“Tell me you’ve always wanted me,” I continue, not releasing her face, but moving my lips closer to hers so that I can feel the heat of her breath hit my mouth. My words come out in a low, rough garble of desire.
She nods, but that isn’t good enough. I need her words to gain back some of the control I feel slipping from my fingers.
“Give me the words, darlin’.”
“Maverick, please.”
She tightens her grip, dancing her thumb over the bead of wetness coming out of the tip of my rigid cock.
“Tell me now, Leighton. Tell me it’s always been me.”
Her eyes widen and I watch as one lone tear falls from her lid. Her tear confuses me, but not enough that I stop. Her silence continues and I thrust my hips, my cock moving through the loose hold her hands have around me. Her eyes close for a beat, and when she opens them I see that the last of her indecision has vanished.
“It’s always been you.”
“Try again,” I continue, baiting her to get what I need. “It’s always been you, Maverick.” With my last command, I crush my lips to hers. This kiss is hard and bruising, but full of the promise of what’s to come if she gives me what I crave.
She rips her mouth free and screams, “It’s always been you, Maverick, God help me, but it’s only ever been you!” She drops my cock, her chest heaving, to grab my face and pull my lips back to hers.
I have no idea why I pushed her. Why I made her confirm what I knew deep down, but with her words, everything that had been weighing on my mind for almost two weeks vanishes and I feel the most all-consuming peace flood through my body, leaving an uncontrollable need for her behind.
It doesn’t matter to my brain that there is so much unknown floating around outside of our heated embrace. The only thing that matters is this . . . us . . . right here in this moment, as I pull her off the counter to remove the rest of her clothes, tossing them along with her boots onto the floor. I don’t give a shit what the consequences of our actions are.
My earlier thought comes rushing back: it’s too soon, but in the same breath, it’s ten years too late.
And yet it can’t be too late, when it feels so right to have her in my arms.
9
LEIGHTON
“I Wish I Could Break Your Heart” by Cassadee Pope
My skin is burning.
I’m on fire. Every inch from the top of my scalp to the tips of my toes is alive with a power I’ve never felt before. My nerves are taking on a life of their own. When Maverick finishes pulling off each of my boots, he tosses them blindly behind him before he grabs my hips roughly and lifts my body effortlessly up into his arms. My nerves explode with each sweep over my flesh.
It feels incredible.
What am I doing? What are we doing? This has regret written all over it, but Lord help me, I can’t deny that it feels so right to be in his arms—regardless of the fallout sure to come after.
His tongue presses into my mouth, swirling with my own, and I whimper. His straining erection makes contact with my bare naked center as he places one huge hand at the base of my spine, using the pressure to pull me even harder against him. His thick shaft spreads me wide, nestling between my lips. The second my sensitive center meets his hard velvet skin, he moans deeply and thrusts, hitting my clit roughly. My mouth falls from his as I drop my head back. He moves the hand that had been squeezing my ass up my back until his fingers are tangled in my hair and forces my head back, his harsh breathing once against just a hair away from my slack mouth.
“Are you protected?”
His words sound foreign. My brain struggles to understand him as his thick, hard cock keeps thrusting through my wetness. I know if I look down our bodies, the sight that would meet me would make me shatter completely.
“Leighton,” he says, more urgent now, “are you protected?”
“Wha?” I gasp, rolling my hips when the tip of his cock hits my clit again.
“Birth control, darlin’. Are you on it?”
I vaguely feel my head moving, confirming that I am, in fact, protected, but when he gets the green light he had been waiting for, all rational thought flees. With quick and impatient movements, he pulls his hips back, moves his hand from my hair and down to my hips—mirroring the hold of his other hand as he lifts me from him and slams me back down over his hard cock, impaling me completely.
He growls deep in his throat.
I scream loud enough to wake the dead.
His head falls forward, forehead to my sweat-slicked chest.
My head falls back, forehead to the ceiling.
His fingers painfully squeeze my hips, lifting me until I almost lose our connection, before pulling me down roughly again.
My fingers curl, my nails breaking through his tan, tense shoulders, my walls contracting as he hits a part so deep within me I fear I might split in two.
His warm tongue gives a long lick up my neck and I feel my core clench around his width again. Lifting my head, my eyes going from the ceiling to the blazing emerald orbs of his hungry gaze, I will my fingers to release his shoulders, but when he starts thrusting rapidly into my body, I search for purchase while a string of gibberish flows from my lips.
My back hits the wall and he stops his movements to frame my face with his hands, forcing my mouth to his for a hungry kiss. My hands drop from his shoulders and wrap around his back, the muscles tensing under my hands. Our kiss is nothing short of brutal, his hard shaft still buried deep, and I know he could stay still, just like this, and it would be all I need to push me over the edge.
But with an animalistic sound vibrating against our connected chests, he rears his head back and looks into my eyes. The heaving breaths coming from his slack mouth reach my nipples, the sweat from his chest making it feel almost like a physical touch. He doesn’t move, just continues to search my face and I whimper when my need hits a fever pitch, squirming against the wall to try to make him move his hips.
“Fuck,” he says with a groan, the word coming out in a long, low tumble between his lips.
“Please,” I whine, needing him to move, desperate for more.
“Fuck!” His bellow rings out around us. His hands move from my face, down my neck, and he takes each of my breasts roughly in his hands, bending his head to pull one of my nipples between his lips. I feel him hollow out his cheeks as his tongue rolls over the sensitive peak, then he sucks hard.