Harder (Caroline & West #2)(66)

More love. More touch.

More people who looked at me the way Caroline does, saw me like she does, asked me what I want.

I touch the loose fists of her fingers, and she grips my hands tight.

“Bed,” I say, barely audible. “Get on the bed.”

She does as I ask, clearing away the books. I turn on the closet light and flip the overhead switch off so it’s quiet and dark and we can be just the two of us.

She watches me strip. Watches me crawl up over her, strokes my arms and my shoulders as I lower down to my elbows to kiss her.

“How come you’re so much bigger?” she asks me.

“Landscaping. And lifting weights in Bo’s garage.” Burning off frustration and hatred. Trying to get rid of the habit of her, the knack for hope I’d picked up in Putnam.

“When I got off the plane and saw you,” she says, “I thought you were scary.”

“I felt scary.”

She widens her thighs to bring me between them. Lifts her hips to rub hot swollen slickness over my cock. “You feel good to me now.”

“That’s all I want. To be good to you.”

Her hand curls over the back of my neck. “Be good to me forever.”

“I hope I get to.”

She lifts her knees. Tips up her hips. Invites me inside. “We decide. You and me.”

I kiss her, my tongue delving into her mouth, my boundaries dissolving. She kisses me, her fingertips digging into my shoulder blades, nails biting crescent moons into my back.

When I can stand to pull away, I back off so I can tell her, “I don’t think I ever made a decision on you. It got made for me when we met.”

“Same here. You’ll recall I fainted.”

“Oh, I recall.”

“You were over top of me, just like this.”

“Thinking dirty thoughts.”

“Mutual dirty thoughts.”

“Even while you were passing out?”

“I think I passed out from how dirty my thoughts were.” I rest my forehead against hers, resisting the urgent message of my cock to make this happen now, now, now. She lifts her hips again. “You said you wanted to get inside me.”

“It was hot out. I said I wanted to get you inside.”

“It sounded like the same thing.” Another hint from her hips. “Would you?”

“Get inside you?”

“Yes.”

“We need a condom.”

“Not really. I’m on birth control.”

“I didn’t … It wasn’t like I tried to make you think. I wasn’t f*cking other women.”

“Because you love me,” she whispers.

“Because I love you.”

It’s the first time I’ve ever told her.

She already knew, though. She’s known forever.

“I love you, too, West.”

“After all that.”

“You know I do.” She tightens her arms around me. “Come inside me now.”

She lifts.

I thrust.

Gliding, sinking, easy and hard at the same time, but perfect, because me and Caroline—that’s who we are. That’s the way we’re going to be.

Deep, deeper.

Hard, harder.

Fast, faster.

Clutching, gripping, grabbing, pulling, kissing, holding on. There’s nowhere to go and nowhere else we have to be.

This is what I want.

The first thing, the main thing—this woman in my arms, in my life. This woman next to me. As long as I’ve got her, I can figure out the rest of it.

I can do whatever I’ve got to do and be whoever I need to be to keep her.





Caroline


There’s a reason they call it falling in love—because of the way it tips you ass over teakettle and then shakes your life up, hard.

Don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing like it. No better drug. No adventure more fantastic.

But it changes things.

It changes you.

I got West back that November and fell in love with him all over again. It was like that Gravitron carnival ride where you stand against a wall and they spin you and spin you until the floor drops away and you’re stuck there by centrifugal force.

I never could stop myself from laughing on that ride. I’d try so hard to peel my hand off the side, lift my arm, wave at my sisters across the way. My oldest sister, Janelle, always tried fancy stuff, walking her feet up, posing kind of silly. Alison would be white-faced, scared.

I would laugh until my cheeks hurt, slain by the hilarity of my own helplessness.

It snowed early and often that winter, and West and I laughed so much. Talked so much. Fucked all the time, everywhere, completely helpless against the urge to put our hands on each other.

School. Sleep. Food. Sex. West.

I didn’t have the strength for anything else. I was falling, swooping, drifting, whirling around.

Laughing.

When I finally hit the ground, I hadn’t braced for the impact, but I was too dizzy, laughing too hard to care.

I wouldn’t have changed the ride for anything.


When the phone rings, I’m on West’s couch. I’ve got a library book in one hand, Frankie’s head in my lap, and no way to reach my cell.