Eyes Wide Open (The Blackstone Affair #3)(29)
Author: Raine Miller

“I love you t—”

I shushed him with my fingers over his lips and lifted my head up. “I know you do. You tell me all the time. You’re better than me at expressing your feelings, and I want you to know that I see it. I see it in how you take care of me and how you touch me and how you show me by being so solid and just . . . there for me.” I took in a deep breath.

“Brynne . . . it’s the only way I—”

“Please let me finish.” I pressed my fingers back over his lips. “I need to say this before we look at the test and I lose it completely, because I’m sure I will either way it reads.”

His blue eyes said so much, even though his mouth stayed closed. He kissed my fingers, which were still covering his lips, and waited for me to continue.

I took another big breath. “I ran away from you for the last time. I won’t hit you with a ‘Waterloo’ again. It was terrible to just take off like that and I’m very ashamed I was so weak and selfish. I acted like a child and I cannot even imagine what your family thinks of me right now. They must be praying I’m not pregnant, just sick with some horrible flu, because I’m sure they see me as a crazy American freak who is trying to trap you—”

“No. No, no, no, no, they don’t think that,” he interrupted, his lips finding mine and silencing my speech for good. He rolled me under him, very careful of my left wrist, stretching my arm up and out of reach of getting bumped. So very Ethan-ish of him. Taking charge of me in the only way he knew, and in the way that I needed him to. How did he always know?

He kissed me thoroughly, pinning beneath him and finding his way deep inside with his tongue, sweeping in a wide circle over and over around mine. I felt that glorious sensation of being invaded that came whenever we were together. His need to be inside me coupled with my need to have him there.

He lifted his head and held me under him, one hand propping his body up and the other holding my cheek. He had his serious face on now. “I know the truth, Brynne. I was there from day one with you, remember? I know how hard I had to work to get you.” He dipped his head and dragged his stubble up my neck to lick below my ear. “I wanted you then, just like I want you now, like I’ll always want you,” he whispered through nibbles and lip bites up my neck and across my throat, working his way back to my mouth so he could swallow me again.

I blossomed under his intimate caresses, finding my way to where I needed to be.

He pulled back, his beautiful, hard features over me, reflected in the shadows of the one lamp in the room. And right there in the early hours of the night, buried in the middle of an experience that had the power to change our lives forever, my Ethan spoke the most perfect words.

“I wish I could make love to you right now. Now. Before we know what it says . . . because it will change nothing that I feel in here . . . for you.” He picked up my right hand and laid it flat over his heart.

“Yes, please,” I managed before falling into a place somewhere so far into love with him it laid me bare. This thing with him and me was truly irreversible.

He rose up from me and sat back on his knees. His eyes were piercing blue, asking for permission because he was like that with me. Ethan knew what he wanted and would take it from me, but he needed to know I was willing.

I was. No words were exchanged because they weren’t necessary. Not really.

I slowly raised my other arm to match my left one and arched my back, offering myself to him in a way I know he loved. Submitting myself to his care and knowing he would take us to a place where we could be like that together in the way we understood so well.

He pulled off his T-shirt and tossed it. My eyes soaked in the cut abdominals and solid curves of his deltoids and biceps. I could stare at him for hours, but usually didn’t get nearly my fill of looking.

He pushed my shirt up and over my head, leaving it bunched around my left arm. It would have to stay there, because I was still connected to the IV. He drew his hands down, hovering just above my skin, not touching as he swept his eyes over me. It reminded me of a pianist poised just before beginning to play a piece. It was beautiful to watch him.

He bowed over me, starting at the hollow of my throat, and drew downward with his tongue as far as he could go. He dragged it achingly slow over my sternum, down my stomach and to my navel, where he gave some special attention to the indentation. He never got near my br**sts and the obvious evasion got me undulating for him, my body already on fire, craving his touch.

He looked up from my navel just before reaching for the waistband of my leggings. He drew down with his tongue as his hands drew down the leggings, right over the center of me, to lick at my sex. His tongue pushed between the folds and found my clit swollen and aching for him. I bowed off the bed and moaned as he devoured me to the brink of orgasm with his lips and tongue.

“Not yet, my beauty,” he rasped against my pu**y, slowing down the flick of his tongue to keep me on the edge of climax without crashing over. He pressed a palm over my stomach and with the other hand managed to pull the leggings straight down and off my legs completely with a little lifting help from my raised hips.

He opened one of my legs wide and high and growled a sound of pure carnal lust, staring down at me spread for him, his other palm still planted on my belly. Ethan had me totally exposed and bared, pinned by his hands when he descended again and inserted his tongue, penetrating me as far as he could go. He worked magic with that tongue of his, and I felt myself falling as everything within my body was pulled toward a release. I might die if he didn’t give it to me.

“Say it to me now,” he commanded with a harsh breath at my center.

Again, I understood him. I knew precisely what he wanted to hear.

“I love you, Ethan! I love you. I love you so much . . .” I sobbed my declaration, barely able to form audible words.

He heard me, though.

Ethan wrapped his perfect tongue around my pearl and sucked it hard. I went off like a nuclear explosion, slow at first, and then a rolling pause just before the incendiary blast that broke me apart into countless fragments. Pieces of me that could only be collected and reassembled by one man. Only Ethan could do that. This truth I understood implicitly. The one who had the power to take me apart was also the only one with the power to put me back together again.

Ethan’s blue eyes were hovering over me when I opened mine. He’d moved back up my body, his hand where his mouth had just been, long fingers sliding slowly up inside me, his thumb just pressing on the bundle of nerves in a decadent sensation of pleasure.