“There’s only one way you could ever hurt me. By not being honest with me. By not being yourself. What do you want, Drew?”
“You.”
Her lips curved up into the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen. “Then take me. All of me. Without holding any of yourself back.”
Between the feel of her wet, hot body over his and the words falling from her beautiful mouth, he was so far out on the edge that he almost couldn’t pull himself back. But he knew he needed to try.
“I’ve wanted you too much, for too long. If I don’t at least try to keep control—”
“No.” With that one word, she sank all the way down on him. Past any barriers that had been there before. Past the point of no return. “I don’t want either of us to be in control tonight.”
As if her words were the key to the final lock on his self-restraint, in the next split second, Drew had flipped them over so that she was on her back and he was looking down on such pure, sweet beauty that it was nearly impossible to take all of her in. But he already knew that he could look at Ashley for the rest of his life and never stop being stunned by what he saw. Such honesty. Such intelligence.
Such heart.
He rocked into her, and as he drew back, they both gasped as her inner walls clenched at him.
“Again.” She grasped his shoulders so tightly he knew there’d be marks. Marks he would be proud to wear. “Do that again.”
As he rolled his hips into hers again, sweat dripped from his body to hers. Even as she gasped with the pleasure of taking him into her, she licked out against his shoulder.
“So good.” She closed her eyes and shifted her hips to increase the friction between their bodies. “I wouldn’t have waited to sleep with you if I’d known it would be this good.”
She’d made him smile from the very beginning, just the way he was smiling now. “If you had known, would you have seduced me that first night?”
“Yes.” She tilted her hips again to take him even deeper, the most sensual creature ever put on this planet. “Yes.”
“I knew,” he told her as he threaded his hands through hers and put them on either side of her head. “I knew we would be this good.”“And you still made us wait when we could have been doing this since Los Angeles?”
He laughed into the crook of her neck as he nipped at her sweat-slickened skin, and she moaned at the way the small movement shifted his body inside hers. “A little anticipation never killed anyone.”
“It almost did.” Her words were borderline accusing, which made him laugh again...setting off another sequence of vibrations from his body to hers and then back again. “You have a lot to make up to me. All those hours without your body over mine. Inside of mine.”
If her words hadn’t already been enough to send him from still barely rational to pure insanity, the way she sank her teeth into the cords of his neck just then did it. And in that instant, he forgot that she had been a virgin just minutes ago. Forgot everything except how much he wanted her, how much he needed her—and how much she wanted and needed him, too. All that mattered was giving her the pleasure she craved. The pleasure she’d been waiting for.
He tightened his grip on her hands and, without warning, thrust hard. Deep. Her eyes went wide, and her breath came out in a whoosh. But he didn’t give her time to recover before he did it again. Even harder this time. As deep as he could go. Her legs had been around his waist, but now she planted them on either side of his knees to give herself traction. Traction to take even more of him.
He wanted to memorize every incredible moment where she was giving herself to him. The way her eyes fluttered closed on a gasp of pleasure, then opened again as if she was determined to take in his pleasure, too. The way her skin shone with sweat. How the tips of her full breasts were tight with arousal that he needed to take against his tongue until her sex was clenching tight around him again with every pull of his lips. How she grew even hotter, even wetter, as he moved to lave her other breast with the same wild passion.
“Drew.”
For his entire life, he’d been putting emotions into words and music. But in this moment—one that felt like the most important of his life—there was only his mouth against hers so that he could drink in her sighs, her gasps, her moans while they made love.
And in that instant of beauty and wonder, Drew could suddenly see that for his whole life, he’d been holding back. Holding back a part of himself, even in his music.
But with Ash, he didn’t want to hold back anymore. Couldn’t hold back when she touched every last part of him, inside and out.
He whispered her name over and over against her lips as more heat, and more mind-blowing pleasure than he’d ever known was possible, built up between them. And then he heard a low cry vibrating from her throat, felt the tight, rhythmic pull of her body against him, and he fell with her. Way out over the edge. Way past control. Way past sanity.
Way past the man he’d been before she’d come into his life.
Straight toward something that felt exactly like love.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ashley dreamed she was listening to the most beautiful song in the world. One that stirred her heart, moved her soul, and made her want to sing along.
As she slowly came awake to the now familiar feel of the bus’s tires moving along the freeway, she realized she hadn’t been listening to the song in her dreams. The music was coming from just beyond the bedroom door.