Grounded (Up in the Air, #3)(82)

“I’m sorry,” he said brokenly, his voice no more than a whisper. “I only seem to disappoint you. If it makes you feel better, I’m beginning to hate the man I was before I met you.”

I stroked a hand over his hair. “Of course that doesn’t make me feel better. As far as I can tell, you’ve always been wonderful, even during your slutty days.”

“I feel like life was easy before I met you, because it didn’t matter,” he said in a rough voice, leaning into my hand. “Nothing mattered before I knew you. I was a pretender, playing at life with monopoly money. I didn’t feel anything. Nothing ever really changed because I just I didn’t care. And now that it does matter—now that everything matters, it’s so much harder, because things have weight now, and my life has substance. You can hurt a thing with substance. I’ve become vulnerable, where nothing could have hurt me before. My mistakes, even my past ones, will have consequences now.”

I moved into him, pulling his head into my chest. He nuzzled there, making me sway with the force of his affection. I kissed the top of his head comfortingly. “I understand completely, James. I fought my feelings for you for so long for just that reason. Letting you in meant opening myself up to a pain I thought I was immune to, because I had become frozen to all of it. I was unfair to you, and even to some of my friends. You were right when you told me that I have room in my heart for more than Stephan. You read me so well without me ever having to say the words. It astounds me. Perhaps we were made for each other. You’re making me a believer, my love.”

He wrapped his arms around me. “I’m sorry you had to see that video, Bianca. I tried so hard to keep it from getting out.”

I rubbed my cheek against that silky hair. “You didn’t make me watch it. I take responsibility for that. And I learned something important from it. It did hurt to watch you with her, but I think it was worth it, in a way.”

He pulled away far enough to give me a genuinely baffled look. “Why?! How?”

I gave him a small smile and some very solid eye contact. “Because I learned that you may have f*cked a lot of women, James, but I’m your first lover.”

“Yes,” he rasped, kissing me like he owned me. I loved that kiss, and yes, that ownership.

“You’re so different with me,” I told him as he pulled away long enough to pull me on top of him. I straddled him in his chair. “You always were, from the very beginning.”

“Yes,” he murmured, undoing his slacks to pull out that delicious cock. It was hard as a poker and ready to go, as ever. “I’ve told you this. It’s unfortunate that you had to see me at my worst to believe it.” He ripped off my panties as he spoke, making the words come out harsh and raw.

He impaled me on his arousal forcefully, not checking if I was ready—not letting me respond. It didn’t matter. I shuddered with the pleasure, and the pain, of his possession.

He didn’t move once he’d seated me to the hilt, but held me there, looking up at me with his heart in his eyes. I loved those eyes so much.

I cupped his cheek. “You’re so different with me,” I repeated. “You never made me look down; you never let me look away from you. You never walked away from me.”

He shook his head. “Never.”

“I loved your eyes first,” I told him, repeating his words from a few weeks ago back to him, because it was true, and because we were two halves of a whole—we had been all along, and he’d been so clever to know it right away. I used to think it was insanity, but now I was beginning to think that it was pure brilliance. “I see it, too, James. I see the other half of my soul in you.”

He jerked against me suddenly, grinding me against him. He never broke eye contact as he came inside of me.

He pulled my forehead to his, giving me a self-deprecating grin. “Well, that was embarrassing. I feel like a teenager. I’ll have to make it up to you.”

I smiled back, far from upset about it. I loved affecting him so powerfully that he lost control like that.

“I have no doubt that you will,” I said, meaning it. If we were keeping score on orgasms, I was in the lead by four to one, at least. The man always could play my body like a drum.

He slid a hand between our bodies, moving his thumb in soft circles over my clit, circling his hips to move his thick length inside of me in an intoxicating grind.

“Touch me,” he said roughly. I relished the chance. It seemed like more often than not only he did the touching.

I ran my hands over his chest and up to his shoulders. I cupped his face in my hands before running my hungry fingers to the buttons of his shirt. I loosened it clumsily, popping a few unfortunate buttons as I went. I moaned when I got his chest bared enough to stroke that perfect golden skin.

He brought me like that, with those little circles of his hips and that clever thumb, his skin under my hands. It was a gentle wave of sensations.

He grabbed my hips firmly and thrust harder as I still quivered around him. Big hard thrusts turned into rough bucks. He bucked me nearly off his length before yanking me back onto him. What had started gentle turned into a deliciously rough ride as I was still recovering from the first orgasm.

His eyes turned from tender between one hard thrust and the next, taking on a possessive gleam. He didn’t even have to say the words. I knew what he wanted. “I’m yours, James. Yours.”