Page 49 of Always Been His

“Sienna…”

“I loved you,” I say, and my voice does not crack this time. It comes out steady and clear and the realest thing I’ve said in years. “I love you. I have loved you since I was sixteen years old and you kissed me in the oak tree, and I’m sorry I didn’t say it to your face in Boston. I’m sorry I didn’t say it in the alley. But I’m saying it now, in the rain, in your backyard with your mother’s guitar and I need you to hear me.”

He closes the space between us before I finish the sentence.

His hand catches my jaw, and he kisses me, deep and slow, his tongue filling my mouth until his oxygen becomes mine. I lose track of time. Nothing else exists but Grayson’s lips on mine, his hand on my jaw, his pupils blown so wide, the blue is dark and stormy. I grab the front of his soaking shirt with my free hand and hold on as if my life depends upon it. His other hand finds the small of my back and pulls me in, and the guitar is the only thing between us. I loosen my grip on it without breaking the kiss, and he takes it from me, his fingers careful around the neck even now, even like this, and he leans it against the trunk of the oak behind me.

His hand comes back to me.

He palms my waist through the soaking hoodie and walks me back until the bark of the oak meets my shoulders, and I’m between him and the tree where it all began, with nowhere left to go and no desire to be anywhere else but here. The rain is coming straight down and cold and I don’t feel it. I feel his hands. I feel his mouth dragging from my lips to my jaw to the rain-wet curve of my throat, and the sound I make is embarrassingly immediate, my head tipping back against the bark to give him more room, my fingers curling into the back of his neck.

“Grayson,” I breathe.

“I know,” he says against my throat, his voice so low I feel it vibrating through me.

His hands find the hem of my hoodie and tug. The wet cotton peels up and over my head in one rough motion, and then the rain hits my bare chest and shoulders all at once, cold and immediate, but I barely feel it because I’m with Grayson, and my heart is telling me that nothing else matters.

His shirt is soaked through and clinging to everything, defining the broad shelf of his shoulders, the thickness of his arms, the way his stomach cuts strong lines through the translucent cotton. I thought I’d memorized every part of him, committing it to my subconscious with indelible ink. I hadn’t memorized this. The boy I fell in love with, in this backyard, was long-limbed and comfortable in his skin. The man pressing me against this tree has been built by the years I missed, and I need to touch all of him, taste him, kiss him, feel him inside me and shatter the distance between us for good.

I reach for the hem of his shirt. “You’ve been working out,” I murmur against his mouth.

“You like what you see, Songbird?” His hands slide up my bare waist to my nipples, and I shudder as pleasure ripples through me.

He pulls the shirt over his head and drops it onto the wet grass. Then his skin is under my palms, warm and rain-slick, and I close my eyes for a second just to process it. He is unfairly, unreasonably built. I am going to think about this for the rest of my life.

“Off.” He hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my leggings, his voice dropping to a level that lives below sound. “I want you to notice everything.”

The fabric stretches and tears at the hip, cold air hitting bare skin, and my breath catches and stays there.

“Grayson…”

“You’re always in my way, Sienna.” His knuckles brush my hipbone, rougher now, his voice going lower. “In my space. On my mind. You’re fucking everywhere.”

His fingers find bare skin underneath and stop.

“No bra, no panties,” he says, low, his thumb pressing into the curve of my hip.

“I just needed to get outside,” I say, my voice coming out smaller than I intended. “I didn’t think about it, I just…”

“Admit it.” His mouth drags slow along my jaw, his breath teasing my wet skin. “You did it for me.”

“I did it for you,” I whisper, a thrill traveling down my spine. Truth is, I’d never wear underwear again if it made Grayson look at me the way he’s looking at me right now.

His hands grip my waist and he lifts me up. My legs wrap around his hips on instinct, ankles locking at the small of his back, and the bark bites into my flesh. Sharp and immediate and grounding. Every ridge, every bump, pressing into my spine.

He is so warm. Even in the rain and soaking wet, his heat radiates through every point of contact, and I lean into it like I’m starving, demanding more.

“Tell me you want this,” he breathes, one hand sliding up between my shoulder blades, cushioning me from the worst of the bark. “Tell me you want me.”

His hips shift and I feel him through his jeans, hard and insistent, pressed right where I am already aching, and the sound that leaves my throat doesn’t make it all the way to language.

“I want you,” I say. “I’ve always wanted you.”

Something in his jaw loosens, like he has been holding that particular muscle tight for years and I just gave him permission to let go.

“I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want you, Grayson.”

He pulls back just far enough to look at me. The rain is running down his face, his eyes are dark and serious, and he cups my face in both hands, right there against the tree, like we’re not soaking wet in a backyard in a storm. Like this is the only place either of us has ever needed to be.