“No.” She shakes her head furiously.
“Tatum, don’t make this difficult.”
She pulls my hand and leads us to the stairwell.
I pull back, stopping her. “You really feel like trucking up eighteen stories?”
“If I get in that elevator, you’ll leave me.” Her voice breaks, and so does whatever was holding my heart together. “I just want you to stay. Please stay.”
“You’re leaving in—”
“Two days. Please, please just stay,” she begs.
“Get in the elevator,” I try to redirect us.
She yanks her hand back. Then I hear a gasp and look over my shoulder.
“What?” I snap at the bitches looking at me.
When they look away, I look back to see Tatum opening the stairwell door.
What the fuck? I think as I follow her.
When I open the door, I hear her little feet padding up the stairs. It’s loud and echoes.
I take them two at a time, knowing damn well she’s going to tire and not wanting her stuck in this stairwell with God only knows who else in here.
I don’t fucking care that when she’s in New York, I will have no way to stop Legs from making shitty choices, but I will be damned if another woman I love gets killed on my watch.
When I catch up to her, she looks over her shoulder at me, tears running down her face.
“Don’t do that, Tatum.”
Once on the landing, she turns and throws her hands in the air. “I can’t help it! I can’t, and I don’t want to. I’m a logical person. I am. I know when I came to you... I didn’t expect, not in a million years, to fall in—”
I grab the back of her head and kiss her hard, stopping the words. I can’t hear them, and I can’t un-hear them. The visual in the letter, I got rid of them a hundred times, but words spoken, they aren’t as easy to throw away.
Her tongue strokes mine, and I groan, pushing hers back and licking deeper in her mouth. I then grip her ponytail with one hand, while the other is on her ass as I lift her up. Her legs wrap around me as I push her back against the wall.
She reaches between us, pulling wildly at my shirt, and then she pushes her hand down my pants, gripping my rock-hard erection. Then I yank up her cotton skirt as she guides me against her silky panties, then pushes them aside and rubs my cock against her heat.
I thrust into her soaked pussy, and she throws her head back. I catch it before it hits the wall.
“Careful,” I growl, thrusting fully into her.
“Oh, yes,” she cries, grinding against me.
Her pussy is so tight it’s almost painful, but I don’t give a fuck as I thrust in and out of her with the fierceness of a man possessed, and I am... by her.
My balls tighten, and I feel her contract around me, squeezing my cock like a glove, as I fuck her harder, faster, until I feel white hot lightning shoot down my shaft. I try to quickly pull out so I don’t come inside her.
“Don’t,” she says, thrusting forward and stopping me. “I want anything I can get from you. I want your come. I want it all.”
Unable to resist, I thrust deeper than ever before and jet off inside her.
Both panting, both sweating, both trying to control a kiss, I slowly pull out and set her down on her feet.
“Don’t leave me. Just two days. Please, that’s all I ask.”
I nod.
Halfway up the stairs, she slows down.
I squat. “Get on.”
“You can’t—”
“Get on,” I interrupt.
I hike up the stairs with her legs wrapped around me in a different way than I am accustomed to with her. Her arms around my neck; her lips there, too. She kisses me the whole fucking way up, and it makes me feel like I’m walking on a fucking cloud.
Chapter Twenty - Five
A man of few words, but one who stands by what he says. That is Michelangelo Mazzini. True to my asking, he stayed the last two days. My body is deliciously sore, and my heart is so full it’s overflowing.
Somehow, we did it. We managed to finish the book, our secret game of sexual Mad Libs between our real-life game of sexual gratification. Both morning, I woke up to a new page turned down, or finished soaking in the bath to find Angelo writing.
In fleeting times, we must remember what we have come to cherish. Annie, you are part of me in a way I never thought possible. I am a broken man, shattered really. Yet, you take all of these pieces of me and find a beauty in the mess.
Annie, my beautiful Annie, your soul is bright white, a light almost blinding. In our time together, you have been something to look forward to. I don’t remember a single time in my life, or even in my career, when I have had such anticipation for anything like I do with you.