A Hamilton Family Christmas - Donna Kauffman Page 0,31

stopped just short of pushing inside her. “I hope you’ll let me do the same.

In response, she tightened her legs around him, bringing him into her body. “Start now.”

10

Trevor drove into her, long, deep, and fully, staying there even as she arched up on a long groan of satisfaction. She felt tight around him, so tight, and he began moving before she could acclimate to having him inside her, filling her so completely. But where she expected discomfort, there was only this intense, pervasive heat, like a hot glow spreading inside her as he moved his body within hers, and she responded to it like they’d established this rhythm years before. Perhaps lifetimes before. His own Vesta, indeed.

She didn’t question it, didn’t question the ridiculous things they were saying to one another. Two strangers, caught up in the moment, in the center of a raging storm, trapped during a time of year when sentiments ran high and emotions weren’t always steady. Later. She’d worry about all of that later. Because, this…this was worth every foolish thing she might say, and whatever mortification could possibly follow.

Besides, they’d both said things. Made claims. Staked claims. If she was going to be made a fool, she wasn’t going to suffer alone.

Which, having mentally settled that, should have allowed her to push everything else aside and just go on this glorious, intense pleasure trip he was taking her on.

Except it didn’t. Because every time he drove into her, she felt something…more. And it had nothing to do with friction and the lovely places he was reaching inside her body. When he moved his head so he could tease her nipples, lick at the tips, make her squirm, make her scream, and ultimately make her come, writhing beneath him…it didn’t feel like simple, sweaty sex.

It…mattered. More than slaking lust and exhausting pent-up sexual tension.

He slowed in his thrusts, letting her climax ripple through her until every last shudder was spent. Like he knew her, he was partnering her, being in it with her, not just along for the ride. When she opened her eyes, she found herself looking into his, and there was so much there to see, naked on his face. This mattered to him, too.

And because it did, her heart ached. Physically squeezed, as she felt him gather inside her, his strokes moving deeper, more rhythmically, and finally picking up speed and intensity…and his gaze never once left hers. He wasn’t just taking her, he was joining with her. It might have been just another foolish sentiment, except there were tears gathering at the corners of her eyes as he built higher, and came ever closer.

And she never cried. Not ever.

But when she moved, tightened her muscles just enough, tugging him over the edge into that long, sweet, groaning release, she didn’t just feel slaked and pleasantly fulfilled. She didn’t just feel him, the weight of him, lying spent on top of her. She felt like a part of him was hers now. A part no one else had. A part worthy of being tended to, of being held dear. She felt that he was hers now.

And all she had to do was find a way to keep him.

11

He pressed his lips to her temple, then buried his face in her hair. “That was…” He had no words for it. None that would do justice to what had just happened between them. It should have been sex. First sex. Awkward, getting-to-know-your-body sex. Even with someone who held all the promise in the world of being special to him, it was still, at first, just sex.

Only, not this. Not with her.

“I know,” she said.

He slid to his side, pulling her to him even as she was naturally turning into his body, her leg draped across his, her head finding its natural spot between the crook of his arm, and the space over his heart.

He slipped his hand into her hair, keeping her cheek gently pressed over his slowly recovering heartbeat, and pulled her tightly against his hip with his other arm. “You do know, don’t you?” he said, somewhat in awe.

“What do I know?”

“Just that…you’re right, we’re strangers. And yet, not. I don’t know you, but I know of you, if that makes any sense. And, it would be insane, and ridiculous, to think I know what you are and what you can be to me, except you look at me, and I see that same understanding on your face.” He tilted her face