Besotted by Rebecca Sharp

Miles

The ride to my brother’s old apartment building was spent in tense silence filled with disagreement and desire. And having Kona try to fit his ninety-pound ass up front to see Eve created a furry wagging wall between us—one that Eve was eager to give some attention to while I got the silent treatment.

Thankfully, it was only a few blocks away, so it wasn’t long before I pulled into a spot and turned to face her again, giving my pup a stern eye to get back into the back seat.

“Why are you talking to Benny about moving in above the Pub?” I asked again now that I could see her.

“Why are we at your brother’s building?” she countered with an arched eyebrow.

My jaw tensed. Maybe I had overreacted a little back at the bar. There was just something about her… My fingers tightened where they still held the steering wheel. Something that just screamed mine.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I knew it was my own fucking fault. I wanted this woman for everything she wanted to give me but I was afraid. Not afraid of the unknown. No, my fear was very real. Like an injury that kept me bedridden for over a year and had the doctors wondering if I would recover. And then there was Eve and she was like my miraculous recovery. But when you are surviving a life-threatening injury or disease, there was always the unquenchable fear that it won’t be a miracle, that it will only be momentary.

So, you accept the healing with hesitation and, the battle turns inward, wanting nothing more than to believe in miracles but knowing all could be lost just as easily.

“I’ll show you.”

I climbed down, letting Kona out who immediately sprinted up the stairs and was probably waiting outside Mick’s old neighbor, Gwen’s door because he wanted to play with her dog, Oscar.

Eve followed me up to the second level of condos, and I let us into my new place.

It was sparse.

It was also a decision I’d made two days ago.

I watched her steps falter when she saw the bed in the bedroom and her head turned to mine. “What’s going on?”

I dropped my keys on the counter and leaned my arm against it. “I’m moving in here.”

“Really?” Her eyes lightened. “You’re… not going to live out of your car anymore?”

“First off, it was a tent on top of my car, not actually in my car, sweetheart,” I drawled and, even though we were still in disagreement limbo, we both laughed.

The laughter quickly sunk under the heaviness between us.

“Why are you thinkin’ about movin’ in above the Pub, Eve?” I couldn’t stop the hard edge from finding my voice at even the suggestion of her living with any other guy except me.

Adjusting her glasses, she peered up at me and confessed, “I didn’t get the apartment.”

The vise around my chest tightened. “Why?”

“I-I didn’t realize that I would need two months of rent for the security deposit instead of one a-and I don’t have it. And that means I don’t have the apartment.” She huffed. “And I can’t tell Addy because she’d push back the work you guys are doing. It’s really only for two more weeks. I think working at the bar should make me enough money by then to get the place—if it’s still available. Really, I was going to ask Laurel if I could stay with her—or maybe even Gwen, but I just know they don’t really have any guest space.”

She stood again, her hands finding her hips and dragging my eyes to the way she swayed as she began to pace.

“I just mentioned it to Benny. I didn’t even know there was another room up there until he offered it to me about five seconds before the floodgates opened and the Pub was packed for the night,” she rambled, her words like a steady stream of truth, bumping and rolling over every event and thought in her mind. “So, I don’t know what I’m going to do. But I do know that it’s only for a few weeks until I either can save more money or find a different apartment… and I know that I’m going to make it work because I’m not going to dip into my savings for this.” She glared at me. “I refuse—no matter how angry it makes you.”

I pushed away from the counter and closed the space between us.

Even angry, I was in awe of her—this woman whose truth was a weapon and who used stubbornness as a shield. I was in awe of her unwillingness to falter—even for two weeks—on her dream. And I was in awe because, no matter what she insisted, she’d let that dream falter when it came to me.

“I don’t want you moving in with Benny,” I rasped with a low voice, dipping my head close to hers and pinning her stare.

“I’m not moving in with him,” she corrected. “I’m just moving into the same building. The same floor, really. But it’s not like we’re sharing a room. And it’s only for two weeks, Miles.”

I reached for her hips and yanked her against me. “I don’t care if it’s only for two-fucking-seconds, you’re not moving in above the Pub.”

Her breath hitched and I didn’t have to look to know that she’d shifted to rub her thighs together. “Well unfortunately, you’re going to just have to—”

Growling, I captured her lips—and her protests—with mine and sunk my tongue deep into her mouth, informing her not-so-subtly that this wasn’t up for debate. I’d give her the money myself if I thought she’d take it. But she was proud and stubborn, so I’d have to figure out some other way to resolve this.

Some other way that could be addressed after our need for each other.

She sighed into the onslaught like she’d been waiting a lifetime for this kiss. Not the sweet, romantic one—this one, the hard, unyielding one that walked the nonexistent line between possessive and punishing.

Our tongues dueled as I gripped into the perfect globes of her ass and lifted her.

She was mine.

She may not know it. Hell, even I might not fully know it, but she was.

I growled as her teeth sunk into my lower lip, tugging it into her mouth to suck on it. My little mermaid was learning too damn quickly the things that drove me even more insane with need.

“You can’t just kiss me into doing what you want, Miles,” she murmured against my mouth.

In reply, I angled my head and filled her mouth with my tongue, stroking against the firm velvet of hers.

“But I can kiss you until you forget what it is you want,” I muttered, swallowing her moan as days spent apart poured out between our lips.

Even though I’d talked to Mick two days ago about this place, I’d only picked up the bed this morning. I told myself it was because of work and all but really it was because I didn’t want to have to lie to myself about how I wanted my first night in this bed to be with her. So, I waited until today, knowing I’d be texting her later… knowing that she’d be here.

Carrying her into the bedroom, I kicked the door shut behind us, leaving Kona to whimper on the other side. I closed us into a space that was only us. No past. No future. No fears. And no fucking apartments.

Her feet dropped to the floor and I tore at her clothes, grateful that I didn’t rip any the way I pulled them from her body. Kneeling, I peeled down her yoga pants along with her underwear, a feral grunt erupting from my chest when I bared her swollen pussy.

I wanted to taste her.

I wanted her too bad to taste her.

“Bedtime.” I grinned as I stood, gripped her hips, and tossed her onto the bed, reveling in her small shriek that harmonized with the sound of something tearing.

I looked down to see that my T-shirt had torn. I’d felt her tug on me as I let her go but she must’ve been holding tight enough on the fabric to tear it.

My eyes slid to the culprit.

Eve was cocooned in the light blue duvet like she was floating on water. Her face was flushed, her full lips panting from our kiss and her brief flight onto the bed. It was her heavy breaths that felt like they were the source behind the beats of my heart.

It was those breaths that pulled my gaze down to her chest, the swells of her tits rising and falling like buoyant beacons on the sea. It was those breaths that made my mouth dry as I gorged myself on the sight of her. From those pink peaks that belonged in my mouth, to the taut stomach that guided me lower and long legs that led me up, to where her sex glistened hungrily for my cock.

“I liked this shirt,” I teased, my voice coming out like sandpaper.

I didn’t give a shit about this shirt. It was probably the oldest Madison Construction tee I owned and needed to be tossed anyway. Without breaking her stare, I reached up and pulled at the flap of fabric folded down over my stomach, revealing a corner of my chest.

Even though there was a flush of embarrassment in her cheeks, she murmured, “I like it better off.”

My dick jolted.

“You know how many times I thought of you like this, this week?” I growled angrily, pulling the scrap of fabric off of me.

She was like the current—like the riptide—that flowed under each and every other fucking thought, step, and task. First, wanting to get her out of my mind, determined to believe that one night and one day were enough. It would’ve been easier to believe that one meal for the rest of my life would be enough. Then, convinced of nothing else except that I needed one more night with her.

Just one more.

Famous last words of every addict and alcoholic. And I was nothing if not drugged by her.

“What did you do?” She licked her lower lip, watching my hands as they reached for the waist of my jeans.

“Suffered miserably,” I bit out. “Until I could get in the shower and jack off, remembering what it felt like to be inside you.”

She let out a small moan and I winced, pulling down my jeans and boxers over my throbbing cock.

“I thought about you too. I thought about you so much it hurt.”

Fuck. Somehow, I got even harder as I placed one knee on the bed, her legs falling open in invitation to her soaked sex.

Sliding up over her soft body, I aligned my face with hers. “I shouldn’t have asked for one more night,” I confessed in a ragged whisper. “But I need you so damn bad. I’m sorry…”

I needed her, but I didn’t want to use her.

Her hands snuck up between us to cup my cheeks as a small smile toyed with the edges of her lips. “Don’t ever apologize for needing me, Miles.”

A hoarse groan ripped from the broken corners of my heart and pulled them tighter back together.

“Then I’m not sorry for needin’ you this way, Evie.” A shudder ripped through me as the head of my cock wedged against her hot entrance. “I’m not sorry for needin’ you at all.”

Her barely parted lips flew open with a cry of exquisite pleasure that came only when it was laced with pain as I thrust my heavy cock completely inside her with a shout, the wet walls of her pussy locking me in.

Black and white stars flashed in my vision, and I almost came on the spot.

Whatever discomfort she might have felt disappeared. Eve began to arch and rub against me. Groaning, my eyes focused on her nipples, erect and tight, begging to be sucked. But even that temptation couldn’t make me move to taste them.

I thought I’d been just remembering wrong when I imagined last weekend, but this… now… I hadn’t imagined it. My cock was squeezed by the hottest, tightest pussy I’d ever felt.

“Miles…”

“I’m not sorry for needin’ you like I do,” I growled against the skin of her neck just as I began to move the way she wanted—the way we needed.

Grunting, I pulled back and slammed inside her, and she took all of me again. Every angry, aroused inch. Again and again. The more she took the more I thickened. The more she pulled, the more I gave.

Just like every other part of this impossible and incredible woman, she took whatever I threw at her and somehow made it okay.

My teeth sunk into the soft flesh on her chest just above her breast as I reached down and found her clit. The little bud was drowning in her desire as my cock ground inside her.

We’d gone months without each other, but now that I’d had her, a week without touching her, a week without being wrung by her body, was an eternity. An eternity without food or water or air. An eternity without the essentials I needed to survive. An eternity without Eve.

My hoarse growl drowned out her broken moans and whimpers as I claimed her body, dying each time her pussy clamped around my cock.

“Need you to come for me, Evie.” My voice was unrecognizable.

My thumb rolled over her clit and sent her body fracturing around me as she screamed and bowed against me as her pussy tightened and gushed around my cock.

Grunting, my hips jammed into hers hard and fast, my new bed shaking underneath us as the rippling of her core welcomed my own orgasm. With a long, low groan that sounded a whole helluva lot like her name, my release plowed through me, pumping long and steady inside of her, filling her.

Heaven. Home.

I collapsed to the side of her, rolling her with me so I could stay lodged in her slick warmth. And I’d stay there for hours if I could. Release… it wasn’t temporary for me. It was more than the orgasm. It was being a part of her and feeling safe for the first fucking time.

But that wasn’t exactly practical, so when I heard her labored breathing soften, I gently shifted us so that I could clean us up before she fell asleep.

“Maybe we shouldn’t go a whole week next time,” she offered drowsily. Even in her sated, sleepy stupor, I saw the second she realized she’d assumed there would be a next time.

I wouldn’t lie to her. And I couldn’t lie to myself any longer.

There was going to be a next time.

And a next next time.

And, well, a lot of fucking times after that.

I slid back into the bed next to her and cupped her cheek. My thumb brushed over the soft skin as I tipped her head up to mine, catching her half-lidded gaze.

Whatever I’d planned to say vanished and instead, words slipped from my lips that I had no fucking clue where they came from—which could only mean they came from a place that wanted this without a sliver of fucking doubt.

“Maybe you should live here.”

Like she’d seen a ghost, Eve’s eyes shot open as she stammered, “W-What?”

“You’re not going to live above the Pub.” My fingers tightened where they rested over her hip. “You can live here.”

“But you live here.” Her head shook slightly with a subconscious jerk of discord. “No. I’m not going to kick you out of your own place just so that I don’t have to stay above the Pub.”

My chest rumbled with a quick harsh laugh. It wasn’t really a laugh, more of a tortured smile that found a voice. “Who said you were going to kick me out?”

There was the silence that only came in these moments when the gauntlet was thrown. Like the break of a wave, it took a second for the power of what had crashed to dissipate over us.

Her palm flattened on my chest and I steeled as she pushed herself up to look down at me. Her hair tumbling over her shoulder and pooling like a silken scarf on top of me.

“A-Are you telling me to move in with you?” She breathed out, quickly adding, “Of course, I don’t mean move-in, move-in. I mean just for the short term until I find a new place. To live with you. Temporarily. It probably won’t even take me that long—”

My neck craned up, and I smothered her words with my mouth. It was truly the only effective way I’d found of silencing her when she needed it.

“I’m telling you that you’re staying here until you find a place,” I grumbled against her lips before my head dropped back onto the pillow.

I didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t know that it needed to be called anything. All I knew was that it meant she’d be here and safe and not having to stress. All I knew was that it meant I wouldn’t have to let her go quite yet.

She stared down at me and even in the darkness of the room, I wasn’t sure anyone had ever seen me so clearly.

“Okay,” she said softly, leaning down and pressing the sweetest damn kiss to my lips. “Thank you.”

And in one moment, what started as two nights turned into two weeks.

Fourteen days of permanence. Fourteen days of Eve.

But instead of revolting me, I felt calmer, knowing she would be here. The agitation that lived inside me from the moment we moved here, the stirring that insisted I needed less and less of everything except loneliness… it stilled. And waited.

It waited for more.

More of anything with her.