Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(97)

“Thank you.” I stroke his neck and kiss him again. He’s so warm, wired, animal.

Also, shirtless.

When his tongue parts my lips, I go weak against him. The kiss gets serious, fast. My back bumps into the wall, his hand catches behind my knee.

“Let’s go home,” I say.

We don’t even make it to the parking lot before he’s pushing me up against a tree, the bark rough at the back of my head until his hand is there, protecting me.

Then, scorching heat and roving hands. I’m wet, was already wet in the hall, wetter still as I pushed through the door and he gave it a shove from behind me, groped my ass with his free hand in the deepest, dirtiest way.

“Home,” I say on a gasp.

“Yeah.”

“You drive.”

“Keys.”

I fish them out of my purse, although I’m not sure how. West is no help. His hands are all over me. “Here.”

I have to dangle them in front of his face to get his attention.

Back at the apartment, Krishna and Bridget are waiting.

“How’d it go?”

“Did you nail his ass?”

West doesn’t even let me talk. He pushes me in front of him, says, “Give us a minute,” and slams the door to his bedroom in their surprised faces.

“That was rude.”

He’s too busy unbuttoning my pants to answer.

A few quick jerks, a shove onto the bed, a condom retrieved from the desk, and he’s on me, pushing my knees open, testing me with his fingers. When he feels how wet I am, he makes that mmm sound that drives me crazy. “Hurry,” I tell him.

It doesn’t last long, but oh, God, it’s amazing. One confident thrust and he’s filling me, our tongues dancing, his belt buckle jingling as he moves into me hard and deep. We don’t talk. I’m not sure we breathe. He needs to claim me, and I need to claim him, too, his flaws and his anger and his stupid macho protective bullshit, his promise and his body and the way he is, frustrating and imperfect, gorgeous and hot, violent and intelligent and real.

He sucks my nipple into his mouth, laps it with his tongue the way he knows drives me crazy, gets his hand up under me and tilts to put friction where I need it. It doesn’t take much. I’m close. So close already, and he feels bigger and harder and deeper than ever, driving fast, breathing ragged against my neck. “Come on, baby,” he says, and I make this sound like a sob, but I’ve never felt this good.

Tighter and harder, I dig into his shoulders when I start to come, needing to hold on to him, to keep him here, right here, this close. He groans, pushes his forehead into mine, kisses my temple when I turn my head, comes inside me holding my hands, our fingers interlaced, his grip so tight that the ache in my joints is the first thing I feel when I’m capable of feeling anything but bliss.

I wiggle my fingers, and he lets go.

“Holy crap.”

He grins.

“That was—holy crap.”

He kisses my nose, still smiling, and shakes his head.

“Seriously. That’s all I’ve got. I’m sure there are other words, but …”

West starts laughing, his belly moving against mine. “Never let it be said the caveman thing doesn’t turn you on.”

“It doesn’t!”

He keeps laughing, so I pinch him. “Last time you hit Nate, I puked!”

“You just came in, like, fifteen seconds. And that time at the library—”

“Don’t even bring that up.”

“After I decked him. You were hot for me.”

“I was not!”

“You would’ve let me do anything to you that day.”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“You so would have. I should’ve kissed you. Skipped all those months we spent kidding ourselves. Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking about it.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Right, because you’re such a good girl.”

I get my hands around his head, pull him close, kiss him. “Okay, maybe I was thinking about it. But only because you so clearly needed an outlet for all that rampant testosterone.”

“You would’ve volunteered to be my outlet?”

“Your receptacle. Because I’m a giver.”

“I just gave you an orgasm that made your eyes cross.”

“Well, sure. Giving has its benefits.”

He starts laughing again, and I hug him tight, loving the way his body feels against mine.

Loving him.



When we come out, we bump through the bedroom doorway, West’s hand at my hip, a shit-eating grin on his face that I can’t see but can feel with my whole body.

Happy.

It’s amazing, I think, that we can find so much happiness at a time like this. I mean, yes, sex. But it’s not really the sex. It’s what’s underneath the sex. It’s how he makes me feel, how I make him feel, how we are together. This golden ribbon of something beautiful we’ve always had between us, there even when I was peering into his car and trying not to look too hard at the bare slice of flat stomach reflected in the car window. Even when we were arguing at the library, not-touching at the bakery, kissing on the train tracks.

Even when I told him to make up his mind and walked out on him, that ribbon was there—a shining possibility underneath.