Hold on to Hope
“Evan . . .”
TELL ME, he demanded, his movements harsh, his face in profile where the moon slanted down.
So gorgeous it was unfair.
“Why do you need to know?” It felt like a last-ditch effort that came bleeding out.
“So I can do this.”
Evan’s mouth crushed against mine.
Possessive and hard.
A desperate assault, though his hands took hold of my face like it might be a treasure.
“Tell me,” he demanded at my mouth. “Do you love him?”
There was nothing else I could do. Nothing else to say. “No.”
His lips closed over my bottom one, sucking slow, just the tip of his tongue running the flesh.
A stake of ecstasy plunged to the middle of me, way down deep in that cavern he’d left in the perfect shape of him.
I gasped in shock.
I knew he was swallowing the sound down, taking it in like a word, listening to what my heart would say.
Every inch of him tightened, his muscles flexing and bowing as he pressed me deeper against the boulder, his cock hard where it urged against my belly.
Oh God.
This was crazy.
Bad and wrong and I knew in an instant that I could never get enough.
Dizziness swept through my mind. My body drenched in need.
Desire and lust.
Something so much bigger than my consciousness swelled in the atmosphere.
Something profound and irresistible.
My fingertips raked against his bare skin, clinging to his shoulders.
“I missed you, I missed you, I missed you,” I realized I was mumbling into his kiss. Like my soul was giving him my answer. The whole, bitter truth.
He groaned around it, the sound a tremor that tumbled down my spine and took a dive straight into that pool of need.
It sloshed in a slow-slide of chills that rippled beneath my flesh.
Evan coaxed me into submission with his maddening kisses.
Reservations dislodged.
Every molecule in my hypocrite body was screaming hell yes.
Wanting what it shouldn’t have.
Demanding it.
Evan’s lips were firm and tender and imploring as they moved and tugged and nipped, and he whispered my name over and over again.
“Frankie. God. Frankie. I missed you. Can’t go on like this. Not anymore.”
My hands moved in the space between us, right over his chest. E-V-A-N.
I knew he would feel it.
Hear it.
No one had ever listened to me the way that Evan Bryant did.
His name came like a promise.
A plea.
The second I said it, he took us deeper, into that blissful madness I had never been able to resist, his tongue sweeping into my mouth to tangle with mine.
At the contact, we were nothing but a chemical combustion.
Sparks and fire and greed.
All hands and panting moans, and Evan’s eyes were wide open, tuned in to me as our worlds rocked and our bodies begged.
He spread a hand down my side and hooked it under one leg.
I opened up.
Muscle memory.
Knees going weak as he pressed me firmer to the boulder to keep me standing, so I wouldn’t crumble at his feet, so he could fit his magnificent body between my thighs.
Pinning me.
Owning me.
Torturing me as his hand splayed across my neck and down over my breast.
He slid it under the fabric to tweak my nipple, and he exhaled a needy moan when he touched my flesh.
I whimpered. Arched for his touch.
“Unicorn girl,” he mumbled against my lips, his fingers flitting across the necklace I still wore around my neck. “I’d never cut your wings.”
Oh God.
I nearly lost it right there.
Nearly came apart in his arms and begged him to make it true.
Belief just teasing at the edges of my periphery.
Emotion pulsed and throbbed and wept, and his hand was moving lower, his erection still rubbing at my shorts.
Evan had always known how to work me, how my body would succumb to his magnificent hands.
He spread me wider, palm smoothing up the back of my thigh.
Chills raced, and he was slipping his hand through the leg of my short shorts to the soaked bottom of my bikini.
He pushed the fabric aside.
My heart stampeded.
My spirit sang.
Fingers dragged through my lips, plunging in once, before they were finding that sweet spot and sending me soaring before I could even process what the hell I thought it was that I was doing.
The recklessness that he evoked.
This boy who had always possessed me in every way.
The boy I wanted to hold.
An orgasm stormed through me like the bright, blinding flash of lightning followed by the low rolling rumble of thunder.
Shattering out to touch every one of those cells that had been so on board for this.
And I was whimpering, holding on tight before my mouth was moving across his jaw, his throat, before I was pressing a thousand kisses to the scar at the middle of his chest.
I didn’t even realize I was sobbing until his hands were back on my face and prying me away, those eyes roving my face, reading me, pads of his thumbs working to gather up the moisture that was making it hard to see.