Fueled (Page 74)

“You don’t get it do you?” he asks. “You may not have the experience but…” He fades off trying to find the right words. “…you’re the purest person I’ve ever met, Rylee. That part of you—that innocence in you—it’s so goddamn sexy. So fucking incredible.”

He rests his forehead against mine, pulling my body further into his. He sighs and laughs softly, his breath feathering across my lips. “You know, a couple of months ago, I might have answered you differently. But since you fell out of the damn storage closet, nothing has been the fucking same.” He pauses momentarily, his fingertip trailing down the bare line of my spine. “No one’s mattered before. Ever. But you? Fuck, somehow you changed that. You matter,” he says with such clarity that his words delve into places deep inside of me I thought could never be healed. Places and pieces now slowly stitching themselves back together.

I still as Colton’s warm arms wrap around the chilled skin of my back. He pulls my hair to the side and presses his lips to the curve of my neck. The scrape of this returning stubble sends shivers down my spine. “What is it with you and jumping to conclusions tonight?” he murmurs, keeping his lips pressed against my skin. The vibrations of his lips ricocheting across hypersensitive nerves.

I shrug without explanation, suddenly embarrassed at confessing my moment of blatant insecurity to him when he so obviously showed me tonight that I’m the one he wants. Silence settles around us for a bit as we breathe each other in. “If there’s something you’re not getting from me—that you need—you’d tell me right?” He leans back to look at me, his hands resting on my shoulders, thumbs brushing absently over the dip of my collarbone, question in his eyes. I continue, “When Tawny said—”

Colton’s eyes snaps alert. “Tawny?”

“She was in the bathroom,” I confess and see irritation flicker across his face.

“Fuckin’ Tawny,” he mutters dragging a hand through his hair. “Look at me, Rylee,” he commands. I raise my eyes up to meet the raw intensity in his. “Tawny’s just jealous that she doesn’t have a tenth of the sex appeal that you have. And the best part about it—about you—is that you don’t even realize it. Do you remember that night at the Palisades?” he asks and all I can do is nod, mesmerized by his words and the soft smile ghosting his lips. “That’s what I was struggling with. Why I was such an ass. How could I bring you there and treat you like everybody else when you were like no one I’d ever been with before? And then I walked over to you, and you were standing there trying to figure out what my problem was, looking so goddamn beautiful and unintentionally beguiling. And even though I’d been a dick, you stepped toward me and gave everything of yourself to me without a single explanation.” He reaches up and traces a line down my forehead and nose and then stops on my lips. “It’s such a fucking turn on, Rylee. Like no one else I’ve ever been with. No one.”

I draw in a ragged breath, afraid to believe what he’s really telling me. That I give him what he needs. That things between him and I are different for him. A first of sorts for him. I swallow loudly before clenching my jaw. If I speak right now, three words he doesn’t want to hear are going to come tumbling out of my mouth. It’s been an emotional night, and I’m more than overwhelmed. All I can manage is a simple nod.

“I’ve never had to work so hard to get something I never thought I wanted,” he confesses and the words feather through me and embed themselves in my swelling heart and transparent soul.

How is it possible to feel love this intense when I thought the ability for me had died with Max?

I lean in and express the words my tangled tongue cannot, by pressing my lips to his. “Thank you,” I whisper to him for the many things I don’t even think he could understand even if I told him.

He pulls back and I can’t miss the smirk on his devilishly sexy mouth. He raises and eyebrow at me, amusement in his eyes. “A God in the sack, huh?”

I can’t help the laughter that bubbles up and spills out, not surprised he didn’t forget. “Did I say that?” I tease as I run my fingertips down the ridges of his abdomen. I can feel his thickening arousal pulse beneath me from my touch. “Must have been a slip of the tongue.”

“Oh really?” He asks with a playful grin on his lips, and a look in his eyes that tells me his sated needs are no longer fulfilled. “Tongues are funny things don’t you think?” He leans in and traces my lower lip with his tongue. “They can lick like this,” he whispers. “And they can kiss like this,” he says branding his mouth to mine, his tongue parting my lips and dominating my mouth. He shifts us backwards on the mattress so that his weight presses deliciously on top of me.

He breaks the kiss and the lust in his eyes has desire unfurling in my belly. “And they can lick like this,” he whispers before grazing his way down my neck to tease the tightened bud of my nipple. “They can tease and pleasure like this.” His tongue caresses one then another before trailing down my abdomen at an achingly slow pace. My muscles flex in anticipation as he stops at the top of my sex.

He looks up at me and I catch a flash of grin. “And they most definitely…” He blows against my seam, the heat of his breath feathering over my sensitive flesh. “…love to taste like this.”

His tongue laves over me and my sharp intake of air followed by a soft moan is all I can manage. My words are lost and mind is clouded from the soft slide and adept skill of his tongue.