Page 91 of Pour Decisions
I reached for the fly of his jeans, but he stopped me.
“What’re you doing?”
“I want to make you feel good,” I said against his mouth, making another grab for his waistband.
“No,” he said, firmly but gently pulling my hands away.
I reared back at that. “No?” I said with a brow quirked. “Owen, you’re hard as a statue.” I palmed him through his pants for emphasis, and he hissed through his teeth. “Let me take care of you.”
“Later,” he breathed, though I could tell his control was barely leashed.
“Later?” I repeated dumbly.
“We have time, Whiskey,” he said, tapping his watch. “Remember what you said in New York?”
Realization dawned, and I grinned. “Daysin bed.”
“Days,” he confirmed. “So first, we’re going to go somewhere more private, and thenmaybeI’ll let you have your wicked way with me.”
Anchoring a hand at the back of his neck, fingers filtering through the strands of his hair, I brought his mouth to mine again. “Lead the way, QB.”
The sexual tension betweenus was as thick as smoke in the cab of my truck as I drove us from the bar to my house. Delia was quiet in the passenger seat, and I followed her lead. It wasn’t uncomfortable. I think we were both considering what we’d just done—and what we were about to spend the rest of the weekend doing.
I’d told her once that I was a greedy and possessive man, and every nerve ending in my body buzzed with the need to fully claim her, to drive my cock inside her and mark her as mine forever.
Some of that tension eased when we pulled up to the gate of my house and I rolled down the window to punch in the code.
“It’s one-one-two-seven-zero-eight,” I told her. “If you ever need it.”
The day my dad died.
Unbidden, a wave of grief coursed through me, and terror gripped my chest. My dad had passed so suddenly, there one second,gone the next. I never got the chance to give him a proper goodbye. I couldn’t even tell you what my last words to him were. Even all these years later, I wasn’t sure if that was a blessing or curse. I was on solid ground mentally, but the problem with grief was that it wasn’t linear, and the reminder that these moments on this plane are so fleeting snuck up on me at the worst possible times.
Delia reached out and grabbed my hand, giving it a quick squeeze, grounding me, then pulling away as I put the truck in park. Having her here, knowing we were set on a course to—hopefully—forever, reminded me how easily I could lose her. She was another person I cared about deeply who could be gone from my life in an instant, and panic gripped my chest.
The second the door into the mudroom off the garage closed behind us, the leash on my control snapped, and I was on her. Shoving her into the wall, slipping my hand beneath her skirt and cupping a handful of her ass.
“Bed,” she growled as my mouth descended on hers, punctuating the word with a nip of my bottom lip.
“No.” The beast in my chest needed her now, was unwilling to wait the seconds it would take to walk us there.
Normally, I could keep those demons at bay, could maintain my composure. But in the comfort of my own home, with Delia in my arms? I knew I was safe to fall apart if I needed.
As if sensing the shift in me, though she didn’t know why, Delia reached up and cupped my face, leaning back to stare at me. “I know,” she said quietly, and I didn’t have to ask what she meant. Somehow, this woman could feel the chaos of swirling emotions inside me. Probably because she frequently experienceda similar phenomenon.
We were far more alike than I’d ever thought.
“I know you want to fuck me right here,” she continued. “That the caveman in your chest is screaming at you to do so. But we have time, Owen. So much of it. A lifetime, really. There’s no rush here.”
But I knew better than anyone that lifetimes weren’t guaranteed, that they could be cut short and ripped away in a flash. That knowledge was what drove me now.
I sighed deeply, the exhalation carrying the weight of the world. “The gate code is the day my dad died,” I said, offering no further explanation. Delia didn’t need it; she simply nodded in understanding. I tipped my forehead against hers. “I haven’t even had you yet, but I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you,” I admitted.
“You’ve always had me,” she said quietly, tilting her face to press a soft, featherlight kiss to my lips. “And I know the loss of your father still haunts you, but be here with me right now. Feel me, Owen.” She pressed her hands to my chest, and I removed mine from under her skirt to skate them up her sides, along her arms, over her shoulders and into her hair. Touching every inch of her I could reach. Proving she was, in fact, very much alive and not a figment of my imagination. Cradling her head, I lightly massaged my fingertips into her scalp. “I’m real. I’m safe. I’m yours.”
I nodded, then pushed back from her to kick my boots off. Delia slipped out of her own shoes, and I reached for her hand, pulling her through the house.
We passed from the mudroom to the laundry room, then thekitchen, eventually entering the open space of the living room, where the staircase served as the centerpiece. I didn’t pause to let her take in my home, only silently led her up the stairs and straight to my bedroom.
