Page 154 of Love Felt Like This

“And what have you imagined?”

My eyes whip to hers. She’s watching me intently.

I lean forward, cupping her shoulder in my open palm as I hold my breath and brush my lips across her collarbone.

I pull back. Maybe it’s too much.

But her fingers spread over my forearm, holding me close.

I purse my lips against her skin again. She lets out a shaking exhale. Her body is so warm. So soft.

“I’ve imagined I’d kiss you here,” I whisper, moving to her shoulder, then kissing the top. “And here.” My mouth moves to her neck to place a kiss there as well. She tilts back, as if granting me more room along the column of her throat. I kiss below her chin. “And here.”

I run my lips across her jaw and to her ear, where I can’t help but nip at the earlobe and bury myself in her hair, tasting grapefruit and a sheen of sweat that is so, so sweet.

“And here,” I murmur, the words cracking as I finally brush my lips over hers.

I pull back, peering into her eyes. For the first time, I see every ring of green. The light. The dark. The flecks of something else entirely. Not even a color but a pulsing want.

She reaches out and strokes her palm along my jaw and neck, tracing down until she rests her hand just above my heart. She must feel how much it pounds under her touch.

I place my hand on the bedsheets, right next to hers, entwining our thumbs together. It feels like our little secret. Then again, I always feel like I’m getting away with something by being with Beverly.

Chapter Thirty

I’m Yours

Beverly

Griffin’s heart beats fast under my palm. I lean closer, ghosting my lips over his, breathing in his exhalations. He smells like the biting cold and a little bit like syrup. He smells a lot like home.

“I love your smile,” he mutters.

“Am I smiling?” I ask, but I can already feel it getting wider, so big it almost hurts my cheeks.

Griffin chuckles, curling his hand behind my head right as I tangle my fingers in his shirt. I tug him closer, and our lips touch.

The kiss is gentle. Nothing about it feels selfish or greedy or expectant. I stroke my thumb across the buttons of his shirt as his fingers shift down the back of my neck. A careful caress. I pull him closer. His low groan follows.

I sit up taller, crawling on my knees to him, tangling my legs in his lap. His hand presses into my waist, as his thumb strokes a line up to my ribs and back down. The bottom hem of my dress rides up as he grasps the fabric. That much closer to my bare skin.

With Beau, it was always go, go, go. With Griffin…it’s anticipation.

He taps my outer thigh and hums. “Hang on.” Then he shifts me to the side and gets up off the bed.

“Oh, now you come back here, Griffin Patrick Harvey.”

He chuckles, clutching the back of one of his boots and ripping it off, then doing the same to the other before gently placing them side by side. They are such a contrast to my haphazard boots I kicked off earlier.

I watch as he removes his jacket and hangs it over the back of Momma’s craft chair. Then he reaches to the corner of his black shirt and pulls it over his head.

Before me is a canvas of bare skin and tattoos. I rarely see him in anything but long-sleeves, but now I see every line unfiltered over olive skin. It’s his own constellation of black and white ink, coating both arms in washes of gray. Monochromatic florals, vines, and birds, each trailing over his shoulders and down his forearms. And just where the cuff of a shirt would end, there’s that small bird, perched atop a curved branch.

I run my hands over the illustrations, tracing my fingertips across the flowers and over the bird’s head. Stroking over his wrist and up to his forearm. His muscle twitches on impact.

I blink up at him, and he’s standing still, jaw tense, as if gauging my reaction. I reach up, cupping his jaw and bringing him back down to me. He crawls onto the bed, brushing his palm over my waist and up to my ribs.

His bulky body hovers over me as he places kiss after kiss along my chest, nipping over the fabric and biting down along the lining of my dress. He trails his rough beard down my stomach and to my pelvis, then slowly lowers to his knees beside the bed.