Page 23 of The Grumpy Roommate Gamble

With another reverent curse, I took her mouth and began to move in little, shallow thrusts, sinking slowly deeper as her body adjusted to welcome mine. When I was fully seated, I held there, rising up enough to look into her face.

Her hair was a tangle of curls around her shoulders, and she looked absolutely perfect against my pillow, lips swollen from mine, cheeks flushed. In the moment, I could be honest with myself. This was exactly what I’d imagined on my deployment. When everybody had been talking about what they’d do if we survived.

I had survived, and here I was, buried inside her. The luckiest son of a bitch on the planet. I had no idea what I’d done to deserve someone like her, and I was so damned grateful to be here.

“You’re fucking perfect. You know that?”

“We feel pretty perfect together.” She kissed me again, lifting her hips and urging me into motion.

We’d lost the leading edge of urgency, falling instead into a slow, savoring rhythm. I paid attention to each and every sound and shift she made, adjusting my movements accordingly todraw out this encounter as long as possible. Skin slicked and muscles ached, but I didn’t stop the slow rise and fall. Only when her head bowed back against the pillow and she gasped, “I’m close. I’m so close,” did I change the angle of my thrusts so the base of my dick would stroke against her clit. Her moans grew deeper, her body tightening around mine.

“Gabriel. I need more. Deeper.”

Shifting, I lifted one of her knees higher, pressing it back toward her chest, then I drove into her again. She cried out in ecstasy, so I did it again and again, until the headboard began to thump against the wall and those glorious tits bounced. The sight of those breasts was going to do me in. I could feel lightning gathering at the base of my spine.

“Come on, sweet girl. Come for me. Let me feel you come apart around me.”

She erupted, her body fisting around mine hard enough to yank me over the precipice, until I was blind and deaf to everything but her.

FOURTEEN

FELICITY

I startled awake sometime in the wee hours, disoriented. Some sound had roused me, and I lay there listening, straining to figure out what. A breath that wasn’t mine interrupted the silence. Not from the other side of the room but beside me in the bed I realized now wasn’t my own.

Gabe.

In a flash, it all came flooding back. The long, blissful hours we’d spent here, feasting on each other until hunger had driven us downstairs to refuel. We hadn’t been able to wait even for the carbonara, settling instead for scrambled eggs and toast. Then we’d come back upstairs and fallen on each other all over again, insatiable. I’d wondered what it would be like to have all that focus directed at me, and now I knew. It was utterly glorious. I was happy and a little sore in places I’d forgotten existed, and I’d gotten very little sleep. I knew I’d be feeling the effects of that during work today. But I couldn’t find it in me to regret a single moment. Being with Gabe had been absolutely incredible and more than worth the wait.

Thinking of everything that had passed between us, heat built low in my belly, and I wanted him yet again. I consideredturning to him, seducing him awake for more passion. But he needed sleep, too. And anyway, we had time. This wasn’t some one-time tryst. We were building something here. I felt it in my bones.

The knowledge of that left me with a sense of fizzy, effervescent excitement, like a kid on Christmas morning. I’d never felt like this before. Sex, intimacy, relationships… none of them had ever been like this. Not that there’d been that many others. But it had to be love that made the difference. Because I did love him. This gruff but kind and secretly sweet man, who’d gone to so much trouble to give me back something I’d lost.

Beside me, Gabe suddenly jerked.

“Gabe?”

He didn’t answer, his body continuing to thrash in the sheets. “No. No!”

Nightmare.

Intent on waking him, I rolled over, laying a hand on whatever part of him I could reach. “Baby, wake?—”

He surged up with a roar, and suddenly I was on my back, his forearm pressed against my throat hard enough to cut off most of my air supply. I couldn’t speak, so I groped along his arms, his shoulders, until I could frame his face. My eyes watered as I tried to gasp his name, to will him awake.

Abruptly, he went still.

Then he scrambled up and off me so fast, he actually fell off the bed, crashing to the floor in a tangle of limbs. I coughed as blessed air surged back into my lungs.

Gabe scuttled backward, away from me. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” The words almost sobbed out.

I resisted the urge to rub at my throat because I instinctively knew that would make this whole situation worse. Instead, I rasped, “I’m okay. It’s okay. You were having a nightmare.”

I turned on the bedside light and grabbed my glasses. He satback to the wall, on the other side of the room, knees drawn up to his chest. His hair stood on end, and his breath heaved.

Driven to soothe, I threw back the covers and started to go to him.

“Don’t!” The word snapped like a whip, halting my motion.

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