39. Petra

Chapter thirty-nine

Petra

After tears turn into affectionate whispers and chaste kisses, we manage to pull ourselves together.

Reed and I grab our things from the car and take a tour of the upstairs to drop them off in the master bedroom. We spend the afternoon unpacking. Each box is a peek into Reed’s life as we move things into the house. His furniture is more about comfort than aesthetic, and since most of the heavy lifting is already done, we’re able to get most of the boxes stacked up in various rooms.

Reed orders takeout while we unbox his vinyl record collection, and when it arrives, he puts on his favorite, and tugs me into the kitchen. Once I’m stuffed, Reed pulls me to him, and we sway to the music in the sunshine. “I’m so glad you’re here, Pet.”

I close my eyes and hide my smile against his shoulder. After a few more songs, I let him go. “We should probably keep unpacking. I swear I saw some baby albums in a box in the living room that are calling my name.”

“I saw some boxes that definitely need to be moved up to the bedroom,” Reed counters with a smirk. His hand comes down playfully on my ass, and I squeal. “Come help me.”

I roll my eyes at him and head to the storage pod to grab another set of boxes to bring inside. Reed groans, but follows.

“We can change anything you want, Petra,” he notes as we bring the boxes inside. “If you don’t like the—”

He’s skipping steps, and I halt in the entryway, blushing. “I’m sleeping on a twin bed, with a desk older than I am. I have no room to talk when it comes to decor. It’s your house. You should decorate it the way you like.”

He brushes against my back as he moves past me, toward the stairs. “My house for now,” he murmurs, with a barely there feather of his lips against my cheek. He sends tingles everywhere. I must blush harder, because Reed chuckles, slow and deep, and heads to the second floor.

I lean against the wall, giggling, my knees weak.

“Bonus points for the house,” Reed calls from the bedroom. “Your laugh echoes beautifully up the stairs.”

I grin and squeeze my eyes shut, an overwhelming joy sweeping through me. I don’t care what anyone says about speed, timing, or realistic expectations. I’ve never been this happy with someone.

My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, still grinning, and put it on speakerphone while I move a box to the kitchen. “Hi Livi.”

“Hey. Tommy’s here too. We want an update. How’s your man?”

“Your man?” Reed asks as he sneaks up behind me. “I like the sound of that.”

“Gross,” Tommy groans.

“They encourage each other,” I complain to Tommy. “At least now you have to listen, too.”

“What’s the story with crazy pants?” Livi asks.

“That one’s accurate too,” Reed mutters with a grimace. “She won’t stop calling, but she can’t find us here.”

“Troni, send me the address?” Tommy asks.

“Sure.” Tommy is overprotective but, with Kinley this upset, better safe than sorry. I pull up my text messages. “Sending it to you right now. I’m going to stay here tonight, and then I’ll check in with you guys in the morning.”

“Okay. Glad you and your family are safe, Reed. Take care of my sister,” Livi warns.

“I promise,” Reed answers. I glance over my shoulder at his serious tone, and he brushes our noses together before pressing a soft, warm kiss to my mouth .

Electricity rushes from my lips to my toes, and I break away to end the call. “Love you guys. Bye.”

“Love you,” they chorus, and then the house is quiet.

“A promise is a big deal, you know,” I tease, trying to keep it light. My heart is revving out of control.

“It’s an easy promise to make.” Reed turns me around to pin my hips to the counter. He rakes his hands through my hair, his eyes fiercely gold. “Ask me what I was thinking about earlier, Pet.”

I can’t. I have no air left. It’s all been scorched by the way he looks at me. “What?”

“I was reliving the first night you slept over, when you asked if you could hold me. And when you said you’d cancel your DKP subscription. Your voice on the other side of that shower curtain when you asked for me. Not Knight. You always saw me. Just me. I knew before dinner at The Riverfront that I wanted to date you. I knew in your kitchen that I was in danger of falling in love with you. And I knew—after you told me about Natalia—that my heart was in your hands. That I would choose you, each day, for the rest of my life.”

I suck in a breath, hands searching for him without me asking them to. My palms spread wide over his chest, and he’s warm under my fingers.

“Your dad said something to me before dinner, when you walked in. He said, ‘God speaks in my heart. I trust her to you.’ And he was right. Not about you being my property,” he smirks, “but because when you’re happy, I’m happy. When you’re heartbroken, so am I. And when you’re annoyed, well, usually I’m laughing, but you laugh when I’m annoyed, too. It doesn’t matter if I’d met you in Los Angeles, or Swift River, or Indonesia. I’d recognize your soul anywhere.”

I can’t find my breath. “What does my soul look like?”

“Mine.” He leans in and his lips touch mine—a key slipping into a lock, laying me bare to him. There are no more secrets, and what we’re left with is each other .

The past shatters like glass that softens into sand, because it can’t hurt us now. Not when he fits against me like we were made for each other.

Mine. It goes both ways. We’re mirror images, and he’s mine, too. I open my mouth to tell him, but then he deepens the kiss and the words fly out of my head, replaced by more, please, everything.

His hands change, from soft and tender to hot and demanding. He pulls my shirt off, right there in the kitchen, and then he’s moving me backward, toward the hall. It takes too long. I lace our hands together and we run up the stairs, laughing. He leads me into the bedroom and kisses me with the afternoon sun pouring through the window and heating up my skin.

He yanks his shirt up until he’s skin all over, and it’s been too long since I’ve had full access like this. “Aren’t you going to shut the door?” I protest with a gasp. He wraps his arms around me. With a quick pinch, my bra loosens, and I let it drop to the floor.

“Why? It’s our house, darling.” He punctuates it with a kiss to my shoulder that leaves me breathless. “No need to hide.”

Our house. My brain runs away with the phrase, no matter how ridiculous it is. I kiss everywhere I can reach while he unbuttons my jeans, and I’m frantic as I pull them off. His hands set fires across my skin as he cups my breasts. He teases my nipples to hard points that ache, leaving me breathless and needy.

He kneels, kissing his way up my thighs, and smirks. “You could’ve told me you wanted this earlier, you know,” he teases, stroking the damp fabric of my sheer underwear before tugging them down my legs.

“Well, I want it now.” I tug him back up. “I can’t wait anymore. I want all of you. Just like this. I started birth control the day after I listened to the thumb drive.”

Reed’s pupils widen, and his swallow echoes in the empty room. “Always unexpected, Pet,” he notes, guiding me down to the bed. His hand stretches across my chest, forcing me to lay back, and swipes a thumb over my nipple. “I can only imagine how big that decision was for you. Thank you for trusting me. But I want you soaked and trembling first.”

His shoulders fit between my thighs, spreading me open, and I’m lost to the warmth of his mouth. The sunlight bakes into my skin as he devours me. I melt under his attention, and my hands thread through his hair to hold him to me. “Right there,” I plead. “Oh, tesoro , don’t change a thing.”

He chuckles, but does as he’s told. He’s delectable, annoying, amazing. The smirk he gives me with only his honey eyes while he strokes, nips, and swirls, sends me higher. I squeeze my legs around him as the need builds in me. My thighs shake as he sucks my clit back into his mouth, and I surrender. Reality disintegrates until nothing exists except for me and Reed and the places we touch.

When the darkness recedes to the edge of my vision, Reed climbs over to kiss me, long, slick, and deep. The slide of his lips is sinful, and I shudder.

“I want you in every room of this house, Pet. All this time apart has had me dreaming about all the ways I’m going to have you.”

The air burns in my lungs as I suck it down. “Oh? Have you been writing scenes?”

Reed’s dimple winks at me as he smirks. “More like writing a playbook, baby. ”

“Oh? And what if I’ve been writing my own?” I undo his pants, and he’s hot and firm in my fist. I smile, eager to make him come. I want to watch his face change when I don’t swallow this time. “I have so many new fantasies.”

But Reed shakes his head as his hands map my curves. “Later. I want you, Pet. In a dozen ways, I want you. But right now I want to bury myself inside you and convince you that it should be you and me from here on out.”

There’s something swelling in my chest, reaching the highest peak of the swell before riding the crash of it. Though I’m wrapped around him and can’t get any closer, my heart aches for him beneath my ribs. I throw my leg over his, burrowing into him. “I don’t need convincing, tesoro .”

My hands unclench and explore, undressing him, memorizing him. There are a thousand places I love to touch that elicit a thousand soft sounds. He slides inside me with a groan that vibrates through my whole body. My eyes slip closed as I clutch his shoulders and adjust to the way we fit together. He’s hot and firm, stretching me in all the right ways.

“No. Look at me, Pet.” When I open my eyes, his are tender and amber and perfect. Neither of us says it, but it courses between us. Three words I struggle not to say. They seem too good to be true for our short time together, broken hearts, and jagged scars.

I love you. I love you. I love you. All of me trembles with the effort of holding them back. “You know,” I whisper.

“Darling Petra,” he murmurs, eyes molten. “I know.”

He kisses me again and fire licks through my blood. He retreats, then slides back in slowly, carefully, slicking the way for us, and it’s so good that my nails dig into his back. He takes the next thrust harder, deeper, and I arch against him. “We should’ve been doing this for weeks,” I lament.

“Live with me in Portland and we can do this all the time.”

“Not content with visits?” I tease, but he hits a spot that has me crying out.

“Never.” All his careful exploration goes out the window. He sucks at my lips, my neck, my breasts, sliding deeper with each thrust. The friction of him drives me crazy, and my legs shake with it. He winds me up until I can’t see, breathe, or think of anything but Reed.

Reed. Reed. Reed.

We heal our scars together. We belong together. My eyes shut, but the sunshine bathes us, dazzles us, chases away our shadows.

I’m moaning, pleading, as he swipes his thumb over my clit. He does it again and again until I cry out. “ Ti amo, Reed!”

“You can’t hide it from me in Italian,” Reed growls, and kisses me again. “One more, my love. Take it from me.”

I clutch onto him for dear life as I arch against him. I’m on the edge, but it moves father and father away from me. Reed’s thumb moves faster, presses harder, as he kisses his way up my neck.

“You don’t need to hide it. You don’t need to run. I’m not going anywhere, because I’m so in love with you, Pet.” Reed’s lips brush my ear with his words. They slip inside me, smooth as silk, warm and sweet as melted chocolate, as vibrant as bouquets and coastal sunsets.

All around us, the sunlight explodes into a shower of gold. It drifts through me, filling me up, coiling me tight. I whimper as he lays claim to my mouth. I’m dizzy and out of breath as he kisses me over and over. He pulls back enough to let me breathe, and I fall over the edge.

With a moan that echoes in my bones, Reed follows.

All I know is Reed. And warmth. A warmth that seeps through my pores until I’m baking in it. I didn’t realize how deep the chill went before now. Reed’s skin is just as hot from the sun and exertion. He rolls off me and we lay together, savoring all the places we touch.

“I’ve never felt this before,” I confide after I’ve caught my breath. “My heart is walking around in your body. It’s yours, Reed. All of me is yours.”

“And all of me is yours, love,” he says. He leans in to kiss me slowly, softly—a kiss full of promises that fuels the fire banked in me. “When you’re ready to go again, let me know. I wasn’t joking. I’ve been fantasizing about this for weeks, and I have so many ideas.”

I shiver at the possibilities. I’ve been craving him for weeks. “Does that mean there’s a chance I could be tied up again tonight? Because that really did a lot for me.”

“Fuck yes, there is. Amongst about a thousand other things I’ve got lined up for us. You’d better pencil me in for a couple decades while we work through them all. I love your whispers, but someday I’m going to make your screams echo throughout our house, Pet.” He reaches for me with a smug smile and bright eyes, but I slip from the bed before he can pin me beneath him. “Hey, hey, come back. I’m not done holding you.”

“I want to show you something.” I dig my manuscript out of my bag, and Reed blinks at me when I crawl next to him and place it in his hands.

He touches the first page with such reverence that it makes me cry. I brush the tear away, determined to hold it together. He delves in, turning page after page without saying anything. He doesn’t need to. His face says it all. He laughs, frowns, turns the pages faster when the conflict comes up. He makes it all the way to the end of the first book before he looks up.

“You’re amazing. You get a sneak peek inside my head with some of those audios, but this—seeing inside your beautiful mind, Petronia? The world you created, the characters you filled with love, the thought you put into every page. It’s stunning.”

Tears pour down my face, quicker with each word. He leans in to catch them, wiping them away with lips and thumbs.

“I’ve read a lot of books to my nieces, and none of them have conflicts like this. You’ve taken a genre that can be trivial and imbued real hardship in it, in a way that kids will understand. Do you know how many kids need that? Need something to connect to when they are full of big feelings that adults tend to minimize? It’s a gift.”

“I already had sex with you, you don’t have to flatter me,” I say with an uncomfortable laugh.

Reed is having none of it, though. He takes my face in his hands to kiss me softly. “If I didn’t know you, I’d say the same thing. I can’t wait to see where this new path takes you, because I have no doubt that it will be extraordinary. I’d be honored to record it for you.”

“You’re a charmer.”

He grins. “If I’m so charming, then how long before I can convince you to move in with me?”

I close my eyes as he kisses me from forehead to shoulder, basking in the warm affection of it. “Mmmm. Four months? Three months. Two months.”

His lips curl into a smile. “What if I tell you there’s a huge, copper soaking tub in the backyard with its own solar water heater?”

He’s got to be joking. “One month.”

“I’m holding you to that,” he says, and kisses me again. “We can use it together when the jasmine vines bloom. Will you read the next one to me, Pet?”

“Really?”

Reed nods as he gathers me in his arms. “Your voice is my favorite sound in the world.”

“Yours is mine.” I brush our noses together before I lay in his arms and flip to the next book. “Natalia smiled up at the lavender sky as she and Eda trotted across the meadow. It was the first day of spring, and all of Galin was gathering together to celebrate.”