Continuing to shake my head, I rock my hips against his, meeting each thrust. We challenge each other like this for a long time—push and pull, moan and sigh—until finally, it’s impossible for me to hold back. When I whisper how close I am to reaching the edge, he moves his fingers from my hip. He touches them to my lips, and I glide my tongue over his thumb before he presses it to my clit, rubbing it in tiny circles until I’m on fire.
“So good,” I sob as he thrusts harder. The release hits me hard and quick, leaving me trembling and grinding my hips against his. He moves my hand from the headboard, pressing both our fingers to my chest so I can feel my heartbeat. He wants me to be fully aware of what he’s done to me. I tighten my pussy around his cock, dragging out a low, animalistic sound from deep within his chest.
“I’ve got to come, baby,” he says. Suddenly, I feel every muscle in his body go taut before he releases. He pumps into my body a few more times, and then he goes perfectly still, breathing heavily. For a long, beautiful moment, we stay like this with our bodies still meshed together. Finally, he races his fingers down my spine and flips me over so we’re facing.
Before I can say a word, his mouth covers mine.
Chapter Eighteen
The thing about sex is that it instantly changes things. People will say it doesn’t—and even I’m guilty of muttering those words once or twice—but there’s no way to give someone control of your body, to take over theirs, and not be transformed in some way, whether that change is small or significant.
As Rhys and I lie beside each other with the tips of our fingers touching and the sweet sparks of electricity bursting between us, there is no doubt in my mind that everything is different for us.
“That was—” He releases a breath, breaking the silence. “God, girl, you’re amazing.” I smile to myself and drag my feet back and forth over the rumpled sheets until he stills me by trapping my legs between his. “Did you hear me? You. Are. Amazing.”
“Oh, yeah? So are you.” His hand finds my hip, and he turns me toward him, rubbing his lips over the tip of my nose. “And just think,” I whisper, “we could’ve been amazing each other all along.”
He throws his head back and laughs, giving me the chance to push my lips to the rough column of his throat as I skim my nails over the muscles of his chest. He catches my wrist with his hand. Holding me close to him, he lowers his chin until his sea blue eyes are staring right into mine. “We should have.”
For a long time after that, we’re quiet until the sound of his phone vibrating on the nightstand pulls us out of the daze. Leaning over me, he grabs it and touches his finger to his lips for me to keep quiet.
“Hey, beautiful,” he answers with a smile, and I feel my own expression of pure satisfaction fade into a frown. At first I feel a surge of panic, and anger, but then I can clearly hear an enthusiastic child’s voice on the other end, and I relax against the pillows. “My niece,” he mouths.
Not wanting to sit in on a private conversation with his family, I climb off the bed and pad out of his room in search of the bathroom. I’d been too preoccupied on the way in, but I find it relatively quickly—a couple doors down from his bedroom. Grabbing a washcloth from the neat stack piled up on the storage rack, I clean up carefully, wincing at how sore and tender my flesh is when my fingers touch it.
“Rhys Delane,” I whisper softly, glancing back in the direction of his bedroom, “you are most definitely incredible.”
Dropping the cloth in the brown wicker hamper by the door that’s halfway full of used linens, I examine myself closely in the mirror. I trace my finger around my kiss-swollen lips. Glide my knuckles across my hot, flushed skin. And finally, I touch my hair, which is framing my face in messy waves. I start to run my fingers through it to give it some order, but then I decide against it. When I return to the bedroom, he’s off the phone and is sitting up in the bed.
He’s gotten rid of the condom, but he’s still stark naked with no sheets or bedspreads covering him—which, of course, I don’t mind at all.
He holds out a muscular arm to me, beckoning me to him. “Come here,” he says and drags me onto his lap to straddle him when I comply. “Sorry about that. She always calls before bedtime, and—”
I had forgotten just how early in the evening it still is, which only manages to make me crazy with anticipation. God, what’s he done to me? “Don’t say sorry.” I press my lips to his, but pull back when he hesitates to respond. I bite the inside of my cheek, studying his face carefully, before I finally ask, “What’s wrong?”
The corners of his lips twist into a tight smile. “Just family bullshit. It never ends.”
He told me once before that his mother and niece were the only family he has left, so I shift one of my eyebrows in concern. “Everything alright?” At first, he’s reluctant to say anything, but at my urging he pulls me closer and lets out a frustrated breath against my chest.
“I talked to my mom for a couple minutes. My niece’s mother is trying for custody again,” he explains, rubbing his hands up and down my bare arms. I shiver and mold against him. “She lost custody of Stacey a few months after my brother went to prison. Then she married a mean ass drunk—and she’s not much better herself—so there’s no fucking way I’m letting that happen.”
“Oh,” I whisper, tilting away from him and hoping he doesn’t see how rigid my body has gone. No. No. NO. Suddenly, I regret asking him to tell me what was bothering him because I absolutely do not want to discuss his brother right after what we just shared.
He only takes my silence as an invitation to continue baring his soul to me. “My brother Owen was a drunk, too.” He touches the tiny scar beneath his right eye, feathering his fingers over it. “A gift, after we got into a fight right after Stacey was born. He tried to take off with her in the car after downing a bottle of Jim Beam.”
Oh God. “Rhys, I—”
“And then, he ended up going to prison for running some poor kid down a couple years ago and leaving her for dead,” he tells me brokenly, and I feel my head start to shake from side to side. “My niece’s mother is the same way, and she thinks she can drag Stacey back into that shit.” His jaw clenches in anger, and deep inside of me, I feel that same fury hurtling through me.
Because that poor kid Owen Delane had run down was my sister—older than me by a mere 10 months. What Rhys says next only makes everything worse, makes my heart fall to the pit of my stomach.
“I used to bail him out. I was stupid enough to bail that motherfucker out time and time again because I thought he could change. He didn’t change, which is why I cut him out of my life.”
I can’t breathe. I can’t. Fucking. Breathe. Somehow, though, I manage to blurt out, “What?”
“He’d get picked up for drunk driving, and I’d scrimp together whatever I had to get his ass out. The week before—” he starts, but I can’t hear any more of this, and I cover his lips with my fingers. “Jesus,” he growls and rubs his hand over his face. “What the hell am I doing? I’m ruining this for you, Evelyn, and I’m so sorry—”
But I’m already stumbling off of him, shaking my head. “This can’t happen again,” I say, my voice anything but confident, my breathing anything but calm. Calm and confident flew out the window the second Rhys pulled me through that door earlier and into his arms. I swing my legs over the side of his bed and slide my feet around on the thin carpet in search of my boots. “This will never happen again.”
Ugh, where the hell are those shoes?
“Is it because I’m letting you in?” he demands angrily, coming up off the bed after me. “Letting you into my world?”