Page 67 of Echoes in the Storm
He’s stripped off his wet shirt, standing in my entrance in only his soaked jeans with his belt and the button of his jeans undone.
“I thought I should take them off so I didn’t make your carpet wet with the bottoms on the way to the laundry.” He gestures at the dark legs of his jeans, and then my hallway rug.
“Yeah.” I swallow, glancing down at the pools my leggings make on the floor. “I should probably do the same.”
Duke’s wet jeans swish across the hardwood floor as he closes the space between us in three long strides, his hands rising to my hips to lift me off the floor and carry me with him until my back finds the wall.
I hit the plaster with enough force to knock the air from my lungs, my chest burning given I don’t get a chance to draw another breath before Duke’s mouth is on mine.
Holding me in place with his hips, he brings both hands to my face, pushing my wet hair out of the way as he tilts his head and deepens our kiss. I allow his to consume me, wanting to be as much a part of him as he already is of me. He’s been inside my head since he first admitted he needed help on the roadside, so it’s only fair that I get a chance to infect him also.
Maybe then he’ll stay? Maybe if he gets enough of me, feels the way I need him here in order to keep treading water and being able to breathe, he’ll come back?
God, I hope so.Because with how deeply I’m falling in love with this man, I can only imagine the separation will tear me apart when he takes a chunk of who I am with him.
“You deserve so much more,” he mutters, his eyes closed as he presses his forehead to mine, his hands still braced against the sides of my face. “You deserve love.”
“I deserve yours,” I whisper, lifting my chin to kiss his nose.
Duke drops me to the floor, my feet only just getting under me in time to take my weight as he hooks both hands in my leggings and shoves downward, hard. I step out of the wet fabric, helping him as he yanks them off in what can only be described as murderous frustration.
He pauses to look at my thong, and frowns. “No time.”
I gasp, my arms wrapping around his shoulders on instinct as he hitches me up his body again, using one of the hands braced under my arse to hook the thin strip of fabric over my pussy aside. I reach between us, my heartbeat thundering like a marching band as I wrestle his boxers out of the way and free his hard length.
He enters me in one short, rough thrust, shunting me up the wall with determination as he drives into me over and over.
I close my eyes and moan at how full, how complete he makes me feel. His lips are hot on my neck, his tongue hotter still as he tastes the water that runs across my flesh. Duke’s forearms cage me in, pressed flat against the wall on either side of my head, and I couldn’t love that more. I feel wrapped up in him, lost in him …as though I’m his.
“So … fucking … beautiful,” he grinds out between thrusts hard enough to make the bruises that linger from last night ache. All I can do is hold on as this man destroys me in the most beautiful of ways. Hold on to my heart for fear I’ll lose it again to another man who’ll leave me when I need him most.
Duke’s legs buckle as he jerks his release, our bodies entwined as we fall to the floor. I’m so close, and he must know it, as he shuffles back, taking me with him so he can keep going missionary style on the wet timber.
The sight of this man holding me to him, the intensity in his eyes as he focuses on my pleasure—it doesn’t take long before I follow him over that cliff, diving into the deep and sinking in his embrace. Realising that as much as this man has managed to bring my life, my love back into the light, he’s also the very thing that’s going to finally kill me.
Duke
“Thanks again for the lift.” I put my hand on the door, ready to get out when Cammie’s mum stops me in my tracks.
“What happens now, Duke?”
Fuck.I called her knowing that A) Cammie would flip when she heard the HQ was ready early, and B) that if I waited until Cam was home to give me a lift into town, I wouldn’t get here before Archie did the school run.
“How do you mean, Clara?”
She twists in her seat to face me better. “I may be getting old, but I’m no fool. I know what it looks like when two people have strong feelings for one another.”
She saw us last night at the show, came and sat next to me for the second act, beside Cammie’s platform as she did her thing on the spotlight.
“I don’t know,” I say with a sigh, ceding that this conversation won’t be over soon and relaxing back into the seat. “I thought I could give us a chance, see where it leads, but we can’t deny the crux of it all.”
“That you won’t stick around,” Clara says with a sigh. Her eyes are hard, her expression impassive, yet I’ve never felt more schooled in my life.
“That I don’t live here,” I correct. “My life is somewhere else.”
“She’s been through a lot, my daughter,” she says in her we’re-no-longer-friends, I’m-her-mother tone. “I thought I could trust that you’d be honourable enough to only take things in this direction if you had good intentions for her.”
“I do have good intentions,” I snap. “And that’s why I think it’s best I cool things off, give her distance to make up her own mind.”