Page 103 of The Marriage Deal
“Tell me what you need.” His hands roam my body, stoking the flame that just keeps burning hotter for him every day. Every time he has me.
“You.” The sound of his rumbled pleasure, like a dark growl, has yearning spilling in the innermost depths of me. I speak against the pulse that flutters quick under his skin, “I need you.”
“You have me.” His lips drift over mine. He kisses me soft and slow and soul deep.
I spread my legs wider, inviting him inside without words. His hands move from my waist to cradle my face. Finally, he invades. But the invasion is agonizingly slow, not because it doesn’t feel good—but because it feels like a sharp claw closing around the already tender organ that is my heart.
I need him to move faster.
I try to shift my hips, to urge his thrusts deeper, harder, faster.
One hand moves from my face to cradle the back ofmy head. With his arms around me like this I feel small and safe and…cherished.
He pulls back to thrust slow. I feel every inch of him invade me.
My breaths quicken. I think I’m panicking.
I need him to move faster.
This doesn’t feel like fucking. It doesn’t feel like sex.
This feels like he’s making love to me.
“Briggs…” I plant my hands into his chest, needing space. Needing—I need to remind myself that this isn’t real. I can’t do that with him like this, slow and steady and so fucking… “I can’t?—”
He freezes above me, rooted inside me. “Lilah?”
The sound of my name on his lips like that hurts. It’s filled with emotion I have no claim to. Not really.This isn’t real.
I slam my eyes closed against the tears that hover.
“I—” I try to swallow the bubbling emotion that threatens to boil over and fail as a sharp, strangled sob bursts from between my lips. It’s the dam that loosens the floodgate, literally. The first tear falls, and a torrent follows.
“Lilah?” There’s fear in his voice now. “Have I hurt you? Talk to me?”
His worry only makes my tears come faster and harder. I don’t want him to think he’s hurt me. I’m the one who has hurt me. I’m the one who let my heart get involved in a game I knew it didn’t have a hope of winning.
I’m the fool here.
“This isn’t what we do. Slow and soft like this—it’s not—” sob, “what we do.”
“Lilah?”
“We fuck Briggs and this—this feels like love. It feels like everything I’ve began to feel for you even though I know I shouldn’t. I’ve been trying not to…” Gosh, the tears just won’t stop. “I don’t know how it happened, but it happened. I’ve fallen in love with you.” I wail the words into his chest. “I love you. I’m so sorry…”
“Lilah.” Briggs catches my face between his hands. His body shifts over mine, and I can feel him still hot and hard inside me. Burrowed deep. He forces my eyes to his both with his hands and his command. “Look at me.”
I can’t stop the flow of tears or the tremble that has taken over my body. Even my teeth are clattering now with the force of the tremors. There’s too much emotion inside my body, wreaking havoc. I can’t contain it.
“I never intended to let you leave when our deal was up. I knew from the first time that I kissed you, that I wasn’t ever going to let you go. That you were mine. That you were meant for me. But deep down, I think I knew when I watched you jump from that cliff and my heart leapt out of my chest after you, that you were mine.” He presses a kiss to my forehead, my tear-soaked temple, my cheek and nose and lips. “And I am yours.”
He kisses me through the emotion that leaks from my body in the form of tears and sobs. Happy and confused sobs. Hopeful and heartrending sobs.
“I love you, Lilah.” He begins to move inside me, gentle and slow. His kisses are whispered promises against my lips, my jaw, down my throat. “I’m in love with all the parts of you. All the crazy, maddening, cliff-jumping, fur-loving parts of you.”
I laugh through my sob. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much emotion in my life.
I feel as though I could burst.
