Total pages in book: 82
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 78334 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 392(@200wpm)___ 313(@250wpm)___ 261(@300wpm)
I want him too much to push him away. I don’t know what this makes us. I only know that right now, with the threat pressing closer and the past refusing to stay buried, I don’t want distance.
I want him… on me, inside of me.
The robe parts further when I shift my weight, and cool air slides across my skin. It isn’t the temperature that makes my breath catch. It’s the way Cole is looking at me—like he’s been holding himself back for years and isn’t sure he can anymore.
Cole looks pained but not conflicted. His shoulders are rigid, jaw tight, eyes dark and stormy. His mouth comes down on mine hard enough to steal my breath and touch my soul. I can feel the emotion flowing between us… possession and relief and frustration all tangled together.
I gasp into his mouth as his hand slides over my breast and squeezes. My hands move to his chest, gripping fabric, dragging him closer. The robe parts all the way, and his hands are everywhere, urgent and searching like he needs proof I’m real.
“Don’t even think about telling me to stop,” he murmurs against my mouth.
“The only thing I might tell you to do is go harder or faster,” I shoot back, breathless.
Cole chuckles and kisses me again, deeper this time, and my body arches toward him instinctively, his clothing the only barrier between us. His mouth moves down my throat, slow and deliberate, teeth grazing lightly before his lips follow. Every place he touches feels amplified by adrenaline, by the fear still fading from my bloodstream and the knowledge that someone out there wants to erase me.
But here, I am anything but erased.
His mouth is on me, hot and unhurried, tracing down my collarbone to my breast, his tongue circling slowly before he draws me in.
“Cole.” His name comes out unsteady.
He hums against my skin and keeps going, in absolutely no hurry, one hand sliding up the inside of my thigh with agonizing patience.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he says, his voice rough at the edges.
“Then show me.”
That snaps whatever restraint he had left.
He stands just long enough to strip his shirt over his head and shuck his jeans, and then he’s back, all of him pressed against all of me, and I feel exactly what I do to him. I reach between us and wrap my hand around his length. I give a hard squeeze, the way I know he loves it, and his breath hisses out sharp through his teeth.
“Tessa.” A warning.
“Cole.” Not a warning at all.
He takes my wrist and pins it above my head, which has always been his answer when I push too hard, and then his fingers slide between my thighs and find exactly what they’re looking for. I’m embarrassingly wet and he knows it, stroking slowly, watching my face with an intensity that makes it impossible to look away and impossible to stay quiet.
“Please,” I manage.
“Please what?” He knows exactly what. He just wants to hear it.
“I need you. Now. Please.”
“Not yet.”
I make a sound of protest that he silences by pressing his mouth to the inside of my thigh, and any argument I had dissolves completely. His fingers keep moving, steady and relentless, while his lips drag upward with excruciating patience until his mouth replaces his hand and I stop being capable of coherent thought entirely.
My fingers curl into his hair. “Cole—”
He hums against me like he has absolutely nowhere else to be, like we have all the time in the world, and he intends to use every second of it. The vibration of his tongue makes my hips roll and pump. He responds by sliding his hands beneath me and pulling me closer, holding me exactly where he wants me, and that—the certainty of it, the complete control he takes without asking—is what pushes me over.
The orgasm rolls through me in a long, shuddering wave. I call out his name, broken and warbled, my whole body arching as he works me through every last tremor without letting up until I’m pulling at his shoulders, oversensitive and desperate.
“Okay,” I breathe. “Okay, now. Please. Now.”
He presses one last kiss to the inside of my thigh and moves up my body, and when his eyes meet mine, I shudder from the intensity. I remember how good he feels sliding into me and I’m breathless with anticipation.
Cole settles between my thighs, his hand to the back of one leg to spread me wide as he pushes in slowly.
Achingly, deliberately slow.
The sensation steals the air from my lungs but it’s not just physical. It’s a collision of past and present, regret and longing and everything we’ve lost the past five years.
He stills when he’s fully seated, forehead dropping to mine, breath uneven. “God, Tessa.”
I can’t speak and just pull him closer. I’m full… so very fucking full and I don’t ever want to feel anything else.