Kneeling on the edge of his bed, he gently spread my knees apart with both hands. He dipped his head, dropped a kiss to my inner thigh, and crawled the rest of the way up my body to settle between my legs.
I gripped his shoulders, and Christian brushed his fingers along my cheek, smiled down at me before he kissed me long and slow. He rained those kisses along my jaw, pressed them to my chest, captured my breast in his mouth.
I was adrift, my fingers in his hair as Christian’s skimmed up and down my sides. My body vibrated, resonating with emotion.
He rose to his hands and abruptly his shoulders dropped as he dove down to press his mouth to my hipbone.
I sucked in a sharp breath as my hips jerked from the bed.
He rocked back up on his hands, his eyes chaotic as he stared at me. He didn’t look away as he wrapped his hands around my waist, his fingers sliding down to gather the edges of my panties. He wound his fingers through, palmed my backside.
I was half exposed.
A suppressed moan broke from his mouth. “You have the sweetest ass, Elizabeth.” He squeezed once before he shimmied my panties down, for one second shifting to my side to pull them off.
I was squirming, this unknown need Christian had created in me knotting my every muscle.
Kneeling between my legs, Christian stared at me as he grazed the back of his hand up my inner thigh. “I’m going to touch you, okay?” His voice was hoarse, his attention flicking down between my legs then back up to me.
Somewhere inside, I searched for embarrassment, to find a reason to be ashamed.
But it was nowhere to be found.
This wasn’t like the few second fumbles I’d had with Ryan. This wouldn’t leave me feeling dirty and used, and Christian would never send me away disappointed.
“Please.”
Christian watched over me as I looked up at him. His fingers found me. My mouth went dry.
In seconds, I was breathless, unable to fathom how free I felt, this need to experience with Christian everything I’d never experienced before.
My back arched as pleasure built.
And I was saying his name, begging, pleading, because he was driving something in me no one had ever managed to reach before.
It twisted tighter.
Wound higher.
Then it broke.
Pleasure streaked through my body, and I cried out as I dug my heels into his bed.
Christian braced himself with one hand, dipping down to kiss my stomach as he led me through my release.
My entire being slumped to the bed, overflowing with satisfaction that oozed and bled, shone as sweat across my body and contented every crevice in my heart.
“Oh my God,” I breathed.
A low rumble echoed from Christian’s chest as he crawled back over me and pressed his mouth against mine.
“You are amazing,” he mumbled between kisses.
“Pretty sure that was all you. And yeah, amazing.” I kissed him hard.
I felt him smiling against my mouth, his fingers winding in my hair. “Yeah?”
“Um, yeah. Definitely yeah.”
He pushed up on his hands. A look of adoration crossed over his face, this softness that radiated from his spirit while every inch of his body remained hard, twitching as he held himself in restraint.
I stared up at him as he caged me, my hands shaking as I reached between us to push his underwear from his hips.
“Elizabeth . . . baby . . .” His voice came in a harsh whisper as he tucked his chin to look between us where I struggled to get them down past his thighs.
He moaned, twisting out of them while he continued to hover over me, and kicked them off his feet.
He turned his face back to me. He clenched his jaw when I wrapped one hand around him and the other around the back of his neck.
A shudder traveled from his pelvis, over the ridges of his perfect stomach and up his chest, emitted as a stuttered breath from his lips that spread across my face.
“Elizabeth,” he rasped, blue eyes boring into mine as his tongue darted out to wet his lips.
Lust flared in his eyes, and he clutched the sheets on either side of me. He rocked into my hand, muscles rippling along his back, bunching over his shoulders.
Fragmented tremors rolled through my body as I surrendered to this abandon. I’d never understood what it felt like to both desire and feel desired. I sucked in a strained breath as I explored him, my eyes never leaving his face, feasting on the pleasure I brought him.
He reached down and covered my hand with his. “Elizabeth, baby . . . I think you need to stop. That feels way too good and this is not how I imagined ending this night.”
Christian kept a hand on my hip as he rushed to sit up, tore open his side drawer, and rummaged around inside. He pulled out a little foil packet and ripped it between his teeth.
My legs shook as he knelt on his knees between my thighs. Air heaved in and out of my lungs as unbridled need spun with a loose thread of apprehension.
It coiled as a hunger deep in my stomach, throbbed between my legs.
Christian quickly covered himself, his hands coming down to run up the underside of my thighs as he tugged me closer to him. My legs dropped open to make him room.
Fire singed the fibers of my skin as Christian slid his palms up my body and down my arms to lace his fingers with mine, then brought them between on chests. His elbows hit the bed, bracketing my body, his weight propped by the easy bend of his knees. Our hands were tied between us, our chests rising and falling in spastic quakes.
Christian nudged the side of my face with his nose. I felt him breathe me in, felt an impossible connection with this man who hovered above me. His mouth grazed the side of my face, his voice soft in my ear. “I love you so much, Elizabeth.”
His nose traveled my cheek until he brought us face to face. His expression was severe, twisted lines of devotion and lust.
So beautiful.
He swallowed deeply and shifted. I felt him at my center. He barely marked me, the slightest penetration as he searched for air and his hands tightened on mine. But he didn’t look away. Searching. Longing. Loving.
“I love you,” I whispered, the words a promise, an encouragement that I wanted this as much as he did.
There was no turning back, nothing I could do to win back my heart.
Christian swept a gentle kiss across my lips before he pulled back an inch to look down on me. He tightened his hold as he gathered me closer.
Then he slowly filled me.
His elbows dug farther into the bed and his mouth dropped open with a ragged grunt.
An overdose of sensations hastened through my nerves as Christian took all of me. He seared into my body as he stretched me, the burn the most exquisite kind of pain. It was a branding. A seal. And I’d never be the same.
Now Christian held me whole. This was a bond we could not break.
For a few seconds, we both lay still and listened to the short gasps heaving from our lungs and the blood pounding through our veins. Nose to nose, we stared.
Christian unwound our hands, shifted to bring one to my face. Tender fingers brushed back the hair clinging to my damp forehead.
And he smiled. This stomach-flipping, heart-lurching, earth-shattering smile. But it no longer was a smile of manipulation, not one to bend me to his way. This one was genuine, filled with love and adoration and everything I wanted us to be.
This smile was only for me.
“Are you okay?” he murmured. He splayed his hand wide, his fingers supporting the back of my head while his thumb caressed over my cheek.
I wet my lips, taking in the man above me, the only one I would ever love. My fingertips fluttered over his lips, and I whispered, “Perfect.”
I tilted my chin and lifted my mouth to his. The kiss started slow, soft and tender, flicks of tongue and grazes of teeth, as tender and slow as the movements of his body as he cautiously began to move within me.
; Pressed together, he kissed me deeper, our mouths filled with longing as I opened to him, body and soul. I ran my hands over his shoulders and down his back. The muscles were rigid and strained as they bowed and twisted as he worked over me.
Tentatively I moved, lifting my hips to meet him.
Christian slipped one hand down my side, his fingertips digging into the ridges between my ribs. A smooth palm cupped my bottom before he flattened it over my hip and ran it down to my knee. He tucked me closer and hooked my leg over his hip.
Pulling back, he filled me, deliberate and strong.
I gasped and clung to his shoulders as I began to match him move for move.
“Oh, God, Elizabeth.” His fingers dug deep into my thigh. Incoherent mutterings of pleasure slipped from his mouth to mine, and I devoured them while he devoured me.
That feeling built again.
Everything was frantic, the love that solidified this bond between us, the sounds that filled his room, mumbled words of devotion, every desperate touch.
I knew he was getting close. His movements were quick, jerky, his breaths clipped and labored. “Elizabeth . . . uh . . . you feel so good. So . . . good.”
This time he was begging and I was clinging because I needed more.
His hand slipped between us because Christian knew.
I curved my arm around his head, and he buried his face in the crook of my neck.
And I was lost.
Lost to him.
Pleasure rushed, surged and crashed, saturated every inch of my body.
Christian jerked and cried out in my neck, held himself rigid before all the strength left him and he collapsed on me.
We lay like that for countless minutes, our worlds shaken.
Christian rolled to his side, taking me with him. He placed his palm on my cheek, caressed this thumb over the edge of my lips. He gazed at me as if I were the center of his world.
There was nothing I could have done to stop this when I realized he’d become mine. “I’m going to love you forever, Elizabeth Ayers.”
I looked up at the man who now held everything, my trust, my future, the nature of my heart. Reaching up, I ran my fingers through the thickness of his black hair.
“Don’t ever leave me, Christian.”
Christian frowned, his blue eyes sincere as he leaned forward to whisper at my forehead. “I couldn’t.”
Four Years Later
CHRISTIAN & ELIZABETH
* * *
CHRISTIAN
* * *
“Christian, let go.” She struggled to untangle herself from my arms that were wrapped tight around her waist. The only thing it did was cause me to tighten my hold.
She giggled and pushed against my chest.
My words came muffled into the crook of her neck where I pressed my mouth against her skin. “No, stay.”
I didn’t want her to be anywhere else.
“I wish I could, but I have to get to class.” She pulled back, and I was unable to stop my smile as I looked into the warmth of those honeyed eyes.
God, I loved her so much. That hadn’t lessened in the four years we’d been together. It’d only grown.
I pretended to pout but released my hold, allowing her to roll away from me.
A faint smile tugged at my mouth as I turned to lie on my stomach.
There was nothing else I could do but watch her dress in the late evening light filtering in through the blinds of my bedroom window.
Elizabeth leaned down to pull her jeans onto her long, toned legs.
Locks of dark-blonde hair cascaded in messy waves over her shoulder, obstructing her small, heart-shaped face.
Though every line, dimple, and curve had been burned into my mind.
Everything about her made me think of honey.
The honey tinge of her eyes, the sun kiss of her skin, the sweetness of her mouth.
I should have known the moment I met her that she was perfect for me. I should have known it with the way she’d stolen my breath the second I’d walked through the doors of that small café and found the girl sitting there waiting for me—my study partner that had become my everything.
She was not only beautiful but one of the most intelligent, compassionate people I’d ever met.
Over the last four years, I’d gotten to know her in the best of ways.
In every way.
Our lives had meshed.
Become one.
Neither of us wanted it any other way.
We were so different, yet so much alike.
Like me, she had continued to work her way toward law school next year. But while I’d become a real estate attorney so I could one day partner in my father’s law firm, Elizabeth would be going into family law, focusing on children’s rights.
She wasn’t in it for the money.
She thought it was the best way for her to become an advocate for those who could not protect themselves.
She still left me in awe every day.
“Are you sure you have to go?”
She grinned over at me. “Aren’t you the one who’s always saying we have to stay focused on our studies?”
I smirked at her. “I changed my mind.”
Light laughter filtered from her mouth. “I don’t think so, Christian. Not today. Besides, I have work first thing in the morning. Matthew will kill me if I end up crawling in that bed with you and don’t show up for my shift tomorrow.”
“Forget Matthew,” I teased.
Maybe I should have been jealous of Matthew. He’d become one of Elizabeth’s best friends, and they studied together often after getting to know each other at work when Elizabeth had started at a small restaurant a couple of years ago.
But I wasn’t.
With the way she looked at me, there was no questioning her devotion to me.
She was good.
True.
I guessed I’d known it that first day all those years ago when I’d listened to the passion that had come from Elizabeth’s mouth.
Honestly, it’d made me question myself—what I believed in and what I lived for.
Over time, that answer had become clear.
Elizabeth.
She made me a better person.
The best part was our goals perfectly aligned.
Our lives planned out.
She was serious about school and committed to her future, but she still took time to enjoy every day of her life, something I’d had a hard time balancing at first.
My father had always pushed me to do the best, to be the best.
Before I’d met her, I’d become arrogant.
Conceited.
Completely wrapped up in myself.
Elizabeth had challenged my self-serving attitude from the very start.
* * *
j
* * *
ELIZABETH
* * *
I laughed at the boy who grinned at me from his bed.
I’d never been one for frivolous things—a fling with a beautiful, black-haired, blue-eyed boy included. I’d thought that was the only thing he’d be.
A fling.
That he’d break my heart.
Now I just shook my head at what he’d suggested, no longer surprised by his demand.
By the fact that he always wanted me to stay.
Still, I fought the well of unease that built up inside of me. Nerves rattling through, wondering how in the world I was going to tell him.
Terrified of the way he might react and excited at the same time.
“I’m not forgetting Matthew. That would be rude. Besides, I need the money, and if I stay here with you, you know what’s going to happen.”
“That’s exactly what I was hoping for.”
Another one of those grins.
If I stayed any longer, he would definitely have his way.
I shoved my feet into my shoes. “I need to go home.”
“Then move in with me.”
Another shot o
f laughter rippled out, but this one with pure disbelief.
“I think you already know the answer to that.”
“I want a different one.”
Christian had asked me so many times to move in with him.
I couldn’t help but find the idea of waking up next to him each morning incredibly inviting.
But that didn’t matter.
I’d always quietly refused, committed to the picture I had painted in my mind from childhood.
It was one of a new house with a new husband, a place where I would become mother and he would become father, though now I found that picture skewed.
Again, I glanced over my shoulder at Christian as I prepared to leave.
A wave of guilt washed over me for keeping it from him for so long.
I’d known for a week.
Every day, I intended to tell him, but each time I opened my mouth, the words just wouldn’t come.
Even with the progress I’d seen him make, growing from the self-centered teenager I’d met our first year here at Columbia to the kind-hearted man I knew now, Christian still had his life mapped out.
A plan he intended to follow.
I wasn’t exactly sure of how he was going to handle this news.
I wasn’t concerned about our relationship. I felt confident in our commitment to one another.
We were solid.
What I was worried about was how much stress this would place on him. This wasn’t exactly what I’d expected of my last year of under-grad before law school, either.
I was just better at accepting what life threw my way.
But we’d figure it out.
I knew we would.
Before I spiraled into worry, I grabbed my backpack, slung it over my shoulder, and leaned down, planting a quick kiss on Christian’s lips.
“Bye. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He returned the kiss, lingering a little longer than I had, stirring those feelings inside of me.
Making me want to say forget it like he’d suggested and crawl right back in bed with him.
Take Me To The Beach Page 69