Page 34 of Always Been His

I named it five Christmases ago, lying on Mary’s couch with Sienna asleep on my chest under a quilt, her breath against my collarbone. I knew it then. I knew I loved her, and I came to Boston tonight to tell her.

About an hour later, the door opens and Sienna comes tumbling in. She launches herself at me, her arms wrapping around my neck and her thighs locking around my waist, and the velvet couch creaks under both of us.

“Hi,” she breathes against my mouth, her forehead against mine.

“Hi, Birdie,” I rasp, my hands flying to her hips.

She kisses me.

Her mouth opens for me before mine has even caught up, and Christ. Christ. Four years and her tongue still slides against mine the same way, slow and hot and a little messy, and I groan into it like a man dying of thirst because that’s exactly what I am. That’s what she has made me.

I don’t let her up for air.

She slides a hand inside the front of my shirt, fisting in the cotton over my sternum. My right hand glides up the side of her waist, slow, dragging the crop-top higher with the heel of my palm until my fingers are on her bare ribs, and her skin is warm and damp, and the sound she makes into my mouth this time is closer to a whine.

“Gray,” she breathes into the corner of my mouth, her hips shifting once in my lap in a way that is going to ruin me. “I have thirty minutes to get ready.”

“Good. I only need twenty,” I growl against her lips, kissing down the curve of her neck.

She moans, her head tipping back to give me the line of her throat, and her hips press down into mine in a slow, dirty roll that takes the last working brain cell I have in my skull and sets it on fire. The blood in my body relocates without asking me. My cock kicks against the seam of my jeans hard enough that she feels it, and she lets out a small wet laugh against my temple, and the laugh is what nearly takes me out. My hand under her crop-top spreads wide across her ribs, my thumb sweeping up the underside of her bra through the cotton, and she gasps.

“Gray…”

“Birdie,” I murmur into the hollow of her throat, and her pulse is hammering under my lips, wild and fast and real, and I have to close my eyes against the sheer weight of it.

My fingers tighten on her ribs.

“What are you going to do with your twenty minutes?” she whispers, her forehead dropping back to mine.

“Everything I can imagine.” I swallow hard. “And more.”

Her tongue slides against mine, faster now, hungrier, and my hands are on the bare skin of her waist, and I can feel the heat of her through my palms, through my chest, through every point of contact between us. The tiny white cotton with the gold stars is bunched up under my fingers, and I want it gone. I want everything gone. I want her skin against mine until I cannot tell where I end and she begins.

My thumbs hook under the hem. “Can I?”

She nods, breathless, already lifting her arms.

The crop-top comes off in one motion, and then she’s sitting in my lap in a bright red bra that is doing absolutely nothing to hide the way her chest is rising and falling in short, sharp breaths.

“You’re staring,” she says, but she doesn’t sound self-conscious. She sounds pleased.

“I have to memorize you, Birdie,” I say, dragging my hand up the curves of her body. “I don’t know when I’m going to see you again.”

“I’m happy to add to your spank bank,” she deadpans, leaning into my lips.

“Birdie,” I whisper against her lips. “You’re all I crave. I can’t get enough of you.”

“You’re such a sweet talker, Gray.”

I grip her hips, pulling her closer against my chest. “No, Sienna. I’m only sweet on you.”

The laugh that punches out of her is surprised and bright, and I swallow it with another kiss, leaning forward until her back arches and her chest presses against mine. The lace of her bra is rough against my skin. Her skin is hot, and I can feel her heartbeat now, rabbiting against my ribs like it’s trying to escape her chest and burrow into mine.

“I haven’t heard how much you missed me yet, Birdie.”

My mouth travels down. Down the line of her jaw, down the column of her throat, down to the place where her pulse jumps just above her collarbone. She tilts her head back and gives me room, and I take all of it. My lips drag across her skin, salt and coconut oil and a little of the makeup setting spray her glam team uses, and lower, to the swell of her breasts above the red lace.

“Hmm,” she groans, rolling into me. “You know, with tours, interviews and celebrity hangs, I haven’t had time to miss you.”