We wrote this little outtake for charity a while back and wanted to share it with all of you. See us at the bottom for a few notes, and come find us on twitter (Lo & Christina) and tell us what you thought! Enjoy! (A note that this outtake is for mature audiences only)
Will & Hanna Outtake
Timeline: After Chloe & Bennett’s rehearsal dinner in BEAUTIFUL BEGINNING
Hanna POV
It’s been seventeen minutes and thirty six seconds since Will went into the bathroom and turned on the shower. For seven of those minutes, the shower has been off and the bathroom has been completely silent.
I want to knock at the door, to ask if he’s okay or if he’s completely freaking out—because a sizable fraction of me is freaking out—but if he’s not freaking out, then knowing that I’m freaking out might trip him into freak out, and then this whole night will be a mess.
“Remember that thing I alluded to on the plane,” he’d asked.
“Jog my memory, Player Will.”
His eyes had squeezed closed so tight, and the room full of people present for Chloe and
Bennett’s rehearsal dinner fell silent, in one of those strange waves, where it seems impossible for a hundred people to make no sound at all. I swore I could see his breath pick up, could see the sweat break out on his forehead. He was a terrified mess and he’d never looked more amazing to me. Love is weird.
“Marry me?” he’d said.
I’d walked up to him, taken the mic from his violently shaking hand, and whispered so that only he could hear, “Ask me again tonight. I’ll show you just how much I want it.”
He’d smiled so big, with such enormous relief and anticipation, but now, here I am, alone in our hotel room flipping through the channels on the local television.
Friends
Simpsons
Buffy
Some movie with Bruce Willis.
And Will is behind a closed door. Let’s be honest: he’s totally freaking out.
#
Twenty nine minutes and forty six seconds after he went into the bathroom, Will comes out. He’s got a towel wrapped around his waist, his hair is finger-combed and still wet, he’s clean shaven and, sweet ceramic Jesus, if things weren’t a little weird between us I’d already have him on his back and be riding him like a rodeo bull right there on the floor.
Should I just have said a simple ‘yes’ tonight at the rehearsal dinner? Here’s where I always seem to mess things up: telling him yes with his cock in my mouth seemed like such a more interesting way of accepting a proposal of marriage. But maybe when hounded by the cougar twins for days on end, and exhausted from the insanity of Chloe and Bennett’s wedding week on top of what we both would admit was some pretty stellar—and pretty constant— vacation sex, Will wanted me to give him a simple ‘yes’ and be done with it.
It’s just that I’m not simple. I’m not a straight line. I zig-zag and wander and get lost in tangents and I want to know what he was thinking tonight in particular. I want to talk about it and evaluate it and make sure it’s what he wants. The tattoo is on my skin, permanently now— All that is rare for the rare—in Will’s most careful handwriting, and my H is similarly inked on his hip, but what does marriage give us that these symbols don’t?
Sure, it gives us tradition and foundation, gives us a bond that I attach weight to, and this open acknowledgement of our commitment to a future together forever. And some pretty great tax benefits, eventually, let’s just be honest here. My answer would always be yes. He could ask me to run around the resort naked with him and I would say yes to that, too, because I want all of these adventures with him. But when we talk about marriage, I want it to be us, alone. Most definitely naked and on our way to putting some of his parts inside some of mine. I want him to say it again, just us, so I can see his face and hear his voice and know that he’s not just doing this because he thinks he should, or that—though less plausible—he got caught up in the moment.
I want him doing it because he can’t imagine another path for us.
“You okay over there?” I ask.
He bends down and retrieves a pair of boxers from his suitcase. “Yeah, why?”
“Because we’re in California and before we came you gave me the world’s longest lecture on ‘California’s scarce water resources and how it will affect the state’s economy and environment during one of the worst droughts on record,’ and how I shouldn’t shower for more than a few minutes if I could help it. And, incidentally, after you propose marriage and I suggest you ask me again when we are here together, and naked, and alone, you take a ten minute shower and then take another twelve minutes to shave.”
He drops the boxers instead of putting them on and stands at the foot of the bed in all of his tall, tattooed, naked and sculpted glory. And let me just take a moment to describe how much I love looking at Will naked. He’s not even erect, he’s just relaxed, and so at home in his own skin that I want to climb on him and burrow in there and make my home there, too.
“Hanna Bergstrom. You are freaking the fuck out.”
“I’m not.”
His blue eyes narrow in amusement. “You are.”
“You are,” I counter.
“I am not.”
He scratches his chin just below his lip and I need him kissing me now now now. I haven’t been alone with him since this morning when he pinned me to the bed and fucked me like it was our first time, savage and loud and so hard he was a dripping, sweaty mess, and I came so hard he had to pull me out of bed and into the shower.
“I’m beat from today,” he says. “I wanted some time to decompress so I could focus on you for a while now that we’re back.”
“Oh.”
He climbs onto the mattress, prowling. And now, yeah, he’s pretty erect. “I wanted my face clean shaven so I wouldn’t burn your thighs with my stubble.”
“That . . . was considerate.”
He bends down, kisses my bare knee. “Well, it’s a big night for me.”
“It is?”
“I’m proposing twice.” He drags his teeth up my leg from my knee to mid-thigh. “It seems like it might be a good time to impress my lady.”
“Will Sumner, you are dangerous to my lady bits.”
“You could take off these little shorts,” he says, tugging at the hem of my pajamas with his teeth, “and I could be dangerous inside your lady bits.”
We both stop moving and I stare down at him for a breath. “It sounds like you want to climb in there and lay some booby traps.”
He smiles. “Yeah,” he says with a growling little laugh, “that sounded better in my head.”
His hands slide up and my shorts come down and oh. I guess before we do anything as formal as proposing we’re doing this: his lips on my hip and then between my legs, wet and tongue sliding in pressing circles around my clit, and the hint of teeth that scares then thrills me.
Even more than his orchestrated attack on my body— when he tunes everything just right to have me twisting and begging and screaming for more—I love his dissolution into chaotic hunger, when he’s all teeth and growl, his whole face up between my legs, hands and fingers digging grooves into my skin to keep my thighs spread as wide as he wants them. I love when he’s a sloppy lover more than nearly anything because it tells me he’s lost in this. Lost in me. I know without having to be told that Will was a precise lover before me. Only ever perfect in execution, passionate enough to satisfy all parties, but never so savage that he lost himself. But with me, sometimes he zig-zags and wanders and gets lost in tangents. There’s no imminent end to this, we have all night. He takes his time and finally, finally lets himself be something other than controlled and distanced.
Like now. His tongue is everywhere and not where I need it, but I don’t care. His mouth on me is only sort of for me. Often it’s mostly for him, for my taste and sounds and the searching roll of my hips—close, closer, there. There. And then we meet in that place where it’s for both of us—what I want to get and what he wants to give and it gets bigger and bigger. Bigger than this room, bigger than the air outside. Bigger than the words marry me or yes or ask me again. But I say it anyway.
Yes. Please yes. Please yes.
I’m coming and my legs are closing in on his head, and he’s fighting me with a growl until I go limp, stars behind my eyes and bliss coursing through my blood.
“Yes?” he asks, smiling.
“Yes, I’ll marry you.”
“But I didn’t ask again yet.” He climbs my body, chin wet, lips wet, fingers wet.
Wordlessly, he asks me to lick his cock. He fists his hand around the base and stares at my lips as I lick them, then lick him. Unable to resist, he slides a finger in alongside his cock because he likes to feel my tongue with his fingertip.
With a tilt of his head to get a better view, he tells me, “Get it nice and wet.”
I can’t smile around him so my eyes do it for me.
He’s wet now. And hard. Slowly pulling from my mouth, he’s shifting slightly back and sliding it there, against tender, soft skin, in his favorite spot and where I swear Will would build a summer home and a winter home and his burial plot someday. The space between my breasts has known more of his kisses, whispered words, and drag of his cock than nearly any other part of my body.
“Squeeze me. Swallow me up,” he growls.
Here is where it might seem like the pleasure is only his—his cock, between my breasts—but really, it’s for me. The H tattoo is just in front of my eyes, sliding closer and away with the flexing of his hips. He watches the head appear and disappear between my breasts. I watch his tattoo. It’s black and thick, and—though I don’t know how—darker than his others. It’s not because it’s newer—he has a more recent Plum on his forearm, embedded and nearly hidden in his double helix. It’s almost like the H is denser—ink upon promise upon love upon devotion upon ink. Pressed into the layers of his skin, and I can’t ever resist touching it with my fingertip. Like his finger to my tongue, I just like how it feels.
I reach out and run my fingerprints over his tattoo while he plucks at my nipples and grunts filthy words about my tits and my wet slippery tongue and whether I want him to come on my chest or in my hair or between my legs—though they aren’t questions, not really. Will is so obscene, and it seems like he gets more and more open with me over time. I want him like that. He is every fantasy I never knew I had, and I will give him any fantasy he’s ever enjoyed.
He pulls back, slaps my breasts with his cock and makes a decision. “Roll over, Plum.”
After I sit up and kiss his chest, his neck, his sharp, smooth jaw, I do what he says. He watches me every second, eyes somehow both hard and tender. Hard because he’s strung tight, wants to just fuck. Tender because hello. He loves me more than I think he’s ever imagined loving.
My spine arches, like a reflex and his hands slide down my back and over the curve of my ass and he lifts my hips just enough to bend and lick me clit to backside—and then he’s there. At the edge. Teasing in and out and in and out.
“Will.”
With a groan he slides in all the way and it’s deep, so deep it doesn’t matter how many times he’s fucked me from behind, I feel it somewhere vital and tender, like my lungs or my heart or my throat. He pauses, spanks me. Let’s me catch my breath before his palm flattens on my back, flattens me down to my belly and he’s all along my skin, his entire front to my entire back, fucking me in these slow, forever long strokes.
“You love me?” he asks in to the warm skin just behind my ear.
“More than anything.”
His lips move, his tongue slides over the shell to the lobe. He bites me, sucks me, then whispers, voice coming out in little bursts, “It wasn’t just on the plane. It wasn’t just tonight. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
It . . . Marrying me . . .
He pulls back, stroking me from inside as I pant yes and yes and yes, and this Will is precise and controlled and careful. He’s thinking more about words than pleasure. “Living with you,” he says. “A house with a backyard.” He’s breathless, a little. His hand comes beneath me to play with my breast. “Fuck,” he grunts on an exhale. “You feel like a fist around me. Is it good? Does it feel right?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah it does. So fucking right.” He slides in, and out, and it’s thick, stretching, a pleasure that seems to radiate out and back in, from everywhere, every point on me and in me. I don’t know where my orgasm starts or how it builds but it does. It’s inside me and along my skin and deeper please Will deeper.
His fingers slide down to stroke me between my legs. “I don’t want a tattoo or a girlfriend. I want always. I want a wife.”
“Yeah?” I manage.
He flips me over to my side and lines up with me, facing me, my leg over his hip and he’s tender now as he slides back in. I’m so wet, he must love this.
He does, reaching between us to feel the part of himself that slides out, slick. His wet fingers move up my body, cage my breast. I feel heavy and sensitive in his palm and he sucks at my nipple before finally, finally he lifts his head and kisses me with eyes open, full of some emotion that hasn’t been labeled anywhere, by anyone.
He kisses me in these tiny, plucking kisses. Lips and tongue. Lips. Oh, his lips. Soft and strong and obliterating.
“Is this what you needed?” he asks, pulling back. His eyes are so clear now, not even a hint of teasing. Will knows sex and pleasure, but in the past couple of months we’ve acknowledged that we’ll probably stumble through the emotions part together. We’re hopeless sometimes at knowing what we’re supposed to be doing . . . it’s so much easier just to ask.
Is this it?
Am I giving the right thing?
Am I doing this right to make you want me forever?
I nod. “This is what I needed.”
“Just us?” he whispers, rolling on top of me. “Just me, talking about how in love with you I am while I tell you I need to spend the rest of my life with you?”
I nod again, leaning into his kiss, hungry for more than he’s giving me. He’s being controlled and seductive but I want tongue and sounds and the abandon that gives way to teeth and maybe even a bit lip, a taste of blood. I want his unhinged, desperate groan when he’s so close and so close and closer and my bite gets him there.
“I wanted to feel you like this,” I admit.
“Hard?”
“Yeah,” I manage, though it is and isn’t what I meant. I want him hard because it means he’s craving me, but more than that I want to feel nothing but us in the room.
The thought—it’s official: we have this earth-shattering thing between us, and a life we are going to build together—cracks me open and makes my throat tight, my eyes burn like I might cry, but only because the overwhelmed feeling I get when I think about him makes my emotional wires cross. Happiness so enormous it makes my heart ache. Relief so intense it makes my muscles tighten.
He looks down at me, my imperfectly perfect Will with his dark hair falling into his eyes and his lips parted like he wants to bend down and bite, his inked arms so stiff as he hovers over me, and he must see something in my face because his expression breaks and the control is gone. In its place is this euphoric, relieved smile and he pulls back once, carefully, before he’s moving so fast, so hard that my body jerks, snapping under his movements.
“You belong to me so completely,” he says through a laugh, or a grunt, or both.
My cheeks flush and it spreads down to my chest, because I know now that he’s seen everything I’m thinking, the I love you and the I need you and the I’d do anything for us. Really, anything. Hot coals and parched deserts have nothing over my pure desire to keep this person in my heart and over my body and deftly feeding questions and dreams into my brain.
Sensation rises like steam to the surface of my skin and I’m pulling him close and on top of me, all of that solid weight and he’s slippery with sweat, skin so hot, groaning so deep and hungry into my neck to come,
come,
please, Plum, come I can’t
I can’t
I don’t think I can hold on.
My orgasm rolls inside me, threating to spill over and then I’m making that noise he loves, the sharp choking cry that breaks up all of my words. His face is pressed into my neck, kissing, and biting and loving me with his arms dug beneath and wrapped around my shoulders so he can push as deep as physically possible when he comes right behind me.
He stills, breathing more heavily into my skin than he does when he races. I slide my fingertips down his sweaty back, over his ass to hold him there. In me, deep.
“Will you marry me?” he asks.
“Yes.”
He exhales, long and slow, kissing the salt of my sweat from my neck and then bringing those perfect lips to mine. With a smile, he kisses me like he’s exhausted and happy and satisfied. . . but then it deepens, with tongue and sounds and his hips starting to move, just a little, like he might not be done here quite yet. “You sure you don’t want to make me ask again?”
Thanks for reading! We get a ton of emails asking what we have next, here it is:
Sublime
True love may mean certain death in a ghostly affair of risk and passion from New York Times bestselling duo Christina Lauren, authors of Beautiful Bastard. Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author of Shatter Me calls Sublime “a beautiful, haunting read.” Oct 14th
And along with Gallery Books, we’re thrilled to announce two new additions to the internationally bestselling Beautiful Bastard series.
BEAUTIFUL BELOVED, an eShort, features Max and Sara Stella (from Beautiful Stranger) as they struggle to balance passion and play with the arrival of their new beautiful bundle of joy. Feb 2015
In BEAUTIFUL SECRET (the fourth full-length Beautiful novel), the brother of Max Stella (Beautiful Stranger) comes to New York City on business from England. Niall Stella has a classically stiff upper lip, a mind for engineering, and no clue when it comes to women. Too bad for him he’s about to get obliterated by one . . . and he’ll never see it coming. In a fun little twist, this is where the Beautiful series meets up with Christina Lauren’s new series Wild Seasons. April 2015
