A Vine Mess (Love on the Vine #4)

23. Liam

Fuck, my name on her lips was the most beautiful sound.

And the way she arched backward, her tits pressed forward and those studs glinting in the low light of the waning day, her eyes squeezed shut in ecstasy? She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever laid eyes on, her orgasms the most stunning thing I’d ever witnessed.

I wasn’t a religious man by any stretch, but Ella’s body was an altar I’d happily worship at every day.

When she calmed, her arms the only thing still quivering with the effort of keeping herself upright, I slowly withdrew my fingers from her pussy and held them in front of my face. They were coated in her desire, and Ella watched me closely as I licked them clean, groaning at her perfect taste.

“Gonna need more of that,” I said, once again sinking into the water.

“What—” Ella started, cutting off with a yelp as I dragged my tongue through her pussy. She twitched against me, hissing, and said, “Fuck, Liam. Give a girl a break.”

“Shh, baby. Let a man enjoy his treat.”

“But I want your cock,” she whined, and I looked up through my lashes to find her bottom lip jutted out in a pout.

“So fucking needy,” I grumbled without menace as I stood up. In a flash, I lifted her off the ledge, spun us in the water, and sank onto the bench built into the rock wall beneath the water.

With my back against the wall, Ella settled on my lap, straddling my thighs, her breasts right above the surface of the water—and within reach of my mouth. Leaning forward, I captured one tight peak between my lips, cupping the other one in my hand. I swirled my tongue around the tip and tugged at her piercing with my teeth before moving over.

Ella’s hands dug into my hair—one of her favorite things to do, I was quickly learning—and yanked hard until I was forced to peel my mouth from those fucking perfect tits.

“I know,” she said with a smile as though she could read my mind. “The tits are great. But”—she leaned closer to kiss me, and we lost ourselves in that connection for too brief a moment before she backed away—“I have an emptiness only you can fill.”

I dove my hand into the water, the time spent in the elevated temp making sweat break out on both our temples, and grabbed my cock, brushing it against her. “You mean this? This gonna fill you up?”

“The only thing that can,” she agreed, rising onto her knees slightly so I could line myself up. I pushed in only as far as the head, letting my girl take me as fast or as slow as she wanted.

I should’ve known it’d be the former.

Ella impaled herself on me, forehead falling against my shoulder. “ So deep like this, holy shit.”

I rubbed my hand up and down her back, letting my fingers settle in the groove of her spine and trail over the bumps. I could feel that she held herself back, clearly needing a moment to adjust, like some unseen barrier prevented her from taking me completely.

But when she finally relaxed, and I sank that final inch into that tight, wet heat?

“Fuck,” I breathed.

“Yeah,” Ella said with a disbelieving laugh. “I see what you meant now, about being made for me.” Experimentally, she lifted a bit and swiveled her hips around, lowering again, taking me impossibly deeper. “I don’t think—”

Beneath the water, my hands gripped her thighs, waiting her out. Just being with her like this, neither of us moving, completely content to just breathe each other in and bask in this unreal connection—it was enough for me. Honestly, it was all I’d ever need.

“This scares me,” she admitted, peeling back from me far enough to look into my eyes. “How much I care about you, how hard and fast I fell, and how quickly it all happened. But I’m ready to take this leap if you are. I’m all in, so long as we ’re all in, together.”

I gathered her hands in mine and brought them out of the water, pressing my lips gently to her fingertips, to every bit of exposed skin I could reach.

“Hate to break it to you, Delatou,” I started, grinning up at her, “but you’re stuck with me now.”

Ella slumped against me, throwing her arms around my neck and ducking so our mouths touched. “You’re stuck with me too, Danvers.”

“Thank fuck,” I said. “Now I think I might die if you don’t move.”

With a laugh that was quickly becoming my favorite sound, Ella lifted herself almost completely off me and sank back down, all thoughts but her, but this moment, but the fucking vise-like grip of her pussy around me vacated my brain.

Her hands gripped my shoulders, nails digging sharply into my skin as she leveraged herself up and down, and I’d be damned if I didn’t love the sting, didn’t fucking revel in the way her tits bounced in my face. There wasn’t anything else in the world as good as this—as good as her .

The water sloshed around us, mingling with our heavy breaths and our moans of pleasure.

“Nothing has ever felt as good as you,” she said as I filled her again, as she wriggled her hips atop my lap to get closer. Then she circled them slowly, saying, “Oh, yes, right there,” as her clit rubbed against the trail of hair at my lower abdomen.

“That’s it, Wildflower,” I said, grabbing a fistful of hair at her nape and holding her to me. “Take what you need.”

“I’m close,” she whimpered, though I already knew from the way her walls pulsed and clamped around me.

“Let go.”

“Need a hand,” she breathed.

I was far too happy to oblige, reaching between us and deftly finding her clit, angling my hand so I could circle it with three fingers. I fucking relished the way her hips moved faster as she bucked against me, how her thighs quaked like her clit was some on switch for her vibration setting. Her hands at my shoulders gripped me tighter, fingernails surely puncturing my skin, but I didn’t give a fuck. Not as long as she got there.

I met every one of her downward thrusts with an upward one of my own, the water stirred up violently around our bodies like we were caught in the center of a tempest.

My balls drew up tight to my body, that pressure at the base of my spine nearly unbearable as I held myself off, refusing to go down unless she went with me.

“C’mon, Wildflower,” I said through gritted teeth, punctuating my words by circling her clit faster. “Come for me.”

A low, almost keening sound left Ella as I used my free hand to grip her tit, roughly pulling at the piercing, giving her so much sensation, forcing her orgasm to surface.

I was rewarded a moment later when she fell apart, that low sound building into a full-volume screaming of unintelligible words as she climaxed, the pulsing of her cunt triggering my own. I unloaded inside of her, hoarsely shouting her name, murmuring praises as I worked us through it, forcing her to feel every ounce I could wring out of her.

Exactly like the first time, fucking her—coming with her—was a goddamn out of body experience where I felt like I was floating, my flesh and bones unable to contain the sheer amount of ecstasy we made together.

What felt like hours later, I returned to myself, my limbs deliciously limp in the water and Ella collapsed against me. We merely embraced each other and the silence, neither of us willing to burst our blissful little bubble.

It was Ella who spoke first .

“You think it’ll always be like this?” she asked, turning her head to look up at me.

“I fucking hope so.”

She laughed then, the sound vibrating her entire body and reminding me I was still buried inside her but rapidly softening. Shifting us slightly, I slipped free, and Ella reclined across my lap rather than straddling it.

“Sex isn’t everything,” she began, cutting me off with a sharp look when I opened my mouth to retort. “But I’m fucking glad you blow my mind every time.” Leaning in, she gave me a gentle kiss, then two more in quick succession. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“For taking the time to learn what I do and don’t like. For your patience with me. For…just being you.” Her shoulders twitched in a little shrug.

Before answering, I rose to my feet, Ella still cradled in my arms, and began wading toward the steps leading back up to the deck.

“You never have to thank me for that,” I told her. “But what do you say we go back to the cabin and I spend a few more hours doing it anyway?”

Ella grinned. “Deal.”

Several hours later, after doing exactly what I promised and learning new ways to get Ella off, we were a spent and sweaty mess. She was at my side, a leg hooked over my thigh, head resting on my chest with my arm around her, tracing the raised lines of the tattoo on her side. I was surprised that most of the skin of her back was free from ink.

“How come you haven’t filled this in yet?” I asked, brushing my broad palm down her spine.

“Haven’t found anything I loved enough to put there yet,” she said, almost sleepily.

And I knew I should let us get some rest, but as I followed the line of one of the flower petals along her ribcage, I decided I needed to know the stories behind each of them—or if some of them didn’t have a story at all. I had a feeling Ella was more sentimental about what she put on her body than I was, though.

“What do they all mean?” I whispered.

She was quiet for long enough that I thought she’d fallen asleep. Instead, she shifted out of my hold and sat up, tucking her legs under her, her torso and sexy thighs naked and on display.

Pointing to one of those thighs and the fine-line bouquet of five flowers there, she said, “My and my sisters’ birth flowers.” Right below that was four words inked in an old typewriter style. “A quote from one of my favorite fantasy book series.”

Then she grabbed my hand and positioned it at her other knee, below the female bust, arm raised as she watered the flowers blooming from her head, covering the bulk of her face save her nose and lips. “I think this one is obvious,” she said with a grin, sliding my hand upward toward her hip and that floral piece I’d just been tracing. “And again, obvious.”

“You do have a lot of floral tattoos,” I gently ribbed her.

“You don’t call me ‘Wildflower’ for nothing.” She paused to ponder it for a moment, though, dragging my palm across her stomach to the other hip, where another collection of sunflowers, daisies, and what looked like strawberry blossoms stretched the length of her torso.

“We all need something to worship, right? For me, that’s flowers. I seek my religion in the garden, or building arrangements for special occasions. My body is just a shrine to the thing that brings me joy and gives me purpose.”

Our hands moved again, my fingertips dragging across the vines and blooms curving under her boob, mirroring the other side and meeting in the center, topped by a bee.

“That’s beautiful,” I murmured as she continued to map her flesh with our hands. I tiptoed my fingers up her arms as she told me about the other flowers decorating her skin. I hadn’t realized how many she had until I had her naked like this and finally took the time to study them all.

“And what about those words on your back?” I asked when she was done showing me the vines twining around her fingers.

Ella reached across her body and tapped the words on her left. “It says ‘I love you as big as the sky,’ or as close as we could get in Greek, in my dad’s handwriting.”

“Do you have one for your mom too?”

I couldn’t imagine, knowing how close all six of the Delatou women were, that Ella would get a tattoo for her dad and not her mom as well.

She shifted and extended her right leg, turning it to the side so I could see the heart on the side of her heel. I leaned closer for a better look.

“Are those…fingerprints?”

“Her thumbs,” Ella confirmed.

I sat back and whistled low, shaking my head. “I was right. You’re way more sentimental than me.”

Ella reached out and tapped the mermaid on my right deltoid. “I don’t know. I’m sure the story behind this one is close to your heart.”

Growling in warning, I lunged, tackling her so she was flat on her back, then peppered her face and neck with kisses.

“A lot of them are the result of being eighteen and on my own for the first time during my freshman year of college. A silent act of rebellion against my father that I could cover up for the holidays. Not that it mattered, anyway. They’re a part of me, and despite the absolute meltdown he had when he first saw them, there was no erasing them. And believe me, he tried.”

“He what ?”

I couldn’t help but laugh at her expression. We’d both heard the horror stories that removal is more painful than getting them in the first place.

“Scheduled the removal consultation behind my back,” I confirmed, “then tried to bribe me into going. By then, Gramps had already given me access to my trust, so I didn’t need his money—not that I would’ve taken it anyway.”

I shook my head, tossing away the memories. I didn’t want to think about my dad or those days. Not now, not ever.

Instead, I told her how I had a habit of walking into my favorite studio in Portland, flipping through the books of flash tattoos, and picking one at random to get done that day. Or I’d just let the tattoo artist do whatever he wanted—within reason, of course.

“There are only three that are truly meaningful,” I said at last, looking down at her from where my head rested on my palm, the length of my body stretched out at her side. I didn’t need to map my tattoos with her—she’d already spent enough time doing so herself, with her eyes, hands, and mouth. And they were mostly stupid little things that needed no explanation.

“Which ones?”

I sank back to sitting, hauling her up with me.

First, I pointed to the letters across my knuckles.

“This was the first tattoo I got in Michigan,” I said. “I left Oregon in a hurry, brokenhearted, and needed a reminder that I’d get through it. Now…I think it’s just a good mantra in general.”

“Will you tell me about her one day?”

God, I hadn’t thought about Mellie in days , nor had I paused for a second to remind myself I had my brother’s wedding and my entire family to contend with at the end of this trip.

Ella had shared so much with me, had trusted me with so much, and I knew I owed her that in return. But not right now.

“Soon,” I promised. “I just don’t want to ruin this moment.”

Ella nodded in understanding, urging me to continue.

I tapped the back of my left hand. “This one is for my late grandmother. Her name was Rose, and she was one of my absolute favorite people.”

It had been several years and her loss still stung, still had the ability to punch me in the gut and knock the wind out of me. I breathed deeply, trying to quell the stinging behind my eyes.

“You miss her.”

“Very much,” I managed to choke out.

Ella didn’t offer me any condolences or platitudes. She merely crawled onto my lap and held me tightly while I collected myself.

“What’s the last one?” she whispered .

I swallowed hard, the momentary wave of grief quickly replaced by that of nervousness.

I stretched my right arm out in front of us, showing off the small blue butterfly inked on the inside of my wrist.

“This one…is for you.”

“ Me ?” she gasped, then twisted enough to extend her same arm, displaying the similar creature tattooed in the same spot. “I always thought it looked a lot like mine.”

“It was silly, getting it when I couldn’t guarantee we’d end up here. But…that first time I saw you was the first time I felt like a small piece of the old me—the man I’d been before everything had gone to shit—had returned to me at last.”

“How did I not know?” she whispered, gaze still fixed on our arms, though they had that glazed quality that told me she was somewhere far away. “How the hell could I have missed it?”

“Hey, no,” I said, grasping her chin and turning her head until those green eyes met mine, clearing as they did. “You didn’t know because I was too afraid to make a move. That’s not your fault, Wildflower. And it doesn’t matter. What’s important is that we’re here together now. That we’re finally getting our chance.”

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “We could’ve had so much longer.”

I gathered her closer and moved to recline against the headboard, pressing a kiss to her temple.

“It’s okay, baby. We’ve got forever to make up for it.”