Page 94 of The Love Dare
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
winnie
Oh god.
She’s never thought of herself as a particularly traditional person, but the combination of desire and dominance in his voice makes every single bit of insecurity melt away. He’s on the verge of coming undone. She’s seen the evidence with her own eyes. Yet he’s so controlled, so purposeful as he takes her knees and gently eases them open, she’s worried she might combust on the mattress.
“Good girl,” he purrs.
Those words light a spark in her that only books have ever been able to touch, blurring the line of fantasy and reality, awakening that inner wanton woman she only ever lets come out in the privacy of her own thoughts. A gleam lights his eyes as if he knows her secret. She doesn’t have it within her to feel anything except craving as he sweeps his gaze over her. There’s no doubt, no fear, no insecurity. He’s brought her beyond that, to a place filled only with want and need—and that’s before his day-old scruff starts scraping her inner thighs.
Oh my god.
She fists the sheets, wriggling with yearning. He doesn’t stop, doesn’t pause. He moves faster, more urgent, more demanding as she tenses beneath him. The sensation builds, growing and growing, as the world narrows to a pinpoint, those opposites pushing and pulling, pressure swelling, until finally, an entire cosmos erupts behind her eyes, the darkness pierced by pure fire. He doesn’t even have his freaking shirt off yet, and she’s on her back in another plane of reality.
Winnie doesn’t know how long it takes her to come down from the high, but when she blinks the final vestiges away, he’s poised above her wearing the smuggest grin she’s ever seen—and that’s saying something, considering he’s one of the best hockey players in the world with the salary and the trophies to prove it. But she can’t even bring herself to be annoyed. He deserves that grin.
He earned it.
“Shit, Ty,” she mutters, her heart still pounding in her chest, her skin tingling, her lungs empty. “I think I just blacked out. Whatwasthat?”
“Come on, Win,” he gently chides, his smile turning boyish, more carefree than she’s ever seen it, no weight to pull the edges down. “We’re only getting started.”
Then he tugs his shirt over his head, grabbing it by the collar and yanking it off in one fell swoop the way that guys do without even realizing it turns girls to mush. But before she has time to melt even farther into the pillows, his lips are there, setting her skin ablaze instead. He kisses every inch of her body as if it’s his own personal paradise, finding every freckle, every scar, every imperfection she ever saw in the mirror and thought to question, claiming them with a silentmine, mine, mine. She glides her hands over the endless contours of his muscles, marveling at how they tense beneath her touch. He’s powerful and perfectand commanding in a way she knows she’ll never be, and yet the slightest brush of her fingers leaves him undone.
“You’re so beautiful,” he whispers over and over, driving home the point with each thrust of his hips as they finally join together, his hand on her cheek gentle even as the rest of him pushes them harder and harder toward oblivion. “I’ve been dreaming about this for as long as I can remember, and fuck, Win, you feel more amazing than I even thought possible. I love you. Only you. Always you.”
She clings to his shoulders as he carries them higher and higher, unable to fully understand how a man who could have any woman in the world has somehow chosen her, but she believes it. For the first time, she well and truly believes it, not from his words, but from the secret language their bodies are speaking, every sigh and groan and slap fused with the undeniable truth that she’s his, and he’s hers, and their hearts are bound even more tightly than their bodies. They cry out together, backs arching, fingers clawing, holding on as they hit that tallest peak with a silent promise to never, ever let go.
They cling to each other as they drift slowly back down, the weight of him delicious as he buries her into the mattress.
“I feel like I should say something,” he grumbles into her ear. “But I’ve got nothing. I’m pretty sure every speck of blood has fled my brain and it’s not coming back anytime soon.”
She laughs as he throws himself to the side, tugging her with him so she curls against his chest. “You were pretty chatty five minutes ago.”
“I have no idea what the hell I said.” He throws an arm over his head with a sated sigh, then looks down at her with a grin. “Was it any good?”
She laughs and snatches his lips for a quick kiss. “I liked it even better than the Shakespeare.”
“Really?” He arches a brow, a playful gleam entering his eyes.
She wants to capture that look in her hands and cradle it against all the horrors in his world, to protect this light and happy and free version of him he so rarely lets shine. Tyler brushes his fingers over her cheek, touching her as if he needs to make sure she’s real, that this moment isn’t his mind playing tricks on him, dangling his deepest dream right before his eyes one second before they open to the harsh light of day. But she’s real. She’s here. And she’s not going anywhere.
“For where thou art,” he murmurs, tone hushed as though it’s a sacred oath as he tracks his thumb across her lower lip, then glances up, ensnaring her eyes, “there is the world itself.”
Winnie shivers despite herself.
Tyler laughs softly, as if he’s called her on a bluff. Butcome on. Her heart can only take so much before it bursts.
“Okay, be honest,” she counters. If he wants to call her out, fine. She’ll call his ass out too—literally. “Are you hiding a Shakespeare cheat sheet between your butt cheeks or something?Idon’t even have Shakespeare so well memorized.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” he answers innocently, eyes flashing like the devil.
“Don’t make me tickle you.”
“Are you threatening me, Win?”
She shrugs. “Maybe.”
