Erin McCarthy - Believe

I froze, stunned by what she had just said, both by how vehement she had been that my mom sucked and the other part . . . the part that made my nostrils flare and my chest to tighten. “What do you mean, you love me?” She must mean generically speaking. Not love, as in love love. Just more like the way when you care for someone.

But she gave me a smile, and her fingers brushed over my chest and gripped my T-shirt. She looked up at me from under her long eyelashes, expression sheepish. “I know it’s probably pathetically soon to say something like that, but this, what I feel, it’s so strong and real, it has to be love. And if I love you, it only seems right that you know that, whether you think it’s insane or not.”

Girlfriends had told me them loved me before, but I never believed them, because they didn’t. And I figured that if I was so sure I knew when a girl didn’t actually love me, I would be sure of it when she did love me. But for a second those words hung there, between us, while I tried to absorb what they meant. While I tried to remember this moment, to capture it and own it. “It might be a little insane that you love me, I’m not going to lie,” I murmured, capturing her neck with my hand and pulling her mouth toward mine. “But what’s not insane at all is that I love you. Because you’re probably the sweetest, most amazing girl I’ve ever met. I don’t deserve you.”

“Yes, you do,” she whispered. “You deserve everything you’ve ever wanted, Phoenix.”

When she looked at me like that, her big brown eyes shining with emotion, expression wide open and honest, I could almost believe her.

“What I want is you.” My hand was shaking, and this time it wasn’t from anger, but from something else I couldn’t really define in any words that made sense. I just knew that I had basically jumped off a fucking cliff and there was no net.

Because I was in love with Robin. Like real, hard-core, all-consuming, how-the-fucking-hell-did-this-happen love.

“Really?” she asked, and her vulnerable uncertainty nearly undid me.

My anger was completely gone, replaced by an urgent, possessive need to show her how truly and deeply I had fallen for her. “Yes, I love you. God, so much.”

I kissed her. Hard. “Let’s go to your room.” Maybe sex wasn’t the best way to express my feelings, but I didn’t know the right words, and I felt caged, contained. Too much emotion.

But she didn’t seem to think it was weird. Robin stood up and reached for my hand.

The second we were in her room, she tugged at my shirt, lifting it up to expose my chest. I finished the job, yanking it over my head. Then I pressed her against the door I’d closed behind us and lowered my mouth to hers. She tasted sweet and delicious and like mine, all mine. I crowded her with my body, kissing her hard and sliding my hands all over her. She had the most perfect curves, the most perfect lips, the most perfect response to my touches.

Emotion, passion, made my movements aggressive, sharp, my blood running thick and hot, thoughts scattered in all directions as I pulled up her dress so I could feel the warm heat of her skin.

“Can I?” I murmured, moving up her thigh.

“Yes,” she whispered, head falling back to expose her neck to me.

That she didn’t even question what I was asking for made me love her even more. This was it, the real thing, the end of the line for me, the moment that made everything else that came before it unimportant. Robin loved me, and that was all I needed to know.

Listening to her heavy breathing, her soft cries as I touched her, her knees falling apart, I fumbled in my jeans for a condom, knowing this had to happen, right here, right now, against this door.

“Oh, God,” she said, eyes going wide with shock, when I lifted her hip to rest on mine and pushed inside her.

She didn’t even know the half of it.

“This okay?” I asked, even as I moved. She was just so tight, so hot, I couldn’t believe how amazing it felt, how perfect we were.

“Yes,” she said, and her voice was breathy, eyes half closed. “It’s good, so good.”

That’s what I was talking about. “Hold me,” I said, “so you don’t slip. Dig in hard, I like that.”

Robin’s fingernail scraped across my back, pressing into my flesh, and the sharpness matched the intensity of my emotion perfectly. I came inside her, gritting my teeth, enjoying the way she squeezed her inner muscles onto me in some instinctive chick voodoo that had me feeling like I’d do anything she wanted, now and forever.

Not wanting her to lose the momentum, I pulled out and dropped down in a squat so I could finish her, her hands in my hair, her shocked exclamation when my tongue touched her almost as satisfying as my orgasm. She couldn’t see the smile I didn’t prevent from spreading across my face as I slipped a finger inside her, tongue still working the swollen button in front of me. There was something about that sound she made, that little moan that was a whole octave higher than her natural voice, that drove me crazy. She was so damn sexy.

“Yeah, babe.” But she didn’t really need my encouragement. She was already there, yanking hard on my hair as she shuddered through her pleasure.

Leaning back on my heels, I wiped my mouth and stared up at her. “I want you to remember that forever,” I told her. “Because I will.”

I swallowed hard, my mouth hot, thighs burning from strain, as I stared down at Phoenix. His eyes watched me from under that fall of dark hair, his gaze piercing and glassy and intense. I nodded in agreement, afraid to speak, scared that I actually might start crying. What was happening between us was so much, so passionate, so beyond anything I’d ever felt, it was overwhelming in the best possible way. It was like I couldn’t contain it inside me, and my fingers shook, goose bumps rose over my body, my throat was tight.

We all wonder when we will fall in love, wonder how we’ll know that our feelings are real, if someone is the right one for us.

Then it happens, and those questions seem laughable.

Because when it’s real, you feel it in every inch of you, every cell, every vein, every nook and cranny. It moves, it rises with each breath, it’s alive, and the world around you becomes sharper, crisper, in focus.

There is no question, only the answer.

Phoenix rose up, his body brushing against mine, and he smiled. “Hey,” he whispered, kissing the lobe of my ear, his arms coming around me to gather me close.

“Hey.” My legs felt unstable, but I felt wonderful, agitated in a good way, the air between us intimate and sweet with the smell of sex. I thought I would be embarrassed, but I wasn’t. I just felt close to him, warm, safe.

“You’re good for my temper,” he said, kissing my neck before pulling back.

“Glad to help.” It had almost broken my heart to see his stoic face when he had been speaking to his mother. I didn’t even know everything that she had said, but it clearly hadn’t been good because he had alternated between holding it together with clenched fists and a tight jaw, and bursts of exasperation. I wished I could help him more, but I knew it was his decision whether to cut her out of his life or not.

But I didn’t want the moment between us to end either, so I shared my thought before I could chicken out and not say anything. “You know what I would like to do?” I asked, then continued before he could take a guess. “Take a bath.”

His eyebrows shot up. “A bath?”

“Yes. Want to join me?” My level of the apartment had the roof pitch, which was part of the reason my room was so cozy, and the bathroom was the same, on the opposite side of the house. It had a tiny shower crammed into the corner, way too small for two people, even two people who wanted to be on top of each other, but the bathtub was original to the house, a claw-foot, cast-iron soaker, and I had been eyeballing it since I’d moved in.

“Uh, hell, yeah. I don’t think I’ve taken a bath in twenty years.” He looked bemused by the idea. “But I’m down with that.”

“Awesome. And somehow I don’t think you were showering when you were three months old.”

“You don’t know that,” he said with a grin. “I was pretty independent.”

Ten minutes I had the water running and lots of bubbles industriously foaming. I slipped off my dress and underwear and quickly got in, sinking down, not wanting to give him a lengthy view of me naked. It was stupid, I knew that, but I felt exposed just walking around with no clothes on. Yet I had been known to wear dresses that came up to here and went down to there, so my magic line of modesty was a bit ridiculous. It was what it was though, and Phoenix didn’t comment on it.

He took his time stripping off his clothes and setting down two soft drinks he’d run down to the kitchen to get on the toilet lid for us. It gave me time to study his body, remembering how it felt to have him press me hard against the bedroom door.

Phoenix stuck a foot in and winced. “Fuck, that’s hot. I’m not sure about scalding water on my balls, babe. That sounds like a bad idea.”

Relaxing back against the tub, I lifted a foot out of the bubbles and tickled his thigh with my toes. “Don’t be a baby,” I teased.

“What? I think sex makes you sassy.” He made a face, but he sat down opposite from me, knees sticking out of the bubbles because his legs were too long. “Baby this.” And he gripped my foot and lightly bit my toes.

“Hey!” I said, giggling, trying to jerk it back. “That tickles.”

He smiled, a beautiful, relaxed smile as he lightly massaged my foot before putting it back in the water. He sank back, shifting so he avoided the faucet. “This feels pretty good, I have to admit. Even in August.”