Finding It (Losing It, #3)(55)

I rose up on my elbows, and he crawled above me. He kissed me sweetly, slowly, and the frenzy of our previous moments disappeared. There was a level of intimacy in just kissing him that I’d never experienced, and it left me excited and terrified of what came next.

Sex had never been a big deal to me. But everything about Jackson was a big deal. I was afraid I wouldn’t be good enough, afraid that I wouldn’t know how to have the kind of sex that meant something. What if when it was over, he regretted crossing that line?

His hand smoothed over my cheek and he said, “Don’t. Don’t do that.”

I didn’t know if he knew the exact line of my thoughts or just that I was worried, but it soothed me all the same.

He kissed me, and then slowly eased me back on the bed. He lay beside me, and I turned on my side to face him. I laid my head on his arm, and he pulled me into his chest, just holding me for a moment. We’d held each other like this before, but this time was different. My heart was thundering, and my skin sang. His hand traced down the line of my spine, and I arched into him. He continued over my hip and down my leg, his fingers curling behind my knee. A zing of electricity shot from my knee up to my core as he pulled my leg over his hip.

Our mouths met and he said, “God, I love the way you taste.”

He leaned into me, situating his leg between mine, and aligning our hips. He pushed inside me, and for a moment my whole body seemed to forget how to work. My blood forgot to pump, my lungs forgot to breathe, and my hips forgot to move.

His hands tightened on me, and he released a low groan into my neck.

He growled, “I love the way you feel.”

Laying on my side like this with our legs twined together, he reached deep inside me. I’d never had sex like this, wrapped up in another person until it was impossible to find the divide between us. His hips withdrew and then pushed again, and the friction had me arching my back.

My hips stayed aligned with his, but I bent backward until my head and half my back rested on the bed. Jackson leaned with me, curling around my body. His mouth burned a hot path from my collarbone down into the valley between my breasts. He kept a hand at the small of my back and used it to pull me in every time he surged forward.

He rained kisses down on my chest, and I clutched the back of his head, needing to feel him, to hold him against me.

He trailed up again, flicking his tongue over my collarbone and scraping his teeth against the column of my throat. My skin broke out in goose bumps, and I shuddered in his arms. He placed a kiss on the underside of my jaw, and I dipped my head down to meet his.

His tongue plunged into my mouth, mimicking the deep movement of the rest of his body, and I clung to him as he wrung pleasure from my body with each slow thrust.

“Kelsey,” he whispered.

I had to pry my eyes open, and even then each time his skin slid against mine I had to fight to hold up my eyelids. He pressed his forehead into mine, and rather than falling into his dark eyes, they seemed to pour something into me. Confidence, maybe. Or affection. Whatever it was, I stopped worrying about how this would play out. I stopped thinking of the ways I was inadequate. I stopped everything that didn’t have to do with this moment.

He said, “God, do you have any idea what you do to me? Any idea how long I’ve wanted you?”

I didn’t have any ideas about anything, except that I was so close.

I hooked my hand around his hip, my fingers splaying from his lower back to the curve of the rest of his body. I pressed my fingers into his skin, my fingernails spurring him on.

“Harder,” I begged.

His hips pushed forward, and I felt it all the way to my toes.

He slid the arm out from underneath my head and lifted himself up. He kept one knee between mine, and our hips fitted together. He used the leg I’d had around his hip to guide me onto my back. Then clutching my leg to his chest, he gave me exactly what I asked for.

His hips rolled into mine first, as I adjusted to the new position, then rocked forward harder. On his second thrust, I reached up and pressed my hand flat against the headboard.

His pace shifted from slow and steady to fast and hard and the bed creaked beneath us. I sucked in a breath, holding it as I drew closer and closer, and then I was falling all over again. Falling from that bridge. My heart in my throat. Falling for him. My heart in my hands. Falling apart. Falling together.

Falling into place.

It felt like hours before my heartbeat slowed, and I was strong enough to open my eyes.

When I did, my head was both clouded and clear. I couldn’t have remembered fractions or the state capitols or maybe even my name. Those things had been locked behind a wall of bliss. But Jackson’s face above mine? That was clear, as was the way just the sight of him made my heartbeat pick up again.

He lowered my leg to the outside of his hips, so that he was cradled between my thighs.

He leaned down and teased my tired lips with his own.

He said, “I could watch that a hundred more times. A thousand.”

I scrunched my nose up, certain that I’d probably made some hideous face in the throes of the moment. He smoothed the lines on my forehead with his thumb and said, “ I want to memorize the way your eyes clench shut and you bite down on your lip, so that I can sketch your expression from memory. I want to know the exact angle of the way your neck curves, and how many times your heart beats a minute. I want to know everything.”