Page 74 of A Lifetime of Afters
In my mind, I called it the darkness. It kept him up late every night, tossing and turning when he finally succumbed to sleep. One night he woke me up, grunting and crying out in his sleep.
He didn’t seem to remember it the next morning.
Then last night, surprisingly, he went to bed much earlier than usual.
Hours later, when I carefully slipped into bed beside him, he woke up immediately and reached for me.
“Hey,” I whispered. “Sorry to wake you.”
“Noelle,” he whispered, rolling me under him, nudging my thighs with his knee. “Let me in, baby.”
I parted my thighs around his lean hips.
He found my entrance and slowly worked his way inside, his eyelids fluttering shut. Holding himself up on his elbows, he pressed his forehead to mine, whispering my name like a prayer.
This Hawkley, I hadn’t met yet. The urge to soothe, to comfort, rode me hard. I stroked the length of his back. Pressed my body to his. Tipped my chin up to dust his scruffy jaw with kisses until my body accepted him.
With his hands on either side of my head, he rolled his hips, nudging the secret spaces deep inside me.
My eyelids fluttered shut.
“So sweet.” he pressed closer and swiveled his hips, delivering delicious friction to my sensitive flesh. His sweet lips worshiped my closed eyelids with gentle kisses.
His body quaked. He needed me.
I spread my thighs wide, drawing my knees up to hug his ribs, my feet curved around on his back, my hands flexing over the muscles in his strong shoulders.
Whispered words of adoration fell from his lips as he sought to bury himself deeper, and he rubbed his scruffy cheek against mine.
“Too good for me,” he murmured against my mouth, “but I’m keeping you anyway.”
“Hawk?”
Covering my mouth with his, gently licking inside, his tongue begged entrance I would never deny as he kept up his maddeningly slow pace.
“Shh,” he soothed, his thumbs rubbing circles over my temples before gently closing my eyes. “Don’t speak. Just feel me the way I want to feel you. To remember. To hold this memory instead of-”
My mind raced. Instead of what?
“Stay with me, sweetheart,” he urged, covering my mouth again and again, licking, nipping, tasting, teasing.
Joining.
How long I’d dreamed of this.
How much sweeter and deeper and sadder and more intense than I imagined. Beautiful. Exquisite. So thankful I didn’t know. How would I have survived if I’d known what I’d lost?
He was my missing piece.
My missing peace.
The one my soul called for, the one my heart ached to hold, to heal.
To love.
His fingers tightened in my hair as he reared up over me, his own thighs spread wide as he strove to eliminate the space between us, demanding my response, groaning as I clenched around him, giving him what he wanted.
“Noelle… Noelle,” he murmured against my mouth as I came down, one hand gliding down to capture my hip as he rocked harder, chasing his own release. “My good girl, my sweet girl, my girl, my girl, my girl-”
