Forever & Always: The Ever Trilogy (Book 1) (25 page)

I’d never felt that, the true caress of love. I’d felt the grip of lust, of lascivious ardor.
 

He tilted his face and caught my lips, and his kiss was a tide, a rolling wave overwhelming my breath and my thoughts in crashing fervor. I arched my spine and pressed my breasts against his hard chest, lifting my ass, seeking his touch there. I opened my eyes and pulled away from his lips, seeing need in his eyes to mirror my own, and I wished I knew how to get him to unleash himself, to quit holding back.
 

“Ever…” His voice was so deep, smooth and dark and rich. “God, you’re so…much. So beautiful. I feel drunk from kissing you. Like touching you makes me high. I’m dizzy from your skin.”

The poetry of his words made me quiver and shudder and made me clutch him and kiss him compulsively. I nuzzled his throat, felt his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, kissed the hollow of his throat and the side of his neck and up to the crevice behind his ear and then the hard ridge of his jaw. “You’re all there is, all I know. All I need.” I whispered the words with my lips brushing the shell of his ear. “And I need more of you. All of you. Now. I need it…all, now. Please, Cade. I’ve needed you for so long. Don’t make me wait anymore.”

“I’m…I’m broken, Ever.” His words cracked as he spoke them. It was admission torn from the bottom of his soul.

“Me, too. Let’s heal each other. Put each other back together again.”
 

“Here?”

I moaned in frustration. I didn’t want to be reminded of reality. Of the fact that my private studio space was unlocked and that there were windows cracked open so sound could escape, even if the blinds were drawn closed. “No. God. Goddamn it.” I slid off him, and as I stood up, I relished the way his eyes raked down my body and back up, and then his gaze locked on mine, as if embarrassed to be caught looking at me.

I held out my hand to him, and he took it in his, his palm engulfing my fingers. I drew him to me, pressed my boobs against his chest. “You can look, Cade,” I told him. “Look at me.” I freed a button, and felt myself spill out, the edges of the shirt just barely covering my nipples.

He let his eyes leave mine, slide down, and his breath halted as he saw my nearly bared breasts.
 

“Touch me,” I whispered. My heart hammered, my pulse sent haywire by my daring, my need for him.

He touched the pad of his index finger to my collarbone, dragged it across the bone, sliding the edge of my shirt aside. Down, then, his finger moved, and his eyes were on mine as he moved the shirt away, and then my left breast was bare to the air and to his gaze and to his touch, and I was breathless. His hand cupped underneath my boob, and then he lifted its weight and the heel of his palm brushed my erect nipple, sending sparks through me. He flattened his hand over my breastbone, and then slid the other side of my shirt away and caressed my right breast, and then he was on his knees in front of me, kneeling before me, and his fingers were freeing the last few buttons and his lips were on my skin, his mouth grazing my navel.

I threaded my fingers through his hair and tried to remember to keep breathing. He kissed upward, dragging his lips across my flesh, which pebbled with goosebumps. His hands curled around my waist and slid up the bare skin of my spine, pulled me closer and then his mouth was touching too-gentle kisses to the round underside of my breast, and now my lungs filled with an abrupt
whoosh
, which turned into an eager moan as his lips closed on my nipple. He sucked it into his mouth and I was gone, gone, aching all throughout my body, fire blazing a trail from my tits down to my core, and as he tugged on my nipple with his nimble lips the line of heat grew hotter and the pulling within my core loosed a torrent of damp, slick need between my thighs.

“Cade, Jesus, Cade….” I breathed, “don’t stop, please, don’t ever stop…”

He moved his mouth to the other breast and I was dizzy, my knees weak, and his palms were skating up and down my back, holding my shoulder blades and curling under the shirt fabric over my shoulders and down again, to the upper swell of my ass.
 

 
“Hot,” he murmured when he realized I wasn’t wearing panties. His mouth touched an electric kiss between my breasts and then moved down, and my entire body was…what was beyond fire? What was hotter than flame?
 

He pulled his gaze away and his mouth away, and I whimpered at the loss of the hot wet slide of his lips against my skin, but I was rewarded by the raw heat in his gaze as he stared at my privates. He licked his lips, and his hands on my hips tightened their grip, dimpling the flesh with some sort of control he was trying to exercise over himself..
 

“Talk to me, Cade.” I needed affirmation from him. I needed to know his thoughts, to know how he felt. I needed, simply, to hear his voice.
 

“I want you, Ever.” His voice shook. “So bad. You were beautiful when you were fifteen. You’re…Jesus fuck, Ever, you’re a goddess now. Let me worship you.”

“Please?” I could barely speak.
 

My button-down painting shirt was hanging from the crooks of my elbows. His mouth devoured my navel, the inward curve where my hip and my thigh met. I shivered and shook, curled my fingers in his hair and panted, heard tiny mewling moans emit from my throat as his kisses slid down my thigh and back up, across my belly, low. I trembled in his grip. His hands rested on my hips, held me still. I needed his touch; I placed my hand on his, moved his palm with my finger twined in his to cup my ass, my head tilted back, my eyes closed, my breath coming in shallow gasps of ragged passion.

He took the hint and took the taut round weight of my ass in both his hands, caressed the flesh, cupped, tested the firmness with his fingers, ran his palms underneath and lifted each cheek, traced the crease with sliding fingers, dipped in through the keyhole gap and ignited trembling need into an inferno.
 

I let my feet slide apart, opening for him. “Cade? More. Touch me. Please.”
 

I had no problem begging him. I’d beg him until he sated the ravenous hunger within me for his touch, for his kisses, for his caresses and his love. I needed this, more than I’d ever needed anything, and he was being so slow, so careful, exploring me with thoroughness that left me shivering with impatience.
 

He held onto my ass and kissed my pubis, down over the close-cropped hair, and I was limp in his touch, quivering all over, barely able to stand, yet I found the strength to grasp his shoulders and widen my stance. “Yes…” I whispered, “please. Kiss me. Right there, please, Cade.” I loved saying his name, loved whispering his name with such sexual heat.
 

And then he pulled his mouth away. “I thought we were moving somewhere more private?”

I could have screamed. “I don’t care…not now. I just need you.”

He let his forehead rest against my belly. “I don’t want to share the sounds you’re making for me with anyone else. I don’t…I don’t want to be interrupted. I don’t want you to be embarrassed later.”

He was thinking of me, protecting me from my own impatience. I did indeed feel a rush of embarrassment as I realized anyone could walk in. I’d unlocked the door to let him and hadn’t relocked it. Eden had a tendency to visit me without warning, and so did Ms. Meier, my mentor.
 

I pulled him to his feet. “Come on. My room.”

“But your roommate…” He buttoned my shirt from the bottom up, missing a button, so it was crooked.
 

“She’ll leave. Or we’ll have to close my door and be quiet.” I tugged my yoga pants on, grabbed my shirt, bra, and shoes off the floor, and led Cade by the hand across the road to my dorm room.
 

Steph was on the couch, a thick textbook on her knees, glasses on top of her head, a
Doctor Who
episode playing on TV. She glanced up as we entered, took one look at Cade’s mussed hair, my misbuttoned shirt and clothes tucked under my arm and the fevered expression on my face, and shot to her feet. “I’ll just…go to Mark’s,” she stammered, ducking her head as she vanished into her room, packed a bag in record time, and stuffed her feet into a pair of clogs. “Text me when it’s…safe.” And with that, she was gone.
 

I locked the door behind her, flattened my palms against the door and leaned back against it. “Now we’re alone.” I’d been in such a hurry, but now I wanted to delay the moment, revel in the heat in his eyes, the obvious bulge at his zipper, the pounding excitement racing in my veins.

“Very much alone,” Cade said, taking a step closer to me.
 

I reached for him, but instead of pulling him against me and kissing him, I grasped the hem of his T-shirt and lifted it up, over his head and off, memorizing his unique scent as I tossed it aside. My eyes devoured him. I’d seen the evidence of his build through the shirt, but nothing could prepare me for the dizzying splendor of his bare torso. I let my head thunk against the door, my gaze raking over him. Broad shoulders, thick, heavy arms and bulging pectoral muscles, rippling abs, a hint of a wicked V-cut peeking above the waistband of his boxers. Every muscle was hard and huge and defined, but not from hours in the gym, rather from hard work, the natural muscle of a strong man who knew how to use his body, and did. He looked like he could wrestle a bull to the ground, carry a foal on his shoulders, lift a bale of hay with ease.

After his shirt was gone, he unbuttoned three buttons on mine, then stopped. “I buttoned it crooked,” he said with a laugh.

“I know,” I said. “You were kind of distracted.”

I ran my hands over his shoulders, down his biceps and back up, over his pecs, down his abs, splaying my fingers and tracing the lines of his abs. His gaze was locked on me, his hands resting on my hips, waiting to see what I would do. I looked up to meet his eyes. His mouth fell open and his chest expanded with a huge inbreath as I crooked an index finger inside the elastic of his underwear, following the curve of his waistline from hip to hip, and then back to center. I undid the button of his jeans, drew the zipper down. He wasn’t breathing now, holding the breath he’d taken, his hands bunching the cotton of my shirt in tight fists. I ran my hands between his jeans and boxers, caressing his tight ass and pushing the denim down in the same motion. He was wearing skin-hugging gray boxer-briefs; he was hard for me, and he was
huge
. A dot of moisture darkened the stretchy fabric where the tip of him touched it, leaking.

I swallowed hard, able to see every glorious inch of him outlined by the gray material, and I wanted it all. I reached for the elastic band, but he pinioned my wrist in his massive hand. With the other hand, he deftly unbuttoned the last three buttons of my shirt. He let go of my wrist, brought both of his palms to my face and slowly closed the distance between us, pressed his hungry lips to mine, kissed me till I swooned. His palms slid down the arch of my neck, over my shoulders, brushing the shirt away. I straightened my arms and let it fall free.

I was naked before him.
 

He continued to kiss me while his hands explored me, searching my curves in earnest. Sliding down my arms, around my neck and down my spine, following the curve of my ass, the backs of my thighs and around to my quads, squeezing gently the generous flesh and muscle there, and up, tracing in a teasing, tantalizing slide up the crease of my pussy, making my knees quake.

My own hands were not idle; I dragged my finger down his straining length, over the stretched cotton, and then was unable to pretend any longer and impatiently drew his underwear down, down, and he stepped out of them, and we were both bare for each other. I took his lower lip in my teeth and grasped his thick cock in my fist, eating his groan with my kiss and sliding my palm down his length.

“I wasn’t thinking about…this…when I knocked on your door,” Cade murmured, “so I’m not…I don’t have anything. Protection, I mean.”

I squeezed gently, caressed his hardness, learning the length of him, the girth of him, the way he lay straight up against his belly and the bulbous mushroom head, springy under my touch. “It’s fine,” I said, “I’ve got an IUD.”

“Thank god,” he said.
 

He bent and kissed the side of my neck, and I leaned back against the door, displayed my throat for him. His mouth descended, and I held onto the base of him, just holding him, waiting and desperate to see how he’d touch me, what pleasure he would give me, what bliss he would infuse into my eager body. His mouth followed my flesh to my nipple, brought it to diamond hardness with a single kiss, tongued it, nibbled it, and I moaned at each wet touch of his mouth. One hand on his cock, I wrapped the other around his neck and held him against me, arched my back to get more of his mouth on the flesh of my breasts.

“Your tits taste so good,” Cade mumbled. “So good. They’re perfect tits, Ever. Just perfect.”

“I love your cock,” I said, breathless. “It’s so big, so hard.”

“I want to hear you come.” He slid a hand between my thighs, and I spread my legs to allow him room. “Can you moan for me? Say my name when you come, Ever.”

“I love the way you say my name.” I slid my fist up and down his length as slowly as I could, savoring the size and silky perfection of him in my hands. This was Caden, my Caden, real, here, in my house, his cock in my hand and his fingers delving into my folds. “Yes, Caden. Yes. Touch me there. I’ll come for you.”

I’d never spoken this way before. Not ever. No matter how good it was, I never spoke this way, and it had never,
ever
been this good. This wasn’t even sex yet, this was foreplay, and my life was changed, my notion of pleasure altered, my idea of passion shattered and remade.
 

I moaned loud when his finger slid into the tight wet space of my pussy, and louder yet when he curled his finger and found the perfect spot and caressed me there, so gently, so slowly, as if he knew exactly how to touch me, how to make me come. He knew my body, knew it as if he’d always made love to me.