A breath rushes out of his mouth and my finger absorbs it. It travels down my veins and spreads across my body. That breath of relief.
I take off my hand and shake my head at him. “And you’re so stupid if you think that you can make me hate you.”
I see the full impact of my words register on his body bit by bit.
At first, he frowns but when he realizes what I’ve said, his eyes sweep across my face to confirm it. His lips part and the biggest impact is how he tightens his hold on me. How his fingers in my hair spasm and jerk before he digs the pads into my scalp.
Finally, he says in a rough but relieved voice, “Thank fuck you’re smarter than me.”
“Duh.”
His lips stretch into a lopsided smile that I absolutely adore, and I step up on his feet. “I wanna go home. I don’t like it here.”
He shifts a hand down my spine and splays it on my lower back, pressing our bodies together. “Home. Yeah. It didn’t feel like home before.”
I grab the collar of his shirt and tell him sternly, “It’s our home now.”
His eyes flare with emotions. “It is.”
“Good.” Then, “And I think we need new floors.”
His chest reverberates with a chuckle. “We do?”
“Yes. We also need a bigger rose garden because I have ideas.”
“You have ideas.”
I nod slowly, biting my lip and peeking at him through my eyelashes. “Yes.”
A current passes between us, or rather we absorb each other’s desire since there’s hardly any space left between us for anything to pass.
I wind my arms around his neck and he puts his hands under my ass to lift me up. I hang onto him like a spider monkey.
When I’m all adjusted, he grabs the back of my neck and demands, “Tell me about them.”
I rub my fingers in his thick beard and kiss his cheek softly. “Only if you kiss me right now.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. And I don’t want it here.”
“Where do you want it?”
God, his sexy voice always gets me. Always.
It makes me wild. The thing I become when I’m with him.
“In your old backyard where everything started.”
He tightens his hold on my neck as his eyes narrow. “You know there are other people living there now, right?”
“Yup. There’s this lady with a bunch of cats. And I think her husband keeps staring at me.”
I don’t know, actually. I caught him staring once but I don’t know if he keeps doing that. I just said it because I want my beast now.
I want him to come out in all his possessive glory.
“Does he now?”
His dangerous voice sends a dark thrill down my spine. “Yeah. So you should just claim me, you know. Show him that you’re my boyfriend.”
“I’m your boyfriend.”
I wrinkle my nose. “Yes. You are. That’s what the kids my age are calling it these days.”
Amusement flickers over his features as he begins to move. “Yeah, I wouldn’t know now, would I?”
Laughing, I kiss him while he walks us to the very spot where everything started. There’s no rose garden there; it’s covered up by a patch of grass and the loungers and things are different.
Everything is different, yet it’s still the same.
I still feel the same way about him. I still have the same urgency in me to kiss him. But before he can close his mouth on me, I whisper against his lips, “Graham?”
“Yeah?”
“I hate the beach too.”
“You do?”
“Uh-huh. Too many people.”
“Yeah, too many people.”
“And I don’t think I like poetry all that much.”
“You don’t, huh?”
“Nope. I think I like it better when you talk dirty to me.”
A muscle jumps in his cheek and I know it’s lust. “I’ll keep that in mind, Jailbait.”
“You do that, Strawberry Man.”
He comes closer to me but I stop him once again. “Oh, one more thing.”
“What?”
“I love you.”
He puffs out a breath over my lips, his eyes widening a fraction as if he still can’t believe it. Still can’t believe I love a man like him.
“I love you too, baby,” he whispers.
And then, he’s kissing me.
On the same spot.
In the same backyard with probably the same people who’re sleeping right now around the neighborhood.
Or maybe not.
Maybe they’re not sleeping.
Because I think the new owners just turned on their lights. And another one came on in my own house.
Whoops.
I think I woke up everyone with my kiss again.
It’s okay.
Because in his arms, I’m wildness and beauty. And in mine, he’s my beast.
It’s okay because I’m kissing the man of my dreams and he’s kissing me back.
Someone is watching me.
It’s a girl.
I didn’t notice her before. I was staring at my phone, trying to look at the list of things I need from the grocery store before I can go home.
Man, I so want to go home but there’s still a ton of stuff left to buy. And I don’t plan on getting out in the world for the next couple of weeks, so it has to be now.