“No.” I grinned. “This is.” I leaned back and peeled off my shirt.
His eyes drank me in. “This is better than a cat.”
“We’re still getting a cat.” I kissed him hard on the mouth and pulled back.
“Sure, we’ll go tomorrow.” He kissed me back with a groan. “I’ll get you ten fucking cats if you keep kissing me like that.”
“They’ll call us the crazy cat couple.” I laughed.
“As long as we’re a couple . . . ,” he whispered in a serious voice, “let them.”
I nodded, not trusting myself to say anything. He pulled back, his eyes searching mine.
I kissed him again and again.
“Keaton?”
“As long as we’re a couple,” I said against his mouth, “let them call us whatever they want.”
His mouth came down hard, and I realized this was what I’d needed all along, to let go, to adopt a stupid cat, yes, but to let go and fall into Julian’s arms, to give him an “us” to fight for.
In order for us to work, an “us” had to exist.
“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Julian made quick work of the pajamas I’d brought, silk shorts came flying down my legs before I even had a chance to answer. His fingertips felt like velvet across my skin as I moaned his name.
“Mmmmm.”
Julian kissed up my neck then pressed his lips against mine. “Tell me this means this is more than a writing relationship.”
I laughed at that. “It’s never been just a writing relationship, has it?”
He swallowed and then, “Never.”
“I want to try. I don’t know how, and we’re going to piss people off, but—”
“All that matters is that I have you,” he finished, his hands roaming down my body, making me forget my own name right along with all the reasons I had hesitated.
Why had I hesitated?
This was everything.
This felt so good it was painful.
His mouth moved down my chest as he flipped me onto my back and kissed every inch of skin like he wanted to make sure that anyone who came into contact with me knew who had been there. Julian Tennyson.
I didn’t mind.
I dug my hands into his thick hair and held on as he pressed tiny kisses across my hips, bracing them with his strong hands, lifting my body up to his mouth like a feast he’d been waiting for, starving for, begging for.
His tongue was hot, lightning against my skin. A kiss on the tender flesh of my thigh, another closer to where I wanted him. With every pulse, every exhale, I felt him, needed more of him.
“Tell me you’re mine, Keaton,” Julian rasped, teasing me with a soft flick of his tongue followed by the palm of his hand. “I need to hear it.”
I moaned. “I was yours the minute you asked me to build you a fire.”
He chuckled darkly against my skin, and goose bumps erupted all over my body. Everything about him set me off. “And I was yours the minute you pulled a knife on me.”
“Enough with the knife . . . ,” I grumbled lazily as my mind tried to focus on words instead of what he was doing with his mouth, his hands, mouth, hands . . . I couldn’t keep track. It was driving me crazy, so many nerve endings firing while time stood still for us.
This is how it should be.
Happy, not sad.
Hello, not goodbye.
That’s what this was with Julian.
With Noah it would have been goodbye.
It broke my heart to admit . . . that he’d been right.
Because with Julian it was a fresh page, a new page. With Julian it said the beginning, with Noah it would have been tears because it was too close to the end.
I was close when Julian’s mouth found mine again. He hovered over me, bracing his body, staring down at me with the sort of wonder people wait their entire lives to experience.
I kissed him.
Tasted him.
Moved my body in sync with his as he slowly moved inside me like he wanted to savor the moment between us—the moment we were each other’s.
His green eyes locked on mine. “I never want to let you go.”
“Who said you had to?”
Our foreheads touched. “You feel like something I’ve searched for my whole life without even realizing what it was—the treasure you know exists but can’t fucking find.” I gasped as he thrust deeper, rolling his hips, making me come off the bed like fireworks. “Being inside you is my heaven, Keaton.”
“Mine too,” I whispered with another groan as tiny spasms grew, like little bursts of sunlight exploding between us, the world could burn down and I would stay there forever, in his arms.
Our mouths fused as I clung to him, holding him close as he moved fluidly in me like we had all the time in the world, like we could make love forever in that bed.