His hands came to my sides as a smile shot to his face. “I guess you liked it?”
I pulled back just enough to look at him. “I loved it.”
“Even without a second verse?”
“Campbell, shut up.”
We weren’t here to discuss the merit of the lyrics. It was only about how precisely it’d made me feel. Like I was young and in love all over again.
He removed the guitar from around his neck, placing it against the wall, and then he pulled me back against him. “Yes, ma’am.”
When our lips touched, everything went absolutely silent in my mind. He’d kissed me on the Fourth, and it had been miraculous, and yet somehow, it paled to this. I hadn’t been ready then. I hadn’t been anything but tentative and unsure and terrified that he’d hurt me again. I was none of those things now.
I didn’t know what our future held. One glance at this beautiful hotel room told me that Lubbock wasn’t forever for him. He could leave at any time and take my big heart with him. But if I didn’t try, I’d regret it forever.
So, when he kissed me, I kissed him back, and I let the entire world go with it.
“Blaire,” he groaned, pulling me into his lap as he settled onto the couch. “God, I’ve fucking missed you.”
“Mmm.”
“The way you taste.” He kissed down my neck. “The way you smell.” His hands tightened on my dress. “The way you feel.”
He picked me up and effortlessly dropped me back on the couch. His body covered mine.
“Every single thing about you,” he breathed in my ear.
“Oh God.”
My legs came up on either side of his narrow hips. They tightened on him, holding him in place against me.
“Every single thing?”
He brushed my bangs out of my eyes, so he could look down into them. “Every single thing.”
I leaned forward to capture his lips. It felt like a spiral, like diving into a never-ending kiss, drawing me deeper and deeper down. And I didn’t want to stop. I wanted all of this. I wanted all of him.
The kiss morphed in the span of a breath. Suddenly, we were moving with an urgency that bordered on magnetic. As if we couldn’t even hope to pull ourselves apart.
With all the weeks of wanting and the months of orbiting each other and the years that had separated us, it all came down to here, in this place. His body pressed to mine. Our lips sealed like a promise.
But there were no real promises here.
None truly.
Just pent-up want and flushed desire and a hazy glow of need. Something inexplicable and somehow entirely basic. After all this time, falling into each other’s arms felt as easy as breathing. As easy as drowning.
He thickened in his trousers as he shifted forward. The layers of material did nothing to hide what was happening to us. The scents of arousal in the air, the wetness building in the black thong I’d put on, knowing where this night might end, and his cock hard against me.
I moaned, tugging on his shirt and trying to get closer.
And it was in this moment, as his hands sought purchase on my bare skin and his lips trailed down my throat and everything superheated to an inferno inside me, that I discovered all my anger had been misdirected. It had just been a wall I put up between us. Because if I’d given just an inch, I’d have ended up right here. Where I always wanted to be.
Hating Campbell was much easier than wanting him. So much easier than loving him.
He, the breaker of hearts, sunderer of kingdoms, and destroyer of worlds.
Because that inch I’d given had led precisely here. My heart cracked, just a small fissure, just a line that opened to a chasm. And it let him in.
I had no hope of escaping it now that he was in my life again.
“Blaire,” he whispered my name like a prayer. As if he worshipped at the throne of my unending power. As if he, too, were trapped in this moment that put me equally back in his heart.
“Yes,” was the only word I could utter.
I’d only wanted one thing more than Campbell Abbey. And that thing was impossible. And he no longer was.
He kissed his way down my front. My breasts were trapped by the black material of my dress, but he nipped at my nipples through the fabric. I forced my hips upward in delight and desire. It was his turn to groan at the feel of me against his cock.
But Campbell had never been a selfish lover. Even in high school, when he’d been my first, he’d wanted to be sure that I enjoyed it as much or more than he did. He was never, ever like the other boys who offered so little and took so much. Only in the end, of course.