Page 115 of When We Had Forever
With excruciating slowness, he pushes into me, in and in and in, and I whimper and arch my back, all the while holding his eyes as if he’s commanding me to. Itfeelslike he is.
He seats himself deep and stays there. A shiver tears through him and continues straight on into me.
Fuck. I could die like this. In rapture. I would welcome it.
“Am I hurting you?” he says.
I scrape together enough air to answer, even though I’m melting inside. “Just for a second. And only in the best of ways. Don’t stop.”
He makes a sound of anguished pleasure and pulls back, then pushes in again, torturing me with his exquisite self-control. I can’t help but chase him upward every time he retreats, all the while making gasping, begging sounds. I try to free my hands, try togetto him, but he holds me in place, working up to his rhythm with maddening leisure.
When he finally gets there, it’s every bit as consuming as I want it to be. Like he’s dismantling me from the inside. He releases my wrists and I clutch at him, stabbing greedy fingers through his wet hair. His breath spurts hot against my neck. And still, he never closes his eyes.
He rolls his hips, driving into me. Faster. Harder.
I moan. The room is falling apart. Or maybe I’m falling into myself and taking him with me, because as I drown in the feel of him, I know I’ve never once had anyone fill me up this way. No one has ever surrendered with me like this.
God, I’ve missed him. My whole adult life, I’ve missed him without even realizing it, and now he’s finally here.
My fingertips dig into the back of his shoulder as he pushes a rising crash of pleasure through me. I spiral inward, wound tighter with every touch. Hands. Mouth. Wet hair pressed against my forehead. The fresh, deep forest in my nose. A warm, tropical ocean, filling me up. Heat, heat, heat.
It’s almost too much, yet I wonder if it will ever be enough.
And then I’m coming apart, bursting into the darkness like a star, only he’s there to catch all the pieces, because he’s holding me tight, so tight as he makes a sound that steals all the beauty in this world and presses it into a single moment, into this one hoarse cry coming out of his mouth.
We burn together and when the flames die back and his corded muscles unlock, I lie in the circle of his arms. Blissful ripples ebb and flow beneath my skin.
“Fucking hell.” He’s limp beside me, his face pressed into the mattress, his words muffled. “You had me so convinced I was going to die without ever getting to do that.”
When I say nothing, he raises his head. His dreamy smile drains away as he catches my expression. “But...this doesn’t mean what I want it to, does it?”
A pang slices right down the center of my chest. “I don’t see how it can.” There’s no putting the pieces back together. No starting over. There never is. I’ve known that much for years.
Grayson musters a smile that can’t quite mask the desolation behind it.
“But you can ask me again in the morning.” I reach for him. “Technically, I do owe you this one last day.”
His breath hitches as I pull his face to mine.
We have sex once more, this time long and sliding and slow, slow, slow, and he looks at me the whole time again, as if he’s memorizing every lash and the exact hue of my eyes, like he’s storing up every whimpered note he pulls from my throat.
When the wave crests and I come beautifully undone, he whispers in my ear. “All this time, I’ve loved you.”
I clutch him tighter, afraid to open my mouth, afraid of what lies behind my lips.
Afterward, he closes his eyes without turning off the light. I let it be and watch him sleep. I think it’s the first time I’ve seen him like this, lost to the world, not so much sleeping as he is drifting back in time, the lines of his brow smoothed by the innocence of unconsciousness. He looks vulnerable. Trusting. Unbroken.
And I hate—hate—that I’ll have to ruin it all tomorrow.
AFTER
I wake before dawn.
At some point in the night, Grayson has turned off the lamp, and I lie in the blackness, thinking.
Yesterday broke me—sliced me open and pulled my guts out. But it remade me, too. It answered a question I’ve been asking myself for fourteen years.
I regret nothing.
