Until You (The Redemption, #1)(79)

I’ll take that.

The question is . . . what in the fuck am I going to do with it?





CHAPTER FORTY-TWO


Tennyson




When the house is asleep, I stand at Crew’s doorway and watch him sleep, his words from earlier tonight on constant replay through my mind.

“I love you, Tenny. I didn’t think I had it in me to love again, but I do. And I have.”

The expression on his face. The look in his eyes. The words on his lips. All three own me. Own my heart. And kill me silently knowing I can’t tell him I feel the same.

I do.

God, do I.

But if I were to voice the words, if I were to tell him how I really feel—that I’ve fallen just as hard for him—then it would only make what I have to do that much harder on a man who’s already been abandoned once.

What’s crueler? To tell him I love him, a man who didn’t think he had it in him to love again, and then to push him away? Or to love him silently, never saying the words, so it’s easier on him when we part ways?

One option will kill me.

The other would kill him.

I wipe the tear that has welled and slipped down my cheek. My heart swelling and breaking simultaneously as I enter the room and slide into bed with Crew.

My lips find his in the darkness. My heart beats against his in silent protest to the words I can’t speak but that it feels.

Crew startles but slips into the kiss, his hands moving to frame my face, to guide my head back and meet my eyes through the dim light.

Our breaths feather against each other’s as his eyes search mine as best as they can in the dim light.

I’m not sure if I’m glad he can or can’t see what my eyes say. The words my lips won’t.

I love you too.

I think I have for some time.

I don’t know if he finds the answers he needs, but when I lean forward to claim his lips again, to pour my emotions into him, he lets me.

He matches me kiss for kiss. Touch for touch. Sigh for sigh. Need for need.

He kisses away the lone tear that slips down my cheek without saying a word, but rather accepting the numerous reasons it might be there.

There is no finesse in our meeting. No need to direct or guide. It’s just two bodies coming together. Two people who know what each other needs, what each other wants, and knowing how to give it to them.

Unwavering needs mix with unapologetic wants. Urgency escalates with each touch we share in the early morning hours. Open-mouthed kisses placed on my neck. My hand pressed against his heart. His bare hands skimming down the skin of my back. My lips to the scar on his shoulder.

I open for him without prompting. He pushes into my wet heat with a feral groan of pleasure from the intimacy of that first connection. He stills when he settles all the way into me, pausing for a beat to capture my lips with his. To tease and taunt with a tender kiss.

And then he begins to move. We’re slow strokes and soft murmurs. We’re grinding hips and hushed pleas for more. We’re tense muscles and satisfied sighs.

I pour everything I can into our joining. I touch him every chance I get. I hold his eyes the entire time. I meet him match for sensuous match. Anything and everything I can do short of saying the three little words that are burning in my throat and bursting from my chest.

I come first. Silent but powerfully as my body sinks into the intense gentleness of my climax, made more intense by my refusal to look away. I let Crew see every emotion flicker through my eyes and over my expression. The pleasure. The adoration. The gratitude. The vulnerability.

The love.

He moves slow and steady, but it’s not much longer until he crashes over the edge. But his eyes don’t waver as his body soars. He affords me the same courtesy I did him. He lets me see everything I do for him. How I make him feel. How I complete him.

And when he sinks down on top of me—his body half on me, his face nuzzled under my neck, his hand over my own heart—all I can hope is that he now knows.

How I feel.

Why I can’t say the words.

Why this will never be able to work.

And selfishly, I hope he’ll still love me in spite of it.

Because of it.

For it.

“We’ll figure it out, Tenny,” he murmurs, the heat of his breath against my neck reminding me this is real. That he knows it too. “We’ll figure it out.”





CHAPTER FORTY-THREE


Crew




“Girls?” I call up the stairs. “Family meeting time.”

Three.

Two.

One.

The groans come down the stairs as if on cue. The seriouslys come shortly after.

“Seriously. Now, get your butts down here,” I say just as two unhappy tweens tromp down the stairs with eyes already rolling and sighs heavy.

“We’re in the middle of filming a makeup tutorial,” Addy says, looking up for the first time and greeting me with a face covered in rainbow colors. “Clearly we’re not done.”

“Clearly,” I say, forgoing asking what in the world they are trying to paint on her face because at this point, I have no clue. It’s way easier to just smile and nod than to accidentally say the wrong thing and cause tears to burst out without knowing why. “Looks great. Take a seat.”