Her fingers tremble holding the lips open. Her head thrashes against the tiles. All the while her hips gyrate into the spray desperately, her rhythm uneven and broken with her desire. I need to taste that desperation. I drop the showerhead to the floor, not bothering to turn it off before I bend at the waist and pull her clit into my mouth.
“Bristol,” I groan against the plump flesh. “You taste . . . Fuck.”
I shove her fingers aside, spreading her as wide as she’ll go, nipping at the lips with my teeth, slipping my tongue inside.
“Ahhhh.” One of her hands clutches my shoulder, the other grabs my head, pressing me deeper into her rocking hips, deeper into her sweetness. Her taste intoxicates me. I hook her legs over my shoulders and devour her, my head bobbing furiously between her thighs. I want my mouth right here waiting to receive her when she comes. I take her nipple, rolling it between my fingers while I continue licking and sucking and supplicating at her altar.
She comes, shattering against the wall, shoulders shaking with dry sobs, her thighs trembling on my shoulders. I drink from her like a fountain. I’m thirsty, zealous. She claws the skin off my back, but I don’t care. I want her wild, and the pain of her unleashed passion is worth it. I want her unhinged. I want her to feel what I’ve felt every day since we met. I’ve dreamed of having her a million times, and when she jerks and weeps and writhes under my hands, my name coming to life and then dying on her lips, I finally do.
Chapter 23
BRISTOL
OBVIOUSLY I’M DEAD.
I can’t feel my body and a dark angel hovers over me, so this must be heaven. The fluffy white duvet covering my bed is a cloud at my back.
“Bristol, baby.” Grip’s gruff voice reattaches me to the present, to the memory of what just happened.
Me, the queen of DIY orgasms, just came twice in the shower without a dick or a vibrator, or even at my own hand. Unless you count the massaging showerhead as vibrating. I try to speak, but my throat is scratched out from the hoarse screams Grip took from me.
“Yeah?” I finally croak.
“Before we do this,” Grip says, a tightness around his eyes and his mouth. “I need you to believe I would never step out on you. I—”
“Grip.” It’s my turn to hush him, resting my finger against his lips. “You don’t have to explain. We weren’t together.”
Anything else he would say stifles in his throat when I stroke him with a tight-fisted, steady rhythm.
“You were saying?” I whisper, lowering my head to suck on his nipple.
“Bristol, I’m not going to last long.” His head drops. “Please don’t take that as a sign of how it will always be, but watching you come in the shower has me halfway there already.”
A shaky laugh breaks up his words.
“I’ve waited so long for this.” The laugh dies, giving life to a tenderness in his eyes that pries my heart open another inch. “I’ve waited for you.”
He pushes my damp, tangled hair back from my face, his touch rough and reverent.
“I’ve thought about this moment almost every day since we met. Not just the sex.” His smile is so beautiful it literally hurts to look at it knowing it’s for me. “I mean, yeah, of course, the sex. But the first day I met you, I wondered what kind of man it would take to win you. I wondered if I could be a man like that.”
I slowly shift, nudging his shoulder until he’s on his back and I’m looking down at him. I kiss a hard pectoral muscle and dip my head to lick between the ridges of his abs, his sharply indrawn breath making me smile against his skin.
“And what kind of man are you?”
His expression sobers, his eyes a mesmerizing night I lose myself in.
“The kind who would do anything to keep you.” He brushes a thumb across my cheekbone. “Be sure because I won’t let you go after.”
I bite my lip to keep the tears at bay. He has no idea what it means to hear him say that. For the girl who had to beg for scraps of affection, for attention from the people she’s loved the most, hearing him say that sets my fears free. All my life I’ve been the chaser. Chasing my parents’ approval. Chasing my brother’s love and friendship. I went to extremes to make them notice me, to make them love me.
I was right to be cautious. This heart of mine that has no borders, no bottom, no ceiling, would be crushed by the wrong man.
I could easily end up a shell bent to his will and settling for leftovers and reheated affection, but Grip is not the wrong man. He may be the only man I can trust with a heart like mine.
And I finally do.
“I’m sure.” I rest my chin on his flat, hard stomach, reaching up to trace the bold bones of his face, the soft lips and thick, curling lashes. “Are you sure? I’m not like other girls, Grip. You have no idea.”