Page 185 of Before You Fell

Harder this time.

“Every fucking drop,” I growl, too far gone to pretend I have any control left. “I’m filling this pussy with it all.”

I spill deep inside her, my cock pulsing hard as the first thick rush of cum empties into her. Then another. And another. Hot, relentless pulses filling her pussy, milking every fucking drop from my body.

The sensation destroys whatever control I have left.

“That’s it,” I growl through each hard pulse. “Take every fucking drop, Wills. Feel how deep I’m filling this perfect pussy.”

I bite her neck as I squirt into her. The slick heat gathers around my cock as I thrust up through every brutal pulse, driving my cum deeper while my whole body shakes beneath her.

Her name tears out of me again and again, wrecked against her skin, until there is nothing left in me.

I drive up into her one final time and stay there, my cock buried as deep as her body will allow me while the last hard pulses empty into her.

Shaking beneath her. Gasping against her skin. Completely wrung out, as if her cunt has taken everything from me and left not a single drop behind.

We stay there for a while. Her forehead drops to mine. I wrap my arms tightly around her, not wanting to let go. Not wanting to move. Not wanting anything to exist outside this apartment, this woman, and this moment.

“I love you,” she says quietly.

The three words I have spent years swallowing, burying, drinking over, and running from. They come more easily this time.

“I love you too, Wills.”

She pulls back just enough to look at me, her eyes soft, her hair a mess, and her cheeks flushed. She looks at me the way she has always looked at me when she thought I was not paying attention.

But I was always paying attention. I just didn’t know what to do with what I saw.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Willow

Phoenix Stone tells me he loves me in the least convenient places. Against my mouth while I’m trying to make coffee. Into my hair when I’m half asleep, pretending not to notice his hand has slipped under my shirt. With his face buried in my neck after mind-blowing sex. It’s as if the words have become part of how he breathes now.

He’s told me every day since the first time he said those three words.

If you’d gone back a year and told me this would be my life, that I’d survive an overdose, get clean, and somehow end up with the man I’ve loved for most of my life, who would actually love me the way I needed him to, I’d have told you to lay off whatever you were smoking.

But this is my life now.

And I love him the same way I always have. I love him in the ordinary places, too. In the way he still checks the lock twice before bed, as if some part of him is still protecting a version of me that no longer needs protecting. In the way he hums whatever song is stuck in his head while he cooks eggs he’s convinced he’s better at than he actually is. I love him in the quiet, unglamorous, everyday moments nobody writes songs about, and in the loud, reckless ones that started this whole thing. I love him the way I always swore I wouldn’t let myself do again. Completely and without an exit plan.

Phoenix parks my car in the studio lot and shuts off the engine. He glances over at me.

“Ready?” he asks.

“No.”

His mouth curves. “Good. Means you’re not dead inside.” He leans in and presses a kiss to my lips. “I’m right here with you, Wills. I’m not letting go of you today.”

I nod because if I try to speak, I might not manage it.

We get out of the car and Phoenix reaches for my hand before I’ve even closed the door. He doesn’t let go the whole way to the entrance, his thumb rubbing over my knuckles. When we reach the room the band always practices in, the guys are already there, sprawled across the couch like they always do.

Cruz notices us first. His eyes dip to our hands and lift to mine. A grin forms before he can stop it.

“Songbird,” he says, pushing off the couch.