Page 95 of My Grape Crush
“Almost time to wake up,” I joke. “Come join me?”
I lift a corner of the duvet, and she climbs in, my arms banding around her. The smell of her leaves me reeling, and I bury my head into her neck, dizzy with the sudden wave of desire.Last night, we talked and talked and talked. At the crack of 3 three a.m., we finally dragged our exhausted asses (hers still tingling) into bed and conked out cold. Sleep came easy because we staked our ground rules to ride out this mess. No engaging with media, especially social media. If friends, family, or foes tried to dig for dirt, we shut them down. Dani said a fire without fuel fizzles fast, and we need this reduced to ash as of yesterday.
“Did you sleep okay?” she asks.
“Like a rock.”
“Me too,” she says. “I liked having a bath with you. It felt good getting clean together.”
Right. The bubble bath. My skin smells like coconuts for a reason. But I can be excused for a momentary memory lapse. Dani left me with a functionless brain and a quivering mass of shot nerves.
She curls into me, her fingers weaving through my hair, massaging my scalp, turning me into mush.
“Your mom called and invited us for lunch,” she says.
“At the house?”
“One o’clock.”
Uncertainty ripples through me, paranoid thoughts crowding in. To step back in there after all this time—what would it feel like?
My body tenses against hers, and Dani asks, “Is that okay?”
“Yeah. But you don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”
Dani reaches out and fingers my pendant. She asked me last night if I ever take it off. All I said was no. One day, I'll tell her how Seneca's words carried me through the rough patches. He's the father I never had.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” she says, “but I think you need me right now.”
Call that the understatement of the year. Last night, we were both caught between a helpless surge of arousal and raw, new sensations. And when her moans turned into sharp cries, and I looked at where my body entered hers, both places, I knew life would never be the same.
She’s my new world, and I can only pray that I’m hers.
“My mom really likes you,” I say. “JC, too. And Sawyer,” I add, somewhat reluctantly.
She snuggles into me, the sun reflecting off her pale skin, making her glow like some kind of apparition. “There’s this other Trenton. You might know him. His name is Rhys. What’s the verdict with him?”
“Last I heard, he wants to light you up. All day, every day.”
Dani’s hand slips under the duvet to stroke my finger, the one that went rogue. “Tell him he makes me want to do things I’ve never thought of before.”
I smirk, loving this. “As the evidence shows, I’ve thought of many things.”
Last night, her body rewarded mine with a sweet release of passion, while I technically did nothing. Hardly fair to let the woman of my dreams do all the work, as capable as she is. When I roll her onto her back, I take me with her. Her lips mold onto mine, our bodies crashing together. I want to yell out in happiness.
This is it. Pure ecstasy.
I inch lower and spread her thighs wide, settling between them. Her eyes look down into mine as if nothing in the world existed outside the two of us. I ignore the pain in my chest that isn’t from facing more ghosts but the thought of future days without her in them.
I brush my lips against her wet folds, and Dani throws back her head with a low, sexy groan.
“I love how you respond to me,” I murmur.
“It’s cause and effect,” she says, her voice mellow. “And you are one hell of a cause.” She weaves her fingers into my hair again and draws me closer to her womanhood. “I want you inside me.”
“Trust me, I’ll get there.”
No one deserves the burden of making me feel whole, but Dani makes me so much more than the sum of my broken parts. If this giddy, uncertain feeling that won’t leave me alone is what I think it is, bring it on. Even if it's a big scary space of doubt filled with no guarantees. To feel love, however brief it might be, is better than never knowing the feeling at all.
