Every Kiss
Page 25
“We need to talk, Callie.”
Well, there are five words that I could’ve gone my entire life without hearing again.
“Yeah,” I sigh. “I know.”
CELL PHONE CLOSE by in case there are any more updates on Chesley? Check.
Full pot of coffee to get me through this discussion with Wes? Check.
Writhing knot of dread deep in the pit of my stomach? Check.
As I sit here in Wes’ living room, tracing my finger around the rim of my warm mug, I can’t help but thinking that I’m in for a major change. It’s like the barometric pressure in my life just bottomed out. Something is looming on the horizon. Wes hasn’t given any indication of what he wants to talk about, but I’m absolutely certain that it’s about us.
Before we went to the hospital earlier today, Wes and I were at a strange crossroads, and I felt like we were spinning in circles instead of choosing a way. First, he told me he didn’t want to be with me, then he chased me to my car and kissed me. Next, he was right back to not wanting me. His moods have seemed to teeter-totter all day, and damn it, I’m tired of this ride.
Wes walks back into the living room after changing into a loose t-shirt and jersey knit shorts. “Need a refill?” he asks, motioning to my cup.
“I’m good for now.” As he heads into the kitchen, I glance out the window at the first sliver of moonlight peeking through the trees. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night.
He lazily strolls back in, mug in hand, and carefully sinks into the couch beside me and takes a hesitant sip. “I don’t know how you drink coffee in the middle of the summer, but I’m hoping it helps me lift the fog I’m in. I feel like my brain is a pile of shit baking in the desert heat right now.”
I smirk. “Impressive analogy.”
“I never claimed to be a poet.” He cuts his eyes at me, but the corner of his mouth curves up in the slightest grin. I almost forgot what he looks like when he smiles. Playful. Charming. Hot.
“What’s that weird thing you’re doing with your mouth? It almost looks like a smile, but the great and powerful Wesley Baxter wouldn’t dare.” My joking brings it out full-force. My God, he’s gorgeous.
“I smile all the time, asshole.” He swats at me with a throw pillow. “Maybe if you’d stop making it your life’s mission to piss me off, you’d see it more often.”
My jaw drops. “Me?”
“You.”
“Excuse me, but wasn’t it you who openly admitted to being an ass to push me away?”
Wes’ smile slides right off his face. “I guess you’re right.” He sets his mug on the thick stone coaster on the coffee table and shifts to face me. “That’s kinda what I want to talk to you about.”
“I’m not going to push anymore, Wes. If and when you decide you want anything more, we can talk about it. I’m here to be your friend, and you don’t have a choice in that matter. But I can’t force you to love me. I know that.”
He lets out a groan. “Do you ever let anyone talk before you throw your two cents in?” He takes my coffee away and sets it next to his before grabbing both of my hands and looking directly at me. “Look, I know why you pushed me to meet my mother, and you and my mom are completely right. It’s something I’ve needed. Even though we’ve only shared just a few words, I feel more complete somehow, settled. Meeting her was probably one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. But . . .”
“Of course, you’d have to throw a ‘but’ in there.”
He looks down at our hands, exhales a long, slow breath, and eases his weightless gaze back up to peer directly into my eyes. “I know you thought that I needed to meet her in order to find some peace in my life, to be able to allow myself to love someone. But when we were here earlier today, and you were about to leave, I realized that all I’ve ever needed was you. You’ve helped me see that I want more out of my life. Right before your phone rang, I was about to tell you something that I’ve only said to my family and one other person, and I question now whether I meant it or not then. But to be honest, when you got that call, I was relieved I didn’t. I was thankful that I had some time to talk myself out of it. And even though I’ve tried like hell to do that all damn day, I can’t seem to stop thinking it.”
My breath is heaving in and out of my lungs, and adrenaline has every muscle in my body twitching nervously. “You can always be honest with me and tell me exactly what you’re thinking, Wes. You don’t have to keep everything to yourself anymore.”
“I know,” he says, his gentle blue eyes brighten slightly. “I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer, if I tried. Callie . . . I’m hopelessly, irreversibly, and completely . . . I mean . . . damn it.” He grimaces, his top lip in a half-snarl. “Let me start over. Callie . . . I’m in love with you.”
Oh. My. God. I can’t breathe. I can’t freaking breathe. He’s in love with me? Well, that doesn’t mean he actually loves me. There’s a difference right? In love with me. Wait. Nope. No matter how I spin it, I can’t see how I’d ever misinterpret the meaning. Wesley Baxter is in love with me. Damn it. I’m going to pass out if I don’t breathe soon.
“Uh, Cal?”
I pull out of my temporary stupor and take a shaky breath. “Yeah?”
“Seriously?” He jerks his hands from mine and fists one in the top of his hair. “From the moment I met you, you’ve had the biggest mouth of anyone I’ve ever known, and you choose now to lose your tongue? I swear you’ve got to be the most infuriating woman—”
I fling myself at him carelessly, wrapping my arms around his neck and interrupting his rant. “Took you long enough to admit it.”
His eyes narrow playfully as a smug grin plays on his lips. “But deep down, I’ve known it for a long time. Do you remember when we were at the banquet, and my mom said something about embers?”
I think back to that night . . . and what happened afterward. “Yeah, you said there were more than a few, whatever that meant.”
“My mom has always been full of quirky little sayings, but there are a certain few that have always stuck with me.” He pauses to brush a strand of hair from my brow. “She’s says that love is a fire, and you can never tell if it’s going to warm your heart or burn down your house. She could tell immediately that you sparked something. And I can honestly say, sweetheart, that you started a wildfire, completely obliterating everything I have inside of me. There’s nothing left, just a clean slate.”
“That’s, by far, the most meaningful thing anyone has ever said to me. It makes me feel good to know that I’ve been able to make that kind of difference in you.” This is way too much to absorb. I never thought we’d actually get to this point. “Even if you’ve fought me at every turn, you’re worth it to me.”
His eyes crinkle when his mouth turns up into a full-fledged, beaming grin, making my stomach flutter, my limbs go numb, and my head spin. “That’s all I’ve ever needed, Callie. I just couldn’t see through all of my own shit to see it.” His hands graze up my ribs, and out of nowhere, a languid heat rolls over my body and settles low in my belly. A feeling that I want more of. A feeling that I don’t have to fight anymore.
I lean in until I’m right up to his ear. “I love you, Wes,” I whisper, skimming my lips right along the outside edge and peeking my tongue out just enough to graze his soft lobe. I hear the sharp intake of breath just as his fingers grasp my hips.
His mouth finds the tender skin just at the hollow of my collarbone, and he trails blazing kisses up my neck until he reaches the turn of my jaw. He pulls back ever-so-slightly, just enough for his smoldering aquamarine gaze to lock onto my eyes. “I love you, Callie.”
Without any further hesitation, he leans in, his mouth taking my bottom lip with a gentle tug. My fingers knead into the warm ridges of muscle along his spine, and I press my body closer to his, leaving only the thin fabric of our shirts to keep us apart. And that’s much too far. I’ve missed him. Not just him, but this deeper level of connection that I feel ever
y time we’re close like this. Every single time, I crave him just a little more.
There are so many reasons that I’m telling myself that I should hold back, though. That I shouldn’t give into his tender touch. His intoxicating kisses. With every rise that our relationship has had, there’s also been a careening fall into a fiery pit of hell. Every time I think we’re getting somewhere, he turns back into Mr. Hyde.
But all of those reasons vaporize into obscurity when his lips brush across mine, so whisper soft that it’s almost like they aren’t there at all, leaving only one thought in my feeble mind—I want more. I crumple a handful of his t-shirt in my fist, jerk him closer, and hang onto him with everything I have. Screw the light and sweet crap. I crush my mouth to his, eliciting a muffled groan from deep in his chest, and one of his hands immediately slides down to grip the back of one thigh, nearly picking me up to straddle his lap without his mouth ever leaving mine. As soon as I settle over him, his fingertips bite into the tender flesh just under the waistband of my shorts as he roughly rolls my hips over him, grinding his obvious arousal against me.
It’s at this moment that I realize I’m too far gone. I know that there’s no way in hell I’m turning back now. Not that he’d give me any choice in the matter.
Suddenly, Wes stands so quickly that I feel as if I’ve taken flight, but I remain wrapped tightly against his taut frame. He continues to kiss me as he walks, nearly bruising my lips with his delicious assault, but he doesn’t go too far. After bumping the light switch with his elbow, he moves back toward the couch, but he stops short, kneeling on the plush rug in the center of the room. Snagging the bottom of my shirt in his fingers, he breaks the kiss to yank it up over my head and fling it across the room. When it lands on a lampshade, I have to stifle a giggle.
“Apparently, I’m not doing a good enough job if you’re laughing,” he half-jokes. The moonlight streaming through the window makes his eyes look like glistening pools of liquid silver. “We don’t have to take this any further.”
I raise one eyebrow at him. “Oh, yeah we do.” Following his lead, I find the hem of his shirt and tug it over his head, not at all surprised that he allows it so willingly. I judge the distance to the lamp where my shirt currently resides, and I launch his shirt to join mine as a joke. But of course, it lands just a few feet from us.
“You’re such a girl,” he laughs.
“Correction . . . I’m a lady. Bite me.” Of course, I didn’t mean literally.
But he takes it that way. “You only have to ask me once.”
Before I can say that I was kidding, his teeth are already scraping down the side of my neck, stopping to nibble gently once he reaches my shoulder, but becoming harder as he works his way across my chest. At the same time, his arms brace me, lowering me onto the rug slowly until I feel the weight of him over me. It feels so good to have him this close that I wrap my legs around him tighter and arch my chest back up to his mouth. But being the tease he is, he backs away slightly, holding all of his weight with one arm and using the other hand to effortlessly unclasp my bra.
“I’d like to shake the hand of the smart bastard that invented these bras that open in the front,” he says, positioning himself back over me.
“Right now? You’re talking about the inventor of bras . . . right now?”
“No,” he smirks. “I’m doing this right now.” And he bends down to catch one of my nipples between his teeth, causing me to moan so loud that I can hear it echo in the kitchen.
The odd combination of sucking and biting has some seriously involuntary gymnastics going on deep in my belly, and I swear that I’m digging my fingernails into his back so hard that they’re bending backward. Good God, this man can do some insane things with his mouth. Just when I’m getting more accustomed to the sensation, he moves to the other one, treating it in the same manner. The sharp biting pleasure of pain has me writhing against him, begging for more . . . or less . . . no, definitely more.
Much more.
Which is what I get when he moves to lie beside me, his hand moving to my waist to flick open the button of my shorts. I begin to protest—although I’m not sure why—but as soon as he latches onto my breast again and his hand slips into my panties, I’m lost all over again. I’m exiled to a carnal darkness that I could live in forever. The scorching heat. The unrelenting sensation. It’s a wicked kind of bliss that I’ve only felt with him.
Yeah, I’ve had sex before. A lot of it, actually. But it’s always seemed more like a routine. Mechanical. Kind of like watching the same movie over and over again. You like the movie, there are a lot of ups and downs, but it’s the same every time you watch it. Even the ending is sweet, but again, it’s always the same. And no matter how much you kid yourself, even the climax itself was quite anticlimactic.
Not with Wes. Hell, he has so many moods that it could be like having sex with a different guy every time. And it’s so much more intense with him. He pushes me out of my comfort zone a little bit and surprises the hell out of me when I like it. I have a feeling there’s not much this man won’t try.
I tilt my head back, my mind completely adrift in a dark void. The more I feel, the more I want to feel. Rubbing my hand down his smooth chest, over every ridge, every valley, down to the top of his shorts. He starts to pull away, but I grab hold of his waistband before he can, slipping just inside the thin fabric before I feel the weight of him. Thick, hot, and satiny soft. Wrapping my fingers around him, I give a firm squeeze before sliding all the way down the length. That one, simple motion causes a chain reaction. His hand moves against me more frantically. His hips lunge forward, and he releases my tender nipple to let out an almost guttural moan.
“Damn it, Callie.” He jerks back, causing my hand to fall away, and he moves away from me, completely ceasing all action. I’m almost hurt by it until he reaches over to grip both sides of my shorts and jerking them down my legs impatiently, taking my panties off in the same manner. “I can’t wait to be inside you any longer. I want to own you, body and soul. I need to make you mine. You’re mine, Callie. Say it.”
There’s an almost feral look in his eyes, but there’s also fear creeping in around the edges. Fear of being abandoned by someone he loves again. Fear of a broken heart. “I’m yours. Always.”
After pushing his shorts off his hips, Wes moves quick, settling over me and immediately finding my mouth in a blindingly passionate kiss. I’m so lost in the way his tongue is dipping deeply between my lips that I barely notice his hand move between us, pressing the rigid length between the aching flesh at the apex of my thighs. I immediately wiggle my hips, trying hard to get more than he’s giving, but he doesn’t give in. He just gives a wicked chuckle and moves his hand up to grip my hip firmly.
“Trust me, sweetheart, I’m going to give you all you want. Anytime you want it.”
And he sure as hell does.
Before I can even take another breath, he pushes inside of me, pounding so deep that I go completely mindless, all I know is the solid heat filling me, owning me, just as he said. Over and over, he slips out just to the very end and thrusts back inside again in a powerful, relentless rhythm. His hands and mouth are all over me—touching, nipping, pinching—while I lie here helplessly, completely bound to his merciless spell.
The tension is building slowly, fluidly. Promising to send me over the edge with the next thrust. But somehow, he knows and suddenly slows his pace, only moving millimeter by millimeter. And driving me absolutely freaking crazy. He keeps the release just out of reach, changing his pace just enough to keep me teetering at the edge, begging for more.
“Please,” I plead with him. “I need . . . I . . .”
“Shhh,” he soothes, taking both of my hands and pinning them over my head, making the curve of his bicep even more pronounced. Linking his fingers with mine, he dives in again for another deep kiss before his hooded gaze finds mine.
“I love you.” My voice is barely there, but he understands.
Oh, yeah? Two can play at this game. “So prove it.”
“Well-played.” His grin turns into something wicked, mischievous. “But that’s something I look forward to doing every damn day.”
Wes’ grip tightens on my hands as he thrusts his hips again, filling me more deeply than before, but finding his same rhythm. But this time, he picks up his pace, instead of slowing it down when I feel my body tighten inside. The slow burn builds into an unquenchable fire, and it spreads until I’m completely consumed by it. I begin to match his pace, lifting my hips to meet him.
“Damn,” he growls into my neck. “You feel so good. I—oh, hell . . .” His hips thrust again, rolling a little before repeating. “Now, Callie.”
Knowing he’s that close, knowing he’s right on the edge with me, it’s all I need to let go. It’s all I need to be pulled under into that oblivion I’ve been trying so hard to reach. Every burning, throbbing spasm sends me into yet another. I hear screaming long before I ever realize it’s my own voice, and Wes’ own gasps and moans are almost loud enough to drown out my own.
Finally, he collapses on top of me, barely able to catch a breath. I feel limp but weightless . . . and oh-so-good. My legs are quivering, my heart is racing, and my body is slick with sweat. Wes clings to me helplessly, and I feel like we’ve finally reached a point where we’re completely open and vulnerable with one another. And there’s only one thing left that I need to clarify with him.
“I’m not just yours, Wesley Baxter,” I say breathlessly. “You’re mine.”
“YOU WANT TO come over tonight? I’ll be ready to leave in just a bit, so I’ll even come pick you up.”
“Hmm . . . I don’t know.” I know I’m not fooling Wes, but it’s fun anyway. “You’ll probably get back from the hospital late, and you have to work tomorrow.”