adulation of her body with her own. Kissing, teasing, taunting with lips and hands that were making it difficult to hold back, to keep myself from pushing between her legs and sinking into her.
“Jesus, Violet. You’re so beautiful, and you taste like heaven. I’m not sure I can be gentle any longer,” I groaned out the words.
“Then don’t be gentle,” she gasped.
“Condom. I need a fucking condom.”
“Drawer,” she said, head tilting toward the bedside table where the champagne waited for us. She touched my tip and tugged with a flick of her finger, and my body tightened. I took a shuddery breath and breathed in, thinking of everything but what she was doing so I didn’t lose it.
I opened the wrapper, slid the condom on, and turned back to her. I settled between her legs, looking into her eyes as the tip of me nudged her heat. Her hands strolled over my back, to my hips, and tugged.
“Dawson, goddamn it, now,” she said.
I groaned and took her, molding our lips and our bodies and our souls so that there would never be a reason for us to be apart again. So that this moment was the beginning and everything else was the prequel. This was the rest of our lives. The second we’d finally given in to the need and the heat and the passion that had always lain between us, we were forever sealed together.
Her hips rocked into mine. Her lips and tongue journeyed down my chest as we moved together, seamlessly and perfectly. The pace was frantic and not the slow, lingering one I’d wanted for our first time, but there was no way I could slow down. And I knew it was the same for her because I could read Violet like she could read me. This was how we had to be. Fast and powerful and full of emotions drifting around us.
Love and sin, passion and belonging.
Us.
Her body shook, and she cried out, and I completely lost any last strain of control I had as the pure beauty of it overtook me. The inner peace I only ever felt on the water coursed through me. It wasn’t a blur of sky and ocean causing it, but a blur of light and lilac. Home.
We both lay there, breathless, lost in the magic of five years of anticipation finally becoming a reality. It had been so much better than any dream I’d ever had of her, the sensations of touch and scent having magnified those two-dimensional thoughts.
With a groan, because I didn’t want to take my hands away from her body, I momentarily left her side to clean up. Then, I almost ran back to her, pulling her naked body tight up against mine. Her leg went over my thigh, her arms slid around my waist, and we were crushed together again. I rested my chin on the top of her head.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’m angry,” she said.
I pulled away enough that I could look down in her face. Her eyes were flashing, and my heart thudded.
“Why?”
“I’m angry you denied me this for so long. Denied us this. Angry that my first time, and every time after, could have been this beautiful. This joyful movement of souls colliding instead of the mangled mess of bodies it’s been for me.”
God, I was angry now too. Angry that others had claimed her. Angry at myself for letting it happen, but also angry at the cosmos for having put her in my life when she was sixteen and I couldn’t have done anything about it.
“Vi,” I groaned out.
She shook her head, touching her forehead to my chest, hands slowly sliding over my hip and my body, making me awaken again. I was pulsing between us, and that reaction had her looking up at me, eyes wide. “How are you ready again?”
“Jesus, how could I not be? You. In my arms with your tantalizing body and smell, and just you, Vi. You,” I told her honestly.
The anger left her, replaced by a smile so wide I thought it might take the entire world around us and pull it in. I was lost. I’d always been lost with her. In her.
“You have a lot to make up to me, Dawson Langley,” she teased.
“Since we’ve already done amazing, maybe we should work on the sweaty part?” I grinned back, reaching for the drawer and another condom. Because I was in no way ready to be done with Violet Banner.