IRL: In Real Life (After Oscar, #1)(61)

The real life part of my brain tried to remind me I was flying out the following day, but I pushed it aside. There was no room for real life right now when my body was feeling so divinely shattered.

“C’mere,” Wells murmured, pulling me onto my back by the shoulder. He had a thick, warm cloth from the bathroom and began to clean me off with sure but gentle strokes. When he was finished, he met my eyes and reached out to smooth the hair from my forehead. It was so tender, my throat tightened.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

His simple words floored me.

“For what?” I asked. “You did all the work,” I teased, not knowing how else to respond. My pleasure sounded a bit too fast-food drive-thru.

He let his fingers trail down my cheek, his thumb tracing the edge of my jaw. “For letting go. For giving yourself to me so fully. I know it couldn’t have been easy for you.”

His eyes flicked away, his hands brushing the towel against the mess I’d made of his bedding.

You’re wrong. It was the easiest, most natural thing I’ve ever done.

But I couldn’t bring myself to say the words. Instead, I swallowed. “Oh, well… yeah. It was… it was good.”

Huh. That sucked.

I sat up and clasped his arm to stop his attempted clean up. “What I meant to say was it was incredible. And I trust you. Yeah, that’s unexpected, but I do. At least… in this regard. In… in bed.”

I sounded like an idiot. But at least I was an honest idiot. He deserved to know that there was nothing held back between us. I gave him all of me, and assumed he did the same. Because I’d felt it. I’d felt the connection between us when our bodies were joined and his mouth was on my skin.

And it had been unlike anything I’d ever experienced.

It had scared me half to death.





22





Wells





“You’re staying,” I said, trying not to spend too much time parsing what he’d said about trusting me in bed, the implication being that he didn’t trust me outside of bed. The last thing I needed to be reminded of right now was the giant secret between us.

Conor looked up at me, still fucked-out and flushed from his orgasm. “I am?”

I nodded. “Move over so I can replace this cover. Get under the sheets; it’ll only take a minute.” I needed to keep my hands busy or else I would reach for him and bury my face in the crook of his neck and never let go.

He shifted off the damp bedding and pulled the sheets back, looking around my bedroom. “Should I take a shower first? Everything looks so… clean.”

“If you’d like.” I gave him a pointed look, one eyebrow crooked. “But I don’t mind you a little… dirty.”

The man blushed, and my heart did a traitorous skip. Conor slid between the sheets and lay his head on the pillow I normally used. His hair was a riot of swirls and tangles from where I’d raked fingers through it and used it to pull his head back for kisses while I fucked him. Just the sight of him there, like that, in my bed made me feel a strange combination of possessiveness and comfort. He was far from the kind of man I usually had sex with.

I was used to men with slick and polish, who approached sex the same way they approached everything else in life: as a deal to be brokered on mutually beneficial terms. Where sex was about hedonistic pleasure contained within the bounds of a mutual understanding that kisses weren’t contracts and emotion wasn’t in the offering.

Conor was nothing like that. His body was rugged and hard, his muscles earned from hours spent in the wilderness rather than at the hands of some overpriced trainer at an upscale Manhattan gym. To him sex wasn’t a transaction, but an exchange. He gave without demanding in return, he trusted where anyone else would harbor suspicion, and he let himself care even when it was inadvisable to do so.

And he was so brutally honest in his reactions, laying bare his vulnerabilities and his desires and his pleasure. There was no guile or subterfuge, no game playing or manipulation. Conor was himself—unashamed and carefree in a way I wasn’t accustomed to.

By the time I switched out the comforter and joined him in bed, he was most of the way asleep.

“Warning,” he mumbled. “Cuddle whore here. Tell me now if you need your space.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I didn’t cuddle, but before the words came out, I realized having him in my arms was the only way I could imagine spending this night in bed with him.

“Bring it on,” I said. “I can take it.”

He shifted, turning on his side and burrowing his back into me. Without hesitation he reached for my arm and pulled it across him, threading his fingers through mine and holding our entwined hands against his chest. I could feel the steady thump of his heart beneath my touch, the comforting rhythm that caused my muscles to ease and my body to relax against his.

“Mmmmm,” he hummed sleepily. “’Night, Wells.”

My name on his lips did strange things to my own heart. I can take it, I reminded myself.

I couldn’t take it.

Having his naked body pressed against mine, his ass nestled against my crotch, for hours on end kept me hard and ready until I couldn’t stand it anymore. While he slept, I toyed with his hair and ran my fingers softly over his warm skin. I thought about how perfectly he fit in my arms, how easy it was to lie here with him tucked against me.