Total pages in book: 91
Estimated words: 88408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88408 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 442(@200wpm)___ 354(@250wpm)___ 295(@300wpm)
“She’s acting like everything is fine,” Lily whispered against my chest. “And I just want to scream at her that it’s not.”
“So why don’t you?”
“Because,” she said, shaking her head. “You haven’t screamed at me.”
Her hand found its way under the back of my t-shirt, and I closed my eyes at the feeling her fingers on my bare skin. Without thought, my arms tightened around her back and one hand found the hair at the base of her neck.
“I did scream at you,” I reminded her, dropping my head so that my lips were brushing her ear.
“That wasn’t even about me,” she said with a shudder. “That was everything boiling over at once.”
“You think I want to scream at you for leaving?”
“I’d want to if I was you.”
“Hell,” I murmured, my hand tightening in her hair. “I’m so fuckin’ proud of you, Dandelion. Any anger I had about you leavin’ was gone when your dad came in wavin’ that first report card around like a flag.”
“I would’ve stayed,” she whispered. “I would’ve stayed if you’d asked me to.”
“Don’t say that,” I groaned, finally losing any restraint I had when it came to her.
Both of us moved at the same time, but the kiss I’d been planning on giving her, full of frustration and need, never happened. Instead, our lips barely brushed. It was the first time I’d had my mouth on hers in so long that I couldn’t help but savor it.
“I should’ve been here with you,” she said against my mouth.
I shook my head gently and pressed my mouth more firmly against hers to shut her up. My hands were shaking as I traced her body from shoulders to thighs and back up again. She was bigger than when she’d left. Her breasts were bigger, her ass was bigger, her waist was bigger, her thighs were bigger. It wasn’t something most people would have noticed, it wasn’t a huge difference, but I knew. I’d held her before. Had carried her and grabbed her ass and had felt her pressed up against me. The experience had been something that I’d never been able to forget, and I could feel the differences between then and now.
For some reason, those changes in her body turned me on even more. It was like physical proof of all the ways we had changed since that first time I’d kissed her. She wasn’t a kid anymore. She’d been on her own and had experiences outside the bubble she’d grown up in. I knew she’d met far more interesting people than me, smarter, richer, well-traveled and yet, she was in my arms. Her tongue was in my mouth, and her nails were digging into my lower back.
She’d left and she’d come back to me, something I’d never thought would happen.
“You’re fuckin’ beautiful,” I murmured, my voice almost surprised. “Shit, I—”
“I’m the same as I’ve always been,” she said distractedly as she pushed my cut off my shoulders.
“You’re not,” I argued, helping her. I pulled my t-shirt off and closed my eyes at the feeling of her hands on my chest.
For the past week, my mind had been racing non-stop. I hadn’t been able to escape it even after I’d closed my eyes at night. But right then, feeling her soft fingers tracing my chest and belly, everything else disappeared and my mind was finally silent.
“You’re the same,” she said, leaning forward to press her lips against my sternum. “You’re exactly how I remembered you.”
“I’m not,” I argued, my hands shoving her coat off her shoulders and immediately finding the bottom of her shirt so I could pull it over her head.
“You love me?” she asked, meeting my eyes as she stood there in her jeans and bra.
“Impossible for me to stop,” I replied honestly.
“Then you’re the same,” she said with a shrug.
After that, we didn’t talk much. I stripped her slowly, discovering every inch that I’d never seen before, her belly button, the underside of her breasts and the nipples that pointed faintly upward, her hipbones and the short thatch of hair in between. I traced the curve where her ass cheeks met the backs of her thighs with my tongue and pressed my thumbs into the dimples at her lower back.
While I was marveling at all the places that I’d never before touched, she was doing her own exploring. Her hands drifted over my chest and arms, ran along the waistband of my jeans and then slowly peeled them off, gripped me through my boxers, then ran down the backs of my thighs and in between them.
Every movement was unhurried. There wasn’t a second of awkwardness or fumbling, not even when we had to pause to kick off our shoes. Instead, we just took shit as it came, unable to stop and unwilling to rush.
By the time I had her spread out below me and was rolling the condom down my cock, it felt like I had just run a mile, but still had the energy to run a marathon.