Being Me (Inside Out #2)(84)

“You shut me out, and—” My throat constricts. “I was supposed to be there with you. We were supposed to go through this together.”

“Losing Dylan”—he hesitates, seeming to battle within himself before he continues—“it brought back old demons I thought I’d dealt with.” He buries his face in my neck again, as if he can’t bear for me to see his face. “Do you know how I felt when you saw me like that?”

Anguish pours off him and into me and my hands settle on his head, cradling him against me. “I love you, Chris. I can deal with anything except you shutting me out.”

“You don’t know that.”

A heavy weight of doubt settles in my heart, and I wonder if we can make it through this. “You don’t know that,” I whisper. “You don’t trust me enough to believe in me, in us.”

He lifts his head, letting me see the shame in his eyes, exposing what he’s tried to hide. Shame I understand all too well and would never wish on Chris. “You have no reason to feel what you’re feeling right now. Not with me,” I say.

“There’s a part of me that lives in the belly of hell. You don’t belong there. I can’t take you there with me.” His forehead goes to mine. “And yet I can’t stay away. I can’t let you go.”

“Don’t,” I breathe, my hands press to his chest, the muscle flexing beneath my touch. I wish I could pull the pain from within him, heal him the way he does me. “Don’t let me go.”

“I’m not,” he vows, framing my face to stare down at me, his voice sandpaper rough as it shivers down my spine and into my soul. “I can’t, and I can only pray you don’t wish I would have.” He claims my mouth, and it is as if he is claiming me again for the first time. I offer all that I am to him.

His tongue presses past my lips and teeth, finding mine and stroking, and I feel him everywhere, the heat of how much I need him burning away the cold night. Everything fades away but the two of us touching, kissing, melding our bodies together. I am blinded by passion, by the relief of his return, by his body next to mine. Time stands still and somehow my blouse is gaping, my bra open, and I’m pressed against the tree with Chris suckling and licking my nipples. My skirt is at my hips and I stroke the thick ridge of Chris’s erection, nearly desperate to feel him inside me, craving the connection I thought I’d never experience again.

“Chris—” I pant and yelp, the bark cutting into my back, penetrating the haze of desire overcoming me.

“Ah. The tree.” Chris pulls me from the tree, kisses me hard on the lips, and then shrugs out of his leather jacket, spreading it on the ground. He skims my jacket from my shoulders, spreading it on top of his. I shiver in a gust of wind and he takes me down to the ground, his big, warm body blocking out everything but him. Protecting me. He’s always protecting me, even from himself.

Our breath mingles, teasing me with a kiss yet to happen, with the depths of passion I feel for Chris expanding within me. Still, he doesn’t kiss me. He caresses my skirt up my hips again, his touch leaving goose bumps on my bare skin that have nothing to do with the night air and everything to do with the man. I reach for his waistband; that craving for him inside me reignites, becomes urgent. He echoes my silent plea, shoving down his pants, and I moan with the feel of the hard length of his cock thick between my thighs.

On his elbows, he pins me in a sizzling stare as he enters me and it’s as if my soul sighs when he is finally buried deep in the depths of my body, stretching me, filling me.

“I thought I’d never be inside you again and it almost killed me.” His voice trembles with a vulnerability that means even more than his confession.

He begins to move, a slow, sensual slide of his cock followed by another, watching me, me watching him, and we are making love, impossible and breathtaking lovemaking. We sway and meld together in a sweet, arousing dance, but it’s not the harmony of our bodies that reaches deep and claims me, it’s what passes between us as we stare at one another. He is as much a part of me as skin and bone, and it terrifies and completes me.

Chris dips his head and touches his lips to mine, teases my tongue with his, trails his lips over my jaw, over my shoulder, to my nipple. Every lick and taste, and tease, is tender, gentle, a contrast to the hardness of the past week and the man who’d been tied to those poles in the club. Suddenly I need him to know that I see both, I love both.

My hand slides into the silky long strands of his blond hair. “Chris,” I manage hoarsely through the delicious friction of his tongue against my nipple, my sex clenching around his cock. “Chris.”

His mouth comes down on mine, harder now, more demanding, a raw, hungry need in him rising to the surface. “You belong to me,” he growls. “Say it.”

“Yes. Yes, I belong to you.” His mouth finds mine again, demanding, taking, drawing me under his spell.

“Say it again,” he demands, nipping my lip, squeezing my breast and nipple, and sending a ripple of pleasure straight to my sex.

“I belong to you,” I pant.

He lifts me off the ground with the possessive curve of his hand around my backside, angling my hips to thrust harder, deeper. “Again,” he orders, driving into me, his cock hitting the farthest point of me and blasting against sensitive nerve endings.