For a few seconds I toyed with him, running my tongue down the underside before swirling it around the sensitive rim. Caine began to jerk his hips upward, forcing him farther into my mouth.
I sucked hard.
“Lexie,” I heard his surprised gasp, and looked up at him from under my lashes. Caine was awake now and straining against me. “Lex.” His sleepy, aroused voice was such a turn-on. “Baby …”
I continued to suck him as my fist pumped the base of his erection. His breathing grew ragged, his thighs were rigid, and I knew he was close. I took him almost to the edge and then released him before he got there.
“Lexie,” he groaned, his head flopping back on the pillow, “are you trying to kill me?”
“Not quite.” I grinned as I shifted back to pull down his bottoms. He helped and then quickly removed his shirt as I crawled back up his body.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” His eyes cut to the pink scar on my stomach. It wasn’t huge, but it was there. Reminding us. Caine’s arms came around me, drawing me up against his chest. His hands caressed my naked back, his eyes filled with desire and tenderness. “We can wait.”
I shook my head and leaned down to brush my lips over his. “I’m done waiting.” I kissed him with all the fierce love and need I had inside me. My tongue danced with his in a deep, drugging kiss as we crushed tight against each other.
Caine broke the kiss to follow a path down my throat with his mouth. I gasped for breath, my hips surging against his cock as he kissed his way down to my breasts. When he wrapped his lips around my nipple, I lost all control.
I pushed up on my knees, wrapped my hand around him, and guided him to my entrance. I lowered myself down and we panted as he slid inside me. The overwhelming thickness of him took my breath away for a moment and we both held still as my body eased into accepting him.
I sighed when I moved up on him slightly and back down. Pleasure rippled through me.
Caine grasped the back of my head and pulled my mouth back to his, kissing me with a voraciousness that seeped into me—I couldn’t get enough of him. I began to ride him hard.
“Easy, baby,” he attempted to coax through a groan, apparently still concerned for my injury.
“No,” I gasped, my arms wrapped tight around his shoulders as I fucked him with all the desperation that had been inside me for weeks.
We both came fast and hard, the pulsing clench of my climax around his cock wrenching his own orgasm from him.
I collapsed in his arms, my face buried against his neck. I somehow managed to move my languid legs so they were comfortably wrapped around his hips as I sat in his lap.
He twitched inside me at the movement and I smiled. “Round two?”
He kissed my shoulder. “I’ll need a minute or so,” he said, his voice filled with humor.
“And then round two?”
Caine shook with laughter. “Yes. And then round two.” He gently threaded his fingers through my hair to clasp the nape of my neck. He brought my head back and I stared into his handsome face, my gaze low-lidded with satisfaction. Something flared in his eyes at the sight of mine. “Fuck yeah, round two,” he said, “but this time I’m in charge.”
Not too long later Caine held me down, my hands at the sides of my head while he glided inside me, and it was all with tenderness that brought tears to my eyes. He held my gaze as he thrust gently, taking his time to stoke the flame. It was intense and moving and so much more than we’d had before. Now I knew as he gazed into my face while he made love to me … I knew what was working behind his eyes.
I knew it because, as he pushed me in nerve-tingling increments toward climax, he told me.
“I love you, Lex,” he said, his voice rough with passion. “Love you so much, baby.”
The tears escaped before I could stop them. “I love you too.”
He let go of one of my hands to brush his thumb across my temple where the tearstain tracked. The sight of my tears seemed to fan the flames of urgency inside him and he began to pump into me faster.
“Oh God.” I wanted to touch him, but Caine knew his control over my pleasure increased it. “Baby!” My cries filled the room, matching his groans as he fucked me harder. The tension inside me snapped and I cried out as the stunning orgasm ripped through me.
Quick on the heels of my orgasm, Caine’s hips stilled and then jerked as his own climax tore through him.
I stroked his back in leisurely wonder. “I’ve never been this happy,” I whispered, a little scared by it.
Caine must have heard the fear, because he kissed my neck, tightened his hold on me, and said, “Me neither. But we’ll get used to it.”
“Promise?”
He lifted his head to meet my gaze. “No, because on second thought I don’t want to get used to it. If you get used to it—”
“You forget to be thankful for it,” I finished.
He nodded slowly. “Yeah.”
I thought about our rough starts in life, Caine’s of course more so than mine. I thought about our rough last few weeks, mine more so than Caine’s.
I brushed my thumb over his lower lip. “I don’t think we’ll ever forget to be thankful.”
“No. I don’t suppose we will.”
Later that day while Caine was at work, I received a call from my father. It wasn’t the easiest conversation, and I wasn’t sure there ever would be easiness between us. My father was going to be in my life when my case against Matthew and Holts went to court because he was obviously a very important witness. But there were no promises from either of us that there would be a future in the cards. Honestly it seemed pretty impossible with Caine between us.
I had to wonder, even if I wanted my father back in my life, would I have tried to make a place for him in it? Or would I have chosen Caine over him? I wasn’t sure what the answer would be, but I was stunned and a little disconcerted by the little voice inside me that whispered I would always choose Caine.
And then I realized that wasn’t quite true.
I think that I would choose Caine over nearly anyone … but if we had children they would always come first. I also knew enough about the man I loved to know that he would feel the same way. So many adults hadn’t taken him into consideration when he was a child. In the past few weeks Caine had mentioned “our children” in this offhand manner that made me smile—like kids with me was a given now that he’d admitted he loved me.
He would never put a kid through anything like what he’d been through.
Neither would I.
That realization made me think of my mom. It made me think of what Caine had said to me all those months ago at Good Harbor Beach.
So I sat down to have one last conversation with my mother in the hopes of freeing myself of some that hurt.