Page 156 of IRL: In Real Life
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I know.”
His thumbs moved under my eyes again, wiping what they could. “I’m going to come correct,” he said. “I’m going to do this the right way. I’m not going to keep fucking this up because I’m scared of how real you are to me.”
And there it was.
That had been the wound all along, and Bryce had only touched the edge of it.
The real hurt was thinking maybe I had gotten farther out in my heart than he had. Thinking maybe I was standing in something fuller while he was still halfway back, still deciding, still watching me from a distance I had already crossed.
I took a breath that shook on the way out.
“I love you too,” I said.
His eyes shut for one beat, like the words hit someplace tender in him he hadn’t fully touched yet.
When they opened again, they were darker but somehow softer too.
Then his mouth met mine, slow this time, without the usual rush that turned every room around us to blur. He kissed me like he had something to say with it, like he wanted me to feel every bit of what had shifted between us before desire carried the rest away.
This kiss was slower than that. Deeper. Full of all the words we had finally stopped dodging. His hand at the back of my neck. My fingers curling into his shirt. Both of us still breathing unevenly from the honesty of it. It felt like relief and want had braided themselves together, and neither one of us had the strength to untangle them before they turned into something else.
I climbed into his lap without thinking.
He made a sound into my mouth that told me the tenderness was real, but so was the man underneath it.
“Come closer,” he murmured, even though I was already there.
“I am here.”
“Closer.”
That made me laugh against his mouth, and then he kissed me again until laughter had no business being in the room at all.
By the time we made it upstairs, the house had gone quiet around us. Up here it was just us, the soft dim of my bedroom, and the way Micah looked at me like he had finally stopped trying to stand outside his own feelings.
He undressed me with both hands and all that attention, like every piece of fabric between us had become an inconvenience he meant to handle properly. My dress slid down first. Then my bra. Then the little panties I had bought because some silly part of me still believed beautiful underwear could steady a heart that had been knocked around.
He got them off me slow, eyes on my body the whole time, and when he laid me back on the bed, he came over me with thatsame quiet in his face that always meant I was about to feel him everywhere.
“Tell me if anything still hurts,” he said.
I looked up at him and knew he wasn’t only talking about my body.
He started kissing me before I could answer. My mouth first, then the corner of it, then down my throat with slow, open kisses that made my breathing change. He kissed my shoulder, my chest, the tops of my breasts, then right over my heart, his mouth warm there, his hand spread low over my stomach like he meant to calm every last frightened thing in me by touch alone.
“No,” I whispered when he lifted his head enough to look at me. “Nothing hurts there.”
Something softened in his face at that, but he did not stop. His mouth kept moving lower, over my ribs, my belly, the inside of one hip, and by the time he reached my knees, I was already shaking a little because he knew my body too well now.
He kissed one knee, then sucked softly there, and I gasped because he had discovered early that my knees were treacherous, that one good pull of his mouth there could send heat all the way up my thighs and leave me open before he even got where he was going.
He smiled against my skin like he knew exactly what he had done, then kissed his way farther up until he was between my legs and I was already parting for him without thinking.
Micah looked up once, dark eyes steady on mine, then put his hands under my thighs and opened me wider.
His mouth found me slow at first. A long lick through my folds, broad and hot and patient enough to make my head tip back before he ever touched the place that needed him most. Then he went back and did it again, deeper that time, his tongue slipping lower, pushing into my opening with a deliberate little thrust that made me cry out and grab at the sheets.
