Page 129 of Single Dad Dilemma
Barrett’s face broke open into the most beautiful, perfect smile I’d ever seen on another person in my entire life. His heart was in that smile, and I couldn’t believe it was mine.
He kissed me. So perfectly. So gently.
The trembling stopped.
Peace slipped in right on its heels.
“I know,” he whispered.
I let out a watery laugh. “How?”
He traced the skin next to my eyes, studying every inch of my face. “I see it here. I see it when you smile at me. When you hug me so tight, like you want to sink into my skin. When you want to end every day talking.” He kissed me again. “I told you I was okay waiting, Lily. I meant it.”
“I should’ve told you sooner,” I insisted. “I made you wait too long.”
“You told me exactly when you needed to.” He swept some stray hairs off my face, tucking them behind my ear. “But now I’ll need to hear it every day.”
“Oh yeah?”
He nodded, a grave expression in his face. “I told you I’d be greedy when it came to you.”
“I love you,” I said again. Barrett hummed, a delicious rumble that came from deep in his chest. As he closed his eyes, I leaned in and kissed his jaw. The corner of his mouth. “I love you.”
His hands plucked at my bikini, and the strings loosened around my hips. “Again,” he demanded gently.
“I love you,” I sighed, as his hand carefully pulled the bottoms out of our way with a slight lift of my hips.
I pushed at his shorts, and we kissed—deep, deep kisses that I felt down to my toes, that raised the hair on my arms, that rewired my entire brain.
When Barrett pushed inside me, using his hands on my hips to pull me down, a long, smooth stroke that had us both groaning, he stole my mouth in a decadent kiss and told me he loved me too. He said it so many ways. Sometimes with words, and sometimes it was like this, with every push of his hips, with every gasp he pulled from my lungs, like I could breathe in the words and they’d stay there forever. I wanted to lock them in my bloodstream, let them cycle around my entire body until not a single piece of me was untouched by the truth of his love for me.
Eventually, he turned so I was on my back on the couch, and he moved slow and steady between my legs, pressing my calf up against his chest so he could hit the angle that made me see stars.
“I love you,” he told me again. He always told me when he got close. It was one of the last things he said before his movements became sharper and harder.
My orgasm hit first. It wasn’t a bright explosion. It rolled over my body, endless and mellow and so fucking perfect as I let it go with a moan.
And I watched as his finally crested, the tightening of his brow, like it was so good that it almost hurt, and underneath my hand, his heart thrashed in his chest while he groaned my name.
He wound his body around mine as we both came down, and he let out a great, heaving sigh when I kissed the space over his heart.
“Long distance is stupid,” he muttered against my skin.
My smile was dreamy and sleepy and came straight from a blissed-out place in my mind. “It really is.”
Barrett lifted his head and stared into my face. “How much longer?”
I swept my thumb under his lip. “You’re the one who said it would be good for me to go.”
“That was one of my worst decisions. You should never listen to me.”
I laughed, and he dipped down to kiss me again, full of sweetness and longing.
“Don’t worry,” I whispered, curling my fingers into the back of his neck. “I’ll be home soon.”
Home.
Home. It slipped out so easily, felt so right.
