Chapter 10
10
A ubree woke up and for the first time in a long time, she felt relaxed and well rested.
Opening her eyes she saw the couch across the room. The couch she'd fallen asleep on the night before.
Well, she'd fallen asleep on Ruben on the couch.
The soft hiss of sizzling bacon on the stove top turned her head.
The scent was incredible, but what was even better was the sight in front of it.
Ruben in well-worn jeans and no shirt.
Turning on her side, she felt the sheets beside her, and they felt warm.
Maybe it was just wishful thinking on her part, but that's what it felt like. Smoothing her hand over the empty spot on her bed, she let out a soft groan. "Careful," she mumbled into the quiet of the room, "don't get burned."
"Oh. I've got this. If there's one thing I can do, it's cook bacon." His shoulders shook with laughter. "And eat bacon." He turned to look over at her and her breath caught in her lungs.
What would it be like to have this kind of a life every day?
Ruben here, in her space.
In their space.
She felt something shift inside of her and an ache developed between her legs. Her breasts swelled and grew heavier. Her nipples-
Aubree lifted the flat sheet she used as a blanket and tossed it off of her body. Just thinking about him made her too hot to have things touch her skin. "Can... can I help?"
Ruben shrugged. "Things are almost done. You can just come and take a seat at the table."
His smile warmed her all over and she got up from her bed struggling with the heat she felt inside. "I think I should... wash my hands... or something."
"Okay," he turned back to the stove, "everything should be ready to eat when you come back."
Licking at her lips, she made a quick trip to the bathroom before washing her hands at a speed she'd never used before, vigorously rubbing her hands with the oat milk soap she used all the time. And brushed her teeth as if there was a timer ticking down the seconds.
With a quick swipe of a dampened towel over her face, she blinked back at herself in the mirror.
She could see the warmth of a blush in her cheeks and across her chest above her slouchy t-shirt.
Not wanting to waste a single moment she hung up the towel to dry and stepped out of the bathroom door, drawing in a gasp of breath when she saw him still standing at her stove.
He turned slightly, looking over his shoulder. "That was fast."
"I guess..." She cleared her throat to make sure she still had a voice and walked toward him. "I guess I was worried that I'd come back out and you'd be gone."
He shook his head, and she saw the morning sunlight illuminate his back. That's when she saw them again.
His scars.
It was one thing in the bright sunlight, but in her kitchen with the sunlight smoothing over his back like a physical touch, it hit home.
Before she knew what she was doing she was standing behind him, her hand lifted over his scars, but not touching.
"Does it still hurt?"
He froze for a moment, his body going still.
"You don't have to-"
"Aubree."
She heard the click as he turned off the burner on the stove top. He set the tongs off to the side and turned around so he was facing her.
"You can ask me anything." He reached behind him and grabbed up one of her towels from the oven door handle. He wiped his hands clean and reached back to put it away, but he missed when her hands reached out and caught at his waist. "Anything," he reminded her.
"Does it hurt when you stand around for a bit?"
He lifted a brow at her question but answered it immediately. "Not so much anymore. I spent a lot of time building up my core muscles and back strength."
She nodded, thinking about the times when her back would start to ache. "How long did that take you?"
His hands settled on her shoulders and slowly swept down her bare arms as if they were falling in slow motion. "It took a while. I didn't want to give in to the fear that I might not be able to get back in the game again. I pushed, a little too hard at first. I almost pushed myself into traction."
Aubree's lips tightened at his words.
She'd seen those devices before.
She'd passed by rooms where other patients were in traction, and she'd wondered what it would feel like to be trapped in something like that.
"Hey," Ruben's hands rubbed at the outsides of her arms as if he could feel how cold she was inside, "are you okay?"
When she didn't answer him, he leaned down, bending his knees to look her in the eye.
"Breathe with me, baby. In..."
It took her a moment to copy his in drawn breath.
"And out..."
She lifted her chin and lowered it as the breath rushed out through her nose.
He smiled. "Through your mouth. In..."
She followed along and the tension in her body eased with each circuit of breath.
Ruben lifted his hands to her cheeks and gently held her as they went through another cycle of breathing.
Aubree blinked back her tears. "Sorry," she mumbled a little under her breath.
"No apologies, baby. That one came out of the blue."
She shrugged one shoulder. "I should have seen it coming."
Ruben didn't agree with her words. "You can't always see it coming, Aubree. But you can deal with it when it comes."
She looked up at him. A soft smile on her lips. "That's experience speaking."
He nodded.
"And I know that, too," she admitted, "but it's sometimes hard to see it when you're in the middle of it. It's like I go stupid momentarily. It's not an excuse-"
"But it's the truth, baby."
His hands had moved to her back, gently rubbing away the tension that was still tied up inside of her.
"I feel like having you here," she felt her cheeks burning bright at her thoughts, "is a great step in the right direction. I know I have to do this on my own, but it... it's nice having help."
"You never have to do it on your own as long as I'm around."
She breathed in and caught the scent of his skin, warmed by the sun and it brought her mind back to the dream she'd had the night before. When she'd slept in his arms.
She slipped her hands around to his back and paused before she could touch his scars.
Aubree looked up into his eyes and saw the hunger that was gnawing at her reflected in his gaze.
"Aubree."
She licked her lips and saw the way his eyes chased after the movement of her tongue.
She wrapped her arms around him, bringing them flush against each other and even though she knew that she'd spend the night in his arms, this... this was so much more.
His lips pressed against hers and her whole body lit up from the inside.
The feeling of his body leaning into hers didn't set off any warning bells. Instead, it made her feel safe and protected.
She clung to him, opening her mouth under the coaxing pressure of his lips.
Fuck him.
Aubree was like wildfire in his arms. She made him burn.
It was a simple touch, her hands against his back, her lips seeking his, but together? And that breathy moan against his lips? He felt like his whole world had expanded and contracted at the same time.
His focus was on her like so much of the last few weeks had been, but this was different. Laser focused.
Every breath.
Each murmur that he drank down.
Every shift and tremor of her body.
He touched her and she touched him, clothes falling away and discarded under their feet.
They stumbled against the table, chuckling and laughing, and when they reached the bed, it was Aubree who saved them from falling to the ground at the foot of it.
It was her hands on his back, turning him before he sat down heavily onto the edge of it.
Their momentum sent him down to the mattress with her body falling against him.
On top of him.
His hand found her breast. His fingertips plucking at the tip of her breast.
Her mouth pulled away from his and she looked down into his eyes, her own hazy with passion.
"Your hands..."
He laid one hand on her perfect ass, and he cupped her breast with the other, brushing his thumb over her nipple.
The tender flesh tightened and pebbled from his touch.
"Oh, wow..." She arched her back, bracing her hands on his shoulders and looking down at him.
He loved the way her eyes looked to him. Warm and brown, but wide and hazy with passion.
He broke his gaze from hers and looked down over her body from her face to her breasts, over her belly and down to where his body was pressed so intimately against hers. "So beautiful."
He plucked at her nipple with his one hand as he surged upward and captured her other nipple in his mouth.
The wordless sound that came from her lips was sharp and then devolved in a heavy groan.
The feel of her flesh in his mouth, the hard tip of her breast as he dragged his tongue over it, it all helped make him harder than he had been moments before.
Aubree wiggled on top of him, her legs slipping to his sides, bringing his cock in more intimate contact with her body.
Fuck.
He murmured the word against her breast, his teeth pressing against her tender flesh.
She tensed on top of him, but she didn't push him away.
Instead, she shifted a moment later, rocking her hips against him, undulating in a slow roll, dragging her sex against his.
He felt his heart stutter in his chest as his cock wept precum. He felt it touch his belly and cool against his skin.
"It..." she groaned, "it feels so good. So... hard."
He smiled, feeling his own ego stroked by her words.
Ruben lashed her nipple with his tongue, enjoying the rough scratch of her skin against him.
She pushed at his shoulders, sitting up, breaking his contact with her breast.
He released her other nipple from the searching touch of his hand and found her forearm to rub his palm along her skin. "Do you want to stop?"
Aubree shook her head, her dark, midnight hair brushing over her shoulders. "No. I don't want to stop. I want more."
With her hands braced on his chest, she rocked her hips against him again and he watched as he bit her lower lip as she rode him, rubbing her sex against his.
"Fuck," Reuben ground out the syllable as pinpricks of light flared in the outside edges of his vision. "So warm." He groaned and rocked his hips forward so that her next movement had her sliding higher toward his belly.
He watched as the tanned and ruddy head of his cock disappeared into the inky curls that covered her mound.
The slick wet heat that met the crown made his vision sparkle with flares of light.
Just the touch of her heat against his erection was enough to make him want to throw caution to the wind, but no.
"Babe."
She undulated her hips as she sat on top of him, her eyes fixed on his. "Yeah?"
"I... I hate to say it," he reached his arm out toward the kitchen area, "but I need to get my wallet out of my pants."
She paused, her hands rose to her hair to lift it off of her neck. "I don't want to move."
A moment later, her body made a mockery of her words as her hips rolled again, drawing a low moan from her lips.
"I like you," she sighed. "No, I love you right where you are. I think if I move," her hands moved up her thighs to stop at hips, lifting her breasts as she adjusted her posture, "I might come from the loss alone."
Fuuuck.
There was something so innocent about Aubree in so many ways, but she was also very frank with her feelings. Her words.
"I don't want to move off the bed, either." He bit the inside of his cheek as her wet heat felt like it was wrapping itself around him. He wanted to feel her all around him, but the last thing he wanted to do was break their physical connection.
"'Ben?"
He smiled at the way she'd lost some of his name.
It was getting harder and harder for his brain to function when all of his blood had rushed down into his dick.
"Y-yeah, baby?"
"I'm clean. I had a full blood work up before going to the Refuge."
He would have known that if his brain had been working beyond a level just barely over basic bodily functions like breathing and blood pumping through his veins.
"Same." He ground out the word even though she would have likely known that since he was on staff.
Her smile told him that his answer was a good one. "And I have an IUD. Implanted just before my... just before the crash."
"So-"
"Do you really need to get up?"
He moved his hands to her thighs and up to her waist. "Not unless you want to be on the bottom."
She licked her lips and for a second he imagined what it would be like to have those lips wrapped around his-
"Oh!"
He looked up at Aubree and saw her eyes widen.
"Whatever you were thinking about," her voice was barely a whisper, "I like what it did."
The same thought crossed his mind and this time he was more cognizant about what those thoughts in his head did to his body.
Aubree arched her back, and her head dropped back as her hand reached down between her legs.
Ruben couldn't help but follow her hand and stare as her fingers deftly slipped between them and when he heard the soft hitch in her breath telling him that she'd found what she was searching for. There was no way to ignore the sudden rush of liquid heat that bathed his cock.
Before he could say a thing, she leaned forward, bringing his cock into more contact with her sex and suddenly, her fingertips in touch with the swollen head of his.
He heard a sound more of a grunt than a groan and recognized it as his own voice.
When Aubree looked down at him, her eyes were heavy lidded and from the angle of their contact he could see the darker, dustier hue of her nipples between them.
It was a sight that he'd never want to forget.
"I," she licked her lips, "I want to be on top."
Smiling, he nodded. "Do you need my help?"
Her first, instinctual move was to shake her head, but a moment later he saw her bite into the inside of her cheek. "Let's see."
Leaning forward again, she put one hand down by his ear and leaned in, covering his lips with her own.
Ruben found that her heightened passion and her more dominant actions stirred his own passions to a new high and when he reached for her, his hands moving across her back, she broke away with a soft pop.
"Wait." She sounded out of breath when she spoke to him. "I don't think I can think when your hands are on me."
She bit into her bottom lip, and he wondered if she knew how adorable she looked when she was concentrating so hard.
But that thought disappeared when she lifted her hips and rocked back.
Her hand gasped his cock at the same moment the heat of her pussy kissed its tip.
His back arched on the bed, pushing him in past the sensitive folds of her sex.
He could feel her shock at the intrusion, but when her eyes refocused on his, he saw the way her eyes had changed. Her eyes that had been brown before were darker, unfocused.
When she moved again, sinking down on his cock, and Ruben could barely hold himself together.
Could barely hold it in.
His gaze lowered again and watched her stretch around him, taking him deeper into her body. It was heaven even if she was tight enough that he worried she might cut off circulation to his dick. He couldn't seem to care when he was enveloped in her heat.
She lifted her arms, locking her hands behind her head as soon as she bottomed out, sealing their flesh together.
Lifting her face up toward the ceiling, she rocked her hips, creating the most amazing friction between them. Back and forth, back and forth, she sighed, her nipples tightening even more as her breasts swayed with her rhythmic movements.
He'd dreamt of her before. Wrapped his hand around himself and lost himself in the fantasy, but it paled in comparison to the feeling of her body stretched around him, her gorgeous body riding him on her bed. Ruben reached up and skirted his hands from her waist to her ribs and cupped her breasts in his hands.
Aubree dropped her chin, nailing him with a look. "I can't..." She swallowed and moved against him, harder, hungrier. "I can't believe it."
He watched as her skin pinked across the tops of her breasts and the way her hips ground against him. "Can't believe what?"
"This." She groaned and covered his hands with her own. "You and me. I've never been with anyone where every inch of my body wants to touch yours. I want to give you everything I am and drown in your touch."
He felt the subtle scratch of her swollen nipples against his palms just as she changed the angle, and he swore he saw stars. "I'll drown you, Aubree, but not just in my touch."
He half sat up, turning to drop his feet down to the floor.
Aubree gasped and dropped her hands to his shoulders to keep her balance.
With her leaning into him, he helped her find a different rhythm as he pressed his lips to her throat.
There he could feel her hunger and taste the sheen of sweat on her skin.
He'd never felt so close to another person before. Never felt so much a part of someone else's life.
Buried inside of her, he felt the tremulous flutter of her walls against him. He tasted the pulse along the side of her neck, and when she came, he heard her keening cry and pulled her down against him so he could enjoy the feeling of his cum painting the walls of her sex. She shook against him, collapsing against his chest until her cheek came to rest on his shoulder, her hands tucked between them against his chest.
He cradled her closer to his chest, he wrapped his arms around her and rocked her gently.
“This is what I’ve wanted,” he murmured softly as he felt her breath fan across his chest. “You, in my arms.”
She sighed and he felt the warmth of her lips brush against his skin. “Me, too.”
He knew she was barely awake, but he knew she still might hear him. “I want to drown in you, too.”
“Hmm?” She opened her eyes and looked up at him. “You’re a good swimmer. How would that work?”
“Love,” he told her as he lifted a hand to comb his fingers through her hair. “I love you like crazy.”