He trailed kisses down my belly—so soft they felt like feathers teasing my skin. Instinctively, I wrapped my arm around my lower stomach, even though my bra was already pushed down to hide the vicious scar, the reminder of what had happened the last time I fell so hard. When his lips brushed across my wrist, he looked up into my eyes.
I moaned—a mixture of need and frustration.
Why did this have to be so difficult?
“Willow . . . are you okay?”
“I know that I want you,” I said firmly.
That must have been enough for him because he dug a condom out of the nightstand drawer, sliding it on before he lay back against the pillows. He motioned me to him and I gasped when he dragged me onto his lap, burying himself inside of my body. Cupping my face gently between his hands, he drew me closer to him until our chests were smooshed together, until our foreheads touched.
“I don’t want to let you go, Wills,” he whispered, releasing my face to encircle me with his arms.
I was going to die. From the way he smelled and the way he felt inside of me. From the sound of his breathing.
I dug my fingertips into his shoulders, feeling his scar beneath my fingers and his heartbeat beneath my own. “I don’t want you to,” I gasped.
And then we became a tangle of skin and sweat, of mouths and tongues and hands. Of bodies and beating hearts.
Afterward, we clung together, strands of my hair stuck to his body and his arm wrapped protectively around me. His eyes were closed, and I stared up at the ceiling fan, watching as it spun, and I tried to figure out whether I was dizzy from watching it or from Cooper. When I caught my breath and gazed over at him again, I decided that it was because of him.
Always him.
I slid away, determined to find my clothes, and he rolled over, skimming his hands across my hips to stop me. I stood anyway, breathing heavily, with the backs of my legs pressed to the side of the bed as he placed a kiss at the small of my back.
As he slid his tongue up the curve of my spine.
And then he pushed strands of dark hair away from my nape, so that he could touch me there too.
“Where are you going?” he murmured.
“To put on my clothes . . .”
He spun me around to face him, searching my eyes in the dark. “Why?”
“So you can take me home.”
“Do you want to go home?”
“No, but . . .”
“Then what’s the problem?” he asked in a rough voice. When he saw me flinch, his blue eyes softened and he pulled me back onto the bed with him, one knee at a time, until we were kneeling together. “I’m not one of those guys who’ll use you and then tell you to f**k off, Wills. You’re with me now.”
I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what any of that meant, but I heard myself laugh and ask shakily, “Who said anything about being together?”
We hit the pillows with our arms tangled around each other and he sighed into my hair. “You did, beautiful girl.”
Chapter Thirteen
I couldn’t remember the last time I woke up next to someone where the details of the night before weren’t a f**ked up haze or an altogether void. But when the sunlight filtered unsteadily through Cooper’s bedroom window, pulling me awake, and I felt every inch of his body pressed up against mine, every touch, and taste, and sound from last night came rushing back to me.
So I decided to count this Sunday morning in Cooper’s bed—in his arms, with my fingertips carefully tracing the text of his tattoo—as the first time being wide awake since what had happened with Tyler years ago.
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.
Cooper didn’t open his eyes until after I’d moved my hands past his chest, to his shoulder, where he caught my fingers before I could touch the scar on his back. He stared at me for a long time, before I murmured the same thing he’d said to me in his Jeep when we talked about Tyler, “Someone hurt you.”
His gaze dipped to my mouth and he brought my fingers to his own lips. “Just an accident from when I was a kid,” he said.
“In Australia?” I asked, and he lifted his chin slightly. He raked his teeth lightly over my thumb, sucking the tip into his mouth. “You’re lying.”
Reluctantly, he pulled my finger out of his mouth, rubbing the tip of it across his lower lip, wetting it. It was so sexy that I felt my breath leave my body. “Why do you think that?” he questioned.
“Because of your eyes.”
He cleared his throat. “What about them?”
“They’re not looking into mine.”
That brought his gaze back up. Groaning, he raked his hands through his hair. “Do you really want to know?” he demanded, and I gave a little nod of my head. He scooted himself upright, pressing his back up against the headboard as he squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Alright.”
There was so much emotion in just that one word that I immediately faltered. Fuck. I’d pushed too hard. I rolled over, onto my belly and propped myself up on my elbows. “Cooper . . . you don’t have to tell me,” I whispered. I shivered as he reached out to skim his fingertips along my face. “You don’t have—”
“Shhh, Wills,” he murmured, leaning over to stroke his lips across my temple. When he pulled away he was smiling. “I was ten and my dad hit me with a fishing rod.”
“I can see you’re going to joke with me, so I”—but then I looked past the dimple and the grin, past the relaxed expression on his face, and what I saw in his eyes stabbed me in the heart. They were vacant.