This is wrong. This is too far.
She heard the voice in her head but was helpless to stop him because she wanted this so desperately. She wanted his hands on her secret places. She needed the heat of his flesh pressed intimately against hers, learning the peaks and valleys of her body just as certainly as she wanted to know his. His touch, gentle yet searing, sent shivers of longing down her spine and warm waves of desire just south of her belly, where they pooled. High tide, building higher and higher.
His kiss grew more urgent, and she trembled in his arms, her eyes rolling back in her head as she tried to catch her breath. With his palms cupping the fullness of her breasts and his thumbs still massaging the tender tips, she shuddered in his arms, her body tensing for one glorious moment. And then . . . she felt something within her give way, break apart, collide, and shatter, exploding into a million pieces that rocked her being from the core outward. Vinelike tendrils of passion unfurled through every limb of her body, stretching her from within as she convulsed in his arms and her panties flooded with wet warmth. His lips were gentle against hers—the eye of her body’s storm—nipping softly, brushing tenderly. His hands still covered her breasts, but his skin rested easy against hers, organically now, not erotically, like it was simply meant to be there, like his flesh was born to seek hers, and, once together, like they should never again be apart.
Her head rested against the wall of the gazebo as she panted through the final shudders of her first orgasm, feeling alive and limp and gloriously loved.
***
At some point, instinct had taken over: an almost blinding lust that had urged him forward. His fingers had unclasped her bra without permission or forethought. His hands had spanned her waist, then skimmed over the silky skin of her belly, moving upward. By the time his palms reached her breasts, cradling the warm, soft skin with reverence, he’d journeyed way too far to consider retreat. He wanted to touch her. He desperately wanted to be the first to touch her.
Because what he said in the car—that he was falling in love with her—wasn’t a line or a lie. It was truly how he felt: like the world would fucking end and the planet stop spinning if he couldn’t be with her. She was an unlikely obsession, this girl he’d known for such a small amount of time. Were he asked under fire, he couldn’t possibly account for the depth and certainty of his feelings for her. It was like being swept away on a current he couldn’t fight. He could either move with it, or he could drown.
Without replacing the cold, damp cups of her bra, he slipped his hands from her breasts and immediately pressed his chest against hers to warm her through the dampness of their clothes. The rigid peaks of her nipples pushed against him, and he gathered her into his arms, maneuvering slightly to sit down on a bench behind him and cradle her on his lap. She rested her cheek on his shoulder, her drying hair tickling the skin of his throat as she took a ragged breath and exhaled softly. Now and then he felt the aftershocks of his ministrations, the way she shuddered or sighed, the way she nestled against him like she wanted to burrow into his soul for all eternity. She didn’t know, but she was already there.
“Laire?” he asked softly, his voice competing with the rain falling on the thatch above.
“Mmm?” she murmured, pressing her lips to his throat.
“You okay, darlin’?”
“Mm-hm,” she hummed, her voice low and sleepy.
He smiled to himself, holding her closer. “Sure?”
“Yeah,” she sighed.
“First time?”
“You know it was.”
“I love that it was.”
She took another deep breath, kissing him again. “Is it always like that? When . . . when a man touches a woman? On her breasts?”
“Not every woman’s as sensitive, I imagine.”
“And when you touch a woman . . .” She wiggled on his lap, and he knew that her clit was likely as taut as her nipples, aching for his touch. “. . . on her below-parts? That happens again?”
His cock, which was semi-erect against her ass, twitched. “Even more, darlin’.”
“My God,” she murmured, sitting up. “I can barely imagine.”
And if Erik thought she was stunning before, now . . . now she belonged to him. The sated look on her face, the softness in her dark eyes, the slack bee-stung pink of her lips. It was his. It was his because he’d put it there, and he felt such a wave of protectiveness, of devotion, of crazy forever-style love, he couldn’t stare at her anymore without blinking back an unexpected burn in his eyes.
Placing his hand on the back of her head, he pushed her face into his neck and held it there while he made himself breathe in, clean and deep, and let the power of those feelings settle in him and around him. They were a part of him now. He owned them just as much as they owned him. And thankfully his tears receded before falling.