Breathe

We weren’t done with other things.

Sex, as I’d mentioned before, was awesome.

Make up sex was out of this world.

Heightened emotion didn’t only make for effective kisses, it made for effective everything.

I didn’t think either of us held back during sex. Sometimes Chace controlled the intensity. It was rare but it could happen that I might get a little timid with nudity but Chace had a mind to that and never pushed.

But after you’d almost just broken up with your boyfriend who you loved even though his best friend told you not to. After he’d shared with you he’d taken one look at you and knew he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you then let you into his deepest, darkest secrets that were way deep and scary dark. After that, you didn’t think of anything.

Not anything.

But each other and using that emotion and anything else you had to make the bad go away and bring on the good.

And the good was good.

It was all hands, mouths, fingers, tongues, rolling, yanking at clothes, tugging at shoes, tossing them away, then clenching, scratching, licking, sucking, biting, positioning, gasping, groaning, whimpering and growling.

Then Chace took over and did me on my knees and two seconds before I would find it, he pulled out, dropped to his back beside me, yanked me over him and he made me ride him. Which I did, hard, my eyes on him hooded, my hips moving fast, grinding deep, my hands sliding over his chest.

Then I was on my back, Chace’s hips pumping between my legs, he was up with one hand in the bed, arm straight, one of my knees hooked around it, the other hand between my legs, thumb right where I needed it.

And, oh God, it felt good.

So good I was this close again and it wasn’t going to be good. It was going to be fantastic.

Chace drove in deep, stayed planted and ground his hips into mine.

“Faye,” he growled, I forced my neck to right and tried to focus on him. “No one gets in here but me,” he declared, making his point grinding deeper into me.

“Okay,” I breathed.

“No one, Faye.”

“Okay, honey.”

He pulled out, slammed and ground in again. “Ever, Faye.”

“Ever, Chace.”

He pulled out, slammed and ground in and ordered, “Say it again.”

“Ever.”

Another slam and grind then, “My name, baby.”

“Chace,” I whimpered, shifting under him, so fraking, fraking close.

He released my knee and fell to his forearm in the bed beside me. It shoved under and his fingers curled around the back of my neck.

I instantly wrapped my leg around his hip, tipped my head up and, his lips against mine, he whispered, “Do you love me?”

“Yes,” I breathed.

“Always?”

He wasn’t thrusting hard and grinding deep. His rhythm was smoother, gentler, beautiful and I finally focused on him, my arms gliding around him to hold tight.

“Always,” I whispered.

Chace slanted his head and kissed me, his tongue sliding into my mouth and I came.

I took him through it, after it and, when his thrusts grew faster, more powerful, driving deep, I felt it and loved it after he buried his face in my neck and groaned low against my skin.

He started gliding in and out and I took that too, loving it, before he slid in deep and stopped and one of his curls came to my attention. My hand moving of its own volition slid up his back, my fingers closed on it and I gave it a little tug, giving myself a little happy shiver doing it.

“Apparently,” he started in a mutter, talking to my neck, “I wasn’t tired.”

I closed my eyes, let his curl go and circled his hip with my other leg so I could hold him tight with everything I had available to me.

“But unfortunately,” he went on, “when you’re way pissed, you lay off the geek references so you make way too much fuckin’ sense.”

That meant I got through.

Thank you, God, I got through.

I opened my eyes and dipped my chin so my lips were at the skin under his ear, the skin of my upper lip tickled by his unruly curls and I whispered, “Chace.”

His head came up and I caught my breath at the look on his face, warmth, regret and something else, something huge, something that made my heart skip.

“I should have told you earlier. I should have trusted you. I should have read all the things you were sayin’ to me with the way you were with me, for me and with Malachi and knew you could handle it. I was wrong, baby, and I fucked up. But I love you, Faye, and protection going hand in hand with love is all I know,” he admitted quietly.

My chest depressed as my eyes started stinging.

What I saw on his face was love.

He loved me.

Loved me.

“You love me?” I whispered, just to confirm.

“Fell in love with you in a grocery store aisle and you didn’t even know I was there.”

“I probably did,” I confessed and his lips tipped up but it wasn’t teasing and sweet, it was strangely sad.

“Then you did but I didn’t know. You wanted me, I wanted you, I sat on what I wanted and fucked up my life.”

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