“Watch, sweetheart. Watch me come home.” My gaze slides back to his cock as he pushes himself inside me.
“Oh, God,” I pant as he throbs inside of me, my core pulsing around him.
The sting of him stretching me coils in my stomach, but is soon forgotten when he moves his hips in a slow, deliberate pace.
“Harder,” I encourage as an orgasm builds faster than expected.
“No, baby.” He takes my hands and secures them over my head, keeping me restrained. “We’re not fucking tonight. I’m making love to my woman.” His words whisper over my skin like the heat of a fire on a winter’s night. Tremors of excitement pulse from my toes and work their way up to my heart.
“Hetch.” I moan. The start of an orgasm dances in front of me, the promise of ecstasy teasing and taunting me.
“Look at me, Liberty.” My eyes open on command and connect with his. Each one of his thrusts remain controlled, but still, it manages to spiral me out of control.
“I’m so deeply in love with you, B.” My mouth swallows his words. Our tongues make love with the same amount of passion as our bodies.
I don’t get a chance to confess my love before my orgasm takes hold of me and drags me through an abyss of pleasure.
“God, yes!” This time, his mouth captures my cries. Keeping up his perfect pace, it takes only a few more beats before his release seizes him. His cry of pleasure rings out, prickling my skin in a second wave of want.
“Jesus, I’ve missed you.” He drops his forehead to mine while he tries to catch his breath.
“I’m so deeply in love with you, too.” His eyes open at the quietness of my words and lock onto mine.
“Move in with me, B,” he replies, knocking the wind out of me harder than the orgasm he just gave me.
“What?”
His lips curve up at my panic. “Move in with me.” Even repeated a second time, they don’t soothe my unease. Maybe being trapped under him with his cock still pulsing inside of me makes it harder to focus, but it’s like the words have wiped my brain from functioning.
“B-but I live next door.” My answer is stupid, even I know it. If I could slap myself, I would.
“I’m not asking you to move in with me here. I want you to move in with me, in my house.” He whispers soft kisses over my face, like he’s easing me into the idea.
“But it’s not livable. You said it’s too cluttered.” I don’t know why I’m fighting it. Of course I want to move in with him. It’s just so sudden and unexpected. And he still has his cock inside of me.
“I did, but then you came along, sweetheart. You crashed into my life with your jacked-up vibrator, and your inappropriate notes, and you saved me. You saved me when I didn’t know I needed saving.”
A wave of tears burst free, but I try my hardest to control them. “Hetch–”
“I realize I can do anything when I’m with you, sweetheart. The darkness seems a little less dark, the pain is a little more manageable, and the clutter… the clutter fades and what’s left behind is the beauty of the moment. So yes, I know it’s soon. But you’re mine, and I’m not letting you go ever again.”
I let the room fall away from us as I imagine us together in his home. I can see it. I can see us living there in the beautiful home, even through the chaos of all the renovations. But most of all, I can feel it.
“You’ve gone quiet.” He pulls me out of my vision.
“Did you practice that speech?” I blurt, my heart beating wildly in my chest. In my head, I see myself reacting differently, but I can’t seem to switch off the stupid.
“Yeah, with hand gestures and all, but I dropped them last minute,” he replies, letting the heavy tension fall away from our easy candor. “Did it win you over?” he asks when the silence grows too wide.
“You didn’t have to win me, Hetch. You had me already.”
His hands cradle my face as he slows the moment down. “So that’s a yes?” His eyes track mine, holding me frozen to him as if he’s willing the right answer from within me.
“Yes, it’s–” His lips crash to mine before I can finish my reply.
It’s not a simple everyday kiss, but one that changes our lives. Changes our future.
“I love you, sweetheart,” he says as he pulls away, but even breaking the kiss, our eyes stay locked on one another.
“And I love you.”
I never thought the night he interrupted me and my “jacked-up vibrator” as he puts it, we would be where we are right now. Hell, I never thought I’d fall in love again, but here I am. Here we are.
The paths we traveled separately brought us to one another.
He thinks I saved him from himself, but he saved me. And when I close my eyes, I see the faces of all the people who love him; and I see, even if briefly, how he saved each one of them: his mom, Kota, the guys on his team, Mitch. And it makes me love him more.
Harder. Deeper. Stronger.
Forever.
Epilogue
HETCH
four months later