Third Life - Noelle Adams Page 0,81

smiling blue eyes.

“Hi.” Then he takes a step into the apartment, takes my head in both his hands, and takes my breath away with a hard kiss.

I wondered if we might feel a little weird and hesitant, having sex again after everything that happened. Not that it wouldn’t be good. Just that it might take us a little while to feel comfortable with each other again.

It doesn’t take any time at all.

As soon as his lips meet mine, my body comes alive in a way it hasn’t since London. I grab for him eagerly. He kicks the apartment door closed before he pulls me fully against him. And we’re kissing uninhibitedly as we stumble through the living room and toward my bedroom.

We fall onto the bed, and Richard wastes no time in getting rid of my clothes. He’s hot and hard and openly passionate. He’s already aroused—I can feel the bulge in the front of his pants—and his eyes are hungry as they run up and down my naked body. Needy. Almost desperate. Like he’s been starving without me.

I suddenly realize that he has been. He doesn’t just want me. He doesn’t just love me. He needs me.

As much as I need him.

My eyes are burning with emotion as I pull his handsome head down into another kiss. He explores my mouth with his tongue for a while and then trails kisses down my neck. Lifting his head once to check my face, he asks dryly, “Are you going to cry?”

“No, I’m not going to cry!” I huff at him out of principle, despite the fact that the pressure in my throat and behind my eyes makes it clear that tears could come at any moment. “Why would I cry about sex?”

“I thought you might be so overwhelmed with joy that you couldn’t help it.” His tone is still bone dry, but his eyes are very tender.

“I am overwhelmed with joy,” I admit. “But I’m not going to cry about it.”

“Okay.” He gives me a quick kiss and then nuzzles the crook of my neck. “Then I might cry for both of us. I didn’t think it was possible for me to be this happy.”

He’s sucking on the pulse in my throat—doing delicious things to my senses—but he’s also hiding his face from me. I use both hands to pull him up so I can see him.

He’s not about to cry, as far as I can tell from his face. But he is nakedly emotional as he gazes down at me. I try to say something and can’t. The words are caught on the lump in my throat.

“Are you sure about this, Gillian?” he asks in a hoarse whisper. “Are you sure this is what you want?”

I nod for a while before I can manage to speak. “I’m sure. I love you, Richard. More than anything. And I know for sure that you love me. I think part of me always really doubted it. Doubted that a man like you could feel something like that for someone like me. But I know it now. I can trust that now. I can give you everything. And everything’s what I want from you.”

“You have it.” He kisses my mouth. Then the side of my neck. Then a spot just next to my ear. “You have all of me there is to have. If you want it.”

“I do!” I pull his face toward me so I can kiss him, and this time we don’t stop.

We’re kissing as he caresses me to arousal and when he positions himself at my entrance and when he pushes inside me as I wrap my legs around him. We’re kissing as we rock together with so much urgency it’s almost clumsy. Nothing controlled or practiced about it. And we’re kissing when my body shakes through an orgasm and keeps breaking with pleasure as his motion gets hard and jerky.

Richard doesn’t break the kiss until he’s just on the edge of coming. He turns his head to the side as his body tightens like a fist. But he’s gazing down at me as the release washes over him. I see it in his eyes, his face. I feel it in his body.

I feel all of it. His love and need and complete devotion.

It’s mine.

He’s mine.

Richard must have seen and felt the same thing in me because he’s shaking again with emotion when his body softens above me.

I wrap my arms around him and hold him tight. As tightly as