“Can I take you to your room?” he asked, pressing his lips just below the corner of my mouth.
He could take me to Mars for all I cared, but I couldn’t speak. All I could do was nod as I swayed into him, needing his mouth on my throat again. His husky laugh hit the sensitive damp skin he’d just had his mouth on. His hand went to my hip, curling those long fingers over my side.
“Yes?” he asked, drawing his mouth back up to kiss my cheeks, my nose, the sliver of skin just above my upper lip, everywhere but my mouth.
I was panting. Panting. “Uh-huh” was all I could get out.
Slowly, without breaking our closeness, he pulled me up to my feet, his mouth still everywhere, his hands going everywhere else—up and down my back, one hip, two hips, my shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, even my hands. Mapping me out. It wasn’t until he pulled me closer to him that I remembered we weren’t alone in the house.
“The front door,” I whispered, out of breath from just letting him use those lips on me.
“It’s already locked,” he told me as both those big palms slid from where they’d been at my waist, down, over the hem of my dress, before making a return trip upward, inside the skirt that time. Those rough, callused fingers and palms scratched my skin in the two heartbeats it took for Dallas to reach my ass, cupping the bare skin there in those big hands, gripping and molding them together as his breath hit my ear. “I always thought you looked like mine, but you sure do fucking feel like you’re mine, too,” he said, drawing a circle around my pulse point with his tongue.
Without a word of warning, he suddenly boosted me up, my dress straining as the material slid up to rest around my hips. Somewhere in the back of my head, I prayed he’d get us to my room fast—really, really fast—before Josh decided he needed to go to the bathroom and found me with my butt hanging out of my clothes, wrapped around Dallas like a spider monkey. Because that was exactly what it had to look like. The instant I was up in his arms, my legs had wrapped around his waist, my arms twining behind his neck. Face-to-face, my mouth hovered inches away from his. Millimeters, really.
And without kissing me, his forehead to mine, his eyes locked on my own, he started walking us down the hall.
One of my hands loosened around his neck to go up to the back of his head, running my fingers through the super soft short hair on his head. Neither one of us said anything as he kept walking, and eventually, I knew we were in my room even with all the lights being off. He kicked the door closed and took a step back, one of the hands he had supporting me disappearing for a brief moment before the low click of the lock being engaged filled the only other sound in my bedroom other than our breathing.
He didn’t turn on the lights and I didn’t bother to either.
Days later, I liked to think we were so quiet because there was nothing that could be said that would have made the moment better or more meaningful. There really wasn’t. Every time his hands touched me, it was like a sentence was being spoken. And I hoped that every time I set my hands on him, he could feel every single thing I thought of him, everything I felt for him.
He was wonderful and I loved him. I loved him more than I thought I was capable of. If I really put it into perspective, how could anything I had ever felt for anyone before him even be close to the “L” word when what we had was ten—twenty, thirty, forty, fifty—times brighter and more real than any man I’d ever met before him?
It couldn’t. It just couldn’t.
Because no one else was as kind or selfless, as giving or as patient, as loving in all the little and the big ways, as he was.
I’d never really known what I wanted most of my life, but this—him—was it.
And as he set me down on my feet in my bedroom, with only the faintest light coming in through the window from outside, his hands went to the bottom of my dress. In one quick move, the dress was up and over my head, gone to another dimension for all I cared. Those cool, scratchy palms went to my waist, and as I stood there in my underwear and a strapless bra, he pulled me into him, pressing my front to his. He sealed us together from the chest down just as his mouth finally decided to meet mine.
Mouth tilted, it opened over mine. Our tongues clashed and stroked. I was faint and dizzy as he kissed me, his mouth slanting from one side to the other as we ate at each other, like it was the end of the world and there was nowhere else either one of us would rather be.
It was the truth.
As he kissed me and kissed me and kissed me—his body warm and fully clothed pressed flushed to my chest, breasts, belly, and even my thighs—all I wanted was to be wrapped around him again. I was so busy sliding my tongue against his that it took me a while to notice him fumbling with the snaps on my bra with one hand. If that wasn’t my cue to get him out of his clothes, I didn’t know what was.
I sucked in a breath as I tore my mouth away finally, going up to the tips of my toes to kiss that warm, almost salty skin at his neck, tiny hairs prickling my lips and chin. Dallas’s hands kept fumbling at my back, and it took me a moment in the dark for my hands to slide up the hard, bulky muscles of his abs, up over his pectorals until my fingers found the buttons near his throat. I got his tie off and threw it before going back.
He got my bra off as I was about halfway down, unbuttoning his dress shirt. His hands stroked over my shoulders and the back of my neck as I finished and started pushing his shirt away, feeling him help me get it off, fast, almost desperately. With only his thin undershirt between me and all those rippled, hot muscles, I sucked in a breath as Dallas leaned down to kiss my upper lip before pulling away. From the sound and the feel of it, he took his shirt off, because the next thing I knew, a bare, smooth shoulder brushed across my cheek.
In the dark, everything felt so much more intense. His thumbs tucked into the scrap of lace at my hips as he tugged my thong down my legs. The kisses he fluttered on the trip down, at the side of my collarbone, my upper breast, the swift suck he gave my nipple once and only once as he kept lowering his body. Another kiss at my ribs and my bare hip. The sound of his knees hitting the crappy carpet told me where he’d ended up.
When he kissed my thigh and followed that up by pressing his warm breath and mouth to the crease where my thigh met the place my underwear had uncovered, I sucked in a breath, loud, so loud. And when he drew a moist line of kisses down and over, before pressing to the cleft at my seam, I swallowed hard and reached for his head for balance or to get him not to go anywhere, I had no idea.
He kissed me there and kissed me there again. He didn’t part me as the tip of his tongue tapped the outer skin and he gave me another kiss. His sigh was deep and rattled as his hands cupped the back of my thighs, gripping them hard, keeping me in place. Then Dallas parted my seam with his tongue, tasting that little knot of nerves that had come alive with the first kiss he’d given me.
His forehead pressed low against my belly, his nose at the skin I’d luckily shaved before the wedding, Dallas kissed me, sucking and licking those lower lips like I wasn’t already dying and ready for him. He made out with me like he had when we’d both been standing up.
Slowly, the hands on my thighs tugged and led me down until I kneeled in front of him. I kissed him, tasting myself on his lips as I moved my hands all over that chest I’d only seen twice in person, then slid them over those rippled abs that shouldn’t belong on someone over thirty. His own hands were at my breasts, pinching my nipples between his index finger and thumb before he cupped them. Dallas’s mouth dropped to take one and then the other between his lips, over and over again.
I squirmed and moved in front of him, dragging my hands up and down his abs again, over the hair trailing to the button and zipper of his dress pants. In no time, I had him unzipped and slipped my hand inside, my palm toward me. The back of my fingers grazed over his short, wiry hair before I felt that thick, hot root at the center of his body. Dallas’s body jerked as I kept sliding my hand inside, feeling his length tucked to the left, nestled against
his thigh, and I still couldn’t reach the tip.
Flipping my hand over, I wrapped my palm and fingers around his thick width, and as gently as possible, I pulled him up enough until the tip faced the ceiling. Dallas stopped what he was doing, with his lips parted around my nipple, as I gave him a squeeze. He was just as thick as I’d imagined, and as I slid my palm up and up and up, he was just as long, too, eight or nine inches of swollen cock. His hips jerked and he sucked in a breath as I tightened my grip back up around him and pulled on the excess, super soft skin. Up and down, up and down.
In a quick movement, Dallas pushed me onto my back on the carpet, and before I even managed to let out a breath, he was over me. Covering me like a human blanket, but so much bigger, heavier, and warmer. I didn’t need the light to know the blunt, hard thing poking at my seam was him, ready, ready, ready. “I’m on birth control,” I whispered almost shyly. I wasn’t ovulating either, but I wouldn’t tell him that. Not yet at least.
He exhaled and I did the same as I slipped my arms under his armpits, leaving my forearms on his shoulder blades, my hands curling over the muscles of his trapezius muscles. “Diana,” he said from just above me.
I wrapped my legs around his hips, my ankles resting against his dress pants which were still covering everything except that big organ slowly pressing against me, trying to find that place we both wanted.
“I love you, Dallas,” I whispered as I tipped my hips up so he could ease in an inch.
His mouth and entire body came down on me, heavy, like he was trying to consume me into him. His weight was what pushed him in deeper, another inch, and another inch and another, pushing through my wet muscles that were protesting his thickness, protesting him period.
But Dallas kept going, kissing me over and over again until he was settled completely over me and in me, skewering my body with his.
The only sound he made before he started throbbing inside of me was a gasp, then a groan, and he jerked and swelled, shoved deep to the root in me. Dallas came and came, so much cum that when he retreated an inch before thrusting back in me, his cum trickled out from around his cock and down my skin.
“Fuck,” he muttered, all raspy onto my cheek as he held himself as deep as he could get in me. “I didn’t mean to cum that fast.”
“It’s okay.”
His mouth moved over my cheek, from one spot to another, softly. “I’m not done. I promise.” Dallas pulled that thick organ out, slowly and rolled his hips forward, stuffing me one more time. “You couldn’t feel more like mine if you tried,” he told me, punctuating each word with a hard thrust that had me scooting across the carpet a few inches.
My back burned just a little as he kept his speed slow, and the last inch of his push into me a slap, a pound. He kissed me like he was making love to me, slowly, angling his mouth from one side to the other as his tongue caressed mine. His hips moved in a circle, like he was trying to get deeper.
I sucked in one breath after another, trying to keep from making a bunch of noise because the boys were just down the hall, but I kept moving my hips, trying to adjust the angle until he moved his body just enough so that his pubic bone started grinding down on me perfectly.
His chest brushed against mine, both of us sweaty and breathing hard, and he kept rolling his hips, building me up and up until I came around him. I had to toss my head back, bite my lip, and arch my back to keep from making a noise as he held himself still inside of me until I caught my breath. One hard thrust followed by another harder one, and then one more hard pull and push of his cock had us moving across the carpet again. Dallas shoved that thick girth in deep and he groaned, long and low, coming again, pulsing more and more, his length twitching and jerking.
Slowly, his weight went slack on top of me. He was heavy and it was harder to breathe, but I didn’t move my arms from around his back and shoulders, and I kept my legs around him tight, as all those fine muscles pulsed on top of me and in me. He was breathing just as hard as I was, it was like neither one of us could catch our breath.
After what could have been ten minutes or thirty, he got up to his hands and knees, and I could hear him swallow hard, his breathing shallow and choppy. With my eyes slightly more used to the dark room, I could see him reach toward my face. His hand cupped my cheek as I lay there on the carpet sprawled out, still not able to catch my breath.
I moved my head to kiss the pad of skin below his thumb, and just like that, Dallas was lowering himself back down to lay on the floor beside me. His arm slipped under my neck and he curled me into his side. He was damp from sweat, and when I rolled onto my side and draped my leg over his thigh, I felt what had to be both of us on his inner thighs. Sticky and wet. I loved it.
With my head on his shoulder, I slung my arm across the middle of his chest and hugged him.
When he started chuckling, I tipped my face up but could only catch the faint outline of his jaw. “What are you laughing at?”
The hand furthest away from me settled high on the thigh I had on him. He stroked further up, touching my hip with his palm and the side of my butt with his fingertips. He did that twice before he said in that awesome, hoarse, totally worn-out voice, “You know that hug of yours started all of this.”
What? “What do you mean?”
He moved his hand in a circle on my thigh, slowly kneading. “I saw you outside your house a few weeks after you moved in. The Larsens must have been dropping the kids off because you were all outside. You’d been standing on the deck waiting for them, and Josh came out of their car. When he came up to you, he wasn’t even paying attention, but you hugged him with this huge smile on your face. You were laughing. I don’t know what you told him, but then he started hugging you back and you shook him until he finally laughed too.
“And every single fucking time I saw you after that, you were always hugging somebody. Kissing somebody. Telling them you loved them. I’d go to bed thinking about you and wondering why you were always doing that,” he said to me in that low voice, hugging me closer.
“Because I love them and life is short.”
“I know that now, Diana. I learned that every time I was around you. You can see how much you love your family, and it’s the thing I love the most about you. I wanted someone to love me like that. I wanted you to love me like that.” The hand he had on my side found my own hand, and he linked our fingers together. “I’m not rich and I’m not good-looking, but I could make you happy. We could make our own patched-up family.”
My heart broke in half. “Of course you could make me happy. You already do. And you are so good-looking, what are you talking about?”
“No, I’m not. You told me I wasn’t your type, remember?” he reminded me in a tone that didn’t sound sad or disappointed.
“You were being an idiot. What was I supposed to tell you? My, what big arms you have? Then what? Please let me snuggle in your lap, my friend?” I laughed, squeezing my fingers in his. “You were married and you took it seriously. I would never do that. And it wasn’t like you were really nice to me for a while anyway.”
“What did you want me to tell you? That I wanted you to snuggle on my lap?” He chuckled back. “Baby, I took being married to someone I didn’t even love seriously. I never once cheated on my ex, even after we split up. What kind of man would I show you I was if I’d changed my mind about how I should act after I’d met you?”
He had a point and he knew it.
“I thought you were crazy at first, and then I got to know you and I liked you—you were my friend and you were nice just because that’s how you are, not because you wanted anything from me. And then that day I was taking lice out of your hair, you looked up at me while we were laughing and I knew I was done,” he said.
His hand went to my cheek again. “If I can respect being in a relationship with someone who I won’t remember years from now—someone I don’t ever think about—I wanted you to see how seriously I would take spending the next fifty years with the girl
who’s keeping my heart for herself.”
This man. This man was going to stitch me together with industrial strength thread. How? How could I live a day without him? A week, a month, a lifetime?
As if sensing I was losing my shit, but not in the way he thought, Dallas lifted himself up onto a forearm to look down at me. “Diana, I love you, and every bone in my body tells me that I’m gonna love you every day of my life, even when we want to kill each other.”
I sniffled, and what did he do? He laughed.
“When you’re old, I’ll hold your hand when we cross the street. I’ll help you put on your socks,” he promised.
I started laughing, even as tears came into my eyes. “What if I have to help you put on socks?”
“Then you’ll help me put on socks. And if I’m in a wheelchair and you’re not, I’ll give you a ride.”
My tears spilled over as I laughed, and I couldn’t help but put my forehead to his shoulder. “You can’t promise me you’ll always be there. You know that’s not the way it works.”
“While I still have breath in my body, I won’t go anywhere, Peach.” He kissed my temple. “You never know what will happen an hour from now, a minute from now, but I won’t make you regret any of it too bad, even when I get on your nerves and we bicker because we’ve been together forever and know everything about each other. That time could be a month, or could be until we’re both in diapers, but I’ll be there.”
“Diapers?”
“Diapers,” he confirmed, leaning down to kiss my face three times. “I promise.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Tell her,” Josh whispered as he passed by me in the kitchen to refill his cup with apple juice from the fridge.
I ground my teeth and made my eyes go wide in his direction while going back to keeping an eye on my mom who happened to be standing at the stove in the kitchen, giving the rice she was making a stir. “I will. Give me a second,” I hissed at him, glancing in my mom’s direction one more time to make sure she was oblivious.
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