Rebound (Boomerang #2)(63)

“I really want your hands on me,” I say, surprising myself again. I could get used to saying it, to asking for what I want. Something about Adam makes me feel safe to do that. And here, in this lush room, with the fireplace, and snow sealing us in, it seems right to express any desire, to claim every need.

Adam makes a sound like a groan, and his arms come around me. “I want you so f*cking much, Alison,” he says. “It’s killing me.”

He buries his hands in my hair and moves his mouth down to capture mine. His kiss is fierce, and I fall into it, clutching onto his broad shoulders. My robe falls open, and the buttons of his shirt chafe against my bare skin, his jeans rough against the inside of my thighs. I pull him tighter to me, my tongue seeking his, needing the taste of him, the softness of his lips, the taut strength of his body.

His lips trace a path down my throat. I sink back against the bed, all of me open to him, wanting him everywhere. He stretches out beside me, the bed sinking beneath his weight. I want to wrap my legs around him, pull him against me to feel again how hard he is, how much he wants this too, but the pain in my ankle makes that impossible. So I clutch onto him, running my hands through his soft hair, feeling his lips and tongue move over me, down to my breasts, circling them with his tongue, bathing me in a warm, perfect pressure.

His thumb spirals over my nipple, his tongue teasing the hollow of my throat now. He feels so good. Every part of him feels like perfection, and I want so much more of it.

Someone knocks at the door, and we freeze.

“That would be dinner,” Adam says and offers me a sexy, devilish smirk.

“But I don’t want dinner,” I say, holding his face in my hands and rising up to tease his earlobe with my teeth. “I want you.”

They knock again, and Adam buries his face in my shoulder. We’re laughing. And everything feels so slow and sexy and right.

“You’ll have to get rid of them,” I tell Adam.

He takes my hand and presses himself against me. The feeling of him, the weight of his need, fills me with warmth, starts an insistent, throbbing ache that pulses from the center of me. “And you’ll have to get rid of those panties,” he says.

Another knock, this one more urgent. With a sigh, Adam pulls away. “I should get that, or they’ll just keep knocking.”

“I suppose.”

He kisses me and then does his best to tuck himself back into his pants and leaves his shirt untucked.

“Stay where you are,” he tells me.

“I wouldn’t leave this spot.”

He goes to answer the door. My cell phone vibrates on the nightstand—Adam must have put it close by for me—and I look at it.

My father. Of course.

I fire off a text to let him know about my ankle and that I’m stuck here for another couple of days because of the storm. He texts back something about being in the perfect position now.

Dad: Hope you’re getting the goods on Blackwood.


I smile at his phrasing and answer back.

Ali: Definitely getting everything I need.


He doesn’t have to know that I mean Adam—his strength and intelligence and goodness. Or that what I need, I’ve decided, is to forge my own path. That will be a discussion for my return.

“What’s funny?” Adam asks.

I turn to him. “Just life.”

He sits and runs his fingers over my skin. Again, that heat, that feeling of being lit from within by another person’s touch.

“You know what I think?” he asks.

“No. What?”

Adam leans down, his lips against mine. “I think the hell with dinner. We can eat later.”

He traces my lips with his tongue, and I capture it between my teeth, draw it into my mouth. I can’t get enough of the taste of him, the feel of his tongue darting between my lips. His kisses are perfection. The weight of him against me the best thing I’ve ever felt.

I know we should be making promises. I should tell him I’ll quit working for my father. Or he should tell me he doesn’t need my father’s money. We should say that we’ll carry this moment back out into the real world with us, that it means something, that it’s more than the magic of being contained together, our two bodies drawn to each other in a way that feels inevitable. Eternal.

But I don’t speak, and neither does he. If he’s like me, he doesn’t want to be reminded of all that. He just wants to be here, in this moment. The two of us and the storm and no tomorrow. Not yet.

I reach up and unbutton the first few buttons of his shirt, rising up to kiss the tan flesh exposed there. I’m dying to feel more of him, to be skin to skin with him, to take possession of his beautiful, solid body.

“Can you take this off?” I ask. “Or like, maybe everything?”

He laughs and peels off his shirt, tossing it onto the floor beside us. Once again, I can’t get over the sight of him. His broad swimmer’s shoulders, lean tapered torso. The shadow and light of his muscled abdomen, and the beautiful artistry of his tattoo, the birds falling—no, flying, becoming clouds.

I run my fingers over the marks and think about Chloe and what he’s lost. It makes me feel close to her, the way I did when I saw her picture, charged with carrying her love forward into the future I share with Adam. It feels like an honor.

“Better?” he asks.