The Last Letter (Page 44)

“I do act my age.”

“Oh, honey, you don’t, and you never have. You’re not old, not damaged, not a dried-up spinster. You’re twenty-five. So yeah. I’m going to bed.”

I stood in my office, unwilling to move but also unready to take off my heels. That felt a little too much like defeat.

YOU ARE ENOUGH.

I stared at Chaos’s words, chanting them in my head. He was right. I was enough, and I was done being a passive participant in whatever my relationship was with Beckett.

Glancing at Maisie’s handmade diploma, my eyes lingered on Beckett’s choppy handwriting. What was it with military guys and their worse-than-doctor handwriting? His was just as bad as Chaos’s, and that was saying something.

I’d lost Chaos before I could act on my feelings, and I wasn’t going to make the same mistake with Beckett.

I left my office, snatched my keys off the entry table, and walked out. I could have sworn I heard an “attagirl,” coming from the guest room window as I climbed into my car, but when I looked back, the room was dark.

“You are enough,” I mumbled to myself the entire time I drove to Beckett’s cabin. His lights were on, so at least I wasn’t waking the man up. I parked the car, and then I swallowed back the slight taste of panic that flooded my mouth, straightening my back as I walked up his steps.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

I set my knuckles to the door before I could chicken out, but in the precious seconds it took for Beckett to answer, I started to grow some very chicken-like feathers around my heart.

“Ella?” he answered, flinging the door open wide. He was still in his suit, but he’d loosened his tie and unbuttoned the top button at his throat, revealing a small section of skin that I was suddenly desperate to kiss. “Is everything okay? Is it Maisie?”

“Maisie’s fine,” I told him, both annoyed and loving him more because he thought of her first.

“Oh good. What’s going on? Come on in.” He stepped aside, and I walked into the cabin, heading down the hallway. Where before it had been cold and impersonal, now it had pictures that Colt and Maisie had drawn hanging in various places, like those I found myself staring at on his fridge as I wandered into the kitchen. He’d adapted his “neat and orderly” and let us “complicate” the very space he lived in. Silly, but the pictures calmed a tiny bit of my rampant fear that Beckett would disappear one day.

“Do you want a drink?” he asked slowly.

“No.” I spun around to find him leaned back against the counter. He’d ditched the suit coat on our walk in. “You took me on a date.”

“Yes.” He gave me a sexy little smile as he unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt, and I wanted to kick him.

“You took me on a date. Dinner, dancing, romantic little walk. Then you took me to my door and hugged me. Like I’m your sister.” I stalked forward, and his expression changed, a look of hunger flashing before he got it under control.

“I did. Guilty on all counts.”

“I’m not your sister, Beckett.”

“I’ve noticed.” He sucked in a deep breath and put his hands on the counter, his knuckles turning instantly white.

I brought myself flush against him, nearly groaning at the press of his hard muscles under my fingers as I rested my hands on his chest.

“Well, maybe dates have changed in the last seven or so years, but in my limited experience, they end with a kiss.” I rose up on my tiptoes until my mouth hovered just under his.

“Ella.” He said my name like a plea, but for what? To give us what we both wanted? For me to back away and leave him to sleep with his honor?

“Tell me what you want. Because I want to kiss you. Even if it’s just this once.” I closed the tiny gap between our mouths and brushed my lips over his. How could a man that hard have such soft lips?

His body turned to stone against mine, every muscle locked. Under my fingertips, his heart started to pound.

Growing bolder, I kissed him softly, lingering on his bottom lip. Then I retreated just enough to look into his eyes. The rest of him might be a statue, but those eyes said everything he wouldn’t, and he was a second away from—

His mouth slammed against mine, and the rest of him came alive. One of his hands tunneled through the back of my hair while the other wrapped around my waist and tugged me even closer.

I opened under him, and his tongue swept inside, taking, consuming, learning every line of my mouth. A moan slipped from my lips, and I buried my hands in his hair, tugging gently at the short strands.

Then I kissed him back like I’d been dreaming about for months.

Our mouths tangled, the kiss tasting sweet, like the wine we’d finished after our dance, and just as intoxicating. He sucked my tongue into his mouth, and I eagerly rubbed against his, stroking and caressing. Good God, the man knew what he was doing.

My entire world existed in this kiss, in the feel of Beckett’s arms around me.

He switched the tempo, gently sucking at my bottom lip before tilting his head and kissing me deeper until I became nothing but need. Heat rushed through my veins, bringing me to life, a euphoric variation of the tingles in my limbs after they’d fallen asleep and were brought back to feeling.

“God, Ella,” he groaned, his fingers tight in my hair.

“Yes,” I urged, loving everything about this. He curved his body over mine, then lifted me by my ass and spun, setting me on the counter. Then he used both hands to hold my head and kissed me until I couldn’t remember my own name—only that I belonged to him.

My fingers ran along his neck, until I had ahold of his tie from underneath, curling my fingers through the space where he’d loosened the knot.

“I could kiss you forever,” he said against my mouth.

“I’m okay with that.”

He smiled, and I couldn’t help but mirror it. Everything about this felt so incredibly right. He brushed back a strand of my hair from my face with a tenderness that made my heart lurch, like it was reaching for him. I love this man. That thought alone sent my need up a notch, until I was aching and restless.

My sex drive the last seven years had been a broken circuit, and suddenly the lights were coming back on, as Beckett flipped switch after switch.

Kissing me again, he slid his arms around me, and when he pulled me to the edge of the counter, I parted my thighs, bringing us together from lips, to chest, to hips. There was an edge to the kiss now, a rough desperation that could only be the result of the desire we’d both kept tightly leashed the last few months.

I cursed the layers of fabric between us, wishing I’d chosen a shorter, less fluffy skirt. He broke our kiss, and I gasped, sucking in some much-needed air when he put his mouth to my neck. Holy shit.

“Beckett,” I whimpered, letting my head roll back and giving him unfettered access to whatever parts of me he wanted. They were all his.

He supported my arched back with one hand and flicked open the lone button of my shrug with the other, never pausing in his assault on my neck. He rained long, openmouthed kisses down my neck, over my collarbone, and down to my neckline.

My heels hit the hardwood floor as I kicked them off, locking my ankles around his waist to bring him harder against me.

That earned me another groan from his lips. Leaning back, I braced my hands on the cool granite, so at odds with the heat of my skin. He ran his hands over the sides of my breasts, to my waist, down over my dress-covered thighs, until he reached the bare skin of my knees.

I’d never been so glad I refused panty hose in my entire life.

Strong hands slid beneath my dress, running up the sides of my legs. His skin was rough and calloused, yet his touch gentle but for the press of his fingers when he squeezed at the top of my thighs. I had the insane urge to ask him to tighten his grip, to leave some kind of mark that would tell me tomorrow that this had really happened—it wasn’t all a dream.

He kissed me, taking my mouth in a rhythm that made my hips arch into him, wishing his hands would move. I’d never been kissed with such expertise or care, never felt my blood rise to a fever pitch like this. It was utter, complete, delicious madness.

His thumbs stroked down the line of my inner thighs, brushing the edge of my panties, and I felt the sensation everywhere. In my core, my belly, the tips of my breasts. That simple motion caressed my heartbeat and sent it skyrocketing.

“More,” I begged, squeezing my thighs around him, needing the pressure to ease the ache, even if just a little.

Like I’d bitten him, he released my thighs and stepped back, my shock loosening my grip enough that he broke the lock on my ankles.

“Okay, that’s the opposite of more,” I said, my words as choppy as my breath.

He leaned back against the other counter, his chest rising and falling just as rapidly as mine. At least I wasn’t the only one affected by that kiss. He looked flat-out tortured and a little angry as he ripped his tie loose.

Damn, that was sexy.

He closed his eyes as his hands tugged at his hair. He was the very picture of an intensely aroused man who couldn’t get a grip on his control, and maybe I was mean, but I loved knowing I’d put him there.

“Beckett.”

“No.” He shook his head as he opened his eyes. The way his gaze raked over me, my dress barely covering my still-spread thighs, was intense enough to send another wave of pure lust through my system. “Not like this.”

A quick cut of fear slid down my sternum. Had the kiss not been the same gravity-bending event for him that it had been for me?

“You’d prefer to wait another four months to make out? Because this is us, Beckett. I’m always going to be Ryan’s sister. I’m always going to want you, and if the way you just kissed me is any indication, you want me just as badly.”

“I always knew it would be like this between us. From the moment I set eyes on you, I knew the minute my hands…” He caught the side of his bottom lip between his teeth for a second, then gripped the counter.

“Your hands what?” I taunted, sitting up straight and giving my arms a rest.

“I knew the minute I got my hands on you, it would take a miracle for me to stop long enough to get a rational thought in my head. Touching you… God, Ella, if you had any idea how badly I want you, you would not still be sitting on my counter looking at me like that.”