Only her.
Every single day.
Home is wherever she is.
And fuck, home is where I need to be.
I jump off the couch and race to Miles’s room, tripping over a pair of shoes twice before stubbing my toe on an end table that is in the worst position for a mad dash through a narrow hallway. Once I make it inside his boudoir (his words, not mine) with sore ankles and a possible partially amputated toe, I wake up the snoring man-diva to a chorus of nasty names I have never even heard of but damn, dude knows how to cut down a bitch.
“I’m sorry for interrupting your beauty sleep,” (again, his words, not mine). “I just wanted to let you know that I’m stealing your car, but I’ll bring it back tomorrow.”
“You done lost your mind! Why in the hell do you need my car at…” Miles glances at the bedside clock and his eyes grow comically wide when he sees the time. “3:26 in the morning?”
I smile, hopeful, excited, and what I hope reads as charmingly since, you know, I’m definitely taking his car whether he gives me the okay or not. “I’m going home.”
Miles grins so wide, I can see all of his teeth—the pearly white contrasting with the almond color of his unflawed skin. Dude really needs to take up modeling. I mean, I’m straight as they come, but damn, Dylan really is a fucking idiot.
“Well, why didn’t you lead with that, dummy? And why are you still standing here? Go! Go get our girl!”
I don’t need to be told twice. I throw him a wink before sprinting through the house, thankfully keeping my extremities intact this time. I grab his keys off the hook by the door and then I’m out.
Miles lives close to my family home in Alameda, but about 20 minutes (without traffic) from our apartment downtown near Portland State. Thankfully, it’s three in the morning on a Sunday…er…Monday, so it takes me ten minutes. I also may have been driving ten or fifteen miles over the speed limit, but when a man is ready to stop being such a moronic dickhead, abiding by the limits of speed does not fit inside our objective. Our simple male minds can only handle so much focus.
I don’t even remember parking, but I’m pretty sure I did and I’m definitely positive I took two spaces and will most likely have to pick the car up at the impound lot later today. But again, I ain’t got time to dwell on it. I run through the lobby and bang on the elevator button a good eight times before the doors open and I’m in the car riding up to our floor.
Adrenaline is surging through my body and I take a deep breath before plunging through the doors and striding purposefully through the empty hallway until I find the number I’m searching for. I take another deep breath and reach for my keys, which I don’t have, because I left them at my parents’ house while I was off throwing a bitch-baby tantrum.
Fuck. Me. In the ass.
I try the knob and by the grace of the gods, it’s unlocked. Not sure whether I want to jump for joy or punch a hole in the wall that she left the door unlocked while she was home alone and most likely sleeping. Either way, the girl is getting a stern talking to. Later, though. After I kiss the ever-loving-fuck out of her mouth and then spend hours claiming, exploring, worshiping that delicious body of hers, starting with her heart, then moving down to the addicting and mind-altering warmth between her legs.
Damn.
Stay focused, big little Ben. Talking first, earth-imploding make-up sex later.
I push through the apartment and my eyes are immediately drawn to the TV that is on low, airing some bullshit informercial. I know she’s lying on the couch before I even see her. There’s no way she slept in her room, not after last night. Besides, I can feel her presence whenever she’s near. My body hums with awareness, the tether that connects us pulling me in her direction. I only have to take a few steps before my girl comes into view and when she does, my steps falter and my breath gusts out in an audible whoosh.
She opened the box.
Holy fuck! About damn time!
I stare at her in wonder, not able to lift my eyes off her and what she created with the fabric I bought her. She’s fucking breathtaking. Like literally, she’s stealing my breath. My chest grows tight and my throat dries as the seconds tick by on the clock behind me. She curled up in a ball, her feet tucked into the skirt of her dress. Her crazy curls are fanned out around her and a few strays have swept over her forehead. Her lips are pursed adorably and her eyes are shut but the lids are lightly flickering. She’s dreaming. I hope it’s a good one. But from the slight crease between her eyes, I doubt it. The realization makes my feet finally move and I’m kneeling right in front of her within a few beats of my heart, smoothing my thumb down her hands that are clasped in front of her face. A few swipes and that crease begins to disappear.
My fingers ache to keep moving, to follow her sensual curves accentuated by the classy yet teasing garment. Damn, she knows how to make a fucking dress. But, I somehow manage to adjourn my creeper thoughts…well, creepier creeper thoughts. I have been staring at her for a good five minutes. While she’s asleep.
Yep, time to wake her up.
I move my thumb from her hand and bring it up to her nose, sliding up and down the bridge, whispering her name softy between us. She stirs and releases a little sigh but doesn’t wake. I drag my fingers across her cheek and down her neck, towards her collarbone and up and over her shoulder. I give it a little squeeze and a light shake.
“Bug, baby, wake up,” I whisper near her ear before shaking her again. This goes on for a few minutes before she finally mewls and arches her back like a cat, her pouty lips purse and her eyelids flutter, opening up to reveal the most beautiful blue eyes I’ve ever seen. They’re weary and unfocused.
“Ben?” Cady murmurs my name low and in question as if she’s not sure I’m really here or not. I smile and drag a knuckle down her velvety cheek.
“Hey, baby.”
As soon as I get the words out, her eyes grow wide and before I know it, she’s hurling the top half of her body at me, wrapping her bare arms around my neck and burying her face in the crook. Quickly, I stand up from my crouching position, bringing her clinging body with me. She wraps her legs around my waist and I spin us back around to the couch as she begins to rapidly fire out apologies. The deep regret in her voice squeezes my heart in a vise-like grip.
“I’m such a dick, Ben. I’m so sorry. So fucking sorry. I just got so scared—”
“Shhh, stop Bug,” I coo softly in her ear before rearing back and cupping her face in my hands. The tips of my fingers draw lazy circles on the skin right behind her ear. Cady releases a small, breathy moan and the right side of my mouth curls up. “You don’t need to apologize. I’m the dick. You wouldn’t have been scared if it wasn’t for me. All of this started because of me and my dumbass choices. You had every right to run this morning. Do I wish you had stayed so we could’ve talked it through? Hell yeah, but I understand why you didn’t. So, to prevent any more marathons in the opposite direction of me, I want to make something very clear to you. I can’t promise you that we won’t ever fight, or that I will never piss you off because let’s face it—you’re pissed off at me at least half of the time. But I will never hurt you like I did last year. I will never hurt you, period. I know what’s at stake now and I can’t risk losing you again. I wouldn’t survive it, Bug. You’re my fucking everything. I love you so much it’s consumed me and yeah, sometimes it scares the hell out of me, too. But I’m ready to face it. To embrace it. To own what we have—to close my eyes and just fucking fall.”
Cady stares at me for three seconds. Her tired, bloodshot eyes are level with mine. Tears track down her cheeks. No words leave her mouth as her bottom lip trembles. And then…she smiles, and it’s fucking beautiful—easing the deep ache in my chest just enough to feel like I can breathe again. But I don’t have time to relish in it because as soon as it comes, the smile leaves, and that perfect mouth is on mine and all is right in this world.
Her lips are soft but insistent, pressing with heedless urge
ncy. Her tiny hand snakes around my head, sliding her fingers through my hair while forcing a moan from my mouth. I tighten my hold on her body and lift us up. Cady’s legs wrap around my waist and I begin to move, walking us through the living room toward her room—our mouths never breaking apart—fused and starving. Her dress is bunched up between our stomachs and I feel the heat between her thighs against my thin gym shorts as she starts to slowly roll her hips. I kiss her harder—licking the roof of her mouth, her teeth, biting and sucking anything I can find, thoroughly fucking her mouth with my tongue as she gives it right back.
I’m not entirely sure how we make it to her room, but we’re here and I’m laying her down onto her bed. Her legs open wide, exposing her red cotton panties and the tiny wet circle on the front. I barely hold back a growl as my large body envelopes her petite frame and our mouths clash once more. The sheets she tangles between her fingers are still a mess from last night and the comforter is nowhere to be seen. Aside from the box and her sewing machine, Cady hasn’t touched a thing in here since last night.
“You didn’t make your bed. You always your bed,” I unlatch my lips from hers but leave them close, hovering and ready to descend at any moment. I stare down at her—searching. Her lips are puffy and wet, her eyes look lost but present, glittering and half-lidded. Love-drunk lust.
“I couldn’t,” she murmurs breathlessly. “I couldn’t risk last night fading away. I just…I wanted to hold on, even if just for the night.”
Her quiet confession breaks something inside of me. Twists and digs, claws and feeds until all I can do is kiss her. Hard. Bruising. Stealing her words, her thoughts, her worries and replacing them with a promise I will always keep before I rip my mouth away, needing to reassure with words of my own.
“Last night. This. Us. Will never fade away. It’s impossible. We won’t let it. I won’t let it. Not now. Not ever. This is real. This is it. You understand?” My fingers are gripping her jaw but she nods anyway, her eyes closing briefly as she digests what I said. When they open, they’re watery and wild, need spackled inside the bright blue irises. She reaches out and cups my cheek. I lean into her hand, my lips pressing into the inside of her palm.
“This is it,” she reiterates my words. Licking her lips before smiling through the weight of them. “I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. Even when I didn’t want to be. Even when I hated you. When I wished your impressive dick would shrivel up into a micro-dick and I contemplated making a voodoo doll of you, I was yours. In fact, I never hated you at all. I tried, goddess did I try. But it was futile. I love you, Ben motherfucking Catalano-Moretti. I have loved you every day since the day you walked into my life with matching red Chucks and sad eyes. And I will always love you. You’re my Duckie. Fuck Andrew McCarthy.”
“Goddamn it, I love you,” I growl before slamming my mouth back onto hers. This time, I don’t have any intention of stopping. We said all that needed to be said. Now it was time to feel, to give, to touch. To love.
Her curvy body squirms against the rumpled sheets as her hips jut up and meet the large bulge straining inside my shorts. That single grind shreds any semblance of restraint I have and in record time, we shed our clothing, leaving us bare and exposed. Free. Her thighs are spread, ready, needing, and I’m hypnotized by the glistening glory nestled between them.
She looks up at me and bites her lip. “Love me, Ben,” she sighs as I lean back over her, my rigid cock resting against her folds. Our foreheads fuse. Her breath is hot and labored on my face.
“Always,” I whisper against her mouth as I tug on her bottom lip, sucking and teasing just as my hips rear back and I plunge deep inside of her pussy. Home.
We both cry out. Relieved and in bliss.
Our eyes lock and we still for three seconds, and then she smiles and I smile and we move and then…we fall.
For real, this time.
For keeps.
In. Out. Over and over and motherfucking over.
And we never stop.
Epilogue
Songs to listen to:
“Welcome to New York” by Taylor Swift
“Turning Page” by Sleeping At Last, “Love Me Like You Do” by Ellie Goulding
“Perfect” by Ed Sheeran & Beyoncé
“For You” by Liam Payne & Rita Ora “That’s How Strong My Love Is” by Otis Redding
“Home” by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes
One Year Later
Cady
“And that’s the last box,” Ben groans in relief, setting the box on top of another in the sea of brown cardboard cartons taking up nearly every square foot of this apartment. Which really isn’t a hard feat since this place is half the size of our old apartment and twice as much in rent. But, we’re in New York City, baby!
Well, Brooklyn. But still New York!
“Thank fuck!” I moan gratefully and thoroughly exhausted, before letting my body fall backward dramatically onto the sofa. Ben launches onto the couch right after me, somehow gracefully landing on top of me without crushing my curvy fun-sized self with his colossal-ass body. He settles between my open thighs, making sure to give me a few unnecessary but always welcome thrusts into my core as he wiggles to get “comfortable.” I raise my eyebrow and he grants me with that damn full smile that lights up his stupid sexy face that never ceases to dampen the panties. If I were wearing any. Which I am not. Thanks to the week long, cross-country drive from Portland to New York. Clean panties ran out yesterday.
Ben grinds into me again and I suppress a moan, grab onto his magnificent hips and halt the oncoming roll that was surely going to be impressive and jean short-wetting.
“Benjamin Catalano-Moretti, how can you even think about sex right now?”
He lifts his head from where it was nestled in the crook of my neck, working on seducing my weakened state with nibbles and little flicks of his expert tongue. Damn him.
“Baby, I’m a man. When am I not thinking about sex? Besides, I’ve been staring at your fine ass barely covered in denim, bent over while lifting boxes that made your tan arms flex and glisten in the—”
“Glisten? It’s called sweat, you weirdo. You really need to stop reading romance novels. It’s getting ridiculous.”
“Don’t shame me and my literature, woman! They’re hot as hell and there’s always a happy ever after. You know how much I love me an H.E.A. Plus, I didn’t hear you complaining last night when I did that one thing with my tongue that I read about in—”
“Okay, okay. I’ll stop mocking your book choices. Last night was pretty fucking amazing. How’d you even do that? It was like there were five tongues on me at once.” I smile and my skin flushes as I remember how after hours of me teasing his dick through his jeans, he completely lost control—pulling over on the side of a deserted highway. Without a word, he practically yanked me out of the truck, grabbed a blanket from the back, laid it on the earth, then me along with it, and spent a solid hour feasting on my pussy. I orgasmed three times with just his tongue before he fucked me into a fourth.
I’m so entranced in the memory that I didn’t realize he resumed his grinding and neck-nibbling torture. I swat him on the back of his head.
“Ow, woman!” Ben screeches, grabbing his head and pulling back from my tingly neck.
Such a baby.
“All right, I see what you did there. Nice try, buddy. But don’t even start! You know damn well I can’t resist a good hip roll and with those delicious neck love-bites that do weird things to my eyes. We don’t have time for your sexiness right now! I haven’t showered since yesterday morning. We’ve been carrying boxes and furniture up three mother-effing flights of stairs for three hours. Fucking broken elevators! I’m hungry. I’m dirty. I’m sore. I’m exhausted. I need coffee, a nap, and then more coffee before I can even think about having your P in my V.”
Ben looks down at me with those sea green eyes that speak to my soul with every glance. His sinfully sexy smirk is chock-full of amusement, an
d I really want to lick it, taste the joy on him, but I’m trying to make a point and that would just make it moot. So, I hold strong. But I’m not happy about it.
“You want to kiss me.”
Damn him.
“I do not.”
“Fuck, I love you. And your stubborn restraint. It gets me so fucking hot. I’ll break it. But first…” The cocky bastard doesn’t finish whatever the hell he was about to say. He kisses the top of my nose and does this ridiculous push-up jump thingie off of me that is so fucking erotic, I have to clamp my thighs shut to ease the shooting ache between them. He catches the act and his smirk darkens knowingly.
“Nuh-uh. You had your chance, Bug. Now, while you were on a bagel run earlier, I may have put up the shower curtain and stowed away the towels because I knew a shower would be the first thing on your mind. So, get your tasty ass off the couch and go shower. I’m gonna search for the coffee and make us a pot.”
Oh, my goddess, this man.
I scramble off the couch in a flurry and jump into his arms. He catches me effortlessly and I cling to his body like a five-stager. I press my lips to his, murmuring against the soft flesh.
“You really want to have sex, don’t you?”
“I really fucking do.”
I bark out a very un-ladylike laugh and he smiles, his sparkly eyes trained on me and I see it. That love. I see it every damn time and fuck, does it make my heart sing like Miss Houston.
“Fuck, I love you. And your veiled attempts at chivalry.” He swats my ass and I squeal before sliding down his body, making sure to press my heavy breasts tightly against his chest and to add a quick brush of his clothed cock with my hand. I give him a wink and saunter down the hall (if you can even call it a hall; it’s basically four steps long). I begin to shed my clothes as I walk—one article at a time. He groans loudly from the spot I left him, rooted and noticeably pinching a tent. I’m buck-ass naked when I pause at the bathroom door, turning to face him. I can hear his sharp inhale from here.
Falling Over (Falling In Series Book 3) Page 37