She is fucking awesome.” Declan sighs happily, then shifts his gaze to me. “We’ll go dancing. And yes, this is a good song. All about the one you’ve been waiting for.” He squeezes my thigh. “That’s you, babe.”
Time for a full-scale butterfly attack. I’m waving the white flag to all the butterflies in the world. They own me tonight.
When I turn on Jackson Street, I reach for his hand one more time, and we thread our fingers together. Once my house comes into view, I tip my forehead to the slate-gray modern building with the Scandinavian architecture feel and tall windows on each floor. “That’s mine,” I say of the swank three-story home wedged town-home style next to a city block full of some of the sweetest abodes in the city. “It’s athlete row here, as I like to say. Some of the Hawks and Renegades live around here too.”
“Cool neighborhood. But you’re the only person I want to see for the next twelve or fifteen or whatever hours,” he says.
“Same, Deck. Same.”
Tonight feels like our first true night alone. A night when we aren’t surrounded by a hotel full of teammates. A night when we don’t have a workout in the morning.
A night when we can just be together, and also be alone together in a city of millions, without sneaking around, checking stairwells, avoiding the coach.
Finally, five years later, we can just . . . be.
I click on the garage door opener and pull into my home. Once the car stops, I cut the engine, close the garage door behind us, and get out.
That’s it.
We’re officially alone.
“It’s just us for the rest of the night,” I say reverently. I close the short distance to the door that opens into my place.
As I unlock it, Declan comes up right behind me, presses his whole frame against me, and wraps an arm around my waist. I melt into his touch, then my bones liquefy when his lips brush across the back of my neck. “Mmm. You taste incredible,” he whispers.
I lean into him, savoring the feel of his mouth on my skin. Indulging in his kisses for several delicious seconds that unspool into a swoony, decadent minute. I don’t want to stop, don’t want to break the hold he has on me. “Don’t want you to ever stop doing that, but maybe we should get inside,” I murmur.
His hand snakes down to my crotch, where he covers me with his palm. “Get inside,” he muses. “I want to get inside you. Want you to get inside me.”
My breath comes in a shuddery gasp. “Deck, I don’t know if I will last up the stairs with the way you talk to me.”
He sweeps his lips across my neck one more time, pushing his erection against my ass, his chest against my back, giving me a preview. “Then we’ll fuck again and again and again.”
That sounds like the best night ever.
I need it to start so I peel away, unlock the door, and open it.
Once inside, he follows me up the steps to the ground level where I toss my keys on a table in the foyer, then turn around.
We lock eyes. Need flares between us. It consumes me all at once.
I push my man over to the wall, right next to a framed black and white photo of the Pacific Ocean along the California coastline, waves cresting. In a hot second, I’m against Declan, slamming my pelvis to his, our lips crashing together. We combust. I can’t keep track of where we are. We are just making up for lost time in a collision of mouths and teeth. Hands and bodies. Like we have to touch all over.
I don’t want to miss an inch of him, an ounce of him.
I kiss him hard, needing to know his mouth again, his lips again, to taste him. To make him all mine.
My hands grab his face, gripping his stubble-lined jaw. His palms curl around my ass, jerking me closer, our hard-ons rubbing together, our chests slamming.
Breath comes fast and wild. Bodies grind. Lips fuse, and we are one.
This is happening. Nothing will stop us.
We kiss till we can’t breathe, till we have to wrench our mouths apart.
It’s as if we both realize at the same time that we aren’t running out of time. That we aren’t trying to fit everything into an hour or so.
We have the greatest gift of all.
More days.
I slow down. He follows my lead. We find a new rhythm,