Kiss Me Like This (The Morrisons #1)(46)
Author: Bella Andre

She watched him carefully for a few seconds before finally saying, “When you threw the tablet across the room, even though I knew you were upset about the other guys watching the video, I couldn’t help but wonder if your reaction—and the fury behind it—wasn’t entirely about me. If, maybe, your friends watching the video was just what pushed you over the edge because of everything you’ve been keeping bottled up inside for so long. Ever since…ever since your mom got sick.”

He had to work to let her words in, to force himself to actually think about what she was saying. For so long it had been instinctive to push away his emotions, his grief, the feelings of loss that only seemed to grow bigger each day rather than smaller. Fortunately, from the way she was looking at him, it seemed she understood that he was listening, even if he wasn’t capable of responding just yet.

“I’ve tried to push away my past, too,” she said softly. “And even though I know what I’ve been through is nothing compared to losing your mom, I’m just starting to see that maybe hiding from it hasn’t worked…and that trying to turn away from who I’ve been will never work. I don’t want to face it all head on, and it seems like it would be easier not to, but what if facing it is exactly what I’ve got to do? If I can ever be tough enough to do it, that is.”

“You’re definitely tough enough considering you just impressed the hell out of the guys downstairs when you laid it down straight for them.”

She looked up at him, a small smile finally on her face. “I did, didn’t I?”

“They’re not the only ones who are impressed.” He hadn’t planned to tell her this tonight, but there wasn’t anything else he could say now. Not when she’d just stripped his soul bare and made him finally face the truth. About everything. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Serena.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Serena felt more than a little overwhelmed by everything that had happened in twenty-four short hours. Spending her first night in Sean’s bed. Having a huge fight over his mother’s pictures.

And now, hearing that he’d fallen in love with her.

She might have stood there all night, speechless and stunned, but fortunately, Sean knew exactly what to do, and the next thing she knew she was lying beneath him on his bed, her arms around his neck while he traced her lips with gentle—and very arousing—fingertips.

“Did I just move too fast after all my promises not to?”

She wanted to shake her head, wanted to tell him no, but she couldn’t lie to him. Not now. Not ever.

“I want,” she said, her words seeming to come from somewhere far away, “so badly to believe that it’s true, that someone like you could love me.”

“How could you doubt it for a second?”

“You know how people have said my whole life that I was beautiful?” God, she hated the way this was going to sound, but she just couldn’t hold back. Not anymore. Not with Sean. “That word. Love. Whenever I heard it, whoever said it to me, it felt the same. Like it didn’t really mean anything. Because they weren’t saying it about the real me.”

“But what if they were? What if everyone who ever said they loved you meant it?”

“How could they? How could any of them have ever meant it when no one but you has ever really known the real me?”

“I’ll tell you why,” he said in a deep voice that rumbled all the way through her. “Your beauty is so much deeper than the makeup, the outfits you wore, the part you played all those years. And your heart is so big, and so damned pure, that anyone would have to be blind not to see it. Not to see you and fall in love with you the way I did from the very start, from that very first night when you looked at me and saw everything.”

“I think,” she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, “that I’ve fallen in love with you, too.”

He didn’t freak out the way she had when he’d said it to her. No, he simply smiled, a smile that got bigger and bigger by the second. “I thought you might have.”

His gentle teasing made it easier for her to relax into the idea of loving…and being loved. “What tipped you off?”

He stroked her hair back from her face and looked at her in a way he never had before. A look so warm, so comforting, so sweet and yet so raw and real that it shot straight to the center of her heart. “Where should I start?”

She loved the slightly cocky edge to his words, the fact that they could laugh and love each other at the same time. She’d never known it could be like this, that passion and desire and deep emotions could be tempered so perfectly with such ease, and with friendship.

The truest friendship she’d ever known.

“Start right here, with this,” she said, and then she kissed him, slowly running her tongue along his lower lip, from one corner of his mouth to the other. He was so delicious that one taste wasn’t nearly enough, so she took another, this time of his upper lip, and then of his tongue as she slipped hers inside his mouth.

They were both still fully clothed, but she was already wrapped all around him, and his hands were holding her hips tightly. She rocked into him, and knowing exactly how good it felt to come apart against him made her feel reckless. Bold.

Her whole life she’d had to hold back, had to make sure that she didn’t make a single misstep in front of the camera, but with Sean she didn’t need to worry. All he’d tried to do since that day he’d found her in the library so that he could show her the pictures of the two of them online, was love her. And even though she’d been scared to let him, how could she ever possibly have resisted him? Especially when his mother had done such an exceptional job of raising her son.

“You made me feel so good this morning,” she told him. “I want to make you feel good, too.”

His eyes were dilated nearly to black when he looked down at her. “You already are.”

He kissed her again and she almost forgot everything in the wonder of his mouth against hers. Only, in the past ten hours since he’d dropped her off at her dorm room, Serena had realized that she wanted to experience his pleasure as much as she did her own. It had been a revelation to come with his hands on her. And it would, she was certain, be even more of a revelation to make him come.

“Let me touch you, Sean.” When she ran her hands down from his broad shoulders to his jeans, she could feel the hard flexing of every muscle in his back, his hips, as he worked to keep himself under control. Slowly, she slid her fingers around to the front of his jeans. “Please.”