A strange amount of happiness filled my body. I was the only one he’d been with without a condom? I wanted to jump around my room and scream like a freak.
“You never… with Breanna?”
He let out a snort. “Absolutely not.”
I couldn’t help the giddy smile breaking out across my face. “Good.”
A beat passed before I heard Dawson open his mouth. “Ivy, that was…”
“Amazing,” I finished for him. It was. The entire thing was just amazing, and that was honestly a poor word choice for what had just happened.
Slowly, I felt the bed dip and then Dawson was climbing over my naked body, once again. He rested his weight on his forearms, caging me underneath him, making me feel small and vulnerable.
“Do you feel it, too?” he asked, peering down at me, looking the same exact way I felt:
Exposed. So incredibly wide-open and unguarded.
Slowly, I reached my hands up, placing them along his muscular biceps.
“I always have,” I answered.
And it was true. There had always been this automatic pull between us. Like I couldn’t live my life the right way unless he was right there beside me. My life was darker without him in it.
I survived six years without him, but looking back, they were the dullest six years of my life. As if I needed him by my side to be truly me.
A small, hopeful smile passed by his lips.
“This was worth the wait,” he murmured, lowering his lips to mine. His tongue coaxed my mouth open, and just like that, heat was emitting from down below. It was so strong that it completely took my breath away.
Dawson released my mouth, edging his knee between my legs, opening them up once again. “Don’t ever make me chase you again, Ivy.”
His voice was almost pained, and I knew why.
This right here, was our breaking point.
There would be no going back from this.
Reaching my hands up behind his neck, I slowly pulled him down onto me, his face going into the crook of my neck.
Tears filled my eyes. “I won’t.”
Goosebumps broke out along my skin when I lowered my mouth to his ear, “I promise you, Dawson, because I don’t think I could climb out of the endless void if I ever have to leave you again.”
He said nothing; instead, he took his length and rushed to enter me again, allowing his body to make up for lost time.
Because that’s what it was.
Those six years we’d spent apart, hurting and aching, pretending we didn’t feel wrong… they were our lost years.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dawson
“So let me get this right,” my brother said, shuffling the deck of cards in his hand. “You broke up with Breanna, thank the fucking Lord, and then you went over to Ivy’s and fucked her … how many times?”
I punched his shoulder. “Shut the fuck up, I’m not giving you details on that shit.”
Emmett’s shit-eating-grin stretched across his face. Then he laughed. “Okay, but, so…Breanna was just… cool with you dumping her for Ivy? Because from what I remember from a few weeks ago, she was going fucking nuts that you and Ivy were ‘just friends.’”