Managed (VIP 2)
Huffing out a breath, he leans into me, his mouth open and trembling on my shoulder. I look up at the ceiling and push a shaking hand through my damp hair. My heart beats like a snare drum.
Sweaty and shaking, we remain as we are. When he stirs, the movement sends a twinge through my aching sex.
“No condom,” he rasps. “I didn’t think.”
I feel the evidence trickling along my ass. A strangled laugh escapes me. “I guess it’s a good thing we’re both in the clear and I’m on birth control.”
His fingers flex, pushing into my upper thighs as if he can’t help himself. “You aren’t upset?”
“Can’t worry about barn doors when the horse has already bolted,” I say, still dazed. “Or however it goes.”
He lifts his head, and our eyes meet. A strange shyness flutters over me. Holy hell, I’ve never had sex like this, as if my life depended on riding cock. Sex that has me so mindless with lust I forget the basics of protection. Shit, I forgot my name, if I’m being honest. The heat building in his gaze tells me he knows this.
I feel him there, deep within me, still pulsing. I give a little wiggle, and he twitches, that long dick of his getting harder.
“No one else,” he says, his voice a thick rasp.
He doesn’t say if he means for me or for him. It doesn’t matter. It’s clear there is only us now.
Still, I lick my swollen lips and respond. “Only you.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Gabriel
* * *
Destroyed. My polished armor. My stubborn resistance. My hardened heart. She’s smashed through the first two and laid total claim on the third. And I don’t feel like running.
In truth, I can barely move. Hours of coming together, resting, catching each other’s eye, then coming together again like greedy fiends who fuck as though the world is about to end, has taken its toll.
I’m replete and sweating in a tangle of Sophie’s curvy little body and the sheets that have long since pulled from the bed. She lays her head in the crook of my shoulder where she belongs, and I play with the rose-gold strands of her damp hair.
I could have lost her tonight, missed this perfection by being a prat. Gratitude swells in my chest and clogs my throat. Sophie Darling didn’t walk out on me. She gave me a chance.
“Thank you for coming home,” I tell her, unable to hold back the words.
Home. Does she realize how many times I’ve referred to wherever we rest our heads as my home? I hadn’t meant to betray myself that way, but I can’t seem to stop. I want her to know what she means to me, and yet the sensation of exposing my heart is so foreign, I find it hard to breathe as she stares at me.
But her expression goes soft, her brown eyes shinning. Relief is liquid cool along my tight muscles as she reaches up to tuck my hair back from my brow.
“You came home first.”
I didn’t have a home until she came into my life. She gave me one without hesitation, as if she’s been waiting for me all this time, knowing I was meant to be hers. I touch her cheek just to remind myself she’s real.
Her voice is a thread in the dark. “You have fading bruises on your side and all over your face.”
I don’t move. I knew I wasn’t fully healed, but I’d stayed away as long as I could stand.
“They’re faint,” she says slowly as if she’s measuring her words. “But I saw them when we were in the shower.”
Where it was too bright to hide anything.
Her hand smoothes along my side. I’m no longer tender, but the touch raises little bumps on my skin.
“Are you going to tell me where you were?” She doesn’t demand, which makes it worse.
My voice sounds like rust when I finally speak. “Fighting.”
“Fighting?” She rises up on one elbow. “Who? Where? And what the fuck?… Why?”
The horror in her eyes makes me feel small. “I grew up fighting. When I was younger, I did it for money, and because it released something in me that needed freeing.”
Her gaze darts over my face. “And you needed that release again?”
“Yes.”
“Because of me.”
I cannot lie to her. Never again. “Yes.”
She sucks in a breath, and I grab her nape, afraid she’ll go. “Because I was an idiot, Sophie, who couldn’t go back to that hotel room that night without breaking. I couldn’t let myself tell you the truth then.”
She doesn’t pull back, but instead gentles her voice. “What truth?”
The words pour out. “That I wanted you to the point of pain. That I needed you more than anything.”
A sigh escapes her, and she rests her forehead to mine. “Gabriel, I needed you too. It isn’t weakness to admit that.”