I bent down so I could kiss her. I just pressed my lips lightly against her parted mouth and whispered to her, “You are the last person I want to kiss. The last woman I want in my bed. I want you to be the last girl that touches any and all parts of me, Salem, and that means so much more than a first. Who cares if Poppy was there first or if there were nameless people in between? All that matters is that at the end of it all there is just you, only you, and no one else.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time. Her dark eyes were so deep and fathomless it made it hard to read what was going on inside her head. She rubbed her thumb up and down along one of my sideburns and then leaned forward to return the same kind of soft and sweet kiss I had just given her.
“It took me a long time to get here, Rowdy. It’s where I was always supposed to be. This is my final destination, so at the end there is just you and only you as well. The journey in the middle shaped both of us, there is no denying it, but I like being your last . . . just as long as I can keep surprising you with some firsts along the way.”
I laughed because that was typical Salem. Nothing could ever be just good enough. We could be together, would love each other, end up together, but she was always going to want it to be new, challenging, and surprising. That was one of the main reasons I had never been able to get past her and never would.
“I’ve been around the block. Not too many firsts left.” It was the truth but she had managed to pull one or two out in the months we had been together.
One of her jet-black eyebrows shot up and she smiled impishly at me. “Is that a challenge?”
I laughed again because I was happy. Really, truly happy for the first time since she left when I was fifteen. “It can be.”
I almost melted when her dark gaze switched to something sizzling and hot. The arm she had wrapped around my neck tightened, pulling me closer to her, and she traced her fingertip across the outside edge of my mouth.
“Have you ever had sex outside by a lake while the sun is coming up after drinking Coors Light for breakfast?”
I nudged my hands under the edge of her tank top so I could hold on to her waist as I leaned over and flattened her beneath me on the discarded blanket she had brought outside with her. She parted her legs for me and I trapped her face between my palms so I could kiss her with everything that had been missing from my life for the week we had been apart. I wasn’t ever doing that again, being apart, and she needed to be able to feel that.
“Nope. The only one of those things I have ever done before is have Coors Light for breakfast.”
She laughed and it pushed her chest into mine. I felt her nipples bead up against the thin fabric of her top. I wanted it out of my way.
“I’ve seen your fridge, so that doesn’t surprise me. Let me be your first and last, Rowdy . . . and you can be mine.”
I let her kiss me again and helped her yank my shirt off over my head. Goose bumps raced across my skin as the mountain air hit naked flesh.
“First and last, Salem.” I practically groaned the words at her because she was wiggling out of her tank top without separating where we were pressed together, so each little strip of bare skin she revealed rubbed and pressed enticingly against my own.
She smiled at me and it made my dick twitch painfully behind the fly of my jeans. “If you think I’m coming to the middle of nowhere in the woods and getting busy with anyone else, then you’re insane. You are the only person in the entire universe I would ever want to get naked with in a place like this.” She got her hands on the button of my jeans and told me matter-of-factly, “I pretty much want to get naked with you whenever and wherever.”
I sucked in a breath as the backs of her fingers rubbed against the aroused length of my cock. “Good to know.”
She muttered something I couldn’t hear through the river of blood rushing between my ears and the hammering of my heart as she used the pad of her thumb to rub all across the head of my erection between the multiple piercings that decorated the sensitive surface. “The feeling is absolutely mutual, just so you know.” I sounded gruff and slightly strangled.
She chuckled low in her throat and gave the heavy shaft a tight squeeze. “You don’t say?”
Enough of the playful banter. She had left me alone for almost a solid week and I had been twisting myself up over her and this thing we had. It was well past time that she just knew it was her for me and no other would ever do.
While she was busy sliding her fist up and down and then back again, I reared up enough to slide her legs out of her stretchy pants so that she was all creamy, bronze skin and wild dark hair and eyes. I loved the pops of color that decorated her skin, loved the way she wore her life like badges captured in art on her body. I loved that when I touched her, when I put my hands on her tattoos, it looked like our colors just bled into one another. We became one giant painting of swirling colors and heated skin. She was a perfect work of art in more ways than one.