I run my hands freely underneath his suit coat. We have a mountain of clothes between us and I’m desperate to get them off. I want that the hair-roughened skin against my more delicate frame. I want to run my tongue over those hard muscles and take the hardest, velvety part of him into my mouth, into my body, into me.
“We need a bed,” I whisper throatily against his mouth.
He groans and tightens his hands around my breasts one more time before lifting me back onto my side of the vehicle. With exquisite care, he reaches over and buckles me in. Satisfied that I’m secured, he reaches a hand up to my face and brushes my hair back. “I love you, Eliot Masters. I still love you.”
Water drips down my face. “If you want me to stop crying, you can’t say those things to me.” I clutch at his hand and presses waterlogged kisses into his palm.
He releases a small huff of laughter. “I guess you’ll cry a lot then.”
“Will you cry if I tell you I love you back?” I nuzzle my cheek into his hand.
“Maybe. Why don’t you give it a try?” The evenness of his voice is an effort.
“I love you.”
He doesn’t cry, but his eyes soften toward me and love shines through; better than tears in my opinion.
Knox puts the vehicle in gear and heads downtown to the hotel. We get there, but I don’t remember the trip. All I know is that I can touch him again, feel him, breathe him in.
That he’s mine again…and forever.
•••
“I feel…discombobulated,” I admit as we wait for the hotel elevator. People stare at us. I suppose we do look a sight. My veil is askew and Knox’s jacket drapes over my shoulders.
“I told Matty that’s how I felt. Thick headed and muddled. We concluded it’s how quarterbacks must feel when they’re sacked.” He ushers me onto the elevator.
“So we’ve gotten sacked by love?” I snort. It’s corny but sweet, and totally Knox. At the core, he’s a romantic. The man saved himself for the right girl and somehow, I’m her. All my life, I’ve never been anything but Jack’s sister. To Knox, I’m the person he waited for his entire life.
“Yeah, but we’re never saying that shit again.”
I hide a smile. At least now I have something to torment him, and Matty, with. Sacked by love! How hilarious. The elevator stops at the fourth floor and Knox leads me to our room.
My humor turns quickly to something else, because the minute the door of the hotel room closes, Knox has me up against the door. His hands shove my jacket off. His mouth fastens to mine. We each toe our shoes off and leave them haphazardly in the entryway. His jacket gets tossed onto the sofa as we pass by it.
He pulls me toward the bedroom, not once lifting his head. We kiss like the world will end tomorrow. Like we haven’t seen each other in years. Like he’s a soldier returning from an endless deployment.
We kiss like we love each other and don’t know how to express it in words, only in touch. His tongue works against mine in ways both fevered and reverent. I can’t imagine kissing another man. I don’t want to. This taste, this touch, this tenderness is all I will ever want or need.
In the bedroom, we tug at each other’s clothes. Our mouths separate so we can get rid of his suit coat.
“Nice.” Knox waggles his eyebrows as my skirt comes off with one tug of the bow. We both pull off my sweater and bra until I’m in nothing but a pair of pink panties.
He pushes me onto the bed. “I’ve missed your hot body,” he says before lowering his head to pay homage to one very erect nipple. The other nipple gets plucked and tugged by his left hand while his right makes quick work of the buttons on his shirt.
We both groan when his hand finds its way between my legs.
“I love how wet you get for me,” he mutters against my breast. “Wet and hot.” He sinks one finger inside me and I nearly expire right there. “Wet and hot and tight.”
“It’s been so long.” Three weeks has been three years, he’d said; right on the money.
“Yes,” he starts to dip lower, but I grab his shoulders.
“What is it? That time of month?” He looks anguished and I have to stifle a laugh.
“No. I need you inside me. Now. Because it’s been so long.”
He understands. I see it in his eyes, the way they darken and become hungry. Well, hungrier.
He pushes to his feet. As his hands go to his waist, I suck in my lower lip in excitement. He's so beautiful and I pause to take it in. Everything about his frame speaks of power and strength, from the width of his shoulders to the massive span of his arms. But there’s vulnerability, too, in the surprisingly narrow waist, accented by the hard obliques, and centered by the slabs of rectangular muscles outlining the dark hair arrowing down to the heavy shaft that bobs eagerly in the air as Knox steps out of his pants. He shrugs off his shirt, removes his socks, and then stands motionless before me.
I run my eyes over every inch of him once, and then do it again. It’s hard to believe that all this goodness is mine.
“Like what you see?” he mocks gently.
“Yes, very much so.”
“My turn,” he says and reaches for me. I lie back and let him remove my panties. He reaches between my legs and strokes me lightly, teasing me even after I told him I could not wait. “You’re fucking gorgeous, Ellie. Fucking gorgeous.”
He lowers himself between my legs and runs his big hands along my ankles to my knees, then to my inner thighs, until his thumbs meet at my sex.
“You’re so pretty down here. Pink and wet.” He leans forward and runs the flat of his tongue from my clit to my pucker and back again. “And you taste like a fucking dream.”
“Please, Knox.” I’m not too proud to beg. “I need you.”
His fingers tangle in my curls as he continues to lap between my legs as if I’m not almost dying for the want of him. I dig my fingers into his hair and tug. He pushes his shoulders between my legs, spreading me out in an intensely vulnerable way.
“I want you to come on my tongue, Ellie.” His lips move against my skin and even that contact is so erotic I lift my hips to seek out more. “Every night we’ve been apart, I dreamt of you. I had your taste in my mouth and your scent in my lungs, but it would disappear when I woke. Now that I have you…” He pauses to curl his tongue around that throbbing bit of flesh at the top of my sex. “I want to eat you until I coat my throat with you.”
Above him, I shudder in full surrender. His words are nearly as erotic as his touch. I give myself to him, to his clever fingers and his adventurous tongue. He works me over for what seems like hours, one languorous caress after another, until I come in a flood, my toes curling into the air and my thighs trembling against his shoulders.
He surges upward then, his mouth glistening with the evidence of my orgasm. Between his legs his shaft hangs heavy, and the tip of it is wet with his own excitement.
I reach for him and wrap my fingers around that stiff cock. He allows me to guide him to my center. My release has left me swollen, and despite the wetness he coaxed from me, I’m tight against his generous girth.
His lips pull back in a hiss as I suck him in slowly. He lets me set the pace this time, and I treat him with the same studied deliberateness he inflicted on me.
“Aww, fuck, baby,” he rasps out. “You feel so good. So good.”
He falls forward, bracing both arms next to my head. The languid slide of his body against mine is exquisite. And because I'm not afraid this is the last time I'll ever have him, I take my time reacquainting myself with his very perfect physique.
Each push forward and each retreat is slow and deliberate so that every tiny movement of his shaft inside me registers. The head drags against the softest, most sensitive tissue, eking out more pleasure than I think possible.
I rub heels against his calves, the wiry hair scratching against the soles of my feet. His shoulders tense under my hands and his biceps flex with each measured thrust inside my body.