Under an Endless Moon (Moonlit Ridge Book 2)

“Stay right there.” Otto’s voice was a rough scrape as he pushed back. He tucked himself back into his briefs, before he swung off me and slipped off the side of the bed.

While I struggled to breathe.

To push the air in and out of my jutting lungs and calm the violent race of my heart.

I watched him stride across his room and into the attached bathroom.

So beautiful in all his intimidation. Tall and wide and tatted. His butt and thick thighs flexed with each step that he took, and it nearly had me begging all over again.

My body twitched and jerked in tiny spasms while my mind whirled to wrap itself around what had just happened. My brain was having a hard time comprehending the shift. Accepting that it was real and not another one of the fantasies I’d given myself over to for so many years.

I listened to him shuffle around in the bathroom—the clatter of a cupboard and the run of water—while the truth of it sank down over me like an embrace.

Otto Hudson had touched me.

He’d touched me.

And I’d touched him.

And I hadn’t been afraid.

I hadn’t been afraid.

Truthfully, I didn’t think I would be. Every part of myself had believed that I’d feel safe.

This was Otto we were talking about.

The one man who’d ever been able to keep my demons at bay.

The one who saw.

The one who understood.

But God, I’d be a liar if I said there hadn’t been a small part of me that had been terrified that I’d freak out if one day he finally did.

Terrified that the anxiety would take over the rational.

If that had happened? There’d have been no chance that he would ever touch me again. The man was a protector to the extreme. He’d cut off his own hands before he’d dream of hurting me.

Or his dick.

And that would be nothing but an injustice considering how badly I wanted that dick in me.

Over and over.

Preferably without ceasing.

Dangerous thinking, I knew, wanting more when Otto claimed this was going to be a one-time thing.

Dangerous considering how horribly he’d hurt me just two hours ago when he’d rejected me. A spear that he’d driven through my soul.

Dangerous because now that he’d finally broken through the barriers he’d kept fortified around us, I never wanted it to stop.

No doubt, I was setting myself up to get demolished, this secret love I’d harbored for him for so long close to bursting out from within me.

No way to contain it.

But I didn’t think there would be any talking me out of pursuing this with everything I had when he came rambling back out with that smirk licking across his striking face.

Swirls of color painting his flesh writhing beneath corded, hewn muscle as he walked.

A fortress in the middle of the night.

Every molecule in my body flared back to life when he slowly sat on the edge of the bed with a damp washcloth.

“Here.” The single word was uttered so low I felt it reverberate rather than heard it. His attention was careful as he placed the warm, wet washcloth on my belly. He gently ran it over my stomach then up to my breasts, cleaning me.

I wondered if it made me some kind of freak that I would rather him have spread his cum all over me than have him wipe it away.

Mark every inch of me with himself.

Charleigh would tell me I’d been reading too many smutty scenes in my books, which I’d have to politely inform her there could never be too many. Especially if that meant I got to live them out.

With Otto. Freaking. Hudson.

I had to stop myself from squealing as a wash of glee sped through me.

He peeked up at my face with those eyes, sucking me down into that chaotic ocean of blue. His smirk inched higher. “What are you over there grinnin’ about?”

“Grinning? I’m not grinning.” My fingers flew to my lips to trace the shape.

Yep. Definitely grinning.

“Uh, yeah, darlin’. The grin is real. Want to tell me what’s going on in that beautiful head of yours?” No question, he was trying to feel me out without coming right out and asking it, which was kind of ridiculous considering he’d just had his miraculous fingers shoved deep inside me.

“I’m just grinning because my favorite person is now my extra favorite person.”

Amusement played across his delicious mouth. “Is that so? And here I was worried that little stunt might knock me down a peg or two.” With the last, his expression dimmed, taking me in like he was terrified he had pushed me too far.

“Never,” I told him. My voice went wispy, unable to find the lightness.

Not when this felt momentous.

He tossed the washcloth to the floor then reached out and fiddled with a stray piece of my hair as he gazed down at me. “You’re sure you’re okay?”

My nod was shaky. “More than okay. I would have stopped you if I wasn’t.”

A wistful silence stretched on between us. He finally broke it when he said, “It’s my honor, you know…that you feel safe with me.”

“I always have.”

His gaze darkened, and a vat of sorrow suddenly poured out. I knew exactly where his mind had gone. To the moment he’d forever fault himself over when there was nothing different that he could have done.

No way to change it.

It had already been set into motion.

I’d tried to stop it myself.

My chest squeezed, and with a shaky hand, I reached up and set it on his cheek. I’d made that simple gesture many times through the years. But it’d always been…reserved. Held in an attempt for it to be appropriate for who we were supposed to be.

But this?

This was what we were supposed to be.

He kept brushing his fingers through my hair, appraising me as if he were waiting for one of my fractured pieces to break off. Worried he’d be the one responsible for it.

“Still having a hard time getting my head around the fact that you’ve never been touched before.” He let a bunch of speculation hang unsaid in the air.

A twenty-five-year-old virgin wasn’t exactly a common thing.

“Are you really that surprised? When I barely started dating a few years ago? After all the things you knew about me then?”

He flinched, my bringing voice to the point when a wedge had been driven between us. We’d still remained incredibly close, but an intrinsic piece had been cut off.

Shattered hopes left to decay.

“Think I’d chosen to believe that you’d moved on. That you’d found your way outside of me—the way it was supposed to be.”

Air puffed from my nose. “How, when this is the way it’s supposed to be? It’s always been you, Otto. You have always been my safe place. My secret place.”

Energy thrashed.

Our connection whipping a disorder that raged in between.

His eyes were full of truth but his words still reeked of reservation. “I wish I could be more, Raven. Wish I could be everything.”

There was a warning behind it, and I couldn’t stand the idea of him pulling away, so instead, I pulled him toward me. “For tonight, let’s just be, Otto.”

We’d face tomorrow when it came.

Hesitation billowed through him before he gave, plopping down so he was lying on his side next to me.

Laughter rolled out of me, joy uncontained. I scratched my nails through the scruff on his jaw. “You’d better be careful or you’re going to toss me right out of this bed.”

He curled one of those massive arms around me and pulled me close. Two of us face-to-face. His voice went soft. “Never.”

I wanted to claim that forever.

I snuggled closer, clinging to the light, to the smile that couldn’t be erased. “Good. I’d much rather you tie me to this bed than toss me from it.”

A groan rumbled through his massive chest, and his lips tweaked into a grin. “You really do want to be the death of me, huh?”

“Death by orgasm?”

He chuckled low, and those big fingers threaded through my hair. “Death by your brother is what it’s likely to be, but I’m fairly certain it would be worth it. Seeing your face when you came around my fingers. I’m never going to forget it.”

He tucked me even closer.

I lit, a full body glow. The tease still rolled from my tongue, even though there was a small piece inside me that shivered, sure I was in over my head because I had no real clue what I was doing.

“Are you sure that was worth it? I could think of a few ways I could make it even better. You know, risk to pleasure ratio. Because I don’t know about you, but I’d really like to see your face when you come a few more times.”

A billion, but I probably shouldn’t push my luck.

Otto took me by the chin, and he tilted my face in his direction. Moonlight streamed in behind him, and it cast him in a milky silhouette, though even in the shadows, I could make out the intensity in his eyes.

“You are worth it, Raven. You are worth everything. But I don’t want to wreck what we are.”

“What are we, Otto? Because this feels like us to me.”