Page 83 of Love What's Left
“No?” I ask warily.
“You’ll drown.”
“You’re adorable.” I suppress my smile. “I’ll come up for air when I need it. But if I do die in oral service to my wife, put it on my headstone. Because I’ll be going out a goddamn legend.”
“Are you sure you’ll be okay?”
I smirk, fill my lungs once more, and sink until I have her under my mouth, exactly the way I want her.
After twenty seconds of sucking and flicking, her hand leaves my hair. I look up through the water to find Sydney with her hand clamped across her mouth and watching me. Ten seconds after that, she unhooks her ankles from the ladder and drapes them over my shoulders, bucking under my mouth.
God, I missed this. I know the shape of her by feel. Know every intimate frill and petal. What makes her scream and what makes her sob. I ease two fingers back inside her. My left hand squeezes her ass cheek, spreading her so I can graze that sensitive opening with my fingertips.
My cock aches for her, but I need her to come first.
Even through the water and her self-imposed muzzle, I hear her stifled cry. Her bikini top has fallen down farther and drapes around her rib cage, her breasts wet and heaving with every one of her ragged breaths.
She comes before my lungs even start to burn, her abdominals clenching rhythmically when she orgasms, and her thighs clamping around my ears.
When I come up for air, she lowers her hand from her mouth with a heavy-lidded smile. I kiss her. I kiss her and kiss—completely lost. One of my hands roams her body, and the other releases my aching length, notching myself at her entrance.
I breathe against her mouth, “I love you, Sydney.”
Her hands clutch my shoulders, but she stops moving, utterly, devastatingly silent in her reaction to my words.
And I realize what I did. And remember what this is to her. “Sorry. I forgot you . . . forgot me.”
“No. Don’t a-apologize . . . I . . .” She tries to shift away to see my eyes. “I—” She makes a growling sound of frustration. “I-I’m sorry.”
“I don’t love you. I’m sorry.”That’s what she said when I told her who I was to her.When I kissed her in the library, it was“I like you.”
It’s not fair to be disappointed by something I already knew. This isn’t a rejection.
I don’t allow her to look into my eyes. I don’t have control over the muscles in my face, yet. If she sees that pain, it’ll make both of us feel like shit. “I said ‘I love you’out of habit and made it weird. Now you’re making it weirder.” I force my voice to sound teasing.
A small dent forms between her eyebrows, and she shakes her head. She wanted something fun to replace her memories of trauma, and I tried to turn it into some heartfelt expression of feelings.
She blowsout a small breath, then moves subtly against my still painful hardness.Right. Because we were in the middle of something, and she’s not the one suddenly drowning in grief.
If there’s anyone who should know the difference between making love and fucking, it’s me. She wants to get off. There’s nothing wrong with that.
I itch to dive into a bottle. Bourbon. Tequila. I’d take a fucking bottle of mouthwash. Instead, I slap her clit with my dick. “You’re not due for your birth control shot for another month, but if you want me to use a condom, we’ll have to go to the bedroom.”
“Here. Now. I—I trust you . . . Gabriel.”
I almost allow a bitter laugh to escape, but I push it down before it becomes more than a thought. This moment has no room for me to be an entitled ass.
But,come on.She doesn’t love me, but, for the first time in our lives, she believes in me. Eight years of sobriety wasn’t enough to earn it the first time. I had her love, but never her faith in me.
Now I have her trust, but not her love. It’s funny in a twisted, tragic way.
I don’t plunge inside her yet. I need to get her out of the water. She can’t have the first sexual experience she remembers with me hurt from saltwater friction. She doesn’t understand what she’s asking for.
With a tug on her hips, I pull her off the ladder and flip her around, then lift her until she’s torso-down on the edge of the pool with her ass out of the water. Easy enough. Accessible, yet still guarded from any prying eyes.
With my feet braced on the rungs, I pull her bottoms down to her thighs, line up, and hold on to the railing for leverage. “Reach down and play with your clit. You’ll have more fun that way.”
There. That sounded like a man nowhere close to dissolving into romantic drivel. We’re two friends with benefits about to use each other’s bodies for a good time.
