by Amelia Wilde
“I can—” Reggie reaches down, trying to take over. I smack her hand away, playfully, like we’ve never been apart all these years. She reaches again, and this time I grab her wrist and hold it down to the comforter. “Let me do this, Reggie.”
She makes a little noise and reaches again, this time with her other hand, and I catch that wrist in mid-air. God, she’s so fucking stubborn, and a little spike of irritation rushes through my chest, and then I’m scooping both her wrists into one hand, pinning them above her head, against the softness of the pillows. “Damn it, Reg, let me take care of you!”
My face is inches from hers, and there’s a tight tension in the air. Her breasts heave underneath her shirt, and there’s a light in her eyes that makes me want to—
“Damn it, Reggie.” It’s a whisper and a starting gun all at once, because the heavy air around us shatters and she’s rising up to meet me, our lips crashing together. The kiss is so intense that it’s like there’s no tomorrow, no other moment than this one, and I have to have her. I have to have her now.
I pull back for one breath and crash into her again, in over my head. And I don’t care at all.
24
Regina
The only thing in the entire world that matters right now is the way he is looking at me.
There is so much in that look that it is almost overwhelming, and I have to close my eyes, but then I get greedy and open them again because I want to see him looking at me this way. With that awe… that hunger.
He lifts my shirt over my head, gently of course, but there is a trembling eagerness there that has me loving him for a moment. The way his eyes widen when my bare breasts spill free...
That look fills up that hollow space inside of me until it suddenly overflows.
“Adam,” I whisper his name, barely able to breathe because my heart is so full.
But he hears me, and my answer is the low rumble that seems to come up from the deepest place inside of me. Like it’s rising up clear from his toes.
He moves over me, and that’s when my overloaded body recalls his grip on my wrists because he suddenly has me pinned again. He’s holding me fast underneath him, and there is a strange flicker of something like indignation over being manhandled this way that wafts around me like a light breeze. And then it just as lightly blows away when his tongue parts my lips with one insistent thrust.
Because I’m not being manhandled, oh no, far from it. The way Adam handles me… it occurs to me once more that he knows me. On a more intimate level than I’d ever know myself. Because I would never allow myself to know that when he kisses that place on my earlobe my whole body melts. I would have never guessed that the hollow of my throat would be so sensitive. I would have never understood the exquisite torture of Adam’s slow kisses burning a trail along my skin that led straight down to my…
“Are you undressing me now, too?” I tease him with a swat at his hand.
“I’m a full-service nursemaid.” His smile is light and easy right now, but his eyes are so, so dark and heavy.
I hiss in a shaky breath as he bends to kiss my stomach and then flick his tongue around my navel. “Are you going to give me a sponge bath later?”
His eyes flick up to mine. “You need a bath? Why, do you think you’re dirty?”
I bite my lip because this is Adam, my friend, who is bantering with me, but it’s also Adam the man I’ve loved since forever that’s kissing a spot on my inner thigh that makes my toes curl and my whole body go rigid. “I can be,” I manage to gasp. “Dirty, I mean.”
Then I wince. ”Actually,” I say with a wrinkled nose, “I sort of did just do a triathlon.”
His eyes are dark, but I can see the corners crinkle a little, and the corners of my own mouth starts to tug upward. “Well,” I amend it. “I half of one, anyway.”
Adam freezes like he’s not sure how I’m going to react, like he’s scared I might start sobbing again. And I don’t blame him. I soaked his entire shirt after my fall.
But I’m not sad, not anymore. Because…
“I need to wash up,” I tell him. “Before I can let you…” I wave my hand towards the area between my legs.
I whoop with laughter as he whips me off of the bed and into his arms. “Bath time, young lady.”
His bathroom has a giant, claw-foot tub in the center. I cling tightly to his neck as he bends to turn on the faucet, and then I wince as he lowers me into the rapidly filling tub. “Up here,” he commands, lifting my ankle gently. “You don’t want to get the tape wet.”
I look him full-on in the eye. “Is it okay that I’m wet somewhere else?”
I love the shocked look in his eyes, and the way his jaw goes slack. “Damn, Reg.”
“What? You didn’t expect me to have a dirty mouth?”
He kisses me, hard. “I fucking love that you have a dirty mouth,” he says hoarsely, his eyes burning. “I love…” he pauses like he’s caught himself, and then he turns and grabs one of the pristine white washcloths from the rustic wooden shelf. “Your mouth can stay dirty,” he declares as he dips it into the water and then lathers it up with one of the complimentary bottles of body wash. “Let’s get the rest of you clean.”
Protests form on my lips like a reflex, but I don’t let them go further than that. Because when he slides the washcloth down to my center, my powers of speech abandon me. He alternates between long, slow strokes that have me melting into the blissful heat of the water, and short, teasing brushes that have my nipples standing at attention. When he slides the cloth down between my legs, I moan softly and let my head fall back.
I hear his soft hiss. “Like that?”
My hips arch of their own accord. The heat against my center is overloading my synapses. “More,” I beg.
He cups his hand so the whole of my sex is covered, and the friction of the cloth against my most sensitive parts has me panting. “You clean enough, Reggie?” Adam asks, and I can hear the ragged gasp in his voice. “I think you’re clean enough.” He lifts me into his arms, wrapping me up in a plush towel like a baby. “Besides,” he says, brushing his lips across mine. “I already told you, I like you dirty.”
“I think you did a thorough job,” I say. I’m so content, I’m practically purring. “Down there.”
And with that, I am suddenly flat on my back, bouncing slightly as he drops me on the bed, catching my ankle at the last moment so it doesn’t get jarred too much, before he spreads my legs wide. Did his eyes just twinkle? Can brown eyes actually twinkle? Well, his did. “I’ll be the judge of that,” he says with a growl.
“Shit,” I hiss when his tongue finds my center. If I’d dreamed about him doing this before, I didn’t have a good enough imagination because it is...so much fucking more than I’d ever considered possible. His sounds—these little grunts and moans of appreciation—and the near constant stream of encouraging approval, “fuck, yes, God, you’re wet, I knew you’d taste good, Reg Rag, but fuck you’re like, sweet, why are you so fucking sweet? I want to eat you up,” fill my ears with him, even as the sight of his blond head between my legs and the fucking feel of what he’s doing there combine into a tornado of sensation. Even in my most detailed fantasy, I could have never imagined it would be this...fucking...good.
My whole body arches upwards, and I open my mouth to gasp, but what comes out is a scream, because all at once I’m exploding, a string of fireworks erupting up my spine, one after another, after another, on and on, ricocheting through my body until I’m nothing more than a shuddering mass of synapses craving even more sensation.
“God damn,” I hear Adam swear from somewhere outside of myself, and then he’s sliding into me, and I am so wet and ready for him that it only takes one smooth stroke to fill me to the hilt. We both gasp, and I look up to see that he is looking down where we are joined with a look of awe on his face. “Adam,” I groan as he starts to move, and I reach up to hold his face in my hands as he moves above me. “Look at me,” I beg, because I
need to see him seeing me, I need to watch him watching me, cherishing me, because when he does, I feel like a flower starting to bloom.
“I see you,” he says, and the hitch in his voice tells me more than his words ever could, and suddenly I’m crying again, even as the sensations overcome me a second time. He cries out, arching over me with a shuddering groan. I wrap my arms tightly around his back, and he crushes his body against mine as he whispers curses and promises in my ears. I’m falling and flying at the same time, and it’s clear I’m falling apart, but it doesn’t matter at all, as long as Adam is here to pick me up again. I need him. Here.
I need him to stay.
25
Adam
The quiet reminds me of the moment in the chapel before the statue fell from Reggie’s hands. Before the door opened and someone broke the moment into a thousand pieces. Before I ran, heart pounding, on instinct, a laugh ready on my lips. It’s like that, only stretched out a million times over.
I listen to her breathe.
It’s slow and calm, the way she used to breathe when we would watch movies together. Not at the beginning of the movie, but in the middle, when she’d get drawn into the story and forget that anyone else was with her. Or maybe it was that she didn’t care that I was with her. Maybe she felt like I did. Maybe she felt like she was right at home. Alone together, and all that. I used to say silent prayers of thanks—to who, I don’t know, whatever god was listening—that my dad was always busy as hell and my mom would spend hours on her phone, organizing events, organizing her life. It didn’t matter, because it meant I could be alone with Reggie.
It’s like that, only a million times better, because now her naked body is stretched out beside me on the bed in a state of perfect relaxation. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her like this, not ever. I thought she was calm during those movies. The middle of Indiana Jones was a transcendental experience. But now…
Whoever thought that I’d be in this B&B with her now? I sure as fuck didn’t. I always thought that whatever it was between me and Reckless Falls was over. Over and gone. But it’s not, clearly, and I wonder if I just ignored the ache in my chest that tugged me back here all these years, or if I never really felt it until I saw Reggie’s face again.
Water streaming off of it, screaming at me because I’d just interrupted her big breath-holding practice. A laugh rises in my chest and she puts her hand out, fingertips grazing there. “What’s funny?”
“You, out in that lake.”
“Today?” I can hear the pout in her voice. I don’t have to look, and it makes me smile, hugely, ridiculously, because Reggie is not the type to pout. She must really be feeling good if she’s willing to let her guard down like this right now.
“No. The day that I saved your life.” I catch her hand and entwine my fingers with hers in the cool space of the sheets between us. “You were so pissed at me.”
She rolls over gingerly. “Why are you thinking about that?”
“Because it’s so different from right now. Don’t you just feel like—” I’m trying to think of how to describe the sensation. It’s like being under water, the gentle pressure of it surrounding you completely. You can’t help but float, suspended under the surface, almost rising, but what could disturb you down there? Nothing, except an asshole like me, yanking you back up. I’m caught in that moment. “It’s nice here with you.” It’s a lame thing to say, but Reggie doesn’t think so. At least, I don’t get that impression by the way she sighs, right from the center of her chest.
It goes so quiet again that I can hear her heart beating. Or maybe I’m not hearing it. Maybe I’m feeling it through our hands.
How am I supposed to leave her here?
The thought comes idly, like the sound of oars on the far end of the lake. How am I supposed to leave her, indeed. Well, it’s supposed to be easy. I’m supposed to turn over the keys to my father’s house to Cole Granger, or whoever the hell buys it, and turn my back on that place forever. And on Reckless Falls forever. I’m supposed to get back into my rental car and drive back to the city. To my favorite apartment there, the one that’s the penthouse in a building that’s not quite a skyscraper but hopes to be one when it grows up. It’s a place that’s always quiet, insulated from the relentless noise of the city, but even that quiet is nothing like this.
It’s going to hurt like a motherfucker to leave. I can’t even face it head-on. My mind wrenches away from the thought completely.
“I’m sorry about the race, Reg,” I whisper. It keeps coming back to me, even now, even with my body heavy against the bed, the way she was airborne for an awful second and then slammed into the pavement. The way she almost got taken out by all those other bikes. My pulse pounds loudly in my ears at the thought of it.
“At least you were there,” she murmurs, and then shifts, rolling onto her back, pulling my hand onto the flat of her stomach. She’s got abs now. Damn. Desire flickers to life inside me, ramping up from the low-level hum, but I force it back down. I can’t fucking break her, not now, when she’s got a busted ankle. The best thing for everyone is to rest.
And it feels good.
I can admit it, here. Things in the city move at a fast pace. The office is always ticking along. Mergers. Deals. The endless handshaking that I do, because I’m not really on the ground, not really doing all the dirty work. I stopped doing that a long time ago, on Gideon’s advice. That’s not what the boss does, he’d said. But he didn’t say that it doesn’t matter what you decide to stop doing. The pressure is still there. To release it, I go to parties at the clubs, tear the city apart through the night. Looking. I’ve been looking.
For what?
For Reggie.
It’s obvious. It’s clear as day. But the thought buzzes through my brain like an electric fence. Touching it right now would be dangerous, with all the electricity between us. I don’t want to start a fucking fire.
I just want to stay here, like this, for as long as I can.
The rhythm of her breath is like waves lapping on the shore of the lake. Rocking, rocking, lapping against the side of my boat. The boat that I left out there. That damn boat is probably still rocking there without me. I wouldn’t be surprised.
I start to drift off, just a little, the warmth of her heavy beside me, yet so, so light.
26
Regina
I’m perfectly still.
Idly, I flick my mind back and try to remember the last time I was this still, this content to just float in a warm haze of my own thoughts. Lying still usually brings on my anxieties, my brain insisting on showing me a slideshow of all the things I should be doing instead.
But right now I cannot remember anything else that I should be doing. I am here, perfectly present, the only thought in my head a kind of quiet curiosity about why it was getting harder and harder to breathe.
“Adam,” I whisper, blinking out of my haze.
His arm is around me as he inches closer to sleep. With each one of my exhalations, it gets heavier, wrapping around me like a sexy, well-muscled boa constrictor. “Adam?”
He doesn’t answer. But he does shift his long body against mine and pull me to him even tighter.
“Adam, I can’t breathe.”
He shifts again and then groans as he rolls back, freeing me from his boa constrictor arms. But without them, I am suddenly cold and yank the sheets back up to my chin. I sigh and nuzzle my way back into his arms. “Are you sleeping?” I ask him, brushing my leg over the top of his.
I feel his cock stir to life at the same moment his eyes snap open. “Just a breather,” he says, turning to face me. He pulls me to him, letting me feel the whole of him lengthening against my thigh.
I bite my lip and smile into his chest. “Are you seriously ready for round two already?”
“With a girl like you? I’d have to be dead not to be ready.”
My smile widens and I press a kiss to his warm skin. “What do you mean, a girl like me?”
“Like—” He smoothes my hair back from my face. His eyes are heavy-lidded and full of something unspoken. “You, Reg. The girl of my dreams.”
My heart rises to my throat and then falls back down to my stomach. There is nothing I can say, nothing I can do except kiss him as hard as I can. He groans against my mouth, and I shift, wrapping my leg around him and he enters me smoothly, his hips already swirling in the tight circle to hit every right place inside of me. “Adam,” I gasp, sinking my fingers into his hair and kissing his eyes, his lips, his throat, and his thrusts come faster now. His hands delve into my sides, pulling me down to meet him with each punishing upward thrust and this is completely different from the tender lovemaking from before. This is harsh, animal need that has me yelping with each stroke. We cling to each other, fingers leaving bruises. Biting, sucking and nipping, I give in to the need to mark him, loving the way he hisses and holds me even tighter. “Fuck,” he rasps. “Sweetheart, I’m right there, I need you to come for me, right now Reggie, because I’m going to...”
My body responds as if given a command. It’s like a whipcrack snapping through my body. It’s sudden, and wrenching, and when I open my mouth the only sound that comes out is a strangled scream. Adam tenses, and with a thrust that could split me in half, he roars in my ear and my own cries mingle with his, so loud it has to be echoing off the mountains.
My body jerks awake and for a second I lie blinking in the heavy darkness, wondering where the hell I am. I should be up training by now, right? I need to get in a pre-dawn run before I have to get to work, but there is no glow of the streetlight outside of my window to shine on my bedside table, so I can’t see my phone to check why my alarm hasn’t gone off yet.
Then I hear a sigh in the darkness, and feel the shift of something heavy on the mattress with me, and it all comes flooding back.