Page 76 of If You Were Mine (After We Fall 3)
I kissed her head. “Thank you. But you know what? I made it out OK. And I’m here now.”
“Yes.” She kissed my chest. Then she did it again. The third time, she left her lips on my skin. Rubbed them back and forth.
My cock stirred between us.
“Uh, are we still observing the no-touching rule tonight?” I asked as she kissed her way up my chest. “Asking for a friend.”
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“It’s after midnight,” she whispered, her breath tickling my ear. “Tomorrow is here.”
“Oh, thank fuck.” I flipped her beneath me.
She pulled her pajama top over her head and shimmied out of her bottoms while I shoved off my boxer briefs. As soon as I could get my mouth on hers, I kissed her hungrily, passionately, frantically, as if she might be a dream and I was afraid of waking up too soon. My hands sought all the places on her body they’d missed and longed to touch. My tongue stroked along all her curves and hollows. My cock grew hard and thick, aching with the need to be inside her.
She wrapped her hand around it, rubbed the tip over her clit, moaned with pleasure and impatient desire. When she slipped it down, I pulled back. If I didn’t stop and get a condom now, I never would. “Hold on,” I whispered. “Let me get—”
“Do you have to?” She reached for me again. “I want to feel you—just you—inside me.”
I groaned. “You’re killing me.”
“If you’re worried about being safe, I’m on the pill. Come on,” she cajoled. “Let me feel you with nothing between us. Even if it’s just for a minute.”
A minute. Right. As if I was going to last a minute once I got inside her. And if I did, I knew there was no way in hell I was stopping to put on a condom.
“Please,” she said softly, feathering my neck with kisses. “I need it. I need to feel that close to you.”
God, I wanted to. I wanted to share something with her I’d never shared with anybody. I wanted her to have more of me than anyone else had ever had. But this was an ironclad rule! I’d never broken it—ever. This was more than my real name or my criminal record or my family history. This was me. Unprotected. Inside her. It was personal. It was intimate. It meant climbing levels of trust I’d never shared with anyone before.
And it scared me.
She moaned, slipping just the tip inside. “Mmmmm, see? Doesn’t that feel amazing?”
Fuck fuck fuck, what was the right thing to do? This felt like a critical moment—like the decision I made would change everything. My last defenses breeched. My final wall torn down.
“Come on,” she whispered. “Jump.”
I gave up the fight, sliding all the way inside her with slow, sweet ease. When I couldn’t go any deeper, she looked up at me, and even though it was dark, I knew what her eyes said.
I trust you.
I trust you not to hurt me.
I trust you not to lie to me.
I trust you not to break my heart.
As I moved deep within her, I vowed to myself that I would honor that trust. That I would keep my promises. That somehow I would become the man she saw when she looked at me, rather than the one I saw when I looked at myself.
I just had to figure out who he was.
And how to make him stay.
Twenty-Six
Claire
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