Page 63 of Secrets in the Deep

One swipe. Two. On the third, his lips stayed, moving over her mouth in an achingly familiar way.

Her lips parted and he slipped inside, tangling his tongue with hers. And then she was floating. It was him and her and the kiss and everything else just ceased to exist. The last five years of heartache. The loneliness in a world filled with people.

There was nothing left but them.

With fingers that didn’t feel steady, she caressed his bare chest, letting the muscled ridges, the warmth, sink beneath her skin.

His mouth shifted from hers, moving down her cheek. She sighed, her eyes shuttering, head turning to give him better access.

It was like her heart finally beat for the right reason for the first time in years. It beat for him. For them. For the only love that had ever felt real.

“Lift me,” she barely whispered. She wasn’t sure her words even crossed the scant distance. But he heard. He shifted his hands and pulled her up, her legs immediately twining around his waist, holding her in place.

She cupped his cheeks and brought his mouth back to hers. Then she was kissing him again. Tasting him.

“Where are we going with this?” Ryan asked between desperate kisses.

“Upstairs. Definitely upstairs.”

A growl from his throat, followed by another kiss. Then he was moving.

She kissed down his neck and shoulder as he jogged up the stairs, carrying her like she weighed nothing. When he reached the bedroom, she pulled off the shirt and dropped it to the floor. Then his hands were on her neck and back. Kissing. Loving.

He laid her in the center of the bed but was slow to join her. Removing his shorts before crawling over her body, everysecond bringing him that much closer. Until he covered her. Caged her.

She met his eyes. Eyes she’d mourned the loss of. Eyes she’d never stopped dreaming about.

“I missed you.” Her words felt so inadequate. She hadn’t simply missed him. She’d felt his absence like a hollow ache carved into her chest.

“No, Emi.Imissedyou. Every minute of every day.”

Then he was kissing her again, his hand slipping up to cup her breast. She gasped into his mouth as he palmed her. As he found the hard bud of her nipple and rolled it with his thumb.

She arched and moaned, her skin burning at his touch.

He lowered his head and took her pebbled nipple between his lips. The sound that escaped her throat was somewhere between a moan and a whimper. He rolled his tongue over the bud. Sucked her in a way that made a pulse throb in her lower belly.

His mouth was still on her skin when his hand slipped down. Past her hip bone. Her belly. And into her panties.

She held her breath. Then he stroked her clit and it was a whole-body reaction. An entire-self convulsion. An every-muscle jump.

He did it again.

She gripped his shoulders, squeezing, trying to remain still though she wasn’t really sure how.

He rolled her clit in a circle, driving her right to the edge.

“Ryan, please!”

Two fingers barely touched her entrance. And it felt like a thousand seconds passed before, finally, he slid inside.

Her cry was loud and strangled, her world narrowing.

He slipped out of her, then back in. He did it again and again, his thick knuckles widening her. It was torture and heaven and everything in between.

She was close. Too close.

Emily reached down and eased a hand inside his briefs. When her fingers wrapped around his cock, he froze, as if he suddenly forgot what he’d been doing.