I Love How You Love Me(The Sullivans)(49)

But instead of driving into her the way he wanted to, he held her there, poised directly over him. He’d never wanted anyone, or anything, this badly, but he would never forgive himself for letting desire override any lingering fears she might still have.

“Grace?”

“We’re protected?”

He nodded, knowing how important this would be to her, that no matter how much she loved her son, she would instinctively be worried about lightning striking twice and ending up pregnant again by accident. “Yes. I’ll always take care of you, Grace.”

She put her hands on his face and kissed him, so softly that she took him by surprise when she began to lower herself onto him. There were no words to describe how good it felt as she slowly enveloped him, nothing he could do anymore but tangle his hands in her hair as he took their kiss deeper.

Finally, they were pelvis to pelvis, chest to chest, mouth to mouth. Together, they rocked with each other, hard heat and soft flesh coming together in a perfect dance of pleasure. From moment to moment they took each other higher and higher until he was swallowing her gasps as the tight clasp of her inner muscles climaxing drove him all the way into his own release. One that crashed through him with the strength of a tsunami.


Again and again he thrust up into her, and again and again she came down over him, moving with such obvious joy that the waves took him completely under. Deeper beneath the surface than he had ever gone before. Deeper than he’d even known he could go.

Dylan could feel Grace’s heart beating hard and fast against his as they held each other so tightly that there were no spaces left between them. Right here, with her, was where he always wanted to be.

Forever.





CHAPTER TWENTY



Grace had never known that she could completely lose herself in another person and just want to stay lost forever and ever. Was it because Dylan loved her? And, despite all the ways she’d tried to protect her heart, had she fallen in love with him right back?

“I want to stay with you tonight,” Dylan said. “I want to hold you all night long.”

Her ex had never stayed. He’d always said he needed to get back to the city to prepare for an early morning at the office, and she hadn’t pushed, hadn’t made him tell her the real reason he was leaving. She hadn’t wanted to hear the truth that he had someone else or that she didn’t really matter to him.

“I want you to stay, too.” But that wasn’t the full truth, and after what they’d shared tonight, she couldn’t live with anything else. Not when even the smallest lie felt as though it would strip away the beauty of what they’d just done together. “But it scares me how fast we’re taking slow. After tonight, it feels more like warp speed.” Even that wasn’t everything, though. “And I don’t want to fix myself, fix what happened, with sex. Because what if that’s what I’m doing?”

“If sex helps,” Dylan said, “if making love with me makes things better for you, then I can’t see why there’s one damn thing wrong with it. There’s nothing wrong with talking through pain, so why would it be wrong to kiss through it? To let pleasure strip away everything that should never have been there in the first place?”

“I never thought of it like that before.”

“I haven’t ever really had to fight demons of my own, Grace. But yours—I want to take them on headfirst, want to vanquish all your dragons with you, want to fight every battle beside you.”

“Why?” She still couldn’t see. Couldn’t understand why he would give so much of himself—and his love—to her.

“There have always been two loves for me—my family and the ocean. And now, my heart is with you and Mason, too. I know telling you I love you isn’t going slow, but I can’t change how I feel. I love you, Grace. And I love Mason, too. More than I’ve ever loved anyone else.”

The simple way he said it again and again, as if loving her and Mason was the most obvious, natural thing he’d ever done, shook her as deeply now as it had the first time he’d said it.

“Is it that easy?” She’d always needed to ask questions, always needed answers. But never more than she did right now. “Can you really just fall in love with someone and then, suddenly, they’re your new number one?”

“Isn’t that exactly what happened with Mason? Whatever other loves there were for you, they all got in line behind him.”

“Yes.” He was right. Exactly right. Again.

Grace was reeling from all of it. From her first official date with Dylan. From finding out that her ex had a string of paid-off women behind him. From watching Mason take his first step. From the most explosive—and tender—lovemaking of her life.

And now, from hearing Dylan tell her just how much he loved her in a way she hadn’t known a man could express his love. Even her father, who had loved her mother dearly, had never been so eloquent.

One part of her wanted to push him away so that she could be alone to try to process it all. The other part never wanted to let him go.

“It’s a small couch,” she finally said.

“Good.”

And when he slipped her heels from her feet and drew her against himself, her back to his front, cradling her head on his arm, she felt safer—and more cherished—than she ever had before.