Page 64 of Wildflower and Whiskey
That earned me a small, grateful laugh. She rubbed her hands over her knees, gaze drifting toward the window where the motion light glowed faintly through the glass.
“I don’t know how you stay so calm,” she said.
“Practice,” I said. “And a lot of pretending.”
She smiled faintly. “It’s working.”
I set my phone aside and studied her, the soft fall of her hair, the way exhaustion lived in her shoulders but never reachedher eyes. “You should get some rest,” I murmured. “You’ve been running on fumes.”
“I will. Just… stay here a while?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure who needed the reassurance more.
She shifted closer, her voice low. “Phoenix.”
“Yeah?”
“Come here.”
It wasn’t a question. She turned on her knees, caging mine with her thighs, and kissed me like she’d decided to stop apologizing for wanting this. Wanting me. There wasn’t anything polite in the way she claimed my lips. Her mouth was warm and certain, her hands sliding up my shoulders to the back of my neck when I pulled her closer. I’d promised myself I’d be patient tonight, that I’d be steady so she didn’t have to be. But the second she opened to me; I was gone. Every ounce of restraint unraveled like ivy pulling down an old fence. My fingers found the hem of her sweater. “I want to take my time with you,” I rasped.
“Then take it,” she breathed, arching into my hands.
I peeled the top over her head and she helped, tossing it blindly toward the chair. Underneath, soft cotton clung to her in all the ways that destroy a man. I let my palms relearn the map of her shoulders, the curve of her waist, the dip above her hip bone I’d been thinking about since the stockroom. She made a sound in her throat that detonated somewhere low in my spine.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” I said against her mouth.
Her nails scraped lightly at my nape. “Don’t you dare.”
We laughed, right there in the middle of the fear, we laughed. I kissed the curve of her jaw, the hollow under her ear, the notch of her collarbone. Her head fell back. I took her in my mouth, slow and hungry, the way you taste something you know you’re never giving up. She rocked against me, and I braced my handsunder her thighs, lifting, settling her astride me so we could take our time and still be desperate.
“Phoenix,” she said again, my name was like a thread pulling me closer to her.
I slid a hand into the back of her leggings and gripped, the other splayed on her spine. She wriggled out of them with a breathless laugh, and I helped tugging the material free and dropping them somewhere that wasn’t my problem. She reached for my shirt with impatient fingers; I dragged it over my head, and her palms were on my chest, tracing the lines like she was trying to memorize me and claim me all at once.
“Look at you,” she whispered, flushed, reverent and wrecking me. “You’re…”
“I’m yours,” I said, rougher than I meant to.
Heat flashed in her eyes like I’d said something important without knowing how important it was. She kissed me hard then softer, then settled her weight against me, rubbing her center along my cock, which made my vision go white at the edges. We stayed like that for a long time rocking, tasting, breathing in each other’s sounds.
“Condom,” I muttered, my brain catching up to my body by the sheer force of will.
“I’m on the pill. I always take it. If you’re clean, I am too,” she said and my world stopped. I had never gone bareback before. Never wanted to, but my heart was all in with Elyna, it always had been. Despite our past, I trusted her. Knew she wasn’t the broken girl I remembered from high school, even if she carried a chip on her shoulder now for her past mistakes.
“I’m clean,” I said, and that bought me a warm smile that made my heart unravel more.
“So we’re doing this?” she asked.
“I’m all in, Elyna. I’ve been trying to get you to see that,” I said to her.
“When I got pregnant, Riley was wearing a condom. I had been sick the week before and I was on antibiotics. I didn’t know I was at risk of. . .”
“Hush, it doesn’t matter the circumstances of how your boy came into this world. He’s here and he’s a blessing.”
Her lower lip quivered.
“Take me, put my cock inside you,” I urged.
