The Edge of Always (Page 66)

“What are you doing up so early?” I ask, reaching out to brush her cheek with the backs of my fingers.

“I’m not sure,” she says. “I was a little surprised myself.”

“How do you feel?”

“I feel fine.”

I drape my arm over her waist and pull her body next to mine, our bare legs tangling together. She traces the tip of her finger around the definition of my chest muscles. Her touch breaks my skin out in chill bumps.

I study her eyes and her mouth and let my fingertips follow every path that my eyes take. She is so beautiful to me. So goddamn beautiful. She reaches up and caresses my fingers underneath her own and then she kisses them, one by one, and pulls her body even closer. Something is different about her.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” I ask.

A gentle smile warms her eyes and she nods. Then she touches her lips to mine, pressing her br**sts firmly against my chest. Her ni**les are hard. I’m hard long before I feel her hand grip my erection. She licks the tip of my tongue before closing her mouth around mine and I wrap my arms around her body possessively. She presses herself against me below, the softness of her skin, her wetness that I feel so easily through her thin, cotton panties. Without breaking the hungry kiss, I reach down with one hand, slipping my fingers behind each side of her panties and take them off. I thrust my hips toward her, pressing my swollen c**k against her warmth.

I roll over on top of her and look down into her eyes. But I don’t say a word. I don’t tell her how wet she is, or force her to look at me. I don’t dominate her with words or gestures or demands. I just gaze into her eyes and know that this is a moment where words are not needed.

I kiss her lips again softly, the corners of her mouth, the outline of her cheekbone. Parting her lips with my tongue, I very softly kiss her and reach down and take my c**k into my hand, rubbing it against her. I feel her hips shift toward me, letting me know how bad she wants me inside of her. I don’t want to tease her this time, or deny her what she needs, so I push myself in just barely and watch her lose control of her gaze, her eyes fluttering, her lips parting. Forcing my c**k in further, I feel her legs tremble around me. She moans softly, biting down on her bottom lip. I kiss her again and finally push myself deep inside of her, as far as I can go. I hold it there, basking in the shaking of her thighs, the trembling of her hands as they hold onto me, her fingers digging into my back.

I rock harder against her, gyrating my hips. A thin layer of sweat begins to bead off our bodies. I want to lick it off her, but I don’t stop. I can’t stop…

I raise my body up enough that our chests are no longer touching and I grab one of her legs from around me, gripping under the bend of her knee, pushing it back so I can thrust deeper. I pound her harder, pushing her thigh down against the bed. She calls out my name, both of her hands clutching my waist, but she pulls them back and curls her fingers around the top of the mattress above her head. I watch hungrily as her br**sts bounce up and down against her chest and I thrust even harder, leaning over to take her ni**les into my mouth and then into my teeth.

My vision gets hazy. She moans loudly and then begins to whimper. The whimpering makes me crazy. I let go of her thigh and feel my body closing in on hers again, her br**sts smashed into my chest, her arms wrapped tightly around my back. I feel her fingernails press painfully into my flesh. She rocks her hips against mine, and my mouth crashes over hers. As I start to come, my kiss becomes more ravenous. Tremors move through my body and I moan against her mouth and my hard thrusts are reduced to gentle rocking. Camryn takes my bottom lip between her teeth and I kiss her gently, still rocking my hips against her until I’m finished.

I collapse onto her chest. My erratic heartbeat trying to find its rhythm again, I feel the pumping of blood in my fingers and in my toes and aggravating the vein near my temple. I lay the side of my face against her bare br**sts, my mouth parted, the breath expelling unevenly from my lips. Her fingers move through my moist hair.

We lie here together just like this, all morning, without saying a word.

31

I don’t remember falling asleep. When I open my eyes, the clock beside the bed says that it’s eleven ten. And I realize that I don’t feel naked because I have no clothes on, but I feel naked because Camryn isn’t in the bed with me.

She’s sitting on the windowsill, dressed in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt without a bra. She’s gazing out the window.

“I think we should go,” she says without taking her eyes off the bright New Orleans landscape.

I sit up on the bed with the sheet draped over my lower half. “You want to leave New Orleans?” I ask, confused. “But I thought you said we left too soon the first time.”

“Yeah,” she says, but still doesn’t turn around. “The first time we left too soon, but we can’t stay here longer now just to make up for that.”

“But why do you want to leave? We’ve only been here one day.”

She turns to face me. There’s something like sentiment or resolve in her eyes, but I can’t make out which, or if it’s both.

After a long hesitation, she says, “Andrew, I know this might sound stupid, but I think if we stay here… I…”

I stand up from the bed and step inside my boxers I find on the floor. “What’s going on?” I ask, approaching her.

She looks at me. “I just think that… well, when we first got here yesterday all I could think about is what this place meant to us last July. I realized that I kept picturing the times before, trying to relive them—”