“I love you,” she repeated one last time, because apparently she was brain damaged and only had two phrases left in her vocabulary, but that was fine. She didn’t need any more.
Except when he still didn’t move, and she didn’t move, she found a third phrase. “Fuck this,” she mumbled, and she launched herself at him.
He caught her as if it were nothing at all, winding his arms around her as she looped hers around his neck, lifting her and holding her tight against the plane of his chest. They lingered, noses brushing. He beamed. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi.”
He surged upward and she crashed into him, and then it was just the heat of his kiss breaking the cool night air, the wet slide of his tongue and the nipping of teeth, flesh catching on the metal of her lip ring, and it was so good she could barely breathe. Her spine hit brick, and he pressed her up against it as she hooked her legs around his waist. Panting into each other’s mouths, they kissed and kissed, and forget running. This was the rush she’d been looking for, the racing pulse and energy, every atom in her body coming alive.
He laughed, bringing a hand up to touch her face, scarcely parting from her lips as he spoke. “I had a whole speech planned, you know.”
“I want to hear it.” She ground against his hips and found him hard. “Later.”
“Later,” he agreed.
Time went hazy as she lost herself in the warmth of him. She wanted to touch every part of him and have him touch every part of her. It hadn’t even been a month, but she was suddenly starving for it. Not for sex, but for him.
But sex was totally where she was going to start.
Except, out of nowhere, someone called, “Get a room.”
Adam jerked away, face flushing tomato red. Jo laughed, letting her head thunk against the wall. Jesus. For a minute there, she’d completely forgotten where they were.
“This isn’t funny,” Adam murmured. He leaned forward again to rest his brow against her shoulder. “I was about to ravage you in public.”
“And I was about to let you.”
Lifting his head, he fixed her with that gaze of his. “I never thought I’d get to touch you again.”
Something inside her went terribly soft. “Well, you do.” She placed one gentle kiss against his lips, then tilted her head toward the building behind them. “But maybe you should do it somewhere else.”
Glancing up, Adam asked, “This your building?”
“Yup.”
“Can I come inside?” And he probably didn’t mean it as seductively as it sounded, but she didn’t care. A shiver wracked through her.
“Absolutely.”
They untangled themselves, getting another comment from some asshole pedestrian as Adam set her down. On shaky legs, Jo led him to the door and up the stairs. They made it into her apartment without any additional public indecency. She closed and locked the door behind them and stayed there, facing away from him, closing her eyes and breathing.
Heat soaked into her back as he came to hover over her, static flowing with the closeness of him. She ached for contact to discharge the spark. So softly, his fingertip traced the curve of her spine.
“We are going to talk this time.” His voice was rough like sex, and her skin felt too tight, her abdomen molten.
She nodded.
“We’re going to have a reasoned, intelligent, extended conversation about what we both want from each other and how we’re going to make it happen.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m not going to let you shut me down or tell me what you think I want.”
“Totally fair.”
His tone deepened. “But if you’ll let me…” He wavered, swallowing audibly. “I’ve spent the last few weeks not kissing you. I have so much I have to make up for.”
“Oh thank God.”
Turning, she dragged him down until their mouths met again, and it was like coming home and being safe and having her sex drive jump-started right into high gear at the same time.
“I missed you,” he gasped out between kisses. “I missed you so much.” His hands were all over her, broad palms skating up and down her sides and curving around her breasts. One rose to span the width of her ribs. When his fingertips stroked the beads of her necklace, he made a choked sound. “You’re still wearing it.”
“I never take it off.”
He pulled his lips from hers, crushing her to him. It was a bone-crunching hug that wasn’t about sex at all, and the trembling need inside of her shifted, becoming something new.
It might’ve been the best damn thing she’d ever felt.
She stayed there for a long minute, arms wrapped around him just as tightly as his were around her, the side of her face mashed hard against his chest. Finally, she sighed out a humming breath. “Come on.”
She walked them backward, across the tiny room that just an hour ago had felt like a cage and was now a haven, a place where she could be herself and where she could be with him. When they reached her bed, he sat down on the edge of it, tugging her along with him. She climbed to rest astride his thighs, knees digging into the mattress on either side of his hips.
Hand over her heart, he asked, “Say it again?”
She didn’t have to ask him what he meant. Her lower lip wobbled. “I love you.”
His eyes drifted closed, his grin beatific, like he’d been waiting to hear that for the longest time. And who knew? With all his silences there at the end, maybe he had. When his eyes opened again, his lips parted, too. “I love you. Every piece of you.”
All her torn-up edges seemed to knit. Not closed, perhaps, but no longer gaping. She was held together by his presence. His acceptance of who she was.
The meeting of their mouths was softer this time, slower. He skimmed his palm down the center of her chest, tracing the edge of her breast before cupping its curve, sending showers of sparks off in her flesh. His thumb tweaked the metal running through it, and he moaned.
“Did you miss that, too?” She placed her hand over his, firming his grip.
“Would it be crass if I said yes?”
“Not even a little.”
Because really, what more could she want? A man she could kiss and talk to and laugh with and fuck. One who loved her like this.
And fuck her, but his body didn’t hurt his case one bit. She ground down on him with a groan. “I have definitely missed this.”
He was hard beneath her, the thick ridge of his cock hitting her exactly where she needed it—except not, because she needed him in her, hot and wide and filling her up.
“That reasoned discussion we’re going to have,” she panted, interrupting herself to scrape her teeth over his lip, “we’re not just putting it off to kiss, right?”
Because all these weeks without his mouth on her, without the promise of ever sliding her lips over his again, they’d been torture. But so was this emptiness, this screaming need under her skin reminding her just how long it had been since she’d been touched. Since he’d made her come.
He slipped his hands under her shirt and bucked his hips. “There are a lot of different kinds of kissing,” he conceded.
“How about the type where you’re inside me?”
He moaned against her mouth. “Best fucking kind.”
And then his hot palms were less holding her than gripping her, and she was airborne, shrieking in delight as he manhandled her onto her back in the center of the bed. Settling over her, he pushed the fabric of her top higher, kissing across her cheek to her jaw and down the column of her throat. She spread her legs and pulled him down, and when he pressed his hips to hers, she outright whined.
Shaking her head, she plucked at his shirt. She wanted so many things—wanted his cock and his mouth and the smooth flesh of his chest, muscled and warm—and she wanted it all right now.
And it hit her as he sucked at the skin beneath her collar.
She could have it. All of it. This wasn’t just a fuck and it wasn’t just a handful of weeks. Whatever way she didn’t get to have him tonight she could try tomorrow. She loved him and he loved her, and somehow—somehow they’d make it work.