twice more, pushing me higher and farther and deeper until— “Wy—ahh-ahh—”
He pushes up, his dick still straining deep inside me, and when I sneeze, he gasps. “Christ, Ellie, that feels amazing.”
I’m still twitching and spasming around him, and here I am, laughing. “My sneeze?”
“Fuck, yeah.” He drops his head into my shoulder, panting. “Was that it? I could take another sneeze. Christ.”
I laugh, and another tingle of pleasure lights up my clit. “You’re crazy.”
“Crazy for you.” He kisses my shoulder, my neck, up to my lips, where he lingers, lazily kissing me and letting me trace his jaw and stroke his short, soft hair. “I think I’ve wanted you my entire life. I was just too blind to realize it.”
“Too scared,” I whisper.
“That too.”
“Are you still scared?”
He lifts his head, and serious Wyatt is back. “Depends. Were you serious about surprising me in Georgia with a blow job?”
I gape at him for half a second.
He cracks a grin.
“You—” I start, but he swallows my tirade with another kiss, and truly, kissing Wyatt is better than strawberry daiquiris on a beach.
I don’t know what tomorrow will bring.
But I know one thing.
It will be the first day of the rest of my life with Wyatt.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Wyatt
Ellie and I are fooling around in the master bathtub when the text comes in that the Ryders are on their way back with Tucker. She goes pink in the cheeks. “My parents know what we’re doing,” she whispers.
I kiss her forehead before I reach for a towel. “And they approve, because I’m awesome.”
Her lips twitch. “Or maybe because they know I can keep you in line.”
“Nah.”
I’m smiling as I disentangle my legs from hers and climb out of the tub, and not just because her eyes go dark and smoky again as her gaze wanders down my dripping wet body.
No, it’s because of the peace.
The utter contentment.
I never wanted to get married because I didn’t think it was in my genes, in my bloodline, to be capable of being a good husband and father. Fate proved me wrong on fatherhood.
And this sensation that I’ve found a missing piece of myself, and that she’s sitting right there in the bubble bath, turning down the music and tucking her hair behind her ear. “Did you grab my dress from downstairs?”
“It’s on the bed.”
“I didn’t mean you had to. I could’ve gotten it. I just—”
I silence her with a kiss, which might be my new favorite hobby.
Kissing Ellie Ryder.
Who knew?
“I left your shoes for you to get yourself,” I tell her. “But I’ll probably go get them anyway because you’ll get mad and insist you’re perfectly capable, and then we’ll have some silly little fight that’ll end with me needing to stroke your pussy, so—”
“Yep. Same old obnoxious Wyatt,” she says with a grin.
“Same old stubborn Ellie.”
She rests her hands on the edge of the tub and leans her chin on them, watching me dry off. “Provided we don’t die, we’re never going to be bored, are we?”
“I might be.”
She gets me with a surprise slap to the ass, then shrieks as she slips under the water.
I give her to the count of one-half before I’m grabbing her arm and pulling her up.
“Okay?” I ask.
She blows and spits at the bubbles around her mouth. I grab my phone and angle it toward her like I’m going to snap a picture, and she rolls her eyes with a laugh. “Go ahead.”
“Nah, I don’t—”
“Oh, no. I want you to remember this for the rest of your life. Get in here. Selfie with me.”
When I get down on my knee, she scoops bubbles onto my head and dribbles them on my nose.
And we’re both smiling in the picture.
“Crazy woman.” I wipe her face with the towel and set out another on the floor for her when she gets out. “You hungry?”
“You know what sounds good?”
“Banana pudding?”
“Tea. I have chamomile sometimes to help me fall asleep when I’m achy.”
“With banana pudding?”
“We’re out.”
I put a hand to my heart and stagger. “You’re right. We can’t be together. We’ll run out of banana pudding and die.”
She throws the towel at me with a laugh. “Shush and go heat me some water, powder monkey.”
“Yes, ma’am, Calamity Ellie.”
While she takes her time getting out, I toss on sweatpants and a T-shirt, fill a tea kettle and turn on the burner, then head downstairs to get her shoes. Tucker’s left his security blanket down here again, so I take it upstairs too, all the way to his bedroom, and pull out pajamas for him since he’ll probably be dead on his feet at this hour.
Hope he had fun.
I’m on my way back downstairs when I smell it.
Smoke.
“Wyatt?” Ellie calls, and there’s no mistaking the panic in her voice.
Nor the blare of the smoke alarms that suddenly explode in the house.
I tear down the stairs and land in a cloud of smoke just outside the kitchen. Ellie’s in here, coughing, and flames are erupting from the stove. “The towel!” she shrieks, then coughs again.
Fuck.
I snag the flaming fabric and fling it in the sink, then turn the faucet on. “Get out,” I tell her. The smoke’s not too thick—I don’t think anything else is burning—but the smoke alarms are still going off and the towel’s still flaming in the sink.
I turned on the wrong fucking burner.
I turned on the wrong fucking burner.
And there was a damn towel on it.
And I nearly burned Beck’s house down.
After promising her that would never happen.
“Hi, yes, there’s a fire,” I hear her say. “It’s at… Oh my god, I don’t know the address. Beck’s house. Beck–Beck—what’s my last name? Yes! Beck Ryder’s house. On the mount—yes!”
The alarms are screeching. She grabs my arm. “Wyatt. Out. Both of us. 9-1-1 says we have to get out. Now.”
I spray the last of the embers and check the stove, which is off. “It’s out, Ellie.”
“You are not going to die in a house fire on my watch, goddammit, get the fuck out!” she shrieks.
She doubles over, coughing, then says, “Yes, we’re still here,” and that’s when I hear it.
The high-pitched panic.
“Ellie—”
“Out!”
She’s in a bathrobe, and she’s limping hard. The haze isn’t thick enough to mask it. “Please get out,” she adds, and now there’s a choked sob in her voice, and shit.
I sweep her up and head for the door. “Okay. We’re getting out. It’s okay.”
As soon as we’re outside, she twists. “Let go.”
Tears are streaming down her face.
“Ellie—”
“No. No. Don’t. Back up.” She retreats down the sidewalk to the driveway. The yard is too sloped for her to head there, and the limp is breaking me. “Yes, we’re outside. We’ll stay out.”
She’s crying.
Ellie’s crying.
Ellie never cries. She tells those tears to back the fuck up and get out of her way.
But she’s crying. On the phone with a 9-1-1 operator.
“It’s my fault,” she sobs. “I ignored the signs.”
“Ellie. Stop.”
Headlights flash up the driveway. The Ryders are back. They stop mid-way to the house, and Mrs. Ryder flies out of the passenger seat. “
What happened? What’s wrong?”
“We burned the house down,” Ellie sobs, letting her mom gather her up while the alarm blares inside.
“We didn’t—” I start, but my objection is cut off by the wail of a fire engine’s siren in the distance.
“A fire?” Mr. Ryder asks.
“I set a towel on fire. It’s out. It’s fine. It was an accident.”
“It’s because we—we—”
“Ellie, it’s not—”
Sometimes I wish my hair was long enough to pull it out, because that might help distract from the ice-cold fear settling into my chest.
Both the Ryders look at me, but Tucker leaps out of the car, fear written all over his little face, looking so fucking much like the kid I remember being at his age, and my throat closes up and my eyes sting and I grab him tight. “It’s okay,” I say as he starts to cry too.
“Miss Captain Ellie’s crying,” he sobs. “Is the house gonna burn down?”
“Hey, no, no, everything’s fine.” Everything’s not fine.
“Take me home,” Ellie whimpers. “Mom? Take me home. I want to go home.”
“Honey, it’s late,” Mr. Ryder says.
Headlights flash again, but instead of a firetruck, it’s a fire engine red sports car.
Hell.
“Ellie—” I start again while I hug my son and my best friend steps out of his car and the closest people I have left to parents gape at me in utter confusion.
“We can’t, Wyatt,” she says, her words muffled against her mom’s shoulder but still clear as day to me. “We. Will. Die.”
“We—”
“When’s the last time you ever accidentally set a towel on fire? Never. Ever. Because it’s you. You don’t make mistakes. We are not supposed to be together.”
“Ellie, sweetie, what’s all this?” her mom says gently. “Honey, everyone makes mistakes. The house is fine.”
Beck looks up. “My house is on fire?” he asks.
Curiously. Not mad. Just confused.
Despite the alarms still blaring inside.
“No,” I tell him.
“Burned to the ground,” Ellie sobs.
“It’s not—” I start.
“IT WILL BE. Mom. I want to go home.”
Beck looks at me, shrugs in bewilderment, and then saunters to his sister. “C’mon, Ellie. I got you.”
“She’s in a bathrobe,” I say.
“I’m commando,” he offers.
Beach Reads Box Set Page 65