Rebound (Boomerang #2)(64)

“Much.”

Adam kisses me again, his warm muscled chest grazing my nipples, carving my insides. His touch is electric. It’s heaven. And I never want tonight to end.

His fingers leave a searing path on my skin. They brush over my breasts, my belly. He helps me take off my panties. Everything feels seamless, predestined. His tongue trails against my throat, my mouth, my collarbone, as he parts my thighs and touches me, gently at first, and then more insistently. His fingers move against me, and I’m open to him, so ready for the touch I’ve been craving for months. Wanting it more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.

“I want to make you feel good, Ali.”

“You . . . are . . .” I tell him, but my words are air.

His hands move over me, firm then light, flicking then circling. My body arches up to him, and I capture his hand in mine, pressing him to me, moving up against him, reaching for that place of burning light that I can feel tingling at the edges.

He rises up, our hands locked, bodies moving together, and he looks down at me. The firelight gives his skin an even more golden hue, turns his brown hair to shades of gold and amber. And then I realize that he’s truly looking at me. His gray eyes lock onto mine, his expression more tender and more searching than anything I’ve ever seen. It feels like coming upon something wild and rare, something you don’t want to frighten away with sudden movement.

The sight undoes me, and the burning spreads through me like a forest fire, hard and lashing, seizing me, searing everything away. I have to close my eyes, to give myself over to the devastating, insistent pull. My body trembles fiercely, and all I can see in my mind is his expression, his gray eyes locked onto my own. Wave after wave sweeps through me until I’m emptied of everything but a floating lightness—joy.

Finally, I open my eyes again, and he’s still looking at me. Beautiful. Strong. And now, it seems to me, more boyish somehow. Unburdened.

“Alison,” he breathes, and he doesn’t have to say anything else.

I put my hand against his face and cradle it for a moment, taking in his direct, beautiful gaze. Without saying a word, I try to tell him everything I feel. We lie together like that for a long time, and then we break the moment with a slow, deep kiss, the kind that makes me forget who I am, who he is, where either begins or ends.





Chapter 36



Adam


When I wake up, Ali is sprawled across the bed beside me. I have to smile at how much real estate her legs take up.

“Look who’s a little bed hog.”

My lowered voice sounds louder than it should. The quiet and stillness in here is the kind that’s only possible in the middle of a blizzard in the mountains. Through the window, I see snow coming down heavily, but it’s not a whiteout like last night.

I take a minute to appreciate the long, graceful groove of Ali’s spine. All that smooth, flawless skin sweeping down and then back up to the curve of the one round cheek not covered by blankets. Toned legs that go on forever—one of which ends with a thick bandage.

That ankle’s putting a definite damper on my sexual prospects for the foreseeable future. She’s a temptation. I’ve never wanted anyone this much, and I’m aching for her. But I won’t do anything that could worsen her injury.

I’m glad she seems comfortable asleep.

Climbing out of bed, I pull on sweatpants and find the bag of supplies from the clinic in the living room. Laying a pillow under Ali’s leg, I break open the activator in an icepack and drape it over her foot. Then, reluctantly, I pull the blankets over her. It’s a crime to cover her body, but the room has a chill this morning.

She stirs a little, sweeping her blond hair away from her face. “Adam?” she says, sleepy blue eyes fluttering open.

“Right here.” I sit next to her and smile, loving that she asked for me before she was fully awake. I reach under the blankets and rub my hand over her warm back, then brush her hair away from her shoulder. “Hey, beautiful. Go back to sleep. It’s early.”

“Why aren’t you in here?”

“I will be in a minute.” I’d join her right now, but I hear my phone buzzing in the other room, and part of me never fully relaxes when I leave Grey alone for a few days.

“Good.” Her eyes close again. “We have unfinished business.”

“Is that right?” Just like that, my body’s responding. “What about your ankle?”

“You can’t keep using that as an excuse, Blackwood.”

I laugh. “Okay. You’ve talked me into it.”

Smiling, she peers at me through her lashes, sleepy and seductive, and I find myself wanting to frame her face and stare into her blue eyes, because anything less than that feels like not enough now. Amazing how that happened. She flipped a switch inside me with that sweet smile, and I want her. Body. Mind. All of her.

“Sleep a little more, Ali. We have time. We’ll get to everything.”

“Everything? That sounds good.”

“Aim higher than good, Quick. We’re going for mind-blowing.”

“You mean again?”

“I mean always. Every single time.”

She laughs. I kiss her bare shoulder then give her perfect ass a little pat on my way into the living room.

“Hurry back, lovely,” she says, already sounding sleepy.