Page 101 of Scoring Eden

“Are you sure about this?” he murmurs against my lips.

“Yes, I’m—”

Suddenly, I’m airborne. My back hits the mattress with a soft thud, breath squealing out of me in surprise.

His face appears above me, dimples flashing. I don’t understand how he can look both wolfish and boyish at the same time, but he makes it look easy. “You were saying?”

“I’m sure.” Then, just in case that isn’t enough, I add, “I need you.”

I hope he hears the double meaning behind my words. That I need him for more than his body. I need him, his kindness, his heart, his pain, his perpetual summer warmth that glows around him like a halo. I need him to stop running from me and what we could have.

He falls over me, trapping me between two thick biceps that cage either side of my head.

“You have me.” His nose dusts over mine, our heavy breaths whispering across each other’s skin.

My head tilts. “Do I?”

Soft lips trace my own in a kiss so gentle it has tiny hairs across my body rising with a shiver. It isn’t an answer. Not really. But I understand it anyway.

He can’t promise me anything more than this moment. His fear is still dictating his heart, even though it beats in perfect time with mine, even though I know it’s breaking from the pain of his denial of us, just as mine is. I can see it in the way he’s looking at me, starry-eyed and spellbound, confirming that the sensation that’s been radiating in my chest for weeks now—the one I’ve been refusing to name—isn’t one-sided at all.

It’s heart-stoppingly, heart-breakingly reciprocated.

And as terrible an idea as I know it is, I will take this man in any way I can get him. For however long. Even if it means I’ll be left shattered in the end.

I place my hand over his heart and gently push him away. His eyebrows draw tight in confusion before he realizes why I need the space. I throw my discarded shirt across the room, not caring where it lands, then lean back on my hands, my now-bare breasts heaving with each one of my labored breaths.

His eyes darken to pools of starlit darkness.

“God, Eden.” His ragged voice breaks at the end. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

I’ve never known what it’s like to be looked at this way. Like he’ll die if he doesn’t touch me. It’s heady. It’s dizzying. It’s dangerously addictive.

He reaches behind his head to wrench off his plain black tee, tossing it away as thoughtlessly as I did, and even though it isn’t the first time I’ve seen him shirtless, it may as well be.

I swallow. “The sentiment is mutual.”

He smiles, and though it doesn’t carry the same playful cockiness it usually does, his shyness is no less charming.

With shaky hands, I reach for the hem of my leggings, but he bats me away.

“Let me.” His fingers hitch into the waistband, brushing bare skin. “Keep your eyes on me, Eden. I just…need to keep looking at you.”

I fix my gaze on him, not glancing away even as I feel the kiss of cool air between my legs. He grabs my ankles and pulls me down the bed so he can kneel on the floor between my legs. Still, I don’t look away.

It’s him that breaks the connection first.

A thick finger swipes through my wetness, and he tracks the path of it. “Fuck.” The word hisses between his teeth, so quiet I don’t think he intended for me to hear it at all. “So fucking messy, just how I wanted.”

Then he leans in and retraces the line of his finger with his tongue.

My back arches off the mattress. A deep moan rumbles up his throat, his hand clamping me on the stomach to keep me in place before he loses all control and feasts on me like a man starving.

I take it as permission to close my eyes and surrender myself to the warmth spreading rapidly through my body. When his lips latch around my clit and he sucks it into his mouth, I grab fistfuls of his hair and pull with all my strength. He grunts his approval, his tongue not ceasing for even a moment.

If anything, it incites him.

His tongue spears inside me, and despite the hand anchoring me to the mattress, I bow like a willow tree, twisting both away and toward him like I can’t decide if I want him to stop or keep going.