Page 101 of This Beautiful Lie
opening
aching.
A part of me I thought had died long ago reached for him, drawn forward by the quiet way he accepted me… like I was something worth being patient for.
I pulled him closer, my lips brushing his collarbone, tasting the heat of his skin. He let me explore, let me settle back into the want that had scared me only moments ago.
Then I pulled him down on top of me and kissed him, not tentative this time, but wanting. Certain. The kind of kiss that told him exactly where my body wanted this to go.
His answering groan vibrated against my mouth.
That was all it took.
He lifted my hands gently above my head, pinning them with one large palm as he moved down my body, peppering kisses along my breasts, my stomach, my hips—each touch devastatingly slow, like he wanted me to feel every second of his intention and stop it if I wanted to.
I didn’t want it to stop. In fact, I lifted my hips in a helpless offering, chasing the heat of him before it even reached me.
When he lifted my thighs to his shoulders, my breath hitched. I felt his breath first—hot and cool all at once—then an exhale just before his tongue touched that aching bundle of nerves. My entire body jerked. His mouth moving with aching precision. Slow at first, savoring, like he wanted to memorize me from the inside out.
“Dean—” I gasped, my hands flying into his hair, gripping hard, pulling him closer like I couldn’t stand even an inch of distance. “Please?—”
My thighs trembled around him as he picked up speed, tightening helplessly as the pleasure built too quickly to hold. The world narrowed to the heat of his mouth, the rhythm of his tongue, the steady grip of his hands anchoring me when my body threatened to lift right off the slick stone. Heat unfurled slowly, rising in waves that crashed harder with every breath I dragged in. I couldn’t think. I was falling—fast—straight into something I had no hope of stopping.
And then I shattered.
Pleasure tore through me in waves so sharp my vision blurred. He stayed with me through every tremor, his hands anchoring me, until my body sagged against the stone, limp and spent.
Then he slid up my body, covering my mouth with his in a kiss that took my breath away.
I wrapped my arms around him and whispered into his ear, “I’ve never met a man like you before, Dean Weston.”
His breath caught—just barely—and then he buried his head against my shoulder.
“Good,” he murmured, the whiskers of his jaw scraping against the skin of my neck. “I don’t want to be like anyone you’ve ever known.”
He didn’t say more.
He didn’t have to.
But there was something about his words that rattled something loose inside me.
I wrapped my arms around him and breathed deep, kissing every bit of skin my mouth could touch. I’d never experienced anything like this before. Passion and trust that released a part of me I’d been holding onto for way too long…
The part of me I’d been holding inside since I was a five-year-old girl.
The part that felt small and unwanted, that believed love was meant for others but not for me.
I’d carried that hollow place like armor, convinced it was safer not to let anyone inside.
But somehow, Dean reached it anyway. Not with grand gestures or promises, but with steady hands, with a look that stripped me down to the marrow, with the quiet way he made space for me, even when I didn’t know how to take it.
And in the moments when I should have pulled away, I leaned in.
In the moments when I should have remembered this was all a lie, I forgot.
He didn’t just touch my skin—he touched the girl who had been left behind. The girl who thought she was too much, too loud, too broken. The girl who hadn’t dared hope for more than survival.
And now she was wide awake.
