She bit into her bottom lip and held up her arms so he could pull it over her head. With his hands wrapped around her middle, he easily lifted her off the floor and guided her legs around his hips as he sat her on the kitchen counter. She leaned back, bringing his lips to her neck, where he nibbled and sucked at her throat. He removed her bra with ease and teased her nipples to stiff peaks as she tightened her hold around his waist with her legs. “Hurry, I need you.”
If her words weren’t enough to bring him to his knees, she shoved her hands down his pants, giving his cock a rough squeeze. With more control than he thought he could muster, he moved removed her fingers from around him and kissed the center of her palms.
“Please,” she said, wrenching him closer.
“I know, I know. Let me go grab a condom from the bathroom.” He took one step back from her, but she clung to his arm, shaking her head.
“No.”
“No?”
“I’m sorry. I trust you, I do. I only needed some time to wrap my head around everything.” She wiggled her hips to push her underwear down her legs. “I’m on birth control, and I’ve always used condoms anyway, but I don’t want to with you.”
He understood the implied meaning and heaved his gaze up her naked body, resting briefly on her flat stomach, her breasts, and neck marked red from his kisses, then finally her eyes, wild with want. They were his undoing. “I had a full physical before I left LA, and I haven’t had sex since with anyone but you.” His words were rushed and desperate. “I will never give you reason not to trust me. With your heart or your body.”
A sweet smile grew from one side of her mouth to the other. “I know. I love you.”
His heart ached at how much he felt for this woman. He’d do anything to have her—and anything to keep her.
She leaned back on her hands, and he gripped her hips as he slipped inside, groaning with relief. This, right here, was heaven, and he lowered his mouth once again to her breasts for another taste. He alternated between licking and biting the tender flesh there until her breaths came out in short spurts.
“Touch yourself,” he said against her neck. “I want to feel you come.”
With a sigh, she slowly inched her hand down between their bodies and did as he said, working her fingers to get herself off. When the orgasm finally racked her body, he lifted her from the counter and pinned her to the wall with one thigh around his hips, opening her up for him. He was still fully clothed, but his pants had dropped low enough that his belt buckle clanged against the wainscoting with every movement. He bit the juncture of her shoulder and neck, and she sucked in a breath before kissing and biting his ear. It was savage and sloppy and amazing. Sex with the woman he loved, there was nothing better.
His own climax climbed up his back, heat filling his veins as he released inside her, and he pressed his lips to her neck, holding her against him while his breathing slowed. She soothingly patted the back of his neck. “I missed you.”
The word didn’t encompass how he felt being away from Bronte—like a piece of him was missing, even if it had been only a few days and one hundred miles away. Unless a new word was invented, it was the only one he had to use. “I missed you too.”
Tugging on his hair so he would lift his head, she kissed him once. “You’re coming to bed and not leaving until tomorrow.”
He was happy to agree to her terms. “Yes, ma’am.”
She led Chris down the hall and ducked into the bathroom to clean up while he crawled into bed, where he promptly fell asleep.
He woke up sometime later from a movement next to him. Bronte’s head was on his shoulder, but her right arm was stretched up toward the ceiling, index finger extended. He watched her draw what looked like invisible letters.
“What are you doing?”
She startled and immediately dropped her hand, folding it into herself. “You’re awake. You must’ve been really exhausted. You were out in less than a minute.”
“Don’t change the subject,” he said with a laugh. “What were you doing?”
“Nothing.”
He rolled onto his side, resting his head on his hand. “Tell me.”
She hid behind her fingers, but he pulled them away, and she gave in with a shrug. “It’s…I don’t know. I don’t even realize I’m doing it most of the time.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, and he raised his brows.
She stared at the ceiling and gave in with an embarrassed exhalation. “I write things I remember from books. Whatever’s on my mind, I write it.”
He added it to his growing list of Favorite Things About Bronte. Number fifteen: she writes invisible quotes on the ceiling. A smile pulled at his mouth. “What were you writing?”
“Did you, by any chance, get to read anything by my namesakes yet?”
He shook his head. Lately, he was having a hell of a time getting through Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Maybe it was time to move on.