He was all around. His presence thick. Consuming in a way that only this boy could be. Trembling and shaking through me.
Like the first time I’d seen him.
Something that vibrated through the air that I could taste.
An omen.
A premonition.
My world about to change. For the better or worse, I couldn’t be sure.
All I knew was this man stripped me bare. Peeling back the hurt to expose all the love that’d been left there.
My lips parted, and I inhaled, and God, I was such a fool.
Because I rocked, indecision cracking underneath his stare.
“Kiss me,” he demanded again.
There was no resisting his command. My toes lifted as if he were controlling the action. Body and soul arching for him.
I set my mouth on his, our lips barely touching. The two of us just breathed in the splendor. The need and the fear.
I’d never loved anyone the way I’d loved him.
He was a fire that consumed. A strike in the night.
So wrong.
So right.
I tumbled through it, the emotion that knocked me from my feet.
Jace was right there to catch me. He grabbed me by the sides and hoisted me onto the counter. Then the man took over the fragile, tentative kiss.
With both hands cupping my face, he explored me tenderly. Passionately.
His lips soft and smooth, plush where they caught mine in soft, dizzying pulls. He nipped and pressed and sucked.
Tingles spread. Gliding across my skin.
He tucked me closer and wrapped my legs around his waist.
Heat flashed.
Fire.
Desire.
Everything I’d been missin’ for so long.
Oh God, what was I doing? But there was no stopping it. The need that blistered through my flesh. The desperation to get closer. To get lost in this man.
I started rubbing shamelessly against him, the only thing separating us our pajamas.
Part of me wished they weren’t there to keep us apart.
I needed him.
Oh, I needed him.
The love and the pleasure and the release.
Jace pulled me from the counter and started carrying me across the floor, murmuring between his frantic kiss, “I’m going to take care of you, Faith. I’m going to take care of you.”
“Jace . . . I’m—”
Scared.
Terrified.
Desperate.
I couldn’t make any of those words come from my mouth.
“I know, Faith. I know. Slow. Just . . . let me take care of you. Let me make you feel good.”
A gasp jetted from my lungs when he sat me on the edge of the big, round dining table, the air rushing between us as he tore himself away. His stare potent as he looked down at me.
My palms were planted on the table, and my feet were barely hooked on the edge.
He set those big hands on my knees and began to slowly slide them up the insides of my legs.
Chills flashed.
My insides ached. A tingly madness that surged and danced.
“Beauty,” he whispered.
Tenderly.
I almost shattered right there.
“Jace,” I begged, my back arching. Reaching for him. Trying to breach the distance that had separated us for all the years.
But how could we cross it with everything littered in the middle?
And my mind screamed out that my heart and body might be moving too fast. But I didn’t want to stop. Didn’t want him to stop. That vacant space called out to be filled.
“Please,” I whimpered.
Jace’s teeth clamped down on his bottom lip. Oh God, he looked like a plunderer when his eyes raked over me that way. As if he were measuring all the ways he was gonna eat me alive.
Ransack and devour.
My belly trembled.
How was it possible I wanted him to?
I wondered if he could scent the desire on me when his nose dropped to the flesh of my inner thigh and he inhaled, gliding up as he fisted the edges of my sleep shorts in his hands.
Quivers racked through my body as he slowly peeled them down. Cool air blasted across my skin, all mixed up with the heat of his breath.
My legs lifted as he dragged them completely free, and a sharp hiss fell from between his lips.
“You are so fucking gorgeous.”
His hands were back on my knees. Spreading me. I didn’t think I’d ever been so exposed.
“You always made me feel that way . . . like I was beautiful.”
Copper eyes glinted in the rays of the sun when they flashed to my face. “You were the only good thing I had in my life, Faith. You were the one who made me see it when the only thing I could see was the dark. My light in the dark. You made me believe in it. Beauty.”
His confession pulled and pressed and weaved.
Healing a few more of those cracks in my broken heart.
“My beast. The most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.”
I let it slip out. My own confession that staked through my spirit. Letting go of a little of the reservations. Walls slipping. Letting him see. It didn’t matter that it came with a streak of guilt painted like a scarlet A slashed across my chest.
I never forgot you.
You always held a secret place inside me.
I’ve always, always loved you.
I ached to say all those things aloud. But I couldn’t make them form on my tongue.
Instead, I stared, my gaze tracing over the magnitude of him. His wide, wide shoulders and the strength in his ripped, carved abdomen.
Lust twisted low in my belly, a pool of desire that welled, overflowed as it slipped like liquid fire across my skin.
The boy I’d once known was all man.
A picture of sheer masculinity.
His fingertips brushed through my center. An illicit gasp wrenched from my throat and struck in the air as he touched me.
“So wet. So sweet,” he murmured.
Those big fingers parted me and slowly slipped into the heated well of my body.
My walls clenched around the intrusion.
It’s been so long. So long.
I wanted to feel all of him. Wanted him to take me and love me and promise me it would all be okay.
The realization of it brought a tremble of fear shaking through my body. The questions of how I’d allowed things to get this far between us when I had no idea what direction we were going.
The only thing I could feel was my heart tipping that way. Asking him to hold it. Carefully.
I swore, Jace felt it, sensed it, those eyes so soft as he reached up and cupped my face with his free hand as he explored me gingerly with the other.
Soft pants rose from my mouth.
Everything at odds.
My need and my regret and my guilt.
They were a blaze in the room.
Amplified in the energy that thrashed and whipped in that living space between us.
“I’ve got you, Faith. Relax, baby. Let me take care of you. I won’t hurt you. Just . . . please let me. Don’t want to go on a second more without touching you.”
There was no longer any resisting.
Nothing I could do but give. On a needy sigh, my back hit the hard table.
The man lowered his big body into a chair.
Trembles rolled.
Was this really happening?
He tucked me closer to him, his hands up high on my thighs as he dragged me right up to the very edge.
That was where he had me. On the edge and tumbling over.
Falling faster and faster. Where I’d no longer be able to claw my way back up to safety.
He slipped his hands under my thighs, wrapping all the way around until he was holding me by the tops, wedging those big shoulders between them.
“Shit, Faith. Do you have any idea how many nights I spent dreaming of this? Thinking about you? Wishing I was the one who was with you?”
Oh, God, he needed to stop saying those things. But he was dipping down, running those soft, soft lips up the inside of my leg, his voice a rough murmur at my overheated skin. “You marked me, baby.”
A shiver rushed, and part of me wanted to beg him to stop, because I didn’t think I could handle this. The onslaught of emotion coming up from the depths, breaking free of the dam that’d held it back.
But it was too late. Because he continued, his lips and tongue roaming higher.
Higher and higher.
Dizziness slammed me.
An assault of need.
My hips jerked from the table in their own plea.
A dark chuckle rumbled from his massive chest. “Tell me you want me, Faith. Tell me you want this.”