Thank gods for no buttons for once.
He gasps when my fingers curl around his length, and I delight in knowing that I can make him like this, hard with need and want. Me. No one else. Just me. Is that the Connection that makes me so possessive? Or the love for him that consumes me?
Our mouths crash together again, and he’s got us flipped around on the bed so that I’m under him. I stare up into his eyes, dark blue with desire, and one word rings throughout every cell that makes me me: mine.
My shorts are off, his follow suit, and we’re in a frenzy, our hands and mouths everywhere we can touch. Mine, I think, as I kiss the base of his neck. Mine is what I think when I drag my nails lightly across the proof of his desire for me. And then, just as my hand curls around him again, his fingers slide between my legs and dance until I see stars born in the air above us.
“Now,” he whispers against my mouth. I surge into his mind at the same time he does mine, and the orgasm that follows from his fingers and mind threatens to rip me apart until I’m nothing but star dust.
Later, as we lay in bed, content in each other’s arms, I admire Jonah’s ring. “It looks good on you.”
He takes my hand and kisses the place where gold and skin meet. Goose bumps flare up and down my whole body. “Not as good as yours looks on you.”
I roll onto my stomach and prop myself up. “We look like we’re already married with them on.”
He turns on his side to face me, a hand tracing the smooth planes of my bare back so lightly I’m shivering in pleasure. “To be honest, I feel like we already are.”
“In just two months, we’ll be nineteen and officially married,” I marvel. I push my guilt aside. It has no place here, not in this moment. “To think I once teased Karl about the very same thing.”
He presses a kiss against my shoulder, and then another closer to my neck. “Love doesn’t come with an instruction manual or time limits. It’s not one-size-fit-all.”
“I’m not complaining, silly.”
Another kiss is pressed right below my ear, followed by another slow lick that drives me crazy in want. “I never said you were.” He leans back and gives me one of his smug grins. “As a matter of fact, I rather think you’re happy about today’s turn of events.”
“Is that an official Emotional diagnosis?”
He’s smug. “Of course. But then, the better part of Downtown Annar thinks so, too—especially as everyone got to go home with armfuls of free flowers.”
More than just my face burns. “I’m not always the best at controlling my emotions, am I?”
“Did you notice the people around us when we left?”
I hadn’t, of course. I was too focused on Jonah and all of the wonderful visions of my future ahead of me.
“Everyone was drunk on love,” he whispers to me. “And, to be honest, a fair share of lust, too. I wasn’t too good at controlling my feelings, either.”
I pretend to be shocked while being not so secretly delighted I caused Jonah to lose control. “So. You love me?” I roll over and gently nudge him to his back, so I can push myself up over him.
His fingers trace the length of my hips, inwards to my thighs. I’m breathless in anticipation before his hands still. “What I feel for you goes above love.”
I pause, mid-way to his lips. My heart flutters uncontrollably.
“I . . . I don’t think I can describe it, even to you, Chloe. What I feel for you—it’s . . .” He bites his lower lip and stares up at me, his emotions more naked than his chest. “You’re my best friend. My favorite person. Someone I know I can go to when I’m happy or sad or anything in between. The only person who makes me lose control, who makes me so hot and fills me with so much want and need I can’t even think straight. The person whose lips are addictive,”—a thumb grazes my bottom one—“whose mind is more beautiful than anything else I’ve ever seen. You’re more than my Connection; you know that, right? The first night we met, I became the luckiest guy in all the worlds. I don’t think you truly understand what you mean to me.” His head turns softly against the pillow. “I don’t think you ever will.”
I try to find something, anything, to say to convey what I feel for him, too. But Jonah’s right—it’s impossible to put into words. So I do it the only way that can guarantee he’ll know what I feel: I open my heart up to him. Love—no, like he said, more than love—fills me up, overflows, and radiates through the room.