by Susannah Nix
Even now that he’d admitted it, I hesitated. He’d been the one holding back all this time. Denying himself. Denying both of us. I didn’t want to drag him into this. I wanted him to make the choice himself.
Finally. For once. I needed him to choose me.
With my gaze locked on his, I said, “Prove it.”
The corner of his mouth twitched as his eyes went dusky. He dragged his thumb across my lower lip, and dear god, it took every ounce of my restraint not to throw myself at him.
Slowly, his hand slid around the nape of my neck, sending goose bumps shimmering down my arms. His fingers tightened and he pulled me closer. Close enough for our lips to touch, but just barely. A featherlight graze and nothing more.
My lungs burned with breathless anticipation as we hovered on the precipice of a kiss for what felt like forever. Seconds, minutes, hours, eternity. When he squeezed the back of my neck, I let out a needy, impatient whimper.
His mouth pulled into a smile as he finally pressed it against mine.
A real kiss, at last. But a chaste one. Achingly careful. His lips doted on me like I was something cherished and special. A pleasure too precious to hurry.
But god, how I wanted him to hurry. I needed him, and I’d waited so long already. Liquid heat pooled between my legs, and I whimpered again.
He pulled back just enough to look at me, his eyes warm and crinkling. “You have to say it too.” His breath teased my lips, which itched for another kiss. “Tell me you want me. I want to hear you say it too.” The rough edge in his voice shivered through me, sending all the breath rushing out of my lungs.
I squirmed, feeling myself blush, and his jaw tightened as his erection twitched beneath me. I laid my palms on his chest and felt his muscles grow taut with anticipation. Felt the heat rising off his skin through his T-shirt. Felt his heart racing. For me.
“I want you. You have no idea how bad.”
His lips crashed against mine in a bruising kiss, all chasteness and restraint forgotten. I melted against him as his tongue pushed inside my mouth, urging me to open wider as he delved deeper. The intensity of it startled a moan out of me, which inspired him to kiss me harder.
As our mouths slanted together, I pressed my breasts against his chest, craving more closeness. I couldn’t get enough of him, of having him like this, open to me and welcoming. Our bodies locked together, his hands pulling me against him, the hardness in his jeans touching me exactly where I’d always ached to feel him.
My brain was still trying to catch up to the current reality and adjust to this new thing blooming between us. This was Wyatt—flirty, unattainable, beautiful Wyatt. The boy I’d wanted to kiss my whole life. But it was also my friend Wyatt—teasing, competitive, protective, and loyal. It was difficult to reconcile the two sides of him I knew with the way he was kissing me right now.
I was the one who pulled back first, and he made a noise of protest when we broke apart, a small, frustrated grunt that I took as a positive sign. Still, I braced myself, half expecting him to push me away again. Change his mind and withdraw from me the way he’d done before.
But no.
He did the opposite.
His hands squeezed my waist possessively, as if he were afraid I’d try to scoot away, and he looked at me, his blue eyes a soothing turquoise as they searched my face. My lips curved involuntarily, and Wyatt’s answering smile, so bright and joyful, filled me with giddiness.
He touched a callused fingertip to my lips. “You,” he said, like he couldn’t believe it either, like he was checking to see if I was real, and we both smiled even wider as relief gusted out of us in twin sighs of happiness. His finger traced my lower lip, then gently nudged my chin to the side. “I just want to…” He bent his head and pressed his lips to my throat below my ear. “Taste you,” he murmured, his breath a warm caress. “Right here.”
I shivered when his tongue touched my skin, and I heard his breath catch as my hips rocked against him. His hand curled around the back of my neck as he moved up to my ear, nuzzling it gently before exploring the hollow beneath my jaw. Dragging his lips over the sensitive skin, his stubble leaving a trail of delicious prickles.
“I have a question,” I said and felt his teeth graze my throat.
“Of course you do.”
“Define always.”
He pulled his head back, blinking in half-lidded bemusement. “What?”
“You said you’ve always wanted me. For how long exactly?”
His fingers tightened on the back of my neck, and he pulled me toward him, pressing a kiss to my cheekbone before resting his forehead against my temple. “I’m embarrassed to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
When he didn’t follow that up with an actual explanation, I pulled back to look at him. “Wyatt?”
His arms tightened around me, and he buried his face in my neck. “Since I was seventeen.”
The words came out muffled, and I blinked, trying to figure out if I’d heard him right.
He lifted his head when I didn’t respond, his brow creasing with uncertainty. “Say something.”
“Are you serious? Since high school?”
“Remember that night we watched the meteor shower?”
I nodded, caught by a sense of déjà vu.
“You dozed off and snuggled up to me in your sleep.”
“I remember.” Boy, did I ever.
“That was when I first realized…when we were lying there under the stars and you had your head on my chest, I felt—I don’t know—content, I guess? Peaceful.” His head dipped in embarrassment. “It probably sounds dumb, but it was the happiest night of my life up to that point.”
My heart squeezed, and I threaded an affectionate hand through his hair. It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever said to me. But it was also a little hard to believe.
“Wyatt, that was forever ago.” I realized now why he’d brought up that night when he was drunk. It wasn’t just a random memory. It meant something to him.
“I know,” he said in a voice strained by the weight of every one of those years.
“You’re saying all this time…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence.
“Yes.”
I pressed my hand to his face, and his eyes fell closed as he leaned into my touch. So trusting, so sweet, and so dear to me. He looked different like this. More exposed and closer to the surface. A new sense of possessiveness overtook me as I ran my fingers over his chin and traced the hollows below his lips where the stubble was sparser. I bent my head and whispered his name against his lips. They parted for me, his mouth hot as it strained toward mine, his tongue sweeping into my mouth.
I lost myself in kissing him. In being kissed by him. We kissed for a long time, relishing it like teenagers who’d just discovered how much fun kissing could be. Messy. Enthusiastic. Unrestrained. Experimenting with different pressures, different angles. It was so good, kissing him, I didn’t ever want it to stop.
But the longer we kissed, the more the ache inside me grew. My fingers had tangled in his gorgeous, thick hair, and I tugged on it, wanting to feel more of him. In response, he dropped his hands to my ass and jerked me hard against him, the hard ridge of his erection pressing into me as his tongue plunged even deeper into my mouth.
Dropping my hands to his chest, I clawed at his shirt, frantic to touch his bare skin and feel it against mine. “Take this off.”
He yanked his shirt over his head, exposing his beautiful golden torso. I stared, ogling him in a way I’d always been afraid to let myself do before, enjoying the way his breathing changed under the weight of my undisguised admiration.
“Touch me.” His voice simmered with heat, stoking the growing fever inside me. “I want to feel your hands on me.”
I didn’t need to be asked twice. Wyatt’s eyelids fluttered as I laid my palms on his chest again. Smoothing my hands over his skin, I explored the ridges and grooves of his pecs, ran my fingers
through his chest hair, and traced the outline of his tattoos. Touching him exactly the way I’d dreamed of touching him.
When my thumbnail grazed his nipple, a tremor shuddered through him like an electric shock, and his hips bucked against me. He surged forward to kiss me again, but I pushed him back against the bed and pulled my own T-shirt off.
His eyes went wide as he drank in the sight of me, even though it was nothing he hadn’t seen last night when I’d stripped on the back porch. I was wearing the same style of plain black sports bra, even. But this time he let himself look at me instead of forcing his gaze away.
I loved the feel of his eyes on me. For so long they’d slid right past me, never lingering or paying too much attention. It had taken me years to grow numb to the sting of his casual dismissal. Knowing now that it had been against his will, that he’d had to fight for self-control around me, didn’t erase the memory of that rejection.
His attention was laser-focused on me now, and he was seeing every pore, bump, and freckle. I’d never been prone to self-consciousness, but the potency of his regard, so long denied, made me quake a little. As his hands reached out to cradle my rib cage, the rough drag of his calluses sparked on my skin like static electricity. He cupped my breasts through my spandex sports bra, and my breath caught as he grazed my stiff, sensitive nipples.
His eyes jumped to mine. “Can I take this off?”
“Let me.” Sports bras were notoriously unsexy to remove, and I’d learned the hard way not to let a man try to do it for me, unless I wanted to end up twisted like a pretzel with my shoulders bound up and the stupid thing stuck on my head. Hooking my fingers under the elastic band, I pulled it up and shimmied my arms out of the constricting garment, untangling it from my ponytail before tossing it aside.
“God damn,” Wyatt breathed when I’d completed my contortions.
He reached for me again, and my eyes fell closed, my head lolling back as he palmed my bare breasts. I bit my lip when he dragged his thumbs across my nipples and trembled when he pinched them experimentally.
“Do you like that?” He increased the pressure, and a moan slipped through my lips. “I’ll take that as a yes.” His breath seared my chest when he spoke, close but not close enough.
I strained toward him, and his mouth found one of my breasts, his tongue circling my nipple like he was sampling a lollipop. My hips rocked against him of their own accord, making us both groan. I squirmed when he bit me gently, then a little harder, pulses of sharp pleasure shooting through me as he lavished my breasts with attention. Every nip, lick, and squeeze tightening the coil inside me, until it became too much—but also not enough.
Pushing him back against the bed once more, I claimed his mouth with mine, needing to taste him on my tongue again. My hands raked through his hair then dropped down to his chest. My nails dug into his flesh, and he made a low, feral sound in the back of his throat.
“Fuck,” he hissed, shuddering when I experimentally dug my nails in even harder.
I pressed my mouth to his ear, gave his earlobe a nip, and said, “Okay.”
“Not yet.” His fingers tangled in my ponytail, pulling my head back so he could look me in the eyes. A smile like sin played on his lips, and his voice took on a raw edge. “First, I want to see how many times I can make you come.”
A stomach-clenching thrill shot through me, and I nearly bit down on my tongue.
Wyatt grabbed me by the hips, twisting as he tumped me off his lap and sprang to his feet. I stared up at him in surprise and he hauled me to my feet. “These need to come off,” he said as he worked open the button of my pants.
I helped him shimmy them down my legs, along with my underwear, but when I tried to reach for his jeans he gave me a warning growl and shoved me backward onto the bed.
I landed on the laundry I’d spent an hour folding that morning, and he smiled as I squirmed to pull a stack of towels out from under my ass. Bending over me, he swept his arm across the bed, sending all the clean laundry tumbling onto the floor.
His St. Christopher medal dangled from his neck, and it brushed against my throat when his mouth covered mine. I closed my eyes, curling my hands in his hair, feeling a moment of tremulous awe as Wyatt’s stubble scraped over my skin, his lips and tongue searing a path along my jaw, down my throat, and between my breasts.
But that was nothing compared to the way I felt when he dropped to his knees between my legs.
His arms wrapped around my thighs, and my stomach tightened in nervous anticipation as he yanked me to the edge of the mattress. Gazing at me with the look of a hungry animal, he licked his lips and slowly ran his hands up the inside of my thighs. I tried to hold still as he leaned in, consuming me with his eyes as his fingers inched higher. Slowly spreading me wider. Tearing down the last shreds of my defenses.
“Wyatt.” My hands twisted in the quilt as his name shuddered out of me. I’d never been shy about sex or my body, but I wasn’t good at letting myself be vulnerable, and there was nothing more vulnerable than my current position. Helpless and gasping, exposed to him completely. Trembling with need.
His gaze met mine, and the strong, familiar connection between us melted away my apprehension. He lifted my legs over his shoulders, and our eyes stayed locked as he slid his fingers through my slick, swollen folds.
My back arched off the bed, but he pinned me in place with a hand on my hip. When he brushed a fingertip against my aching clit, my whole body convulsed. He did it again, his touch cruelly light, and I writhed in sweet misery.
“God, Wyatt, will you just…” I trailed off into a keening moan as he circled my clit, giving me the pressure I craved.
“Does it feel good?” His eyes found mine again. “Do you like it when I touch you?”
“Yes,” I gasped, desperate for more pressure, more friction, more of his touch.
“Do you want to feel me inside you?”
“Oh god.” I’d never wanted anything more, and I strained against the hand holding me down. “I need it. Please.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you beg before. I fucking love seeing you like this.”
The way he said it, his voice rough and unexpectedly tender, set off a whirlwind of flutters in my chest, but then he slipped a finger inside me, and my head slammed back against the mattress. “God, yes. Just like that. Don’t you dare stop.”
“I’m not going to stop,” he murmured, rubbing his thumb over my clit as his fingers stroked me inside and out. “I love how wet you are for me. So gorgeous.”
My whole body pulsed with white-hot pleasure. I was out of my mind, aching for release as he stroked me faster and harder, the friction almost more than I could stand.
“I love watching you fall apart on my fingers.” His voice was breathy and eager. “I want to feel you come on them.”
I whimpered as the tension coiled inside me, brutally close to the breaking point. Needing more but too far gone to speak.
“I love the feel of your beautiful pussy.” When he spoke, I felt his breath between my legs, hot and teasing. “I can’t wait to taste it.”
Stars exploded across my vision as Wyatt’s tongue stroked through my throbbing folds. The second his stubble scraped over my clit, the dam shattered and swept me away. My back bowed and I cried out as ecstasy pulsed through me in waves, turning my insides to quivering jelly while my walls contracted around Wyatt’s fingers.
“One,” he said, grinning as he stroked me through the aftershocks, relentlessly drawing out every last ripple of pleasure.
“Shit,” I mumbled when my lungs remembered how to work again.
Honest to god, what kind of witchcraft? The man had me coming after one little stroke of his tongue. He’d barely even had to work for it.
His fingers slipped out of me, but his hand clenched hard on my hip when I tried to sit up. “I’m not done,” he said and pushed his face between my thighs.
My hips jerked, everything still raw and throbbing in the aftermat
h of my orgasm. “Wyatt,” I groaned as he licked my oversensitive clit.
He pressed harder with his tongue, mercilessly circling the tender knot of nerves. My core was still pulsating, my skin still tingling, and my awareness so heightened that I recognized the edge of another orgasm building almost immediately.
Fresh tendrils of tension wrapped around my spine as he spread me wide with his face, his tongue caressing me and his stubble burning in the perfect combination of pleasure and pain.
His eyes met mine, watching my reactions as he ate me out, experimenting with different angles and pressures. Quick and rough. Slow and decadent. Learning my body and what drove me to twist my hands in his hair and grind my hips against his face. What turned my whimpers into mindless cries.
Our eyes stayed locked the whole time, the connection between us scorching and unbroken as he drove me closer and closer to the edge. For so long I’d wanted his eyes on me, wanted all of his attention. And now I had it, and it was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I was being worshipped. Coveted. Revered.
“Yes,” I gasped helplessly when he sucked on my clit. “Oh god. Right there.” Pleasure spiraled through me as he hummed, the vibrations pushing me farther, building and building…
He sucked harder, and his teeth scraped over the sensitive tissue. I came with his name on my lips, jerking wildly against his face as ecstasy exploded inside me again.
Once more, Wyatt caressed every ounce of pleasure out of me until my limbs had stopped twitching and my hitching breaths had slowed. He stood, wiping his mouth, and the sight of it made my stomach flip over.
“Wow,” I murmured, a ruined mess beneath him. God, that tongue of his. He should have it cast in bronze as a testament to its agility and magical orgasm-inducing powers.
His lips curved in a self-satisfied smirk. “That’s two.”
It was the sort of bantering and game-playing we’d always done, constantly challenging and pushing each other. Needing to win. As much as I usually enjoyed our competitive dynamic, it wasn’t what I wanted right now. This didn’t feel like a game to me, and I didn’t want him to treat it like one. The problem with games was that they always ended with someone walking away a loser.