Page 88 of My Rose

“I do.” I spun a pan in my hand before setting it down on the stove, careful not to make any sounds that would wake her. “Gotta go.” I ended the call before Dean could reply. He’d find out sooner or later where I’d gone, and once he did, he’d either show up or leave me to my brief moment of peace before I had to return.

A few minutes into flipping slightly burnt pancakes, unsure how the hell one side ended up burnt while another looked vastly undercooked, Rose stirred awake. I kept my focus on the pan, adding new batter while smiling down at it, watching her wrap the blanket around her naked body through my periphery. She made her way over to the opposite end of the island, sitting on one of the stools across from the stovetop.

“Are you burning it?” she asked, cocking her head as she looked at the stack of almost black pancakes.

“I’m trying not to, but I never learned how to cook.”

She giggled and stood back up, walking around the island to stand behind me. Her warmth enveloped me as she opened the blanket and wrapped it around us both, hugging me from behind.

I groaned, dropping the spatula to the side of the stove. “This batch won’t be any better if you’re distracting me.”

She kissed my back in a pattern that I imagined outlined pieces of Atlas. “That’s okay. I’m not really hungry for food, anyway.”

I grinned at the reminder of what I’d said to her before. “No?”

“Uh-uh.”

I turned off the stove and spun in her hold, scooping her up and settling her ass on the countertop. She squealed, laughing and dropping the blanket, letting it fall to her waist.

“You’re being a bad girl, baby.”

“Am I?” Her cheeks pinked over as she leaned back on the heels of her palms, pushing her perky tits up.

My cock twitched eagerly. “Fuck, yes.” I reached over to the small bowl of strawberry topping, dipping my fingers in and getting agenerous amount. “Do you want to be a good little slut for me?” She whimpered and nodded as I spread the topping along her nipples, pinching them before drawing a line down to her pussy. She gasped as I stopped right above her cunt, drawing an arrow with the red dessert, turning her into my favorite piece of art. “I bet you’re so fucking wet right now.” I pushed two clean fingers inside her, scraping my teeth against her nipple, devouring my favorite treats all mixed in one.

Her fingers twisted into my hair, pressing me harder against her. I chuckled, flicking my tongue along the swell of her breast, then moved on to the next, delivering the same treatment.

“Briggs, about l-last night—” She inhaled a gasp as I bit down crudely, marking her breast with my teeth and then sucking her strawberry-sweet nipple into my mouth. She tried to pull my head away, but between the pleasure and the way I wasn’t stopping, she finally gave up. My tongue lapped down the line I’d made, hovering right above her clit as my two fingers pumped languidly inside her tight walls.

“Let’s talk later, beautiful. Lean back more, and let me take care of you.”

She did as I said with a cute little pout on her plumped-up, swollen lips. I reached over for more strawberry topping and covered her mouth, then licked it up slowly, savoring her taste above all else. “Baby, you have no idea how intoxicated I am by you.”

She made a breathy sound through my bites along her lips. A soft touch fell to my waistband before grazing the crown of my cock, and I groaned. “You want me to fill you back up, baby?”

She whimpered more, spreading her legs as I knelt and swiped the remaining strawberry topping over her slit, then licked slowly up her center, relishing the taste of her. “In. Now,” she ordered, and I quickly obliged. Standing, I lined myself up with her entrance and thrust into her. She reached between us, gathering her arousal before pushing her fingers into my lips, the taste of her mixing with strawberries as she kissed me immediately after.

“God, you taste so good.”

Wrapping her hair around my fist, I pounded harder, chasing both our releases. Rose’s moans filled our home, echoing off the vaulted ceilings, possibly rattling the snow from the windows with the extent of her cries. Her orgasm hit her hard, her head rolling back as I finished inside her, then fell to my knees, using my clean fingers to take our combined release and running it up the length of her sticky abdomen. Heat filled her eyes as she watched me lap it up, ending on her lips. “So fucking good together.”

She had no idea where she was yet, but she was helping me break it in more beautifully than I could have ever hoped for. I told her I’d fuck her on every surface possible, told her I’d fill her up and make her mine, and I meant it.

Chapter 32

Rose

“One word frees us of all the weight and pain in life, that word is Love.” ? Sophocles

If it weren’t for the insane desire I had for Briggs every time he so much as looked or breathed in my direction, I’d think him insufferable. I’d tried to tell him I loved him several times now, but each time, he silenced me before I could get another word out. Or, really, any words out. Maybe he knew what I was going to say,and he either didn’t feel the same way—which I doubted based on the blossoming rose he tattooed on his chest, right over his heart, for me—or it was worse than that. Maybe he silenced me repeatedly because he knew and didn’t believe me. He saw that I was sointosomeone else and knew that had gone on for a while before I got to know him.

Perhaps he thought I was just caught up in the moment, losing my virginity and falling in love because I romanticized things and thought I was supposed to love the man I slept with for the first time.

I guess we were both wrong, then.

I thought one thing had always been certain in my life. I’d believed, with every fiber of my being, that August Coleman was my first love. My only love. The idealized version of him had been the love of my life for so many years in my head that Ibelievedwe could have a future, that we could be happy and so ineffably in love, almost like a fairy tale. But I’d never been more wrong in my life, and I knew that now because of what I felt for Briggs Andrews. The way his voice melted me from the inside out, the way his touch grounded me yet also sent me overboard, and the way a look from him was never simply that—it was always so much more.

He meant so much more.

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