Page 137 of Break Point
Watching me with a disorienting calm.
Mercy.
“Chop! Chop!” I tease, attempting to lighten the thick, charged air. He doesn’t laugh. He just keeps staring. “Why aren’t you packing? We have to be downstairs in less than four hours.”
Henry stands and moves toward me, slow and sure, like a manstepping into something sacred. Or like he’s about to wreck both our realities and can’t make himself care anymore.
I don’t move.
I don’t breathe.
I don’t fucking think.
He stops in front of me, all six feet and two and a half inches of him towering over me, so close I can feel the heat radiating off his body.
“I can’t do it.” His voice is a whisper, a broken confession.
I blink up at him, confused, my mouth dry, my pulse thundering in my ears. Refusing to let my heart betray logic. It’s the only thing that’s kept me sane since he came back into my life.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I know it’s late. I’ll help you pack.”
He shakes his head. Takes another step. Tucks my hair behind my ears and cups my face like I’m something precious.
“I want you, Bells,” he rasps, the words scraped from somewhere deep inside him. “Ineedyou. I always have. And it’s been killing me to keep pretending otherwise. To keep pushing you away because I’m too fucking scared to ruin the one thing I can’t live without.”
For a long, shivering moment, we do nothing but stand there, breathing each other in.
“And don’t you dare tell me I haven’t hurt you,” he says, wrecked. “I know I did. I know exactly how it felt. I’ve lived with it every goddamn day since.”
He falters, like it physically hurts to keep talking.
“I’m done second-guessing myself when it comes to you. The only way I feel happy and whole and fucking alive is when I’m near you. And I’ll take whatever you’re willing to give me. But I hope …”
He leans down slowly, giving me every chance to pull away.
“I hope it’s not too late. And that you still want me that way.”
I fist his shirt and stand on tiptoe to reach for him like I might never get the chance again.
Openly.
Freely.
Reciprocal.
He meets me halfway, taking my mouth like he’s been starving for this. Forme. His fingers dig into my thighs as he lifts me off thefloor. I lock my legs around his waist. There’s no patience left, only wild, gasping collisions. Only desperate hands and frantic hearts, crashing through every wall we ever built between us.
Our kisses are messy and aching, like we’re racing against time. Like this moment might slip through our fingers if we don’t hold on to it.
“Be mine,” he says against my throat, his voice hoarse with need and fear and something … deeper. “Say yes,” he pleads into my ear, every nerve-ending rioting from being deprived of this feeling for so long. “Because I can’t be anyone else’s.”
He carries me to the bed and slowly lowers me onto it.
“I’ve always been yours,” he says, lifting the hem of my T-shirt and pressing soft, worshipful kisses to my stomach, tracing patterns with his lips as if memorizing every inch of me in case the world rips me away from him tomorrow.
I throw my head back, relishing the feeling of his hot mouth on me. Sucking, biting, kissing. And the words he mutters against my skin like a prayer.
“You’re mine?” I weave my fingers through his hair and toy with it.
