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CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Faith
There is something very intimate about watching someone sleep. Witnessing that person at their most vulnerable.
As I lay there in Adam’s bed, eyelids heavy, spent and sated from jumping each other’s bones—again—and listening to Lance snore across the room and Adam’s deep, steady breathing next to me, I felt weightless and dreamlike. Like time and baggage and outside influences had no hold on us. Also, I was exhausted. The night at Grace’s had been—no pun intended—a nightmare. Thank God I’d sweetly declined Olivia’s invitation to sleep with her because I woke up at two in the morning in a full sweat, flailing and grunting like a madwoman. The grinding, the smell, the ominous presence. The blinding stabs of pain. I’d ended up sitting cross-legged on the couch, playing games on my phone till I heard Mateo get up and start the coffee.
Here, it was different. It was just me and Adam, and that crap couldn’t get to me. All the heavy baggage didn’t matter.
It didn’t have to.
I could trust him.
I could let him take care of me, and he could let me rebel a little, and we’d live happily ever after. I smiled at that thought as my eyelids won the battle, closing down.
“What put that smile on your face?” he whispered, and my eyes fluttered back open.
I took in his relaxed expression. He seemed so at peace, instead of the man who was constantly looking over his shoulder. I took in the hard jaw, the slightly crooked nose, and the full, delicious lips that had just kissed me senseless and sucked my clit into a screaming orgasm an hour ago. The lips that had also called me “love” in his doorway.
Was that just a figure of speech?
For some people, sure. But not for Adam.
“Hmm, I wonder,” I said sleepily.
Our lovemaking had been different this time. Softer. Slower. Real. Touches that I couldn’t put words to. Long looks saying so many things.
I ran my fingertip over his cheek, feeling the beginnings of rough stubble. I traced his lips then, my belly tightening with feelings I hadn’t yet named myself. At least not out loud.
He stretched an arm overhead. “What time is it?”
“Four thirty, I think.”
He breathed in deeply. “Gotta get up,” he said, bringing his arm back down to pull me closer. “You wore me out, woman.”
“Mmm, ditto,” I whispered into the warmth of his neck, feeling the pull into the abyss. “Five more minutes.”
Movement stirred me,and my eyes popped open as the warmth left. “What’s—?”
“Go back to sleep,” Adam whispered, kissing my head. “That five more minutes turned into thirty.”
I chuckled, pulling his pillow against me. “Sorry, you felt too good to let go.”
He kissed my forehead again. “Don’t ever be sorry for that, babe.”
My eyes drifted open and back closed again, and I blew him a soft kiss. “’Kay,” I whispered. “Have a good night. Love you.”
The canyon-sized pause that sucked the air from the room woke me up that time.
My eyes popped open.
His brows were raised, and there was the hint of a grin on his lips.
I shot up in bed. “I mean—” I laughed nervously. “That was—what did I say?” I waved a hand nonchalantly as heat landed on me like someone was holding a blowtorch to my face. “Dreams, you know. The things that we—”
His lips came down on mine, soft but possessive. Claiming me. Making me his. When he pulled back, he kissed the tip of my nose and looked in my eyes like the boy I used to know. “I love you, too, Faith,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Always have. Always will.”
My mouth opened and closed, and my eyes felt hot. I yanked him back to me by his collar and kissed him again till we pulled back breathlessly, neither of us knowing what to do or say next.
