Unsteady

by Peyton Corinne

No deal needed—if she keeps looking at me like this, I’ll do anything she says.

She stops there, but the unspoken words are just as loud. The look in her eyes says I wanted to help, and this is all I have and I see you.

“For the record,” I say, looking out along the lake, across all the life around us. “I am offering.” She’s silent. Smiling and shaking her head, she avoids every ounce of the eye contact I’m directing toward her. But I can’t bring myself to regret it.

Does she know I’d kneel for her forever if it meant she’d look at me like that?

“I want you,” bursts from my lips, because she’s all I need.

“Great. I’ve got enough energy for the both of us.” I turn my head into her palm and plant an open-mouthed kiss there. “Just relax and let me take care of you.”

I am gone for this girl.

“That’s not what I meant,” he rasps. He pulls his hand away to show me. I’m near to dripping, embarrassingly wet considering he hasn’t done a single thing besides kiss me.

He’s everything.

God, I want her forever.

“I think I’m in love with her.” I hear Rhys tell Bennett, but his voice doesn’t lower even a notch. “And she won’t let me in.”

“Because it was never going to be just sex for me with you. And I knew you weren’t ready for that.”

After he fucked me speechless, he means, in a way that made me regret everything I’d ever wasted on another man because what I had with them wasn’t sex—this, it feels like even more. I didn’t know it could be like this.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to ignore the pinch of discomfort when they both go silent. “I’m his girlfriend.”

“I’m gonna say something now, Gray. And I need you to hear me. Really hear me, okay?” I nod. “I love you,” he says, and he’s smiling—both dimples glinting.

“You don’t need to say anything right now, okay? I can love you enough for the both of us.”

He shuts me up with a kiss, gripping my hips in hands that nearly span my entire waist, hefting me up so I can wrap my legs around him. It causes the silk of my dress to slip all the way up my legs and bunch at my waist, which seems to be his goal.

“No apologies, Gray.” He kisses down my neck. “Never apologies with you. I love you so much. I love you.”

“Yep,” Liam sings, taking a gargantuan bite of pancakes dripping with syrup and bopping in his seat like he’s dancing to music. “Gonna be a good day ’cause Rhys is asking you to marry—”