Page 144 of Love Felt Like This

Everything yet nothing. Much, much better.

Our mouths move like they’ve practiced this a thousand times before. It’s easy. It’s natural. Soft lips turn to little nips. We’re consuming and helpless in each other’s arms. Her hands no longer feel cold as they stroke over my neck. God, I’m desperate. I want more.

Our kisses grow more and more heated as we push, pull, and claw closer before the other can. It’s almost like we’re arguing—the only time we truly ever could. When she bites my bottom lip, I almost choke on my disbelieving laughter. I feel her smile back. This woman is pure energy. She’s bubbling over and into my soul.

I wrap my palms around her back, clutching the hem of her shirt in my fists before skimming down to her thighs. I bend and grip them in my palms to pick her up. She jumps and wraps her legs around my waist, coasting her chest over mine. Soft against hard. She buries her hands into my long hair. We blindly stumble through the room. I don’t know where we’re going, and I don’t care.

I turn us around, walking Beverly backward until her spine bumps against a paneled wall. I cage her in, cupping the nape of her neck in my palm and tugging her closer, as if it’s even possible anymore. Her hands outline my jaw. Her fingers trace through my beard. I want her everywhere.

She pushes my chest, now directing me. She steps us backward toward the couch, but instead our bodies bump together, and I grunt as something shoves into me. The piano shrieks beside my hip.

Beverly giggles against my mouth. “Sorry, I—”

I don’t let her finish, catching her lips again in a hungry kiss. I can’t get enough of her. Her smile. Her laughter. Her excitement that matches mine. I rest back on the piano, gripping her hips in my palms and sliding her down to stand between my spread thighs.

Notes ring from the piano keys, discordant and erratic. She grips my shirt in her fist, pulling at the fabric to get us closer. She’s shivering now. I grasp her tighter. She hikes a leg up, and nerves spiral through my chest and down to my fingertips.

I push my knee between her thighs. She pulls in a sharp gasp. Her palms press down beside my legs to gain purchase, accidentally sending more piano notes echoing through the living room.

With my hands clutching her hips, I shift them forward, then back. Lifting my thigh, dropping it, moving it against her slowly and deliberately. She gasps, then moans.

God, she moans.

I want to hear that over and over. I want it to tattoo my soul.

I kiss a line from the corner of her lips to her jaw and then her ear. Goose bumps appear across her neck and down to her collarbone—that damn collarbone—and then—

“Daddy?”

We both jerk back.

I can’t catch my breath. Neither can Beverly.

“Daddy?” Ava calls again from the bedroom.

I swallow, tucking a strand of Beverly’s hair back behind her ear.

I croak out, “Did the piano wake you up, munchkin?”

Silence.

“Ava?” I add.

“Yes,” she calls back quietly.

I close my eyes and sigh. “Sorry, baby.”

“Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“Sing?”

A bedtime song.

Beverly deflates in my arms, swallowing back her shaking breaths. She blinks up at me, and my finger tap, tap, taps on her hip. A song, a verse, a symphony to this woman who sheepishly smiles before burying her face into my neck.

I could stay here with my palms roaming her hips, but my heart pulls to Ava’s room.