“Last time we slept together, I found you crying over a shirt,” he says, his voice soft and slightly pained.
“That was different.”
“How?” he asks, pushing off the wall and cupping the back of my neck. “Tell me how it was different, because if something happens tonight, it’ll be so much more than just touching. You know that, right? And I mean more than just physically. Even if we only touch or kiss, it’ll be more, and I don’t want you to wake up and feel like you’re cheating or being unfair to his memory.”
I close my eyes, needing to look away from his understanding gaze, away from the love I see in it. He’s right. I know this, and I know he doesn’t deserve to be a regret for me, but the thing is, Oliver has never been a regret. Even when it hurt . . . even when he left. Even when he came back and sliced me open again, he wasn’t a regret because I loved him. Wyatt may not have been the most understanding man—and maybe his ways of making me move past things weren’t perfect—but he did make me understand love for what it was. That’s the little tagline I send off my shattered hearts with. Wyatt was the one who opened my eyes to it, but Oliver was the reason for the hearts and the taglines. He was the one I loved first. He was the one who broke my heart first, and here he is again. For how long this time, I wonder? Does it matter? My heart bleeds.
When I open my eyes again, Oliver is looking at me like I might bolt. I wrap my arms around his neck and lean up, kissing his stubbly chin, his strong jaw, and then move up to the shell of his ear.
“What we have isn’t aligned with that part of my life. We live in a galaxy of our own,” I whisper, kissing his earlobe. I smile when his breath quickens. “Where the storms pass, and the light fades, and everything ceases to exist except for us.”
His hands squeeze my waist, and gently push me back. “I planned out this night where I would keep my hands to myself and sleep on the sofa if I had to, and then you say things like that and scatter every part of my brain—like only you can.” He dips his face and kisses my neck once, twice, three times . . . soft wet kisses . . . before he leans back and pins his gaze on me again. “You make me get lost in you, Elle. The way you look at me, the way you touch me . . .” He doesn’t finish his sentence, but instead, brings his lips down to meet mine in a long, slow kiss. As our hearts beat against each other’s chest, and our tongues dance a slow sensual mambo, everything else fades away.
Oliver’s hands make their way down my body until they reach the hem of my dress. He pulls it off me without breaking our kiss, while I unbutton his shirt and help him shrug out of it. Even though it hasn’t been that long since we hooked up that last time, I feel like I haven’t seen his body in ages. My eyes drop from his face to his chest. My hands trace every muscle, every contour, and every line etched on the beautiful man in front of me. My fingers reach the top of his jeans, and I begin to unbuckle his belt, and as I bring my gaze back up to his, I watch him as he watches me. A look of ecstasy clouds his face as I dip my hand into his boxers and test the weight of him, my hand squeezing as he sucks in a breath between his teeth.
“Elle,” he says, his voice a hoarse whisper, as I kneel down in front of him. He kicks his shoes aside, and I help him step out of his jeans, his boxers, his socks . . . and align my face with his length. I lean forward, placing soft, wet kisses along his abdomen, smiling against him as his muscles spasm. I work my way down, licking each side of the “V” indented on his sides, until I reach what’s beckoning me. My tongue slides under his shaft and he groans, his hand threading into my hair. I repeat the motion on either side as my hand holds his balls. He groans again, louder, when I take what I can of him into my mouth.
“Elle,” Oliver says again, his voice low and guttural. I look up, meeting his hooded gaze, and a thrill runs through me when his hands brush my hair back, away from my face, as he looks down at me. He grabs my shoulders and pushes me back until he’s completely out of my mouth with a pop, then he pulls me up so that we’re chest to chest, his nose resting on my forehead.
“What you do to me, Elle,” he whispers against me as I breathe into his chest. “It’s inexplicable.” He drops a kiss on my forehead and walks me backward until I’m forced to sit on the bed. He takes his time undoing the clasp of my bra and then pulls it over my shoulders. He does the same with my panties, sliding them down my thighs until they’re off and on the floor with the rest of our clothes. Taking a step back, he looks at me—really looks at me. His gaze leaves a trail of heat with every inch it passes over, then he lets out a laugh. “For maybe the second time in my life, I don’t know where to start,” he murmurs, kneeling down in front of me and spreading my legs apart. Kissing my knee first, he makes his way up my thigh until he reaches my pelvis, grazing the patch of hair there, then he kisses his way up my stomach. When he reaches my right breast, he pauses and looks at me over the peak of my nipple.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamt of doing this again,” he says, gliding the slick underside of his tongue over it. I gasp. My hands shoot out to grip his shoulders when he does it again. He blows softly over my little bud, the sensation of hot and cold making me shiver. He drags his face to my other breast and I shiver again, this time, at the feel of his chin scraping against my skin. His mouth closes over my nipple, sucking it into his mouth. As he pulls away and blows softly, his hand tweaks the other. My body feels like it’s on fire, at the brink of combustion, and he hasn’t even left my breasts yet.
As if hearing my thoughts, Oliver looks at me and flashes a smug smile before continuing to explore south of the border. Reaching the inside of my thighs, he nudges them to the sides and holds them apart with his hands, squeezing, as he dips his face into my center. His tongue peeks out and tastes me—just tastes—and he groans, his mouth vibrating against me. My already shaky hands find his hair, and I pull lightly, pivoting my hips against his face. He stills me with his grip on my knees, and raises his gaze to find mine. The intensity in them is so raw, so pure, that I feel my stomach begin to churn. In his eyes, I find our past and our questionable future. It holds the sadness of lost years, the torturous longing of a million what-ifs, and the possibility of what could be. I try to look away . . . try to close my eyes and shut out the fervor his green eyes spear me with, because I don’t want to admit that I’m scared. I don’t want to open myself up and admit that he still has the ability to shatter me—to annihilate me completely.
His tongue lashes against me once more and I lose all thought . . . all reason . . . and come undone under his tongue. I finally shut my eyes and moan out his name as my back bows off the bed and an orgasm rocks through me. Oliver’s kisses whisper over me as he makes his way back up my body. I open my eyes and he holds himself above me, arms on either side of me, and for the longest time, just looks at me, his eyes searching mine. My hand moves between us. His body shudders when I close my hand around his cock and grasp it, slowly sliding my hand up and down, up and down, until he’s breathing heavily.
“We should probably get a condom,” he says, his eyes bouncing between mine. I shake my head, bringing my other hand to clasp the back of his neck and pull his face to mine.
“No condom,” I whisper against his lips. He stills, and for a moment, I wonder if he would rather use one. Maybe he regrets not doing so all those years ago.
“Elle,” he says, letting out a breath. I’m sure he’s about to climb off me and reach for a condom, but instead, he wraps an arm around my back and pulls me closer, settling himself between my folds. Slowly, carefully, he pushes in, giving my body time to adjust to his girth. I gasp when I feel him pulsate inside me. He stops to take a breath and chuckles into my neck.
“My beautiful little Elle,” he says against my neck. The smile in his voice makes me smile. “You feel so fucking good around me, you have no idea.” I arch my back, urging him to continue, because I do have an idea. I have a very good idea. He moves again, not stopping this time, instead, giving me long, deep strokes. “You just . . . swallow me up,” he growls, moving faster now, his strokes becoming harder, as if he’s staking his claim inside me.
“Do you ever think about this?” he asks, his voice somewhere between a grunt and a growl as he readjusts our position so that my leg is over his shoulder and he can get even deeper inside of me. I cry out, nodding. “Tell me,” he says. Oliver pulls back to look first at the spot where we’re joined and then to my face, where I’m sure he can see my desire for him.
“I touch myself thinking about you,” I admit quietly, my eyes refusing to waver from his. He groans and stops moving, closing his eyes as if he’s concentrating. “I picture you taking me like this, on top of me,” I continue, pushing onto him. “And sometimes from behind.”
Oliver’s eyes snap open, and I whimper when he slowly slides out of me, then thrusts in hard and fast. My toes curl, and my eyes start rolling back as I grip on to his ass and encourage him to move faster. It’s all I can do to keep myself from crying out at the level of emotion zip-lining through me.
“Please . . .” I’m actually begging. “Please, please, please keep moving faster.”
He grins, slow and wide, and does what I say for all of four strokes.
I screw my eyes shut. “Please, please, please. Just . . . faster . . . harder . . .”
But Oliver has other plans. He leans down, stretching my legs further apart and kisses the calf I have resting on his chest. He rubs his face over the soft skin there, as his lips drag up and down, matching his hips in soft, slow, long, hard strokes.
“I want this to last forever,” he says, biting the inside of my leg. “I want to make a little house inside your *,” he says, and if it weren’t for his hand tweaking my nipple and his cock pounding harder against me, I would make a joke. But the sensation of an orgasm begins to steamboat inside me, and I can’t think anymore. He drops my leg and climbs over me again, his chest just over mine, so that his face is the only thing I can see. I don’t know what he wants to find in my eyes, but I feel like he’s boring into my soul, as if rummaging through a lost-and-found. Just when I open my mouth to say something, an orgasm slams through me, and I shriek his name instead. As if on cue, he grunts out my name and his eyes close in exhaustion. Oliver lets out a long breath, and when he opens his eyes again, he’s wearing the goofy, lopsided smile I’ve always loved, and it makes me feel like whatever he was searching for has been found.
We lay in bed, naked, facing each other, his hand lazily drawing over my waist and mine over his chest. I’ve always been a go-with-the-flow kind of girl. I’ve never wondered where a relationship would take me—I never really bothered to care. But lying here beside Oliver makes me think about the future. It makes me hope for the future. And even though I told myself that this was just one date, I can’t help the bubble of possibility that pops up in my head.
“What are you thinking about?” I whisper. He pulls my face to his chest, and then kisses the top of my head.
“I’m thinking that this is the best date I’ve ever been on.”
I smile. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“You realize you completely cheated, right? One date means one date, and you planned this out to be two dates.”
He chuckles below me. “I told you I’m not good with rules.”
“Thank God for that,” I say, yawning against him.
I fall asleep in his arms, and even though I’m looking forward to the rest of our date tomorrow, a part of me is terrified of leaving this room and facing reality.