Page 92 of Fourth Wheel
He interrupts me with a growl that reverberates through my chest. “Iknow,” he says again. This time, his anguish is clear, pain coating those two words. He gets it.
We lie still together, accepting what we can’t change while resisting the pull of what could have been.
He breaks the silence first.
“Every day we’ve spent together has been better than any version of my life before you.”
I sniffle, the tightness in my chest threatening to pull me under as I try and hold back my tears.
He strokes both hands down my back, and I swear he trembles beneath me. When he speaks again, there’s no doubt in my mind that he’s fighting back tears, too.
“In another life—where you could stay, or I could go—in another life, I think I could love you forever.”
A sob escapes me this time, because his feelings aren’t just his own.
I love this man. I think I could love him forever, too.
But it was never supposed to be Dempsey and me. Part of me wishes we had never met—that I had never walked into The Oak that first night. Not knowing what his love feels like would be a fair tradeoff for not having to leave him and feel like this now.
There is no long-distance arrangement. We haven’t bothered to talk about what’ll happen when I’m back in town. It’s pointless. Now that I have my own place in Cali, I’ll be in Hampton less and less. I’m more likely to end up in Norfolk or at my brother’s cabin for the holidays. I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents put our house on the market sometime this year.
I won’t stay. He can’t leave. We both know that this is the end of what could have been.
All we’ll have left after tonight are memories and this mutual ache I fear we’ll carry with us for a lifetime.
I brush my fingertips over his lips, then trace the definition of his throat. I will my head to stop spinning and the tears to stop falling as I desperately try to memorize every detail of this man. I resist the urge to even blink and lose a millisecond of the time we have left.
He raises his mouth to mine in the most agonizingly slow kiss, sealing a fate we both know is inevitable. He’s kissing me goodbye, and the kiss is filled with so much sorrow, I think I might combust.
I can taste his sadness. There’s so much regret and longing behind the way his mouth moves against my lips, my neck, my chest, my stomach as he crawls down my body and positions me where he wants me.
“You’re still mine tonight,” he murmurs against my inner thigh.
I say nothing. I can’t. But then he hovers over my body and tilts my chin up, urging me to look him in the eye.
“Stay with me, baby girl. It won’t hurt less if you pull away before time’s up. Stay with me—right here, right now—and live in this moment. Let me try to show you what a lifetime of us could have been.”
I choke back another sob and nod. If all I have to give him is this one last night, I don’t want to cry. I want to be right here, totally in it.
He peels down my thong and savors the skin around my center, kissing, sucking, and even biting me with slow, tantric care. He licks up my folds and sucks on my clit just how I like, but he doesn’t build me up high enough to fall.
He rolls on a condom and nudges in, giving me just an inch at a time, forcing me to feel every roll of his hips and tilt of his pelvis. When he’s finally seated inside me, he uses those damn arms I love to hold himself above me, locking me in his gaze and stroking my hair as we revel in this connection one last time.
He thrusts gently, and we moan in unison. I’m so full of him. Our connection has never been stronger. Nothing’s ever felt more like home.
I close my eyes and shudder at the intensity of it all. But he doesn’t even let me get away with that.
He kisses along my neck before taking my lips in a deep, passionate kiss. “Come back to me, Maddie. Stay with me until the end.”
I open my eyes and meet his devastatingly blue irises. As he stares down at me and thrusts again, I feel a surge of vulnerability. Dempsey sees me in a way no one haseverseen me.
To him, I’m not just something to be conquered or claimed.
He sees me for who I am. And in this moment, I realize that’s my definition of love.
“Baby girl,” he pants, his voice shaky with emotion. “You’re everything. Right here. Inside you. This is the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. It may be the happiest I’ll ever be.”
I moan, his words fanning the flames inside me as he pulls out slowly before gliding back in.
