by Andre, Bella
But he could damn well believe it because he’d seen, again and again, just how naturally sensual she was, the most innately sexy woman he’d ever known. The way simply brushing a fingertip across her lower lip or rubbing his thumb inside her palm could make her pupils dilate, her skin flush, and her breath come faster. He hadn’t missed one single sign since the day he’d met her, even if she’d mistakenly thought that her libido had died when her last relationship had gone so horribly awry.
He didn’t give her any warning as he lowered his mouth to one breast. Her eyes flew open and her hands clutched the back of his head as if to keep him right where he was until she was ready to let him go. But she needn’t have worried about him going anywhere, not when he could easily have spent the rest of the night worshipping her breasts.
He swirled his tongue over the tight bud of rose-colored skin and groaned his pleasure when he moved to lave her other nipple the same way. But it wasn’t enough to go from one to the other—he needed to have more, to taste as much of her as he could have at the same time. Cupping her breasts in his hands, he pressed them together so that every kiss, every scrape of his teeth across her nipples, came right on the heels of the one before it.
They were still standing, but as he took her closer and closer to release with nothing more than his hands and mouth on her breasts, he could feel her grow less steady in her sexy high-heeled sandals. Intending to carry her over to the couch, Dylan swept her up into his arms, but she felt so good there that he couldn’t bear to move just yet. Her lower lip was slightly swollen from where she must have been biting it when he’d been teasing her breasts, and her mouth drew his like the strongest magnet ever made.
When her hands wound around his neck while he kissed her, it meant everything to him that she was trusting him to make love with her tonight. Especially when he knew it was so much more than she’d ever intended to trust him, or anyone else, with.
A part of him wanted to kiss her until sunrise, to just keep teasing and taunting and tasting her perfect lips for hours. But he’d waited too long for this night—a week that had felt more like a lifetime—to rein in the need to get her completely naked and feast on the rest of her skin the way he was devouring her mouth. Without breaking their kiss, he carried her over to the couch, and when he laid her down on it, he went to his knees in front of her.
Looking at her lying on the couch—her full breasts bare, the skirt of her dress hiked up to mid-thigh, her hair across the pillows tangled from his hands, her mouth and skin flushed from his kisses—Dylan’s heart nearly stopped in his chest.
“I could stare at you all night and never quite believe you’re real.” He whispered the words with more reverence than he’d ever felt for anything, even the ocean lit up beneath a full moon.
“I feel the same way—as though I might wake up soon and realize that it was all just a dream.” She pressed her mouth to his, soft and sweet, before whispering, “It isn’t, is it?”
“God, no.” And as he took their kiss deeper again, he had to fill his hands with her, one sliding up the silky skin on the inside of her thigh, the other cupping her breast and teasing her nipple until she was arching against him.
It nearly killed him to lift his mouth and hands from her, but her dress was tangling on his fingers. “I need you naked. Now.”
When he reached for the zipper at the side of her dress and began to pull it down, he knew the sound would be forever connected in his brain with sex. The hottest sex of his life. Grace lifted her hips so that he could pull her dress down, and soon she was left wearing only sexy panties that matched the bra he’d already stripped away. Slowly, so slowly that he knew it just might do them both in, he slid the sheer panties off her hips and down her beautiful legs. Her breath came in hard pants as he moved his hands back up her legs, from calves to knees and then thighs before he finally—finally!—cupped hot, wet flesh.
She moaned as she shifted her hips up higher into his hand, and Dylan could feel how close to the edge he was. Too close. So close that he was afraid he might not be able to form a coherent thought soon. Before that happened, she had to know, “If you need me to slow down, if you feel like we’re pushing too far, too fast, if you need me to stop, I will. No matter what.”
“I know you will. That’s why I don’t want you to hold anything back from me. Not tonight. Don’t hold back, Dylan.”
With her words—Don’t hold back, Dylan—playing over and over inside his head, he put his hands on her legs and dragged her hips to the edge of the couch so that her sex was just inches from his hungry mouth, with only her super-sexy golden heels still on.
“I can’t hold back,” he told her, every word raw, desperate, and totally honest. “Not with you.”
God, she was sweet. And so damned addictive that as he tasted and teased the slick skin between her legs, though she definitely wasn’t trying to get away, he gripped her hips tightly to hold her right where he wanted her. From the way her eyes darkened and her skin flushed even further, he knew she liked the slightly rough play of his hands over her soft curves.
Because for all her professed early nerves, Grace had always been one hundred percent sensual woman in his arms. And the way she gave herself over to pleasure as he slid one finger into her, then another, all while flicking the center of her arousal with his tongue? It only confirmed yet again that they were not only meant for each other, but also that her innate sensual hungers matched his perfectly.
One wicked image after another flew through his brain. Binding her wrists and ankles with silk ties to drive her to the edge again and again until neither one could take it anymore. Having her wait for him on her hands and knees for just long enough that she thought she might go crazy waiting even another second, then driving into her so that she came the moment he took her. Taking her out onto his boat, both of them naked as they dove into the water and then wrapping her all around him as she held on to the ship’s ladder and he drove up into her.
Dylan had never wanted anything as much as he wanted Grace to feel good, so when she went tumbling into climax with his mouth and hands on her, he made sure to take her back up to the peak again before she’d even come all the way down.
“Dylan, I can’t—” she began in faint protest.
But he could feel how close she was to coming apart again, less than sixty seconds after her first orgasm, so he replaced his tongue with his fingers. “One more. For me.” Shifting so that he could kiss her mouth while still playing with the hot, wet flesh between her legs, he thrust his tongue against hers with the same rhythm as his fingers inside her.
Within seconds, she was riding his hand without any inhibition, and he nearly lost it, especially when he let himself think about the fact that soon it wouldn’t be just his fingers inside her. He loved the way she was gripping his shoulders so hard that her nails scored his back, loved knowing that she’d marked him in her passion.
Marked him as hers.
She was soft and boneless against him as he came up onto the couch and gathered her close. She rested her head in the crook of his neck as he stroked her back while she worked to catch her breath.
“I thought you were kidding when you said you were going to give me a handful of orgasms,” she whispered.
He whispered back, “Two isn’t a handful.”
Her eyes flew open again, and she might have tried to tell him she didn’t have another orgasm in her for the night had he not covered her mouth with his. He was about to pull her up to straddle him on the couch when she beat him to it.
They were both panting by the time she lifted her mouth from his and said, “Who said the handful has to be all mine?”
“Grace...”
But she only laughed when he growled her name in warning, and when she yanked at his dress shirt, this time he didn’t stop her from unbuttoning it partway and pulling it over his head. The sooner he was naked, the sooner he’d be inside of her. And once he was there, he already knew he’d never want to leave
, never want to let her go, never want to stop loving her.
She lowered her mouth to his pecs, and again and again she kissed him, teasing and tasting him the way he’d teased and tasted her bare skin, until his head was spinning and he was gripping her hair in his hands the way she’d gripped his when he’d been loving every inch of her.
Drawing deeply from a bank of superhuman self-control, he lifted her back up over him so that they were mouth to mouth, chest to chest, hip to hip. “One more time, Grace. Come for me one more time before I make you mine.”
He said the words between kisses against her neck and breasts, and when he slid his fingers back inside of her, he didn’t let her set the pace this time, just took her up—up—up—so fast that all she could do was give both of them another climax.
She was so beautiful as she threw her head back to ride it out all the way that Dylan realized he’d never truly known just how powerful sex could be until tonight.
Until Grace, when his heart was just as bound to her as his body.
Certain that he’d finally wrung out every ounce of her pleasure, he reluctantly moved his hands from her damp skin so that he could kick off his trousers and boxers and pull a condom from the back pocket before throwing his clothes across the room. Seconds later he had the condom on and her waist between his hands as he lifted her up and over him.
But instead of driving into her the way he wanted to, he held her there, poised directly over him. He’d never wanted anyone, or anything, this badly, but he would never forgive himself for letting desire override any lingering fears she might still have.
“Grace?”
“We’re protected?”
He nodded, knowing how important this would be to her, that no matter how much she loved her son, she would instinctively be worried about lightning striking twice and ending up pregnant again by accident. “Yes. I’ll always take care of you, Grace.”
She put her hands on his face and kissed him, so softly that she took him by surprise when she began to lower herself onto him. There were no words to describe how good it felt as she slowly enveloped him, nothing he could do anymore but tangle his hands in her hair as he took their kiss deeper.
Finally, they were pelvis to pelvis, chest to chest, mouth to mouth. Together, they rocked with each other, hard heat and soft flesh coming together in a perfect dance of pleasure. From moment to moment they took each other higher and higher until he was swallowing her gasps as the tight clasp of her inner muscles climaxing drove him all the way into his own release. One that crashed through him with the strength of a tsunami.
Again and again he thrust up into her, and again and again she came down over him, moving with such obvious joy that the waves took him completely under. Deeper beneath the surface than he had ever gone before. Deeper than he’d even known he could go.
Dylan could feel Grace’s heart beating hard and fast against his as they held each other so tightly that there were no spaces left between them. Right here, with her, was where he always wanted to be.
Forever.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Grace had never known that she could completely lose herself in another person and just want to stay lost forever and ever. Was it because Dylan loved her? And, despite all the ways she’d tried to protect her heart, had she fallen in love with him right back?
“I want to stay with you tonight,” Dylan said. “I want to hold you all night long.”
Her ex had never stayed. He’d always said he needed to get back to the city to prepare for an early morning at the office, and she hadn’t pushed, hadn’t made him tell her the real reason he was leaving. She hadn’t wanted to hear the truth that he had someone else or that she didn’t really matter to him.
“I want you to stay, too.” But that wasn’t the full truth, and after what they’d shared tonight, she couldn’t live with anything else. Not when even the smallest lie felt as though it would strip away the beauty of what they’d just done together. “But it scares me how fast we’re taking slow. After tonight, it feels more like warp speed.” Even that wasn’t everything, though. “And I don’t want to fix myself, fix what happened, with sex. Because what if that’s what I’m doing?”
“If sex helps,” Dylan said, “if making love with me makes things better for you, then I can’t see why there’s one damn thing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with talking through pain, so why would it be wrong to kiss through it? To let pleasure strip away everything that should never have been there in the first place?”
“I never thought of it like that before.”
“I haven’t ever really had to fight demons of my own, Grace. But yours—I want to take them on headfirst, want to vanquish all your dragons with you, want to fight every battle beside you.”
“Why?” She still couldn’t see. Couldn’t understand why he would give so much of himself—and his love—to her.
“There have always been two loves for me—my family and the ocean. And now, my heart is with you and Mason, too. I know telling you I love you isn’t going slow, but I can’t change how I feel. I love you, Grace. And I love Mason, too. More than I’ve ever loved anyone else.”
The simple way he said it again and again, as if loving her and Mason was the most obvious, natural thing he’d ever done, shook her as deeply now as it had the first time he’d said it.
“Is it that easy?” She’d always needed to ask questions, always needed answers. But never more than she did right now. “Can you really just fall in love with someone and then, suddenly, they’re your new number one?”
“Isn’t that exactly what happened with Mason? Whatever other loves there were for you, they all got in line behind him.”
“Yes.” He was right. Exactly right. Again.
Grace was reeling from all of it. From her first official date with Dylan. From finding out that her ex had a string of paid-off women behind him. From watching Mason take his first step. From the most explosive—and tender—lovemaking of her life.
And now, from hearing Dylan tell her just how much he loved her in a way she hadn’t known a man could express his love. Even her father, who had loved her mother dearly, had never been so eloquent.
One part of her wanted to push him away so that she could be alone to try to process it all. The other part never wanted to let him go.
“It’s a small couch,” she finally said.
“Good.”
And when he slipped her heels from her feet and drew her against himself, her back to his front, cradling her head on his arm, she felt safer—and more cherished—than she ever had before.
* * *
Sometime in the middle of the night they reached for each other, kissing in the dark. Grace felt as though she were dreaming as she wrapped her arms and legs around Dylan and he came back into her, having already taken care of protection in the dark. And yet, there wasn’t anything slow, or safe, about the way they took each other this second time.
How could there be when their hunger for each other hadn’t been even the slightest bit sated by their earlier lovemaking?
He slid his fingers through hers, and she held tightly to him as he took her fast and hard over first one peak and then the next without any breathing room to recover. After so long a sexual drought, Grace felt utterly, wonderfully submerged in heady pleasure. She wanted to stay right where she was forever, holding on to Dylan’s strong muscles in the dark, his mouth on hers as they both fell over the edge together.
And after, it was so wonderful to curl her body into his, to pull his arm over her chest so that she was holding his hand right over her still quickly beating heart, and to fall asleep safe and warm and, for the moment at least, sated from soul-deep pleasure.
* * *
Grace woke to the sound of Mason laughing. She knew how lucky she was that he usually woke up on the cheerful side of the bed, happy and excited to greet the new day. But today, she was momentarily lost as to why she was out on the couch instead of in the bedroom with him
.
As the cobwebs cleared, flashbacks to the night before came one after the other. Kisses. Caresses.
And whispered promises of love from Dylan.
Her chest tightened where joy should have bloomed instead, and damn it, she was tired of it. Tired of being so wary all the time, of looking for trouble around every corner. So incredibly tired of not knowing anymore how to let go outside of Dylan’s arms.
When, she wanted to know, would it be okay to just relax for a little while? And to believe, again, that true love could not only be real, but last forever?
Her parents had had such a sweet love and so did Dylan’s. She saw that same love in the lives of his brothers Rafe and Ian, and his sister, Mia. All around her were examples of what was possible.
And yet, even though she wanted so badly to believe, she could still feel the scar tissue deep inside from a wound that hadn’t yet fully healed.
Dylan, fortunately, knew that she was still healing and seemed to understand exactly why she was so wary, so cautious. He didn’t try to pretend it wasn’t the case, didn’t try to fool himself into thinking that she could declare her love for him as quickly as he had for her.
But would he continue to be this patient? Or would he, if she couldn’t rise above her past fast enough, finally give up on her?
Shivering at the thought of losing someone who had so quickly become the sunlight around which her world revolved, she wrapped the blanket around her naked body and let laughter draw her into the bedroom.
Perhaps after the night they’d shared wrapped up in each other, kissing and touching each other, she should have been better equipped to deal with the sight of Dylan wearing only dress pants, barefoot and shirtless, his face unshaven and scruffy—and looking more gorgeous than ever. She had to put her hand on the doorknob to steady herself for a moment as she watched the most sinfully good-looking man in all creation laugh with her son.