gave me wings and I felt like we were flying. Together.
I was having trouble catching my breath as he continued.
“I want more than tonight. I want more than a friendship with clauses. I want you. And if you’re not ready, that’s fine. I can leave and give you time to think about it. But I want you to know that the next time I kiss you, the next time I taste your sweet skin, the next time I’m buried deep inside of you, the next time I make you come so hard you forget where you are, it’s not going to be as your friend. I want you, all of you, and I’m done pretending I don’t.”
He never broke eye contact and his gaze burned with intensity. There was no mistaking what sparked that flame—it was lust. And I was very good with that. Especially now that I knew he felt more for me than just animal attraction, it left me free to fully freaking enjoy that animal attraction.
His speech had taken me by surprise and I was really wishing that a court stenographer would’ve been there to record it because I knew I’d be mentally replaying his testimony over and over for the rest of my life. Beyond the actual words he’d said, there was a confident, take-charge conviction in his stance that sent tingles zipping and zapping in my core. We were standing a foot apart and the space between us crackled with electrical charge.
“Do you want me to go, or stay?”
It was a fairly straightforward question with a much deeper, much more complicated meaning. I knew exactly what he was asking. If I said that I wanted him to stay, then I was agreeing to give him what he was asking for. Me. All of me. My answer was a promise of a commitment that we were more than just friends.
The only thing that was stopping me from once again jumping off the emotional cliff was whether or not he meant the things he said. Did he really want this as badly as I did? I had no clue. All I could do was act on the facts I had, and those were what I felt for him.
“Stay,” I breathed, hoping I was making the right decision. Not that it was much of a decision at all.
That was the last conscious thought I had before Billy pulled me back into his arms, lowered his head, and covered my mouth with the most sensual and loving kiss we’d ever shared.
Things had changed between us in the last few seconds, in a way that was far more profound than the simple words we’d exchanged. As a lawyer, I would normally have wanted proof, but as a woman in love, I trusted my instincts—Billy and I were all in together. I knew it. This kiss was telling me so, and I believed it more than I did most testimony delivered under oath and penalty of perjury.
His hands traveled up and down my body, leaving a trail of electricity wherever they passed. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him closer. I was overtaken by the most curious and contradictory sensation, something I’d never felt before—the combination of a sense of urgency to be naked with him in bed, to have him inside me…and the simultaneous feeling that we had all the time in the world to be together because of the promise this kiss was making.
It was intoxicating, to say the least, and my head spun harder the longer we kissed, and the more he touched me.
With exceeding gentleness, Billy lifted me up and then lowered me down onto the creaky mattress, then knelt by the edge of the bed, brushing my hair back from my forehead as his eyes took in my face.
It may have just been the half-worn-out boarding house bed I was lying on, but the way Billy looked at me made me feel like I was a princess in the fanciest four-poster canopy, and Billy was my prince.
When he started undressing me, his eyes hungrily took in every inch of skin he exposed by taking off my clothes, I lost all sense of where I was, royal palace or boarding house or otherwise. I was just in a state of pure bliss, and Billy was the one sending me there. That was all my brain had room for.
Just like he had in the field after our picnic, when he had me completely naked, he bent