“He’s not,” I croaked through the promise. “He might be in pain, but he’s got love. So much of it.”
“I had it, too, Izzy Baby. I had it, too. But I had to let it go.” He dropped his forehead to mine, and I was sucking down his ragged breaths, breathing his pain, wishing there was a way for me to bear some of it.
But the man was bleeding from the wounds that I’d never had the power to heal.
His head rocked back and forth, his body shaking, shoulders pumping up and down.
“Izzy,” he murmured, so low, my name a needy groan.
“Maxon.” I shouldn’t have said it because it came out sounding like a plea.
“Little Bird,” he whispered, his lips featherlight where he painted the words along the length of my jaw.
A gasp left me on a breath as a riot of sensation erupted. Tingles streaked, gooseflesh rising in an undulating wave.
“So pretty,” he mumbled.
He exhaled a breath that became mine.
Our noses brushed.
Back and forth.
Back and forth.
Oh, God, what was he doin’?
Flames flickered beneath the bare caress. The man my fire, my cold body begging to come alive under his scorching touch.
I whimpered, sagging against the wall when he stroked his hands down my sides and slipped them under my dress, palms riding up the outside of my thighs.
Better question was what I was doing. But there was no reason. No sanity in the middle of this.
No logic where heartbreak and hope met.
“You are so fucking sexy.” His confession was a growl. Deep and dark. “Do you have any idea what it was like sitting across from you all night? What it was like waking up with you asleep in my chair? Like staring at the sun, knowing you’ll go blind if you look for too long, and knowing taking in that beauty for even a second would be worth it.”
He nudged forward, erasing the space between us, and his hands spread wider.
Desire raced. A flashflood of need that shivered across my flesh.
His mouth traced the shell of my ear. “Want to stare at you forever. Get lost. Take you. Possess you. How’s it possible you’re here, Little Bird? You came back to me. Feel like I’m dreaming.”
“It was you who didn’t want me.”
His hands tightened on my thighs, tugging me forward against his hard body, eyes pinned on me. “There’s never been a single day in my life when I didn’t want you. We are endless.”
That was the last thing I heard before his mouth crushed against mine. All senses failing except for the one that registered that Maxon Chambers was kissing me.
It was a reckoning.
Lightning.
A crack of thunder in the air.
I moaned a low sound of pleasure, a groan of pain.
His kiss was fevered.
A demand.
Push. Pull. Take. Give.
A promise.
An apology.
Sensation rushed my body.
This old love trying to bust free.
To climb out.
Reach for him.
Endless. Endless.
I whimpered.
“Izzy,” he raked at my mouth, his hot tongue stroking out in search of mine.
There was nothing I could do. Nothing but open to him. Our tongues met in a dance of greed.
Desperate in their play.
As desperate as our hands that began to fumble and grasp. Both of us searching for what might have been.
His hand fisted in my hair, tugging as he kissed over my jaw and down my throat.
A fever pitch.
Our bodies ignited, grappling and groaning and begging to get closer.
He licked down to kiss at the flesh that my dress exposed above my breast, and then he was palming it over the fabric, thumb tracing circles over my nipple that immediately puckered into a hard peak.
It’d been so long since I’d been touched this way. So long, and it felt so good, so right.
Urgency burned in my blood, reaching a boiling point, and I let my hands slide over his wide shoulders.
Holding on.
Fingers digging in to beg for more.
I was losing control.
This moment that was spinning out of our grasps and given to something bigger.
Sweeping me from my feet, he hiked me up and pressed me against the wall, winding that big body between my thighs.
Second nature.
The skirt of my dress bunched around my waist, and I was gasping, making all these sounds that I didn’t recognize as he rubbed against me, his hand on my breast, his fist on my soul.
He dove back into my mouth, and in the same beat, both of his hands moved to my bottom.
The man took two handfuls of bare flesh.
A spike of pleasure tore through the middle of me, and I jerked and arched, and he was pressing himself to me, the hot, hard length of him seeking my surrender. “Nothing has ever felt as good as you. Nothing. Want to get lost here, Izzy. In this body and this sweet, sweet heart.”
Oh, was that heart speeding, sprinting out ahead, and I was lettin’ him wrap an arm around my waist, the other hand slipping around the front and nudging my panties aside, fingers sliding through the throbbing flesh.