He was saying so many words that I was struggling to comprehend. My fists curled into his shirt, wrinkling the smooth material. “The long game?”
“Molly, you have to realize how much I care about you, yeah?” I shook my head. His milk chocolate eyes deepened with heat and grew more serious all at once. “I’ve been careful with you, with us. I’ve been terrified of scaring you off or starting something you weren’t willing to finish. But I have to be honest with you, I have waited a very long time to find someone like you. And I’ve made a lot of mistakes trying to make people fit this role that you glided into effortlessly. You demanded my attention the second I met you, and then you claimed my respect and admiration, and now you’re stealing my heart. This is real for me. This is serious. I’m sorry if that scares you, but I need you in my life as much as I want you there. Here.”
I licked dry lips and willed my heart to stay inside my chest. “I’m falling for you too,” I confessed. “I… I did try to stop this from happening. You terrify me.” His lips kicked up in an affectionate smile as if that was the most adorable thing anyone had ever said. “I’m serious. You’re gorgeous and surprisingly funny, loyal, and this crazy, successful restaurateur. And I’m weird and flighty, late all the time, and I’m pretty sure I’m unemployed. I’m a mess, Ezra. We’re so different.”
“Thank God,” he murmured. “I don’t want to date myself. You make me smile when I’ve had the worst day. And you make me see the world in brighter colors and unique angles. You’ve opened my mind to my business, but also to my friends. I would be so boring without you. We are different, but in the best possible ways. And maybe that means we’ll fight more than other people, or disagree or whatever, but we’ll also makeup more because of it. And laugh and talk more, and feel more. Molly, I’ve waited my entire life to find the person that didn’t just want something from me, but wanted me. All of me. Now that I’ve found you, I can’t let you go.”
I couldn’t stand the distance between us any longer. With my hands grasping his shirt I yanked him to me, our mouths meeting in the middle. We were all passion and desperation, and greedy hunger that could not be sated. This kiss was explosive, and all things bright and beautiful.
His lips moved over mine with a new sense of urgency, savoring and tasting as if for the first time. His tongue slid over my bottom lip, and when I opened my mouth, he deepened the kiss making my toes curl with anticipation. His hands dipped into the waistband of my skinny jeans, one sliding around to the front to flick open the button.
I fumbled at his shirt buttons, clumsily grasping each one. He moved me toward the staircase as we shed our shoes and pants, tripping up each step, refusing to take a break from this kiss.
God, this man was everything I didn’t know I wanted. Everything I didn’t know I needed. His words resonated in every secret chamber of my soul. I had been waiting for him too. Maybe I hadn’t realized it. Maybe it wasn’t a concerted effort on my part to find him. But I had been waiting. With every bad first date that I refused to revisit, and every pretend grown-up that I refused to call back, and every single attribute added to my picky list of qualifiers, I was shaping my desire for a man like Ezra. Hoping that he was real and that I could find him, and knowing that I would never, ever settle for anything less.
Now that I’ve found him? He was so much better than anything I could have imagined.
He was so much more than anything I could have dreamed up.
Best of all, he was real and really mine. Maybe he was right. Maybe we would fight, and bicker, and disagree. But every second together was infinitely better than apart. I would rather take his bossy, heavy-handed and stubbornly opinionated self than live one minute without him.
He laid me down on the bed, slowing our frantic kisses as he moved over my body. My blouse was left somewhere near the foot of the bed, and I was almost completely exposed to him in my bra and panties.
It didn’t occur to me to be self-conscious. I was too wrapped up in the sensation of his lips moving over my skin, his teeth scraping across my nipple, his fingers disappearing inside me, bringing me closer to an edge that I was restless to find.
His mouth hovered over my breast and I made a sound I had never made before, half-mad with need for this man. His tongue moved slowly over my nipple, before he closed his lips around it and sucked it into his mouth. My fingers clutched the sheets to keep me anchored to the bed, the planet. His fingers did something wicked inside me, heightening pleasure until my back bowed off the bed and I lost my breath with need.
He looked up at me, his gaze so hot I felt it blaze across my skin. He held me there, halfway to bliss and irrevocably forever feelings. “Perfect, Molly. You’re so fucking perfect.”
“Ezra.” I didn’t have adequate words to reply with. I felt too much, wanted to say too much. There were a thousand thoughts racing through my head, at the same time my body hummed with desire for more of him, more of this, more of every single thing. Finally, I settled on a brave confession, something I didn’t know I had the courage to say.
I placed my hand on his pounding heart and whispered, “This is forever for me. You are my forever. I don’t care about your money or your job, or anything but you. I want you and that’s it. I want you forever.”
He struggled to swallow, gazing down at me with those words still reflected in his eyes, he could barely move his throat. And then, as if suddenly remembering what we were in the middle of doing, he snatched a condom out of the nightstand and got back to business.
He slid inside me and everything was right with the world. His hands braced his spectacular body over me while my legs wrapped around his waist. We wound together in a sweaty, desperate tangle of soul-deep emotions and fiery desire.
I had never experienced anything so satisfying or achingly lovely. He held onto me, whispering sweet, sexy things in my ear as his body moved over mine. I lost myself in his words, and touch. This man meant everything to me.
When we were both sated, limp with exhaustion and love, he pulled me against his body and wrapped his strong, safe arms around me.
“So I’ve been thinking,” he murmured over my racing heart. “Now that you’re jobless, I think I have a position that might interest you.”
“Oh my god,” I groaned. “Are you seriously talking about work now?”
He chuckled and his whole body vibrated with the relaxed sound. “You should know by now, I always talk work.”
“You’re a maniac.”
“Social media specialist for EFB Enterprises. It comes with a pay raise.”
“You don’t even know what I make!”
“Then you should tell me, so I can guarantee a pay raise.”
I turned in his arms, laying my head on his chest and tangling our legs together. The moment was absolutely perfection. The kind of moment all other moments would be compared to for the rest of my life. “What does the F stand for?”
He sounded sleepy when he murmured, “Hmm?”