Will’s mouth leaves mine to kiss my jaw and then my neck. My head lulls back and his hands roam down over my thighs and around to my backside, where he cups my butt and pulls me up to him. I gasp and he catches it in his mouth. A thread snaps and we’re lost.
Will holds me tight and flips us so he’s hovering over me and my back is against the mattress. My pulse is in my ears, heat is flooding every corner of my body as Will’s kisses extend to any part of exposed skin he can find, like my neck. The V of skin peeking out from my pajama top. And then the small section of skin on my abdomen where my top has ridden up. Just when I think I might pass out from the pure ecstasy of this, Will asks, “Why are you smiling?”
I shake my head and tug him up so that we’re face-to-face again. “I just embarrassed myself with my own thought.”
The black centers of his eyes grow. “Say it.”
I bite my lip and tell myself there’s no turning back now. “I was just wondering if you’d maybe…kiss me…passionately,” I ask, barely getting the words out and feeling so embarrassed by them that I could combust. “Less controlled. I can feel you holding back…and I don’t want you to.”
He stares down at me—his unruly lock of hair falling over his brow and his dark tattoos competing with the perfect, dangerous rim around his irises. And then like a riptide swallowing me whole, his mouth slants over mine and demands as much as it gives. I make a sound and he makes a sound, and I think I might die from how wonderful this is—from how much more I need. I don’t care about anything besides taking everything that Will wants to give me. And that’s when I realize that never again will I be able to settle with simply nice and soft and stable. I mean, yes, I want those things still. But I also want this. Dangerous, untethered, and demanding. How did I ever think I didn’t need this?
I grasp at his shoulder blades and then pull away with surprise. “Your tattoos do extend over your back!” I peek up and over and am delighted to see that these beautiful flowers completely wrap his shoulder.
Will’s eyes are unfocused when he looks at me, resting on his forearm and pushing my hair back from my face with his other hand. “You’ve been wondering?”
“Every night since I met you,” I say, solemnly. “Sometimes I can’t sleep because I lie here imagining where they end.”
He stares at me, barely breathing. “I wasn’t expecting that.”
And then his head lowers and swiftly takes my mouth for a kiss so intimate, so demanding, so fevered that my toes curl and my legs lock around his. His tongue parts my lips and glides over mine until I’m consumed by him, and everything I knew about myself vanishes and begins redrawing new lines. I want more. Everything.
While we kiss, Will’s hands fumble with the buttons of my shirt, starting at the bottom and working their way up. There’s only one left when I grab his hand. “Wait. Time out.”
He pauses immediately and pulls back.
“I’m not ready yet,” I say in a nervous rush. “I’m sorry…I thought I would be, but then as things started progressing—”
Will immediately cups my face, cutting me off. “Don’t apologize. No explanation needed.”
“I feel bad.”
“Don’t.” He adjusts to his side, resting on his forearm and then using his free hand to pull my hand to his mouth. He kisses my inner wrist with a tenderness that surges to my soul. “You don’t owe me—or anyone else—anything, Annie. Just kissing you is a gift. One that…” His brows pinch together and he pauses, idly playing with my fingers. When he looks at me again, I see something so raw in his eyes I never expected to see: fear.
I never do learn what he was going to say. I expect Will to leave, but he sighs and pulls me over to rest my head on his chest, holding me so tight it feels like he’s afraid I’m going to fly away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Will
Sunlight hits the back of my eyelids, and I drag in a quick inhale. I’ve been sleeping like a rock. Like the dead. Like…I’m not alone.
Shit, shit, shit.
I open my eyes to the sight of bananas and blonde hair. Annie is tucked up close to me, leg draped over mine, head in the crook of my bare shoulder and hand splayed out on my chest. She’s breathing deeply—sound asleep. We must have fallen asleep together after…Damn, I don’t even know what to call last night. It definitely wasn’t just a kiss. It was devastating.
This is not good.
And by not good, I mean the Entire Situation is not good. I’m overwhelmed. There’s a lot happening inside me that I don’t know what to do with. I’m feeling things for Annie that I didn’t know I was capable of feeling. Normally, by now, I’m bored in a relationship. This isn’t even a relationship with Annie, and I’m clawing out of my skin with a need to be more for her. To always be around when she needs me. To be the kind of man I never saw modeled growing up.
And yet—can I trust it? Can I trust myself with her? Would she even want a man like me with so much baggage and heartbreak to share a life inside her white picket fence? I feel like the biggest hypocrite alive to be desiring more with Annie when I just told my brother to pump the breaks with the woman he loves. But I didn’t realize…
Maybe there is hope for us.
Or maybe I should take a step back and think about it without this lushly curved woman pressed up beside me.
It was a bad idea to ever come back to Rome. To let Annie touch me. Kiss me. Turn me inside out. It was so much easier when I thought I wouldn’t like a relationship and that I didn’t want to run the risk of ending up in a position similar to my parents’. Because what other option is there for someone who endured eighteen years of a hate-filled marriage between his parents? When infidelity and emotional abuse were all I saw? There was no tenderness. No patience. There were insults and harsh reprimands and me wondering if that night was going to be the one when all their yelling was going to end with my dad hitting my mom or her leaving us for good to sleep with some other guy.
But neither of those things happened. Ethan and I were always just waiting on the precipice of something terrible—wondering when it would break. It never did—and I guess I’m thankful for that. Instead, their marriage fizzled out in an anticlimactic way that led me to believe that maybe what they had was just normal. They divorced after Ethan and I left home and then acted as if all the hell they put us through never happened. Like I never became a man who avoids real relationships at all costs because all I’ve ever known are painful ones. A man who in no way trusts himself with a woman as good and hopeful and lovely as Annie.
Until I met her and held her in my arms, I never knew I could be capable of so much tenderness. And I’m not talking about sex. I’m talking about tender conversations. Tender words. Tender understanding. Even the way she breathes against my neck while she sleeps is tender—and I want it. All of it. I’m just not sure it’s sustainable or that I want to find out if it’s not. Ever since I realized I could climb that magnolia tree in my backyard, I’ve been very good at protecting myself and avoiding anything that could cause me more pain.
The woman I’m holding has the potential to cause me more pain than anyone else ever has. And I sure as hell can do the same to her. I have no idea where to go from here.
For now, I need to get moving. The sun is still soft and warm, just beginning to rise, which means it’s around my usual early morning wake-up time. If I hurry, I can still get out of here without anyone noticing. Maybe even before Annie notices.