Delaney James was wearing Chanel the night her husband told her he didn't love her anymore.
In an instant, her picture-perfect Manhattan life-complete with a brownstone on the Upper East Side, a blossoming career as a fashion journalist, and a devas...
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I've been with other women in the ten years since Delaney and I broke. Plenty of them, if I'm being honest. Different faces, different bodies, different laughs. They were good women—smart, beautiful, easy to be around. For a night, or a month, or sometimes longer, they were enough. Enough to quiet the ache. Enough to keep me from being alone.
But they were never her.
I never cared in the same way. I didn't check my phone waiting for a message, or lose sleep wondering if they were safe. I didn't look across a room and feel that gut-deep pull to protect. With Delaney, it's different. She flips a switch in me no one else can reach. Some primitive part of me wakes up around her, the part that says mine every time I see someone else make her laugh, the part that would put myself between her and the world without thinking twice.
The others? They were placeholders. People to pass time with. I never worried about hurting their feelings when things ended. I never imagined a future with them, never let myself think about the long haul. Because the truth is, I gave my heart away at fourteen, and I've never taken it back.
Delaney makes me feel like I'm standing on steady ground, even when everything else in my life feels like it's shifting. She's the only one who makes me want to be better—not for the sake of appearances, not for status, not for anyone else's approval, but because she deserves it. Because I want to be the man she can lean on, the one she knows won't let her fall.
No one has ever made me feel the way she does. No one ever will.
I slide my hand up her jaw, gripping the back of her neck as I pull her against me, and wrap my arm around her lower back, lifting her just enough that her toes are just barely touching the water. She clutches my shoulders tightly, digging her fingernails into my skin, and wraps her legs around my waist, allowing me to feel the heat between her legs as she grinds against my torso.
I put pressure on her mouth so she'll open up for me. I need more of her. I need all of her. She finally concedes, and the second I feel her lips part, I slip into her mouth, a gruff, needy moan rumbling in my throat as our tongues meet. She's gentle – her mouth working mine with mild intensity – but from the way she's digging into my skin and pressing herself against me, I know she's holding back.
I break our kiss reluctantly, pressing my forehead to hers before brushing a feather-light kiss across the tip of her nose. My voice is low, almost uncertain. "Are you okay? Is this... okay?"
Her answer comes not in words at first but in the way her hands slide up into my wet hair, nails grazing my scalp in a way that makes me shiver. Then her lips find mine again, hungry, certain, her breath warm against me as she whispers, "It's perfect."
That's all I need.
I tighten my hold on her, lifting her out of the water and carrying her back toward the blanket, every step a battle against the part of me that's begging to lay her down right here and lose myself in her. She trails kisses along my jaw, my neck, until her mouth finds my ear and she bites softly at my lobe, pulling a groan out of me.
