Chapter 29 #2
I took in his leg and the rest of him. My fingertips skimmed the socket and the skin around it without flinching. I took my time cataloging all of him with open desire. Wes was tense, but his breathing relaxed when he realized I wasn’t pitying him—I was turned on.
When he finally stepped free of the denim, he was just .
. . Wes. All broad shoulders and corded muscle and long lines, the familiar and the new knitted into something that made my chest ache.
His prosthetic caught the lamplight, metal and carbon and proof that his body had broken and healed in new ways .
. . and he still sat down in that chair like a king.
He scooted back, legs spread, bare feet solid on the floor. The condom box waited on the nightstand, an unspoken promise.
Wes’s hand stilled at his prosthetic. The room seemed to hold its breath with me as he loosened the liner, fingers working the familiar catches. I stepped back to give him room.
When he finally eased the prosthetic off, setting it carefully beside the chair, something in my chest cracked wide open.
The stump of his thigh was pale and scarred, tender in a way he never let anyone see, and for a heartbeat I was terrified he’d mistake my silence for pity instead of what it was—pure, aching desire.
It was an honor to see him so vulnerable.
I stepped closer and slid my palm over his bare thigh, above the place where bone and skin ended.
“There you are,” I murmured, because it felt wrong to pretend this wasn’t part of him.
His shoulders dropped a fraction, some tight, invisible thing unspooling as he let me look, really look, at all of him.
I picked up his prosthetic and walked it to rest safely beside the bed.
“I’m good,” he said, more to himself than to me as I turned to him.
He leaned back, hands braced on the arms of the chair, his gaze raking over me from toes to throat. When his eyes met mine again, something darker had settled there.
Old Wes. New Wes. All layered into one man who looked like he’d happily devour me whole.
“Now get on your knees and crawl,” he said quietly.
Heat flashed through me so fast my breath hitched.
There was no cruelty in it, no edge of mockery. Just a low, thick want and a trust that I understood the difference.
“Yes,” I whispered, my knees softening as I sank to the floor.
I started forward, slow on purpose. Each movement rolled through my hips, a lazy sway I could feel in the looseness of my spine and the drag of my hair over my shoulders.
My palms slid across the hardwood, then the edge of the rug, then the last strip of floor between us.
Every few crawled inches, I glanced up through my lashes just to watch what it did to him.
His breathing went rough almost immediately. The muscles in his forearms stood out, tendons tight as his hands flexed on the arms of the chair like he was fighting the urge to reach for me. His gaze burned over every inch of skin like I was something he’d been starving for.
By the time I reached him, his knuckles were white on the chair arms. I slid my hands up his shin, over his knee, and along the thick muscles of his thighs. His breath hissed out when I skimmed higher, the sound punching straight between my ribs.
I rose slowly, uncoiling over him, letting my body brush his, skin to skin, until I was straddling his lap, knees braced on either side of his hips.
“You’re going to kill me,” he murmured, eyes searching my face like he was trying to memorize it.
“That would be a tragic time for your luck to run out,” I said, even as my hands shook a little reaching for the nightstand.
The condom box was cool against my palm. I flipped it open, plucked one from the foil, and tore it carefully. His gaze didn’t leave my face, but his breath went a little ragged when my hand slid down to him.
He was hard and hot in my grip, a solid, undeniable answer to every doubt he’d ever had about his body.
His jaw clenched as I unrolled it down the length of him. It was a heady thrill to see him fully ready for me.
When I was done, I settled my hands on his shoulders, the tendons there tight under my fingers. His palms slid up my thighs, over my hips, fingers curving around my waist like they belonged there.
“Last chance to downgrade to advanced cuddling,” I said, trying to make my voice light and failing.
“Not a fucking chance,” he breathed.
I shifted my weight, lifted just enough, and reached between us to guide him. The head of him nudged against me, and my lungs forgot what to do. His hand slid between my thighs, teasing my pussy.
“Fuck,” he growled. “You’re so fucking wet.”
I hissed at his words and lined the head of his cock at my entrance. We both stilled.
His eyes locked on mine, wide and dark and a little scared.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded, throat too tight for words. “You?”
His hands tightened on my waist. “Ask me again when I can think.”
I sank down, inch by devastating inch, every nerve ending lighting up.
Achingly slowly he filled me.
I sank down further, feeling every new stretch as my body opened around him. Heat climbed my throat, my head tipping back as the fullness built, rich and overwhelming. His fingers clamped down on my hips, the grip bordering on bruising, like he was anchoring both of us to the moment.
Our breaths stuttered in the same broken rhythm—mine on every downward slide, his on every helpless thrust up to meet me—until I finally took all of him, hips flush to his.
For a second we just stayed there, locked together, chests heaving, foreheads almost touching, sharing the same thin slice of air while our bodies learned the feel of being completely, irreversibly connected.
He let out a low, guttural sound that I felt all the way through my spine. His head tipped back, jaw clenched, then snapped forward again like he refused to miss a single second of this.
“Holy shit,” he rasped. “Clara.”
“That good, huh?” My voice shook.
His fingers flexed, hauling me a fraction closer. “You have no idea.”
We found a rhythm the way we’d found everything so far—with a little awkwardness, a lot of communication, and more want than sense.
At first I was hyperaware of every adjustment he made with his leg—the way his foot pushed into the floor, how he shifted his hips to keep everything aligned. I checked in constantly.
“Here okay?” I asked, rocking my hips forward, grinding my clit against the base of his cock.
“Yeah,” he grunted. “Right there.”
“What about this?” I angled differently, feeling the drag of him in a new place that made stars burst behind my eyes.
His grip tightened. “Jesus, Duchess. Yeah. That. Don’t you dare stop doing that.”
His answers got less verbal as we went, more hands than words. He started guiding me without thinking about it, tilting my hips, slowing me with a squeeze of his fingers when he needed to breathe, urging me faster when he wanted more. Filth slipped out between gritted teeth.
“Look at you,” he rasped when I leaned back, bracing my hands on his chest. “Riding me like you were made for it.”
Heat pooled low and heavy. My cheeks burned, but there was no way in hell I was looking away from him.
Somewhere in the motion, I stopped tracking what was “best” for his injury and started memorizing little things about him instead.
The way his eyes went half lidded right before a groan broke free.
The angle that dragged a curse out of him and had his nails scraping down my back.
The way his chest hitched when I leaned in, hands in his hair, and kissed him while my body moved over his.
A sharp ache bloomed in my chest mid-thrust, sudden and terrifying.
I could do this forever, whispered something traitorous and true.
With him. Only him.
I cupped his face, pulled his mouth up to mine, and kissed him like that thought hadn’t just shifted my entire axis. His lips were hot and sure, tongue stroking into my mouth in a rhythm that matched the slow roll of his hips up into me.
He broke away on a ragged breath, forehead pressed to mine, voice raw against my lips. “You have no idea what you’re giving me back.”
Emotion punched through the heat. Tears pricked, unexpected and fierce.
“I think I do,” I managed. I hoped he didn’t notice the wobble in my voice.
The tension coiled tighter, lower, my muscles trembling with the effort of holding on. His hands were everywhere—hips, waist, up my back, in my hair—pulling me in, anchoring me to him.
“Clara,” he groaned, voice breaking on my name. “I can feel you—”
“Wes,” I gasped, the world narrowing to the drag, the heat, the way everything inside me clenched and climbed and begged. “I’m—”
That last word dissolved into a sound I couldn’t have identified if my life depended on it.
The pleasure hit like a snapped wire. My whole body went tight around him first—thighs locking at his hips, spine arching, every muscle strung to breaking—before something inside me finally let go and broke wide open.
I clung to his shoulders, nails digging into his skin as I rode it out, his name tearing from my throat on a ragged gasp while wave after wave rolled through me, hot and blinding and so intense it felt like relief.
He followed me over the edge, a half second behind, his whole body going tight beneath mine. His arms banded around me, hauling me against his chest as he groaned into my neck, the sound low and broken and so grateful it made my eyes sting.
We stayed like that for a long moment—tangled, shaking, breathing each other’s air.
His heart hammered against my ribs. My thighs trembled on either side of his hips.
His injured leg didn’t flinch. It didn’t seem to exist for him at all except as something that had done exactly what he needed it to do.
Eventually, my muscles gave up and I slumped against him, cheek pressed to his shoulder. He smoothed a hand down my spine, slow and steady, like he wasn’t sure whether he was soothing me or himself.
I could have stayed there forever.
“Hey,” he murmured into my hair after a while, voice rough but soft. “You okay?”
I let out a laugh that shook. “Define okay.”
He huffed against my temple. “Not dead, not mad, can still feel your legs?”
“Barely,” I said. “But in a good way.”
He held me tighter, like he could squeeze the words into something more permanent.
The thought of this being a lesson for him felt ridiculous.
There was nothing clinical about the way he’d looked at me.
Nothing casual about the way my heart had nearly broken open when he said I was giving him something back.
This had not been practice. It was sex, yes—hot and messy and consuming—but there had been something threaded through every touch, every kiss.
A life, whispered the part of me I didn’t let anyone see. This is what a life with him would feel like.
I wanted it with a bone-deep ferocity that scared the hell out of me.
I pressed my face into his neck, breathing him in, trying to memorize the exact mix of soap and skin and sweat—of safety and danger and home.
Somewhere along the way, our lesson had stopped being about his body and started becoming something else entirely.
My heart was in so much more trouble than I’d ever planned for.