Falling in Love With My Ex’s Best Read online

  The rest of her body follows suit, the shivers vibrating through her and rattling into me. I love every second of it. I know she’s lose and I could draw it out, but I want her to shatter. I want it over and over and over again. I want her arched and aching and screaming my name, curling around me, coming harder than she ever has in her life. That might be wishful thinking, but I do my best to make it happen.

  I clamp down on her clit, sucking the straining bud between my lips. She thrashes against me, but it’s not enough. I bring my hand up and pinch her clit between my fingers while I move down and thrust my tongue inside her.

  She shatters.

  Cozzie whimpers and arches. She pants and moans my name and shakes so hard I now know why they call it coming apart. I wait, letting her ride out the storm, perilously close to going over the edge myself while I still have my fucking jeans on, before I rear up over her. I claim her mouth, letting her taste her own musk.

  She moans my name into my mouth and tugs at my shirt.

  I break away, because I have to. I’m so close. So close to tearing my clothes off and gloving up and getting inside her. I need to know that it’s what she wants. That she wouldn’t have any regrets, because I couldn’t handle her regretting that.

  “Cozzie? Are you…are you sure?”

  “Yes,” she pants, pawing at the hem of my shirt again, trying to dig her hands underneath. “Yes, I’m sure. I want this. I want this with you.”

  I have to close my eyes and brace myself. It’s everything I wanted to hear. Everything. I still feel like I’m floating on some crazy kind of cloud, on the biggest natural high possible when I loop my arms around her waist and pick her up, carrying her to my room.

  If we’re going to do this, we are not going to do this on the freaking couch. We’re going to do it right. Not like thirteen years haven’t passed, but like they have. I’ve waited for her. I hoped and longed and never thought it would happen. That she’d actually be here.

  And now she is. She is and she’s sure, and I already know that I’m going to shatter all the barriers and rules I tried to put up for myself and slow myself down and ask her to stay the night, because it’s real, she’s real, and I’m sure, that no matter how many pep talks I give myself about taking things slow and not scaring her off, I can’t let her go again.

  Chapter 12

  Cozzie

  The taste of myself still lingers on my tingling, kiss swollen lips when Trell sets me down on the floor right by the bed. There’s a frantic urgency to his movements as he pretty much tears his clothes off. I think his t-shirt suffers a fatal blow. His jeans don’t fare much better. There’s the sound of something ripping in the fading light in Trell’s bedroom, a room that should pretty much intimidate me because of the intimacy involved in being there, but fails at the sight of his gorgeous, streamlined body on full display.

  He’s gorgeous. Skin a hue between copper and bronze. Flawless corded muscles. Long, sinewy limbs. He’s shaped so differently than I am. My eyes fall to the V to end all Vs. It travels down, a delicious narrowing after his washboard abs. I let my eyes linger a little lower.

  I’m twenty-nine and this isn’t my first rodeos, but I’m breathless. Trell is gorgeous. He has a nice face, a model-like face, and his body is just as mouth watering, but below the belt…wow. Just…wow.

  I’m embarrassed at my own thoughts and I snap my eyes away from his erection. I know that it looks like it hurts, though. The tip is swollen an angry red and he’s big. Really big. Veiny and glorious. My body goes back to throbbing painfully, the spot between my legs doing the worst of it. Something tightens in my chest when my eyes finally flick back to Trell’s face.

  He’s looking at me in a way I’ve never seen him look at me before. I’ve actually never seen anyone look at me like that before, Bryn included. Like I’m his everything. His heartbeat and his breath. His past and his future.

  I suck in a hard breath, because I know the truth of it. I should feel pressure, but this is Trell. I know I don’t have to fake anything. He knows that for me, love is going to take time. That I might not ever be able to reach the depth of feeling he has for me, but that I’m taking this leap and I know that wherever I am, he’ll be right there with me.

  He gives me a soft smile and that spot in my chest burns.

  “Are you really sure?” He laughs, as soft as his smile, but it makes something tighten in my stomach. It makes my everything else tighten too. I love that he’s asking me. Again. A cross between disbelief, awe, and care in his voice.

  “Yes,” I breathe. I sit down on the edge of the bed. “Yes.”

  Trell doesn’t ask me if I’m on the pill. He’s too respectful for that. I am, but he digs in his night stand by the bed and produces a condom. A second later, he has it on and he’s staring at me, breathing hard and ragged.

  I let my eyes flutter shut. I let him come to me.

  His hand lands on my shoulder. He slowly peels away my sweater and the shirt below. I shiver when the cooler air hits my skin. Trell’s hands explore me, playing over my skin before one lands at my throat. He presses his fingers against my hammering pulse point and then his breath wafts hot on my cheek.

  I let him kiss me. Let him plunder my mouth all over again as he eases me back. I keep my eyes shut. He could put me in the most vanilla position in the entire world and it would still be the most erotic experience of my life. I’ve never felt anything close to this. I know that I’m almost thirty, but I feel like I’m a teenager again, filled up and sparking with lust, wild hunger, and hot need.

  I thought I’d forgotten what it’s like to feel this, but the truth is, it was never like this for me before. Bryn was my first. My only. He’s always going to have that and it’s always going to be special for me when I think about it, but this is something else. Like an awakening. Something entirely new and almost frightening in intensity.

  Trell crawls onto the bed as I scoot up. His knee parts my thighs and I let him. I keep my eyes closed when his hand sweeps up my thigh. He lifts my leg and wraps it around his waist before he does the same to the other.

  I shiver at his heat when he settles close. His cock ends up right near my entrance. All he’d have to do is push forward and he’d be inside me.

  My breath hitches. This is new. This is someone new. Something different. This is unpredictable and wild, like fire. I buck my hips upward on instinct, urging him forward. Trell groans.

  “Tell me that you’re sure. Tell me that I won’t be a regret in a couple seconds. Tell me that you’d forgive me if I get inside you and last five seconds.”

  I let out a burst of nervous laughter until I realize he’s serious. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m very, very sure. So sure that I’d pinkie promise you or something if that’s what you’re worried about.” I open my eyes, cup his face and guide it down to mine. I pepper his lips, his chin, his cheeks with kisses. “Yes, I’m sure. I’m very sure. Five seconds, ten, twenty, what does it matter? I already know it’s going to be good.”

  Trell groans. He shifts, his cock at my entrance. He’s so hard and hot that I vibrate with painful need.

  “It’s okay. However this goes. I just need you. I need you, and after this we can get in the shower or order in takeout or whatever you want, because I’m not going anywhere. I’m not. I’m here.”

  I think that’s what Trell needed to hear, and I mean it, at least for tonight. I didn’t plan on spending it, but now that I’m here, I know that I want this. I want to spend the night. I want Trell. I want this. I want us.

  I buck my hips up again, punctuating that statement and I close my eyes when Trell’s lips crush mine. His body covers mine, so much bigger, stronger. Our skin sticks together from the fine sheen of sweat, but it’s hot. It’s hot and we just fit. Like we were made for each other. There isn’t any awkward fumbling or doubts. Not now. I don’t want to go back. Trell asked me if I wanted to feel, and I do.

  His first thrust isn’t soft or hesitant. It’s brutal and deliciou
s. He stretches me and fills me and all the air rushes out of my lungs in a gasp. He swallows it. He swallows my cry and my breath and gives me his in exchange.

  We kiss each other like there isn’t going to be a tomorrow as he moves inside me. I respond, rolling my hips, grinding into him, opening myself to him, taking every thrust, slow and measured, fast and hot, wicked, brutal, gentle. I love it all. I’m struck by that feeling again, the feeling of rightness. We fit perfectly. Trell is perfect. Straining and sweat soaked, his skin like fire, vibrating and pulsing above me, inside me, all around me.

  I dig my nails into his shoulders and dig my heels into his hard backside and hips. I want to take him deeper, deeper, until he’s as lost in me as I am in him. Until he feels like he’s transcending, flying, falling, transforming into something else. Something he was always meant to be, the same way I feel it.

  He thrusts harder, more frenzied, all over the place with his rhythm. He warned me and I know he’s close and I find it freaking endearing that he’d even say something like that. Make himself vulnerable and open. It reveals the depth of his need, the rawness of his feeling, and it hits to the pit of my stomach knowing that he finds me so beautiful and irresistible he can’t hold back.

  Trell is so big that I’m kind of sore. Every thrust hurts a little more, but I love the pain. The pain is what curdles in my stomach, turning into a ball of raging hot fire, consuming me until I shatter. The climax is sharp, painful, far more wicked than the one I had on the couch. It rattles through me, pounding me to dust. Through the haze, I feel Trell rip his mouth from mine. He groans near my ear, his breath fanning over my neck and damp skin, liquid fire like the rest of him, and then he’s vibrating above me, shaking, clutching me to him as he empties inside me.

  After, we both lay there panting. Finally, I open my eyes and find him staring down at me. Not in a creepy way. In the face suffused with a thousand emotions kind of way. It makes my chest tighten.

  “I warned you,” he pants. “Sorry. The next time will be better.”

  I curl my arms around his neck and pull him to me. “Are you kidding?” I whisper-shout against his neck. I think there might be something wrong with me, because I kiss him there and taste the salt of his skin and it’s one of the hottest things I’ve ever done in my life, if you don’t count the past half hour.

  “No. Not kidding.”

  “It was perfect.” I really, absolutely, completely mean it.

  Chapter 13

  Cozzie

  I’m too warm. The bed is on fire and the flames are licking over me. Sweat beads and rolls down my forehead and temples. Something heavy pins me to the bed. I’m crushed. Trapped.

  I wake up with a start, blinking rapidly into the inky black. I’m temporarily disoriented until I realize there’s a reason that nothing is familiar in the room. I always leave the hall light on in my place and I usually have my laptop plugged in playing one of the nighttime playlists that I made.

  I don’t recognize anything because I’m not in my apartment. I’m at Trell’s. Again.

  The bed isn’t on fire. It’s his body heat that is igniting the bed. I am sweating and I am pinned down, but only because his legs are tangled up with mine. I’m pulled right against his chest, his big arm wrapped around me protectively. We’re both naked. He’s hot. Like a furnace.

  I don’t know what time it is. Probably the middle of the night. I lay there for a while, listening to and feeling Trell’s every breath. It’s nice. Lying beside him, wrapped up in him. I know this is probably everything he wanted and it should make me stressed or pressured, at least a little, but I don’t feel that way at all. It feels like how it felt from the start. Right.

  I knew I probably shouldn’t be back at Trell’s for a second night, especially back to back, but I couldn’t help it. As soon as I was done with work, I texted him and drove over. When I arrived, he greeted me at the door, a huge grin that was both radiant and shy, with a wrapped package. He presented it to me, said he didn’t get me anything for Christmas or anything else, which made two of us. I took the gift with even more shyness than it was given.

  I unwrapped it in the living room while he watched. It was a painting, an original of a landscape and a tumble down barn. It was so beautiful I could almost feel the splintery, greyed cedar planks of the barn and the softness of the grass in the field surrounding it. Trell confessed he was re-gifting. He said he got it at an art show his mom dragged him to, but it actually didn’t match anything in the house. He figured I could use it since my walls were probably still bare. He was right. I loved it and I thanked him by letting him undress me in the dining room, thrust me onto the small kitchen table, and eat me like there wouldn’t be a tomorrow.

  He ordered pizza then let me return the favor in the living room. He managed to get his jeans back on before the pizza arrived.

  After we ate, we took a shower. Together. Followed up with another round in the bedroom. We fell asleep exhausted in a mess of twisted sheets and tangled limbs.

  It was hands down the best evening of my life.

  I want to stay there, blissfully sore and soaked in Trell’s body heat, but the more time that ticks by, the more awake I am. It’s still dark, but it’s probably closer to five in the morning than it is to one or two. I could probably get up and make coffee, maybe even search Trell’s fridge to surprise him with breakfast.

  It takes me ten minutes to untangle myself from Trell’s heavy limbs without waking him. I can’t find my clothes in the dark so I don’t bother. Instead, I fumble towards the shape of the dresser on the far side of the room. I pull open drawers and feel inside until I come up with something soft and large. A t-shirt. Trell’s t-shirt. I slip into it and pad softly from the room. It doesn’t smell like him. It smells like fresh laundry, but I imagine him wearing it, the cotton snug against his smooth bronzed skin, the layers of muscle and the veins that wrist through it all, and the thought warms me.

  Not that the house is cold. It’s more like a glow. Like I’m being lit from the inside out. I’ve never felt glowy before and it’s…it’s nice.

  The green digits from the stove glow in the kitchen. Four thirty. Okay, maybe it’s a little early for coffee and breakfast. I tiptoe into the living room instead and curl up on the couch for a few minutes. I stare at the wall ahead of me, the one with the huge print of the abstract piece that I love so much.

  The play of the streetlight sneaking through the vertical slats of the blinds illuminates the print just enough to define the sharp edges and textures of the brush strokes.

  Wait. What?

  I scramble off the couch and go to inspect the painting more closely. The one Trell said was a print. The one I said that was pretty dang close to copyright infringement.

  I study the canvas and I’m sure that in the play of light and dark, the brush strokes come alive. How did I not notice before? I guess they looked flatter in the light. Maybe it really is a print, but it’s embellished? Trell said he bought it at some department style store.

  I don’t know what makes me do it, maybe because it’s four thirty in the morning and I don’t have anything else to do at the moment. Maybe it’s morbid curiosity. I don’t actually know. I don’t process it. Instead, I slip the painting of its screw on the wall. It’s lighter than I thought it would be. Maybe it really is a print, but it doesn’t have the wood or metal frame around the side that most stores tuck their prints into. This one looks like a gallery wrapped canvas, the paint extending to the sides.

  I slowly turn the whole thing over, so that the back is facing me. The unmistakable scrawl of a black marker is visible along the wooden frame where it crosses to support the canvas.

  Trell. Tit for tat. Thanks for the painting. Here’s one in return.

  Something follows, a long scrawl, and I know it’s a signature. Gretall Van Beaston. Clear as day.

  This isn’t any print. This is a real painting. An original. Given to Trell because he bought her one in return? How would he have the
money to do that? This painting is probably worth more than a brand new car. If he knew the artist, why wouldn’t he have told me?

  I shake my head and set the painting back up as carefully as I can. Now that I know it’s worth a lot of money, it scares me to even look at it, let alone handle it.

  I creep back down the hall towards the bedroom. I’ve been pretty preoccupied the past few times I was here. I’ve never even really noticed the two closed doors down the hall.

  I pause in front of one, my fingers lingering on the knob. It’s probably just closed because Trell has clutter in there or it’s a guest room and unused. Probably not because he’s trying to hide something.

  Like he told me the painting was actually a print.

  Something tells me to open the door. Some sixth sense that raises the hairs on the backs of my arms. I know I shouldn’t do it, but I twist the knob. I push it open and fumble on the inside of the doorframe for the light. My fingers brush against it and, soundlessly, the room is illuminated.

  I stifle a gasp at what I find. It’s not some spare room. It’s a room alright and it might be spare, but it’s filled with paintings and canvases. Some are in various stages of unfinished. Others are done, landscapes and buildings, people, abstracts. There are paint tubes everywhere, brushes, jars of cleaner or something. Blank canvases in the back.

  Okay…so Trell likes art. He never told any of us, but that’s not exactly surprisingly given that he didn’t tell anyone where he lived, either. We all just thought he was kind of eccentric or that he never wanted to clean up to have people over. I don’t know. I never thought anything of it. It was just Trell and we all got used to it.