Sully smirked, taking my hand in his, placing it over his heart. “Let’s not hide anymore. Let’s just be honest. It’s time.”
“God, Sully, I just…the situation, it’s…”
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Remember? No bullshit. Tell me. Say it.”
“Say what?” It was too late for games now, though. We’d already come too far.
“Ophelia.” He said my name softly, carefully, so that it carried weight. He said it like it mattered. It was a reprimand, and it was a caress. It was the first time he’d ever called me by my first name, and the way he shaped the word flooded my body with a warm vibration, a deep undercurrent, like a tuning fork that had been struck and would hum on and on forever unless someone closed their hand around it.
“I love you, Sully. I tried not to. I tried really hard. God knows I tried.” I wanted to bury my face into his shirt, but he placed his fingers under my chin and lifted my face so that I couldn’t.
“Open your eyes,” he commanded.
I opened them, but it was so hard to look at him. Impossible, almost. He sighed heavily. “Don’t you think,” he said softly, “that I feel what you feel? I told you as much in that letter. Don’t you think the bravado and the machismo are simply signs that I’m running scared? Because I am, y’know. I have been since the very first moment I saw you. I love you, too, Ophelia. God, loving you is the cruelest, most unkind thing I can do to you, and yet I’m going to do it anyway. Do you know what that means?”
I tried to look away again—I was buried under an avalanche of emotion, and I felt as though I would suffocate from it. Sully wouldn’t let me hide from him, though. He ducked down, bending so our eyes were locked once more. “Loving you isn’t me telling you something we both already know. It’s waking up together every morning. It’s making love, and arguing and fighting, and dealing with each other’s shit. It’s walking across hot coals for you. It’s protecting you, and keeping you, and honoring you always. There’s no half measure in this, okay? So you have to be fucking sure, because once we travel down this road together, there is no turning back. There is no good ol’ college try. There’s me, and there’s you. Forever. This will change me, and it’ll change you, too. It’s a part of us already. Once we let it overtake us, there won’t be any turning back. Is that what you want?”
“Is it what you want?” I asked in a small voice.
“Don’t do that. Own your feelings. You don’t need to know what I think before you can make up your mind.”
“I know I don’t. I’m just scared to say it.”
Sully smiled—big, contagious, unfathomable—and my heart felt like it was going to burst. “You’ve already done the hard part, Lang. This next part is just the first step.”
“Toward what?”
He gave me a chiding look. “You tell me. Actually tell me, Lang. Right now.”
A cold shiver of panic ran up my spine, but I ignored it. I pushed down my fear, and I plucked up every last scrap of courage I owned. “The rest of our lives,” I said firmly. “It’s the first step toward the rest of our lives, because that’s what I want. I want it all. With you. I can’t imagine it any other way.”
Sully moved quickly, sitting upright. He grabbed hold of me, his hands fisting my hair, running down my back, groping my ass through my jeans. His mouth found mine, and for a moment the world outside of the truck drifted away. There was no snow falling out of the window. There were no dark, ominous clouds blocking out the moonlight. There was no island, and there was no tomorrow. There was just this moment, our moment, and the breath we shared as we kissed.
He was a man possessed. I was a woman lost. Together, we were two halves of something fragile and delicate, beautiful in its complexity.
Sully bit at my lips and my tongue, growling. Placing one hand at the nape of my neck, he kissed me harder, grinding his hips up again; his hard-on was still raging, still made of solid steel. He rocked his hips back and forth, rubbing himself against me, igniting a desperate ache inside me. I needed him. I wanted him more than I’d ever wanted anybody, and I couldn’t wait any longer.
I tore at his shirt, wrestling it over his head, and then my hands were frantically pulling at his belt buckle, trying to unfasten it. Sully took over; he made quick work of the belt, ripping it from his belt loops entirely and flinging it over his shoulder onto the back seat. I unbuttoned his pants and shimmied them down his body, trying not to gasp when I tugged his jeans down over his hips and his erection sprang free.
“Damn it,” I murmured under my breath.
“What’s wrong?” Sully panted.
“I want to ride you so hard, Sully. I need to feel you inside me right now. But I want you in my mouth, too. I want to make you come so hard. I want to taste you. I want to swallow you. But I want to feel you coming inside me as well.”