My palms were planted on the table, and my feet were barely hooked on the edge.
He set those big hands on my knees and began to slowly slide them up the insides of my legs.
Chills flashed.
My insides ached. A tingly madness that surged and danced.
“Beauty,” he whispered.
Tenderly.
I almost shattered right there.
“Jace,” I begged, my back arching. Reaching for him. Trying to breach the distance that had separated us for all the years.
But how could we cross it with everything littered in the middle?
And my mind screamed out that my heart and body might be moving too fast. But I didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want him to stop. That vacant space called out to be filled.
“Please,” I whimpered.
Jace’s teeth clamped down on his bottom lip. Oh God, he looked like a plunderer when his eyes raked over me that way. As if he were measuring all the ways he was gonna eat me alive.
Ransack and devour.
My belly trembled.
How was it possible I wanted him to?
I wondered if he could scent the desire on me when his nose dropped to the flesh of my inner thigh and he inhaled, gliding up as he fisted the edges of my sleep shorts in his hands.
Quivers racked through my body as he slowly peeled them down. Cool air blasted across my skin, all mixed up with the heat of his breath.
My legs lifted as he dragged them completely free, and a sharp hiss fell from between his lips.
“You are so fucking gorgeous.”
His hands were back on my knees. Spreading me. I didn’t think I’d ever been so exposed.
“You always made me feel that way . . . like I was beautiful.”
Copper eyes glinted in the rays of the sun when they flashed to my face. “You were the only good thing I had in my life, Faith. You were the one who made me see it when the only thing I could see was the dark. My light in the dark. You made me believe in it. Beauty.”
His confession pulled and pressed and weaved.
Healing a few more of those cracks in my broken heart.
“My beast. The most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.”
I let it slip out. My own confession that staked through my spirit. Letting go of a little of the reservations. Walls slipping. Letting him see. It didn’t matter that it came with a streak of guilt painted like a scarlet A slashed across my chest.
I never forgot you.
You always held a secret place inside me.
I’ve always, always loved you.
I ached to say all those things aloud. But I couldn’t make them form on my tongue.
Instead, I stared, my gaze tracing over the magnitude of him. His wide, wide shoulders and the strength in his ripped, carved abdomen.
Lust twisted low in my belly, a pool of desire that welled, overflowed as it slipped like liquid fire across my skin.
The boy I’d once known was all man.
A picture of sheer masculinity.
His fingertips brushed through my center. An illicit gasp wrenched from my throat and struck in the air as he touched me.
“So wet. So sweet,” he murmured.
Those big fingers parted me and slowly slipped into the heated well of my body.
My walls clenched around the intrusion.
It’s been so long. So long.
I wanted to feel all of him. Wanted him to take me and love me and promise me it would all be okay.
The realization of it brought a tremble of fear shaking through my body. The questions of how I’d allowed things to get this far between us when I had no idea what direction we were going.
The only thing I could feel was my heart tipping that way. Asking him to hold it. Carefully.
I swore, Jace felt it, sensed it, those eyes so soft as he reached up and cupped my face with his free hand as he explored me gingerly with the other.
Soft pants rose from my mouth.
Everything at odds.
My need and my regret and my guilt.
They were a blaze in the room.
Amplified in the energy that thrashed and whipped in that living space between us.
“I’ve got you, Faith. Relax, baby. Let me take care of you. I won’t hurt you. Just . . . please let me. Don’t want to go on a second more without touching you.”
There was no longer any resisting.
Nothing I could do but give. On a needy sigh, my back hit the hard table.
The man lowered his big body into a chair.
Trembles rolled.
Was this really happening?
He tucked me closer to him, his hands up high on my thighs as he dragged me right up to the very edge.
That was where he had me. On the edge and tumbling over.
Falling faster and faster. Where I’d no longer be able to claw my way back up to safety.
He slipped his hands under my thighs, wrapping all the way around until he was holding me by the tops, wedging those big shoulders between them.