Yours: A Standalone Contemporary Romance (37 page)

“What if I thought something crazy?”

Another button. “Then feel free to muffle me if need be.”
 

Holy shit. I stand stone still, collecting the shreds of my restraint. Letting her undo the rest of the buttons, slide the shirt off my shoulders. I just breathe, and focus on not ravaging her like some kind of goddamn caveman.
 

“I’ve been missing you for two years, Niall. You have no idea how crazy I feel right now.” I tug open the fly of her shorts.

She meets my eyes. “You’re saying this whole time you haven’t—”

“There’s been no one. I’ve barely had time or privacy for my own hand.”

Her eyes narrow. “Damn, Lock.”

“You sound surprised.”

She shrugs. “You used to be—”

“I used to be a lot of things. You made me want to change. So I did.” I slide my palms up under her shirt, find the clasps of her bra and unhook them. “I always hoped I’d figure out a way to find you. Turns out fate or whatever had a different plan. You’re it.”

“I’m it?” She’s barely breathing, working at the button of my shorts, gazing up at me, eyes glittering with need.

“You’re it for me.” I push up her shirt and bra at the same time, strip them both off her. Toss them aside. Take in the lush wonder of her big, beautiful, bare breasts. “I’m yours, Niall.”

Her breath hitches in her throat as I cup a breast in my palm. “Lock…”

I lean in, close my mouth over her nipple.
 

“Oh, thank god, thank god,” she whispers, arching her spine, pushing more of her soft skin into my mouth. “I’m yours, too.”
 

Her fingers, even as she revels in my mouth on her tits, are not idle. They’re unzipping me. Tugging shorts and underwear off. Fisting her fingers around my erection, sliding her hand up and down my length, stroking swiftly, eagerly, greedily.
 

I pull out of her touch, abruptly. “God, Niall. It’s been so long, I’m—I won’t last long if you keep doing that.”
 

She reclaims her grip on my shaft. “I don’t care how long you last. I need to touch you. I need to feel you. If you come too soon, I’ll just make you eat me out.”

“That’s happening anyway,” I say, gasping as she closes both hands around me, now.
 

“Then shut up and let me touch you.”
 

We’re still standing in the middle of the living area of our suite. Curtains wide open, sun shining bright. Bathing Niall’s skin golden. Gleaming off her hair. I want so many things. I want her touch. I want her mouth. I want to pin her to the wall and fuck her senseless. I want to kiss her breathless and love her delirious.
 

But I’m helpless to do any of that. She’s got me in her thrall, hypnotized by her touch. Struck dumb, paralyzed by the ecstasy of her hands on my skin. Her mouth on my chest, her lips on my stomach. Her hair tickling and sliding lower. Her kisses to my belly, to my thighs. Her tongue gliding up the underside of my erection. Her lips closing around me.
 

Suction.

Wet warmth enveloping me.

Her fingers sliding and her hands gripping, stroking, plunging. Her moans humming around me.
 

“Niall, shit. Shit…oh Jesus. I’m—I can’t hold back, Niall. It feels too good.”
 

She doesn’t respond. Doesn’t say anything. Just moves faster. Strokes harder. Works her mouth on me relentlessly. I can’t help burying my hands in her hair and guiding her motions.
 

When I come, it’s a heady rush of bliss pouring out of me, erotic visions of her mouth sliding around my erection, hair obscuring her features, breasts swaying.
 

When she releases me, I stagger backward. Sink to my knees, dizzy. She’s in front of me, staring down at me. Bare from the waist up, shorts unbuttoned and low around her hips. I clutch her ass and haul her toward me. Tug those stupid, useless shorts off. Bare her completely for me.
 

Stare up at her.
 

Sink two fingers into her opening, watch her gaze go glazed and vacant as I slide those fingers in and out, smear her own essence everywhere. Pull her to my mouth.

Keep those fingers moving, lap at her. Feel her hips begin to grind. Feel her hands in my hair, as mine were in hers. She shows me how she wants it, as I showed her. Hard and fast. Relentless. Tongue swiping and flicking until she’s mad with the impending orgasm.
 

When she comes, it’s with a breathless scream, clutching my hair in clawed fingers, grinding against my mouth, calling my name over and over.
 

Hair in her face, panting, staring down at me. “Take me to bed, Lock.”
 

I stand up, take her in my arms. Carry her to bed. She wipes at my face and beard with her hands, cleaning her juices away.
 

I lay her down gently, press my body against hers and kiss her.

Slowly and gently at first.

So she knows, so she feels it.
 

She breaks the kiss first, breathless. “Need you, Lock.” Reaches between our bodies.

Strokes me to readiness. Pulls me to her.
 

“I don’t have—”

“It’s fine,” she cuts in over me. “We’re covered.”
 

“They’re out there with my things.”
 

“I said we’re covered, okay?” She arches, guides me to her opening. “I don’t want that.” Works her hips, sliding me deep, sliding me home. “I want this. Just this. Just us.”
 

I rest my forehead against hers, struggling for breath, for thought, for sense. This is so intensely, deliriously perfect it hurts.
 

She clings to my ass, pulls at me with each thrust, as if to make sure I don’t try to escape. God, I couldn’t. We move together in silence, watching each other, eyes wide, breath coming hard and fast as we meet each other with each thrust. I cup her face, my other fist pressing against the mattress. I refuse to look away or even to blink.

Her face takes on that lovely, wild, almost pained expression of a nascent orgasm. “Lock…god, Lock. I missed this so much. I missed this with you more than I can…oh god, oh god…more than I can say.”
 

I’m incapable of speech right then, focusing on holding out until she’s at the edge, until she’s falling over, until she’s writhing beneath me, crying my name, weeping with the intensity washing through her, hips bucking against me.
 

When I feel her clench around me, I’m lost. I can’t hold it back when she does that, when she clamps down around me, writhing, moaning.
 

“Niall, Niall…god, oh….oh god.” I feel three words on my lips as I come.

I kiss her as my orgasm fades to shudders and I taste them on her tongue.
 

And then, in the brief, trembling moments after we’ve both emerged from post-orgasm stupor, she rolls us so she’s on top.

Pins my shoulders with her hands, all her weight on me. Leans down, leans close.

“You told me you were in love with me, but I haven’t really heard you say the words.” Her voice is a hoarse, vulnerable rasp. “Fucking
say
it, Lachlan.”

I had it all planned out.

Romantic date. Strolling down some secluded avenue, my arm around her waist. Press her up against a wall and kiss her and say those words I’ve never said to anyone.

But she’s demanding them now.

Thank God I’m yours

Is he panicking?
 

God no. Please, no, Lock. Not after everything we’ve been through.

He carves his hands up the backs of my thighs, over my ass, along my spine and up to comb into my hair. Tugging my face down, slanting his lips across mine, kissing me with such fragile tenderness that my heart beats fit to burst in my throat.
 

“I love you.” He whispers it. As if stunned to hear such a thing emerge from his lips.

I, meanwhile, revel in those words.

“I love you, Niall James.” He says it again.
 

I’m overwhelmed, then. Collapse onto him, and of course his heartbeat thunders under my ear.
 

“I keep thinking about that song,” he says. “The one we heard that night in Oklahoma? After the tornado?”

I nod against his chest. “I remember.”

“There’s a line… ‘You put a new heartbeat inside of me.’ Not many people can say—” His voice catches, and he has to start over. “Not many people can say that and mean it literally. But you did. Literally, and metaphorically.”
 

“I love you.” I murmur it to his chest. To his heartbeat.
 

And I think I’m speaking twofold. To Lock, of course, but also to Oliver. To the memory of Oliver, that is. The Oliver that will live on in the deep, secret portions of my heart. Not secret, perhaps, but private. Deeply, intensely private. Totally mine. Something I’ll never talk about, because they belong only to me.
 

But it’s also for Lock. The start of something new. Something different, and beautiful. Something wild and primal, yet also domestic and comforting.
 

“I never believed in love,” he says. “I never…I never thought I’d hear anyone say that to me. Never thought I’d say it. Because…even though I didn’t believe in it, I refused to say it if I didn’t mean it. Because I think…I think I always
wanted
to believe in it.”
 

“Believe in it now.” I roll off him, curl up with my back to his front, tuck his arm around me.
 

“I do.”
 

*
 
*
 
*

We wake in the same position that we fell asleep—his arm around my waist, palm against my stomach beneath my breasts. The sun is still shining, but now it is the red-gold of evening. I feel him stir behind me. Feel him stir between the globes of my buttocks, going thick and hard. He stretches, pushing against me. Groans with the stretch, flexes his palm.

Cups my breast.

Kisses my shoulder. Brushes my hair aside, kisses my neck.
 

“Hi,” he says.
 

I flex my hips, wiggling my butt against him. “Hi.”

I reach behind me, seeking somewhere, anywhere, to touch him. Find his neck. The back of his head. Groan as he slides his palm down from my breast to the juncture of my thighs. I spread them open for him, admitting his touch. And holy shit, it doesn’t take long to get me ready, for him to bring me to a helpless climax, holding onto the nape of his neck and writhing against him.

While I’m still spasming and whimpering, he rolls to his knees. Hooks his hands in the crease of my hips, hauls me up onto my knees. I’m gasping, still shuddering, but I know what he wants, and fuck, do I want that too. I’m just too shaken by the orgasm to do much but let him position me as he wants. I think it’s better this way. I like it this way. Helpless to his touch.
 

He’s behind me, one hand at my core, the other gripping his erection. Touching the crown to my opening, pushing in gently.
 

Fuck gently; I want it hard.

I snicker at my own pun.

“What’s funny, Niall?” Lock’s voice rumbles behind me.

“You’re being all gentle and stuff,” I murmur. “And I thought, ‘fuck gently, I want it hard.’”
 

He flutters his hips, teasing me with not enough of him. And then, without warning, he slams deep. Hard. “Like this?”
 

I’m rocked forward, gasping. “God, yes.
Fuck
yes.”
 

His hand buries in my hair, gathers my curls and uses that grip as leverage. Not gently, exactly. Roughly, beautifully. I push against his thrusts, moan his name—“
Lock! Lock!
”
 
He loses control quickly. Hand on my hip, pulling back into his thrusts, grip on my hair keeping me pinned in place. Hips pistoning. Slamming his thick shaft into me, over and over, until I’m blasted into a frenzy by wave after wave of climax, and he’s still going, driving into me, grunting, groaning, chanting my name like a prayer.

“Niall—Niall—Niall…oh god, Niall…”
 

And then he’s unleashing, not with a shout, but collapsing forward onto me, burying his face into my hair, against my ear, thrusting deep and shuddering there, gasping my name too many times to count.

That’s all there is to the whole world, then. Just Lock and me, shivering together in the crimson gloaming.
 

“God, I love you, Niall.”
 

And—that’s
all
there is.

Hearing it. Feeling it.
 

Owning it.
 

“Thank god I’m yours,” he murmurs, a smile in his voice. Referring to that song. To that moment, in the calm after the storm.
 

“Thank god I’m yours,” I murmur back to him.

The End

PLAYLIST

“Yours” by Russel Dickerson

Snapback
—album
by Old Dominion

“Stay a Little Longer” by Brothers Osbourne

“Rum” by Brothers Osbourne

Southernality
—album by A Thousand Horses

“Whiskey on My Breath”
by Love & Theft

Just Feels Good
—album by Thompson Square

Three
—album by Gloriana

Jekyll + Hyde
—album by Zaz Brown Band

Fuse
—album by Keith Urban

Pioneer
—album by The Band Perry

Platinum
—album by Miranda Lambert

747
—album by Lady Antebellum

Kill the Lights
—album by Luke Bryan
 

Just As I Am
(Platinum Edition)—album by Brantley Gilbert

High Noon
—album by Jerrod Nieman
 

Riser
—album by Dierks Bentley

The Outsiders
—album by Eric Church

“Live Like You’re Dying” by Tim McGraw

Pageant Material
—album by Kacey Musgraves

Annie Up
—album by the Pistol Annies

Dustin Lynch
—album by Dustin Lynch