by Caisey Quinn
Instinctively, she reached up and placed her hands on either side of his face. His stubble tickled her palms. It was as if she were seeing him for the first time, or maybe she was just allowing herself to remember what she’d known all along.
She nodded as she dropped her hands and let them rest on his broad, solid chest.
“I see.”
And she did. She saw the selfless man who took care of the women he loved, the passionate one who loved with all he had—even when it meant walking away. And she saw the beast in him, the one that led him to drink. He wasn’t two separate men as she’d always told herself. There wasn’t one who’d loved her and one who’d walked away. They were two parts of a whole. Both parts making him the man that he was.
The man she loved.
She let her eyes memorize every inch of his face. She savored the moment, every single second of it, fearing they’d both reason their way out of this intense stare down before it went much further. Trace’s hands came up to her wrists and slid down her arms. She barely stifled the shiver it caused.
“You’re still my beautiful girl. Still too damn beautiful for my own good,” he said, his voice a soft, tormented whisper. “I knew I could take care of this.” He slid a hand down and cupped her intimately between her legs.
Her hands clutched his black T-shirt, gripping him tighter for support as need pooled liquid and scalding where he’d touched her.
“I had to make sure I was worthy of this.” Trace’s right hand left the throbbing apex of her thighs and came to rest on her heart. “I know you still love me, Kylie Lou. I don’t know that I’ll ever deserve your love, baby. But I want to. I’ll spend the rest of my damned life trying to be the kind of man who does.”
She placed her hands over his. Her heart quivered in fear at his words. When he lowered his head and kissed her softly between her breasts her entire body began to tremble under his touch.
His chest expanded as he pulled in ragged breaths. She let her hands roam from his hands to his arms. Smoothing them down his chest, she gripped the hem of his shirt.
“I’m scared,” she whispered into the small space between them.
“Me too, baby,” he breathed. “But I need you to trust me. We can’t do this without trust. I just want you, Kylie Lou Ryans. You’re the only one for me. There’s no one else. The things the media says about me are—”
“Shh.” She brushed a finger over his mouth before lifting his shirt over his head. She’d heard all she needed to.
Once his chest was bare, her eyes drank in the muscular planes. Her hands made a path over the chiseled lines of his abdomen up to the hard ridges of his shoulders.
“When you first left,” she began softly, “it was like I had nothing to hold onto. Nothing that mattered anymore.”
An apology flashed in his eyes. He opened his mouth to speak, but she placed her small hand over it once again. His eyes never left hers while she spoke.
“And then I grabbed on to music, to the only thing I knew and understood. Even though every note, every chord, every single lyric I played or sang cut deeper into the pain of losing you.” She felt his hands massage their way up her back as she worked deftly to remove his belt. “I couldn’t save you from yourself. No matter what I did.”
His hooded hazel gaze undressed her at the same time his hands did. She felt every barrier she’d put up between them drop away with her clothes. Her sweatshirt hit the floor, but she’d been exposed to him long before it did.
“And then I tried…I tried so hard to find something that didn’t remind me of you. Someone who could fill that hollow ache you left inside of me.” She felt the wounds she was inflicting on him as his body tensed beneath her hands in response. “And then he walked away. Like everyone else. And I didn’t even care.”
The sound of his zipper coming down as she lowered it slowly filled the silence.
“And these past few days, spending time with my band and letting them see me—
the real me, the feel-first-think-second me—made me realize I was never empty. I’d kept something no one could take away from me. Not even you.”
“What’s that?”
A slow smile spread across her face as she shifted his pants down his hips.
“This.” Grabbing his strong, warm hand, she placed it in the same spot where he’d touched on her chest. His fingers pressed into her flesh. “Loving you is as much a part of me as my music is. It’s not a choice and it’s not something I can live a full life without. I love you. I never stopped, Trace. Not for a single second. Even when I tried my hardest. Even when I wasn’t sure if you loved me back.”
For the first time since their emotionally charged exchange had begun, he closed his eyes.
“You know,” he said softly.
Kylie leaned back against the counter behind her.
“I do.” She nodded. “You brought me back to life. You made sure the only one who could record our song was us. You kissed me on stage because I sang a song that hurt to sing. You bought my daddy’s truck. You went to rehab and got sober. You ditched everyone, your band, your family, to come have a pity party bonfire with me, you—”
The rest of her words were cut off by his mouth clamping down on hers. She opened for him, moaning softly when his tongue plunged inside.
She felt him stepping out of his jeans as he lifted her off the ground and headed towards his bedroom. Her bare back brushed roughly against several surfaces and doorways in the dark as they made their way to the back of the bus, but she didn’t care. As long as his mouth didn’t leave hers, she was happy. For what felt like the first time in forever.
When he laid her down on his mattress, she stared up into his handsome face, placing both hands on either side once more and admiring the beautiful angles of it.
“Even though I know, I still want to hear it.”
He grinned, that slow, intense smile he gave only to her. Bracing himself above her, he stared straight down into her eyes.
“I love you. God, I love you so damn much, Kylie Lou.” His lips danced against hers and she whimpered at the force of the emotional damn breaking inside of her.
“I love you, too, Trace,” she whispered against his mouth. “I thought you broke my heart. But you didn’t. You are my heart,” she said with a tremor in her voice.
He kissed her so hard their teeth gnashed against one another’s. Panting, she began to shimmy out of the denim that still sheathed her legs.
Trace grabbed her jeans with one hand and divested her of them in one swift movement. He was above her again before she could take a breath.
“I missed you so fucking much, baby,” he told between placing frantic open-mouth kisses down her jawline and neck. “Every day. Every damn day I missed you. It hurt like hell being away from you. It wrecked me…having to see you and not being able to have you.”
The intensity of his words combined with the damp heat of his mouth stripped away the remaining protective layers she’d kept around herself.
“Show me, Trace. Show me how much you love me. How much you missed me. How much it hurt. I need to feel it. I need to feel you.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Strong fingers slid her black thong down her thighs.
She let herself let go as he licked and kissed his way back up her legs. When his teeth grazed over flesh, her body jerked in surprise.
A low dark laugh reverberated against her skin.
“Behave yourself, Mr. Corbin,” she warned.
He growled—actually growled—at her.
She giggled, a soft, genuine sound she hadn’t heard from herself in over a year.
His hands were everywhere at once. Palming her breasts, clutching her hips, spreading her thighs. It was as if he were literally devouring her. She couldn’t get enough of him, couldn’t get open enough or get him close enough.
He massaged and kissed his way all over her, taking his sweet time on his exploration of her body. She wondered if he’d forgotten how it felt, if he was
trying to remember and memorize it with his hands and mouth.
His tongue slid south and moved gently over the center of her, causing her body to bow off the bed. As he licked her gently to her first orgasm, she felt all the tension she’d carried for so long extracting itself from her muscles and floating into the air.
“Now that I’ve said it, I can’t stop.” His hands massaged their way up her thighs as he made his way back to her. “I love you. I love the feel of you, the taste of you, the scent of you. I love you so much I lose control sometimes—lose the little bit of sense God gave me. If all I was allowed to do was sit and watch you exist for the rest of my life, I would die fucking happy.”
She smiled as his mouth came down on her left breast. “I love you, too. I love the way you touch me, the way you taste me.”
He grunted his appreciation of her words and sucked her nipple into his scorching hot mouth before moving to the other side. “I hate myself for not telling you sooner. For walking away without letting you know that I loved you.”
“I think I always knew deep down that you loved me, Trace. That’s not why I’m scared.” Her whispered confession stilled him.
His head snapped up from her chest to her face and his eyes met hers. “Then what are you scared of, Kylie Lou?”
She pulled in a ragged breath of air. “That you won’t let me love you. That you’ll walk away again. Like before…” A sob escaped and she laughed at herself as she wiped her tear-filled eyes. “Sorry. I know this isn’t the time—”
He cut her off by kissing her on the mouth. She tasted the faint hint of herself on his lips. “It’s always the time, baby. You can tell me how you feel, or what you’re afraid of, or worried about, or what you need, anytime you want.”
“Okay,” she whispered against his mouth. Her fingernails raked over his chest, pressing him backward. “Let me love you, Trace. I need you to let me do that. You deserve to be loved. You are more than deserving of my love. It’s always been yours.”
She grabbed his shoulders and pressed her palms against him until he got the message. Once he’d rolled onto his back and she was straddling him, she slid her wetness along the underside of his steel erection.
He groaned from the contact. His warm hands grazed her breasts and her body responded immediately, arching into his hands for more.
“Tell me what you need, baby.”
“I need you inside,” she whispered. “I need to feel you inside of me.”
Trace sat up with his back against the headboard and pulled her against his chest. His hands pressed a path down the flesh of her back until they gripped her ass and lifted.
She cried out when he sat her down on the full length of him. Despite her body’s protest at the blunt force of the intrusion, she began to slide up and down readily. His desperate hold on her was breathtakingly tight as he pulled her legs around him.
Her body surrounded him as if it knew the same thing she did, the same thing she always had.
She was made for him. And he was made for her.
“I can’t go slow or be gentle,” she warned him. “I might hurt you.”
“I can take it,” he said against the valley between her breasts.
It was mere seconds before the pressure began to build inside of her. The force of it was so intense she wondered if it would break her in two. Wondered, but wasn’t concerned enough to stop.
Her erect nipples chafed against the smattering of hair on his chest as his hands guided her body, setting the pace of their lovemaking even from beneath her. The light stubble on his face rubbed against the side of her neck as she moved up and down above him.
Words came out of her mouth and were breathed into his ear. Some of them sounded like his name. Some were declarations of love, and some were just sounds of unadulterated pleasure.
She lost count of how many times she came until it seemed to be one endless stream of intensity, wave after wave of ecstasy crashing over her.
When her body went limp and she was certain she couldn’t take any more, Trace gently eased her onto her back and began his worshipful treatment all over again.
“Oh God. I-I can’t. Trace, I can’t feel my legs.” She jerked in an attempt to move them, but it was pointless. She was boneless.
His fingertips drifted lazily up her inner thighs, one of them venturing dangerously close to her opening, causing her to twitch in response.
He chuckled, that deep timbre warming her from the inside out. “There, baby. See? Your legs just moved.”
She was too weak to even open her eyes. His warm, wet mouth placed sweet kisses across her stomach.
“Say it,” he murmured against her navel.
She moaned her inability to speak.
“Or don’t say it. And I’ll just keep turning everything you say into something dirty. I think you like it anyways.”
“Say what?” she pleaded weakly.
He trailed a finger through her damp swollen folds, applying pressure where she still tingled.
“Oh my God, Trace.”
“Mmm, I do like that. But it’s not what I’m looking for. Say, ‘You still have feelings for me, you still think about me…’” he began.
Kylie smiled into the darkness. “You missed me terribly every second we were apart.”
“Oh, you’ve done it now.” With a dark chuckle, he climbed on top of her, sliding the head of his erection up the sensitive path between her legs.
“I said it,” she cried out with urgency as her nerves tingled back to life at the contact between him and her overstimulated core. “Now just let me lie here and die happy.”
“It’s me and you, darlin’.” He took her wrists in his hands and pinned them above her head. “I’m pretty sure you already know we’re nowhere near done here.”
“Trace,” she cried out, his name a plea for mercy as his mouth made its way back down her body.
It was all coming back in exquisite detail. Not that she’d forgotten, she’d just forced herself not to think about it. But some things never changed. He took control in bed, took control and never let up, taking her to the precipice of what she thought she could handle and flinging her right over the edge.
Releasing her wrists, he skimped his fingertips down her arms, neck, and breasts with deliberate, unhurried, and feather light delicious torture.
He placed a gentle kiss on the cleft of her mound. “I should’ve said it before. Should’ve told you. I try not to have regrets, but I do have one.”
His powerful tongue dipped inside of her and parted her swollen folds.
A moan that bordered on being a scream escaped her lips. Her lungs began pumping air in sheer panic as her pussy throbbed hard against his mouth.
“Trace, please.”
“Please what, baby?” His voice vibrated against her, sending her careering out of control. Her body was no longer hers, but his to do with as he pleased. And apparently what he pleased was pleasing her until she went completely lost her mind.
She couldn’t answer so she just shook her head violently against the pillows.
“As I was saying,” he continued from between her thighs. “I regret that I didn’t tell you, didn’t make it abundantly fucking clear…” Another intense lick to her clit and her body began simultaneously straining towards him while struggling to get a safe distance from the relentless pursuit of his mouth.
“That you…”
His fingers dented the flesh on the firm swells of her hips as he held her down and paused to run his tongue up the length of her once more before sucking her clit into his mouth briefly.
“Are…”
She whimpered. It was nearly impossible to concentrate on what he was saying with the mindless frenzy he had her in.
“Mine.”
“Yes, yes, yours,” she breathed. “Only yours.”
Before she could reassure him anymore, he was up on his haunches, sliding himself over her sensitive flesh. She came apart so ferociously her body convulsed even under
his weight.
The sensation made her needy even as she came from the contact to her clit. Her insides clenched on emptiness. She wanted more, needed more. Needed all he could give.
He seemed to realize this. Teasing her, he placed the head of himself just barely at her entrance.
“Say you’re mine, baby,” he commanded, applying the slightest bit of pressure.
“I’m yours, Trace.” She reached up and dragged his face to hers, kissing him hard and deep. “And you’re mine.”
He entered her as they kissed, their sounds of pleasure slipping from each of their mouths into the other’s.
When he finally gave into his release, squeezing her hard and groaning until the veins in his throat and arms bulged above her, she found hers once more. Their bodies, damp and drained, collapsed together in a heap of heavy breathing and sheer fulfillment.
She rolled onto her side, draping one arm and one leg over him.
“Never leave me. Promise you’ll never leave me again,” she whispered against his chest. “I wouldn’t survive it.”
He wrapped his arms around her and squeezed. “Me either, baby. Me either.”
She was too weak to point out that he didn’t promise.
DESPITE HOW completely depleted her body was, Kylie didn’t fall asleep afterwards. Not really. She was hovering, having an out of body experience in the strange, murky haze of twilight between consciousness and unconsciousness when Trace broke the contented silence.
“I meant what I said.”
She tried her best to lift her head off his chest and look him in the eyes to let him know she was listening. But after the earth-shattering sex that had sapped her off all ability to use her muscles, it wasn’t easy.
“Which thing?”
“That I’m sorry I hurt you. That walking away from you like that was the hardest decision I ever made. And I’ll spend every second you’ll let me trying to make that up to you.”
She took a deep breath. “Trace, if you ever go back into rehab, then I’m visiting you whether you like it or not, dammit. You don’t get to cut and run. No more making those kinds of decisions without me.”