26. Woody

26

WOODY

I rubbed my belly, not sure how to answer him. Once everyone had gone, I couldn’t fight the impulse to come talk to him...though maybe I should’ve.

I clenched my jaw, my nose flaring as I willed my tears to stay back, but one broke free anyway.

“How many times and in how many ways do you have to be told that what happened with Stevie was not your fault? That it just fucking happened?” Emery asked, so goddamned kind.

My throat constricted painfully, and more tears fell.

“You didn’t see her face, Emery. I forgot one detail, and she tripped. That was it. And I got to her as quick as I could, but her eyes were swollen shut. I doubt you’d be so quick to forgive if you’d seen what she looked like.”

He cupped my jaw. “I did see her face, Woody. They took pictures because it was one of the worst reactions they’d ever seen. I saw exactly what my daughter looked like. And I listened when the doctor said that you ran flat out, which probably saved her life and nearly killed you.”

I pushed my face into his chest, hiding from him. “You have to know how much I adore her. I would give my life for her, Em. I’d rather die than let you lose her.”

“And that’s why I’m not mad at you, baby. That’s why...” He let out a deep sigh.

Flashes of her little face had tortured me these last few days, and I fucking couldn’t cope with his kindness. I started to go, but he wouldn’t let me. I flailed against him, but he only tightened his grip.

“That’s why I can’t stop thinking about you,” he whispered into my hair. “I’ve never been able to stop thinking about you from the moment we met. I can’t believe someone had you—got past all of that barbed wire, swam the moat, fought the alligators, and won your heart—then threw it away. What a fucking idiot.”

I sniffled through a half smile, the stiffness in my shoulders releasing. “To be fair, the barbed wire only came out later. After everything.”

He kissed the top of my head as he rubbed my back. “You probably should’ve had more time to get over that, but I will not apologize for how good you feel under my body.”

As much as I didn’t feel like I deserved it, I let myself sink into his brawny chest.

“According to Stevie, since Shane and I had only been together for a little over a year, I should’ve been good after a month.”

He chuckled, and it was music to my ears. “I swear, I need to monitor her internet habits a lot more closely.”

I wanted to laugh along with him, but thinking about Stevie made my chest tighten, and I couldn’t help the sob that bubbled up. Emery swayed with me, cocooning me in his arms, and suddenly I was crying about all of it: the rejection from my father, the lack of any real approval from my mother, the betrayal from Shane, the years of never feeling quite good enough. Nearly losing that little girl after I’d come to love her so damned much.

It made this acceptance painful, but Emery held me through it.

I don’t know how long we stood there, only that he refused to let me go. There was no judgment in his touch, no hesitation in the soft kisses he rained down on my head. Standing on this porch, where I’d once mistakenly believed that I’d been creating a life with my soulmate, the contrast between Shane and Emery could not be more stark.

I didn’t know how it was possible for a different man in the same place to make me feel so loved. Desired. I hadn’t believed it initially because it’d felt like I’d subbed out one guy for another.

But that wasn’t the truth. It never had been.

I sniffed and pulled back a little. “I need to blow my nose.”

He laughed, then reached back and pulled a bandanna from his pocket. “It’s a little worn, but it’s clean.”

I blew my nose, then excused myself inside to the downstairs bathroom, where I splashed some cold water on my face. I still looked like a fright with the pinpricks the bees’d left behind, but the swelling had mostly gone down.

Walking back into the living room, I said, “I feel like a fucked-up Howdy Doody. These stings look like freckles, don’t they?”

Emery pulled me back into his arms, looking down at me. “Yeah, but you’re my fucked-up Howdy Doody.”

His eyes drifted to my lips, and he gently kissed me. After a few moments, he pushed his forehead to mine. “That okay?”

I nodded, appreciating the warmth of his presence.

He chuckled softly. “Good.”

When he kissed me again, everything sweet fled, and in its place was need. These past few days had been awful, so maybe he needed what I needed. To reconnect, to be together physically.

“I have to taste you,” he pleaded.

“ Yes ,” I whined.

Checking behind me, he walked me backward toward the sofa. Rather than throw me to the cushions and have his way with me, Emery slowed everything down. My heart started to pound as the sun caught his eyelashes while he pulled his T-shirt over his head. The unhurried way he undid his jeans made my cock throb.

I loved the unspoken command in his actions, and I joined him in disrobing. Nothing fast, nothing frantic, though within moments we stood before each other, completely naked. I thought he’d surely throw me to the sofa then, but instead he pulled me into his arms, skin on skin.

“I won’t pretend you’re just my fuck buddy, Woody. I won’t pretend that I don’t care,” he whispered as we rocked side to side, as if dancing to a tune only we could hear. “I’m going to make love to you, and I hope you’ll be making love to me.”

Emery’s words stole my breath, and all I could do was nod while relishing the eroticism of our shared warmth.

He kissed me, even more deeply than before, finally taking us to the sofa. Pushing me onto my back, he covered my body with his, aligning us in all the necessary places. Everything about him—his scent, his warmth, his...love, maybe—enveloped me.

There used to be a time when I viewed dry humping as the precursor to something better. More. And yet, this wasn’t that. This wasn’t a precursor. This was him giving himself to me and me to him.

There were also practical considerations, mainly that we didn’t have any supplies of any kind down here, but the immediacy of his body against mine was suddenly the thing I needed more than anything in this life. I hesitated, wanting to look into his eyes, yet afraid of what he might see when he looked into mine.

Emery captured my gaze as if he’d overheard my insecurities, and it was like a jolt of lightning and a homecoming all at once. The stress and anxiety of the last few days bled out as we moved against one another, eyes locked.

I thought I knew about soul connections and love, but I hadn’t known anything at all until this exact moment.

“Woody,” he said so softly, as if the sole purpose of his tongue was to gently carry my name on it.

The warm press of his lips to mine, the purposeful thrust of his body...I went a little out of my mind as I wrapped my legs around his thighs, intensifying the connection between our bodies. Inhaling sharply, I was shocked at how quickly I was ready to come at such a basic thing as rubbing against him.

“Can I taste you?” he asked, his voice rough with need.

I nodded, enjoying the way he gripped my ribs as he made his way down my body, kissing a path of fire from my lips down my neck, down my chest, past my belly, before taking me into his hot mouth. And I was done for.

“Emery,” I whispered, feeling the wonder of my body softening into completion.

Orgasms for me were typically a messy, violent thing, and I usually preferred it that way. But this—the way he drew the pleasure from my body as though it were his own pleasure—made me realize that I’d never truly experienced unselfish love, which he offered to me without doubt or hesitation.

I cried out as I spilled into the back of his throat, and he moaned as he swallowed, as if it were his privilege to do so. Boneless as I was, I desperately needed to pleasure him in return. I came up for air and shifted, kissing him, sharing my taste.

I pressed gently against his shoulders, and he went with the motion, rolling to his back. I slid down between his thighs, spreading them as I placed a kiss on the beautiful flare of his cock head then taking him in my mouth. I let my tongue explore the thick ridge of him, gently stroking him as I increased suction. Crying out, he pounded his fist into the cushions, then arched up. Seconds later, his cum filled my mouth and I swallowed quickly, needing him inside me.

Only when he was shaking and wrung out, pleading for me to stop, did I release him. Instantly, he dragged me up onto his chest and pulled me in for another kiss before settling me against his shoulder. Like he knew I needed the closeness as much as anything else.

“You have me so totally fucked up,” he said with an amused chuckle.

I nuzzled closer. “How?” I asked, not bothering to contradict him.

“I don’t wanna do that with anyone else,” he murmured.

“Me either,” I admitted.

He kissed my temple, then kissed it again. “I had my annual the last time I was in Austin. I’m negative, and if you would want to?—”

“I want to,” I said, cutting him off before I remembered the truth of the matter.

“Why’d you get so red all of a sudden?” he asked, brushing his lips over the edge of my ear.

“I had to take an antibiotic . . . Shane . . .”

I couldn’t even say it.

He shook his head. “What a fucking asshole.”

“I’ve been cleared, though. I’m not, you know...”

God, could I finish a fucking sentence?

“Hey,” he said, caressing my jaw. “I’m not worried. If your doctor cleared you, I’m good.”

I let out a breath. “I was lucky that it wasn’t something more persistent.”

He kissed my forehead. “Even if it had been, there’s a workaround for everything.”

I thumped my forehead against his chest. “Okay.”

Chuckling, he asked, “Does this mean I can fuck you raw? You know, once I rally?”

I groaned, dizzy from the thought of it.

“You gonna let me come inside you?” he asked, trailing his fingers along the furrow of my ass. “Fill you up?”

Cursing, I sent him a glare, which only seemed to encourage him.

“Mm. Maybe I can mark you like a wolf shifter from one of my fantasy romances.”

I let my head thump against his arm, laughing. “You actually read those?”

“Where do you think I get my sweet alpha moves from?”

I shook my head and starting crawling off the couch. “I should probably go.”

He barked out a laugh, then dragged me back down with him. “Not a chance.”

I curled into him, laughing as he tightened his grip on me. After a few moments of laughter and goofy smiles, he took a deep inhale and let it out slowly, and I found myself settling into his breathing pattern.

Soon our breathing evened out, and with the sun shining softly through the windows, we fell asleep, lips still curling at the edges.

I woke sometime later, long enough that the shadows had moved across the living room. I blinked slowly, enjoying the gentle press of Emery’s lips across my forehead.

“Hey,” he said, his words like warm caramel.

“Hey,” I replied, heat rushing to my face as I recalled the vulnerability of this moment.

“Care to take a shower with me?”

“Okay?”

He grinned and tugged me up from the sofa, grabbing our clothes as he led me, nude, up the stairs to his room.

I’d had sex in this house many times. I’d even made the unclothed walk from the living room to Shane’s bedroom a time or two, but nothing about that had ever felt remarkable. Our nudity had only ever been perfunctory, but only in this moment, with Emery’s hand in mine, his devilish grin setting his eyes alight, did I feel truly naked.

We slipped into his bathroom and he turned on the water, then pulled me into a kiss as we waited for it to heat up. Emery’s kisses told me entire love stories with a simple press of his lips. I was used to bigger men. I was used to—and enjoyed—a certain amount of dominance from them. But that was often their only play. Emery, on the other hand, treated dominance as an opening bid. He always managed to parlay that into deeper, soulful lovemaking that made me forget about anyone else.

Like I’d seen in a magazine somewhere, Emery had a spray of eucalyptus tied to the showerhead’s pipe, and only when the scent began to bloom did any part of me come back down to earth.

“The water’s ready,” I whispered against his lips.

Emery took a deep breath, as if pulling away from me required every ounce of his self-control. “Let’s make this quick.”

He took my hand and led me into the large shower, tugging me into another mind-blowing kiss as the water rained down on us and steam wrapped itself around our bodies.

My body tucked up against his was my new favorite thing, as was the way he reverently rounded his hands over my ass, angling me so that I got the heat of the water but didn’t drown in it.

When he stopped the kiss, he pressed his lips to my forehead, a hitch in his chest.

“Emery,” I breathed, his name a desperate plea. A prayer.

His lips made shapes of words against my skin, impossible words that just weeks ago I’d have avoided, certain they’d become my own deathly allergy. Anaphylaxis by heartbreak.

An inconvenient sob tore out of my chest, and he put voice to the shapes he’d branded into my skin.

“Shh, shh, shh.” He cradled me against him. “It’s just love, Woody. Nothing to be afraid of.”

I blubbered a bit, which then devolved into laughter, like the kind at a funeral, before shifting back to crying into his chest.

“I love you, I love you, I love you,” he whispered into my wet hair, an incantation.

“I—”

I curled into him, the words trapped in my throat, but no less present.

“I know,” he said. “I know.”