Boomerang (41 page)

“Good.” She smiles and leans down, peppering soft kisses around my lips. She shifts her hips and grinds against me, and my mind empties of everything. I have one solitary need. One goal only. I might have rocked her world before, but I’m going to give her the universe this time.

My fingers find the top button of her pants. I pop it loose, and at that moment, there’s a corresponding click in my brain. A downshift as a sliver of reason returns, and my hands freeze.

“Mia,” I say.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

Come on, Vance. Do the right thing.

“Curls . . . we shouldn’t. Not yet. Not now.”

The tension in her back relaxes, and she melts against me, burying her face into the crook of my neck. I wrap my arms around her and hold her close.

I know I don’t have to say anything else. We got carried away. It happens every time we touch. But I want to make sure she understands.

“Mia,” I say, smoothing back her hair, “you said something at the bar yesterday. You said I didn’t choose you. That every time we’ve ended up together, it’s been because of circumstance. Because we just happened to be at the same place at the same time. You were right. It has been that way, and you deserve better. I’m going to
give
you better. I want you to know that. When this happens between us, it won’t be because we’ve been thrown together. It’ll be because we both choose it. Okay?”

“Okay.” Slowly, she slides to the side a little, still half on me, and says, “But you already did choose, Ethan. You came back with me. You’re here with me.”

I think about what she says for a long while as I hold her. How sometimes we’re already doing the right things, and we don’t know it. Long after she’s fallen asleep and there are no more sounds drifting up from the street, I think about how sometimes, all we really need is the wisdom to see what’s been there all along.

Chapter 53

Mia

Q: Best night of your life?

“First we need to get you out of these wet clothes,” Ethan says. “And then I’ve got a few ideas.”

He slides my panties down, and I lift my hips to help. Then I sit up and unhook my bra, flinging it to some corner of the room. A surge of giddiness washes over me. It’s like I’m drunk in waves tonight, and I’m back at high tide.

Ethan rises from the couch, my underwear in his hands. The blanket slips off to the floor, but I don’t mind.

“Wait . . .” I reach out for him, but he’s already weaving off toward the kitchen. Guess I’m not the only one at high tide. “Where are you going?”

“We need to dry these off,” he says. I hear him crash into something and curse, but he’s back in no time. He mumbles something that sounds like “toaster,” but I’m too focused on his full lips, his perfectly masculine features, to really take in his words.

I sit up and pull him toward me, my whole body practically vibrating with need. I want more of his lips, more of his hands. I want to make him feel as good as he made me feel.

He kisses me, and his tongue teases my lips, slides slowly, playfully, into my mouth. I moan because I’m so ridiculously hungry for him. And I can’t remember feeling this way before, like my body is a live wire, throwing sparks.

His lips still pressed to mine, he eases me back onto the sofa. Finally, I think, desperate for his weight, for the full, gorgeous length of him against me.

But he moves away to kiss my throat, his teeth grazing its hollow, tongue and hands darting everywhere. “Jesus, Curls,” he says, as he brushes his lips over my nipple. “I’ve never seen anything as beautiful as you.”

Again, I reach for him, dying for more. For everything.

And again, he eases my hand away. “Still your turn,” he tells me, and his lips and tongue start a slow, maddening journey down my body.

“That’s not fair,” I protest, but his mouth grazes my navel, and he spreads my thighs apart with warm hands.

“Home team advantage,” he says and dips his head lower.

I wake in Ethan’s bed, and this time I know where my panties are: unfortunately, still on my body.

I can tell it’s still nighttime, but I have no idea how long we’ve slept. Vaguely, I remember him leading me to his bedroom, helping me out of my clothes and giving me one of his t-shirts to wear. And I remember lying with my head against his chest as the final bits of our first night together filtered through my mind.

That night, he couldn’t stop touching me, teasing me with his tongue, giving me pleasure over and over again until it felt impossible, like my body had been replaced by one meant to respond only to him.

Now he’s stretched out next to me, a shaft of moonlight catching his strong jaw and angling down to his muscled shoulder and arm. His chest rises and falls, and his warmth surrounds me, along with that delicious fire and salt scent of his.

We need to get back to Vegas. But I can’t move from this moment. Or I won’t. Instead, I slide closer, brushing my lips against his throat, rising up against his body.

“Wake up,” I whisper and run my tongue over his ear. I need him to be awake, to be fully with me the way I want to be with him.

“Mia?” He opens his eyes and smiles at me. I can’t remember ever seeing something as beautiful as that. “What are you doing?”

“I’m choosing,” I say, and kiss him. He tastes sweet, still, like the strawberries he fed me.

My body, my mind, every bit of me wants this. No more Sleeping Beauty. “I can’t wait any more. Can you?”

He laughs and pulls me closer. “Hell, no.”

We kiss and kiss until I feel drunk again, like that first night, like every molecule in my body wants to crash into every molecule in his.

I slip my hand under the sheet, brushing my fingers over the soft material of his boxers. My touch grows insistent, and he groans. The sound undoes me. It’s possible I’ll lose my mind if I can’t have him. Not just in this moment but always.

I slip on top of him, straddling him, my thighs pressed against his hips. My eyes locked on his, I pull off the t-shirt he put on me last night. Then I smooth my body against his, brushing my breasts against his chest, skin against skin. I run my tongue over the delicious groove of his collarbone, up his throat, to his lips. I get lost there, in the taste of him, the feel of him beneath me. I slide my hips down, fitting myself against his hardness.

He gives a sharp inhale. “Wait, Mia,” he says. “I need to tell you something first.”

I graze his nipple with my teeth. “What is it?”

He tilts my chin up so that I’m looking at him. “I . . . I choose you.”

“I know,” I say. “You’ve probably told me a hundred times already, only I was too dumb to pay attention.”

“But I need to say it in real words. And I need you to know it has nothing to do with . . .” His hands brush over me, and I shiver. “This.”

“Really?” I press against him. “Nothing?”

He grips my hips and pulls me down harder, sending a shock of pleasure through my entire body. “Okay. Not nothing. But it’s more than that. It’s you, Curls. The whole package. The way you look when you’ve got your camera in your hands, like you can see through people, right down to their cores. And your crazy giant hair. Your laugh. How goddamn smart you are. All of it. I choose all of it.”

I want to say it all back to him, tell him how much I love his focus, his generosity. His eyelashes. His perfect, straight nose. His intelligence and loyalty. The way I know I can trust him with every part of me.

I want to, and I will. I’ll try to tell him that every day. And I hope those days stretch to the rest of my life. But for now, I just say, “Thank you,” and I kiss him, hoping he knows what’s contained in those words.

“You’re welcome,” he says, his hand slipping down to my panties. “Now let’s get rid of these.”

Laughing, we finish undressing each other. He finds and puts on a condom then pulls me back on top of him. We kiss for a long, long time, clinging to each other in a stream of bright moonlight. I suck on his tongue, and we both groan and then we laugh at ourselves.

But then he looks at me, and his deep blue eyes glimmer with intensity. “I want you so goddamn much, Mia,” he says. “I can’t wait anymore.”

I feel molten inside, like liquid fire. I want to pour myself over him, envelop us both.

“Then don’t,” I say.

By some magic, our bodies find each other perfectly, and he presses himself slowly into me, pulling me down by the hips, filling every bit of me.

“Okay, we definitely haven’t done
this
before,” I gasp. But then we begin to move together, and I lose my words. Now it’s only this stunning juncture of his body and mine, this perfect wavelike rhythm, ebbs and flows, like we’re elemental. Meant to be.

His hands move over me, and I catch one and pull his long fingers into my mouth. Because I want even more of him. Because I’m not sure there’s enough of him to satisfy this hunger he’s created.

He rolls me over and pins me against the mattress. I want to cry at how good he feels on top of me, how solid and lovely and ridiculously hot. He slips a hand down between our bodies, all of him moving, his tongue in my mouth, his hips against mine, his fingers urgent and circling.

“But it’s supposed to be your turn,” I try to say. Only my body’s selfish. It rises against him, urges him for more.

“Mia,” Ethan groans. “You definitely . . . don’t . . . have to worry about that.”

I wrap my arms around him, drawing him closer. We burn against each other, chafing and igniting, and again, I feel that sun inside me, that radiating, cutting warmth. It builds and builds, and my whole body trembles, filled with how good this is. How good he is.

Then it tips over and explodes, catching me in this sharp electric current, hollowing me until I lose myself to it, burn and tremble and fracture into a million scintillating bits.

Ethan moans, and his movements grow intense, focused. A sheen of sweat glistens on his shoulder, and I taste the salt of his skin. His rhythm builds, and he buries his face in my neck, saying my name. The feel of him driving toward his own pleasure is more than I can take, and my body climbs to meet his.

My trembling makes him tremble.

His groans make me groan.

Finally, he grows rigid, and his arms pen my body, containing me. He gives a deep, long shudder, and it feels like my own body quivering.

Slowly, we stop moving, our breathing quiets. My heartbeat starts to feel like it’s within normal human range.

“Wow, Curls,” he murmurs.

I laugh, and hold him against me. “Yeah,” I tell him. “Go, team.”

Chapter 54