Page 67 of Broken Cedar

I didn’t realise I’d been holding my breath. It leaves me all at once. My knees threaten to follow it. “I missed you,” I say. The words sound inadequate. “Every damn day. And I was an idiot. But I know I don’t want to be with anyone else for the rest of my life. Just you. I just want you.”

His hand lifts, but stops halfway, like touching me is still something he isn’t sure he’s allowed to do. He lets his hand fall. I step forward, closing the distance. My hands find his chest, then his shoulders, then the back of his neck, my fingers threading into his hair.

His fingers brush my cheek, cautiously, like he’s afraid I might disappear if he moves too quickly. Colt’s arms come around me and his forehead drops to mine. His breath is warm against my lips. “Stay,” he says. One word. The one word he has waited eight years to ask me, and is finally, finally allowing himself to ask it.

“I’m staying,” I say, tightening my arms around him. “I’m not going anywhere. Not this time.”

The corners of his mouth lift. It’s small, almost tentative. Like smiling is something he has to remember how to do. His fingers graze my jaw, angling my face toward him before he kisses me. His mouth is soft and warm. His hands are in my hair, then on my waist, everywhere at once like he’s trying to confirm that I’m real, that I’m here. I kiss him back. My arms wrap around his neck, my body pressing against his.

We break apart. His forehead against mine. His breath ragged. My hands still in his hair.

“I’m staying,” I repeat with a murmur.

His eyes close for a second, like the effort of holding himself together has finally become unnecessary. His mouth finds mine again. Slower this time. Colt’s hands find my waist. Then I’m weightless, his arms under my thighs, lifting me like I weigh nothing, which I don’t, not to him. I wrap my legs around his waist. His mouth doesn’t leave mine. We kiss like this, and then he’s moving.

“Hold on,” he murmurs against my lips, heading toward the ladder.

“I’m holding,” I whisper back, tightening my grip.

He climbs one-handed. His other arm around my waist, holding me secure against his chest. He sets me down on the couch. His hands already working my shirt open, button by button, his mouth following his fingers—my collarbone, the swell of my breast, the flat plane between my ribs where my heartbeat is doing something that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with want.

I push his shirt up and yank it over his head. His skin is warm under my palms. I trace the ridges of muscle, the geography of a body I’ve known since we were children and am only now, finally, allowed to touch the way I’ve always wanted to touch it.

His hands find the button of my jeans. I lift my hips as he slides them down, along with my underwear and I kick them off. His jeans follow. Boots somewhere on the floor. Socks. Everything else until we’re both naked.

Colt’s mouth moves down my body. His lips trace the line of my sternum. The dip of my navel. The soft skin of my hip where it meets my thigh. Then lower. His breath warm between my legs. The first flat stroke of his tongue against my clit draws a whimper from somewhere deep in my chest.

“Oh,” I gasp.

His hands find my thighs, pushing them wider. He sucks my clit between his lips, and the sensation is so sharp, so immediate, that my hand flies to my mouth. “F-fuck, Colt.” My hips buck involuntarily. He holds me down, his grip firm, his mouth relentless.

His tongue circles my clit. Slow. Deliberate. Listening to every moan that escapes around the edges of my palm. Then he slides two fingers inside me.

“O-oh fuck.” The curse gets lost in a gasp. His fingers curl, finding that spot, and his tongue doesn’t stop, doesn’t slow, and the pleasure builds—coiling tight, relentless, a pressure that feels dangerous in its intensity.

“I told you no one can take care of this pussy like me, didn’t I?” Colt murmurs against me. The words vibrate through my clit, and I moan—loud, too loud, the sound bouncing off the rafters. He sucks harder. His fingers pump. My toes dig into his back. I’m feral. Ravenous. My hips rocking against his face, chasing a release that’s so close I can taste it.

“I love watching you come,” he moans against my clit. “It does something to me.”

My hands fly over my head, covering my face, but the moan escapes anyway—long, loud, so fucking loud, my hips rolling my soaked pussy against his face as the orgasm crashes through me. My body clenches around his fingers. I arch off the couch, every muscle tensing, and Colt doesn’t stop, doesn’t relent, just works me through it until I’m trembling, gasping, my hand finding his hair to pull him away because it’s too much, it’s too good, I can’t—“Colt, oh god,” I cry. My voice is wrecked. “Fuck, please, I need you.”

“I’m right here, baby.” His lips trace the inside of my thigh. His fingers curl gently inside me, and the aftershock rolls through me in a wave that leaves me melting into the couch with a long, shuddering sigh. “I’m not going anywhere.”

I raise my head from the couch. My hair is a wild tangle. My chest heaving. I look at him—his mouth glistening, his eyes dark, his cock hard against my thigh—and I laugh, breathless and giddy. “Get up here,” I say. “Right now.”

“Yes ma’am” Colt grins. That almost-smile, there and gone, replaced by something hungrier. He moves up my body—hips, stomach, breasts—kissing, smelling, tasting every inch of me like he’s memorizing something he plans to revisit daily for the rest of his life.

I gasp as his tongue finds my nipple. He sucks it into his mouth, rolls it between his lips, and my fingers sink into his hair, holding him there. He kisses along my collarbone. Up the column of my throat. He settles over me, his cock pressing against my entrance.

I open my eyes. His are right there. Dark. Heavy-lidded. He kisses the corner of my mouth. My lips part, expecting more. He kisses the other corner. With a frustrated groan, I wrap my legs around his waist and seize his face, kissing him hard, my tongue against his, hungry, desperate, my hips lifting to take him.

He sinks into me. One slow, relentless stroke that has me moaning into his mouth. My thigh presses against his side. He pushes it back with his hand, opening me wider, changing the angle, and the next thrust hits so deep I go still, my lips quivering against his.

“Fuck,” I whisper.

He pumps again. Harder. A cry builds in my throat. Colt’s hand finds my face, his thumb tracing my lower lip.

“Let me hear you,” he says. “I want to hear you cry my name.”