She got to keep him.
A laugh bubbled past her lips. Adam lifted his head, turning questioning eyes on her. “Are you okay?”
“So okay.”
So deliriously, impossibly happy.
She pulled his mouth back up to hers, tasting his tongue and reveling in the sting of his teeth against her lip ring. Between kisses, they managed to get their tops off. She cursed at her sports bra and smiled at the dull thuds his shoes made as he kicked them to the floor. Their stupid grins kept getting in the way, but neither of them could seem to bring themselves to stop. When he ran his fingertips under the hem of her shorts, thumbs slotting into the hollows of her hips, she lifted up.
Naked, she spread her legs. Watched his eyes go dark and wide as he stared at her.
Then he was pushing the rest of his clothes off his hips, taking a single, slow stroke of his own curled palm around his length before resting his hand on her thigh.
When he dropped onto his elbows before her, she clenched her eyes shut tight. Threaded her fingers through his hair and held on against the breath of air he blew over slick flesh. But she still hadn’t been ready—hadn’t been prepared. His tongue was as hot and clever as it had been when he’d done this before, his lips as sweet when he pursed them around her clit, but the pleasure hit her harder, making a warmth gather deep.
Because it wasn’t just the sex, for all that the sex was a relief. It was being so close to a person again. To this man.
A bare few minutes of his mouth on her had the pressure in her belly coiling, the heat rising to the point where she drew her thighs up, tensed every muscle. Scratched at his scalp and sucked in a breath—
Only to have him draw away.
Her eyes snapped open, her grip going iron in his hair, but he shook free of it, dragging a wrist over the wetness smeared across his lips. He climbed her body like a man possessed and claimed her mouth. The hot line of his cock bobbed against her skin, the tip slick, and she pulsed helplessly around nothing, bucking upward with her hips.
“I want—” He panted, palm curling around her thigh.
“Fuck yes.”
She threw him off her long enough to get an arm flung out to the side. She pulled open a drawer and fumbled for a condom, but when she went to get on top of him the way she’d tried not to dream of doing for weeks now, he shook his head and got a hand around her wrist. Tugged her down to lie beside him until their fronts were flush, the hard points of her breasts pressed just right against the plane of his chest. He put his hand to her side as he licked his lips, darting his gaze between her mouth and her eyes.
“Like this?” he asked.
Together. Face-to-face and on even ground.
Throat dry, she nodded and leaned in.
They lay there side by side, kissing as he got the condom on. Without breaking from her mouth, he pulled her in, hitching her thigh over hips, and oh hell yes. She reached down between them to curl their hands together around his cock.
Together, they dragged the head of him over her slit, across her clit, and back down, and the moment seemed to last forever, all shared breaths and intimacy. Anticipation and love.
Then finally, she tilted her hips forward. Stared straight into his eyes as she let go. Skimmed her hand up his chest to rest it warm over his heart.
And he pressed forward.
“Jo,” he groaned as he slid home. Eyes drifting shut, he gripped her hard by the hip, and she tightened her leg where it draped over his waist. He looked to her again, and her lungs stuttered, an unbearable ache behind her ribs.
Because he’d been open for her before. He guarded nothing, where she guarded everything, but in that moment it felt like there were no walls. Nothing between them.
Gaze glowing and warm, he lifted the corner of his mouth. He touched her face and cupped her cheek.
“I never thought I’d get to have this again,” he said, and it made her eyes sting.
“Neither did I.”
“But we do. We get to—”
They got to share this. Maybe for the rest of their lives.
The words seemed to get stuck in his throat, but she heard them anyway. Bridging the bare gap between them, she captured the soft warmth of his lips. She shifted her hips.
And it was the slowest, softest fuck of her life. Probably because it was so much more. For the longest time, they rocked as one. He stayed buried deep inside her, and she’d never felt so full. So complete.
But eventually, the low heat that built with every hint of pressure against her clit overwhelmed her.
“Adam…”
He nodded, skating his hand down the length of her spine. “I’ve got you.”
Gripping her hip, he slipped a thumb between them, a single point of strength to grind against as he lengthened his strokes. Driving into her, he hit that perfect place inside and rubbed at her clit. She whined, straining.
“Yeah, baby?” He thrust in harder. “Can you come for me? Like this?”
As if she could stop herself.
As if she ever could have stopped herself for falling for this man.
When it finally hit her, she strained to keep her gaze on him, to not look away for one instant, one second. Blackness blurred the edges of her vision as she shattered. Against his lips, with all the breath that she had left, she said, “I love you.”
Following her over, he gripped her tight. “I love you.”
And she believed him.
So. That had gone about a billion times better than Adam had dared to hope it would.
He and Jo lay curled up together in the center of her bed, on their sides and facing each other, the sheet pulled up to just beneath their arms. Their legs and hands tangled in the space between them, and he had never felt so secure, so in love with another person in his life. He was here, and this was real. Everything around him bloomed in brilliant color.
Stroking her knuckle with his thumb, he stared at her. She’d bleached and redyed her hair to the roots since the last time he’d seen her, the once-blue strands past purple now and simmering into a deep magenta, warm and beautiful and just like her.
“Would you ever have said anything?” he asked, speaking into the quiet space they’d created around themselves.
“Probably.” A wry smile stole across her lips. “Earlier today I was half convinced I should drive out and set up shop outside your place.”
“I would’ve loved that.”
“I think I would’ve. Eventually.” She squeezed his hand. “I hope I would’ve. But I was scared.”
“Of me?”
Her smile wavered. “Of how much it would hurt if you said no.”
“You couldn’t honestly believe I would.”
She shrugged, and the protectiveness that’d flared up inside him that summer rose anew. Of course she could believe that of him, and worse. Her whole life, she’d practically been trained to.
Well, he’d just have to spend the rest of his life showing her she didn’t have to.
Lifting her gaze, she asked, “What flipped the switch for you?”
He chose his words carefully. “It was talking to Shannon, actually.”
She didn’t flinch. Just ghosted her fingertips against his.
His chest filled with air a little more easily.
The things Shannon had said had resonated so deeply within him. It had him tied up in knots for days. The whole time, he’d been itching to get in his car and drive, but he’d had responsibilities. He’d finished out his classes and stayed in Friday night getting all of his work done for the weekend. Then this morning, he’d gotten up and gone. Twelve hours straight across half of the Northeast and the Midwest to arrive here, at her address. To see her form retreating down the road, and it had been too much, literally watching her run from him.
So he’d stopped her, and nearly gotten decked for his efforts. Right until she’d realized who he was, and all the walls he’d been ready to set up siege against had crumbled before him.