Chapter 58
CHAPTER 58
CHARLOTTE
“I don’t want to make you cry. Ever.” Those green eyes are liquid, and his mouth is tense.
“But you are,” I murmur and smile a little. The numbness was safer than this, the bubbling of emotions inside of me. I wipe the tears off my cheek. “I haven’t felt anything like this for someone since… him. I’ve been strict with myself. Only temporary arrangements, only men who don’t… who aren’t really interested in anything long-term with me.”
“I know,” he says. “Even if I find it hard to believe that men wouldn’t be interested in you in that way.”
I chuckle weakly. I’m standing at the edge of an abyss, unable to see the bottom. Not seeing a safe way across. “See? You say something like that, and I can tell that you actually mean it.”
His long fingers wipe another tear away. “I do mean it.”
“You don’t do relationships, either,” I whisper.
“No. I haven’t had time.” His lips curve. “But I’m willing to try, Chaos. Work isn’t the only thing that’s important to me. I want more days with you. I want to go surfing and hold you when you sleep. There is more to life than just work.”
I look at the hollow at the base of his throat, where I see his throbbing pulse point. “It’s all I know,” I confess. For years, I’ve thrown myself into other people’s stories to avoid dealing with my own.
Aiden’s hand tips my face up, angling it toward his. “You know more than you think,” he murmurs and kisses me. “You know what you mean to me.”
My tears have slowed. Settled into a deeper emotion, flowing through me and into my grip on the fabric of his T-shirt. “I don’t know what we’re doing,” I tell him, “but I know I don’t want to stop.”
“Sweetheart,” he says, and his deep voice is achingly quiet. “Letting you go would kill me. You’re mine now, for as long as you want to be.”
I wrap my arms around his neck. The hollow inside me has transformed along with the sadness, and all I want is to fill it. And only he can do that. “Take me to bed,” I murmur against his lips.
His arms slide down and circle my waist. “You’re sure? You’re sad.”
“I’m emotional,” I whisper. “Not the same thing.”
He lingers for a moment, his touch warm against my skin, before he lifts me off the ground. I wrap my legs around his waist and grip him tight. Aiden walks up the stairs with me clinging to him like that, ignoring my whispered I can walk. He pushes open the door to his bedroom with his shoulder.
“Aiden,” I say.
He lays me down on top of his duvet and climbs over my sprawling body, settling on top of me. Both of us are still fully clothed.
My heart is beating so fast that I can hear the thunder in my ears.
“Yes?”
I lock my knees around his hips and pull him close until most of his weight rests on me, deliciously crushing me into the mattress. I feel heavy and light at the same time.
Too many emotions are swirling inside me.
I need him. I need him so much that I think it might shatter me, the final blow in a fight I never knew I’d been waging. It cripples the control I’ve so carefully built.
“We’ve always used a condom.”
His mouth hovers over my neck. “Yes. You prefer it, and it’s safer.”
“Yes. But I’m on birth control, and I’m clean. I took a test just a few months ago. And… I’ve never had sex without one.”
Aiden is completely motionless for a good few moments, long enough for me to wonder if I’ve fucked up again.
“We could try it?” I ask. “If you want to?”
He buries his head in the crook of my neck with a groan. “God, Chaos. You’re really trying to kill me. But I’ll die happy.”
I run my hands through his hair and use my nails the way I know he likes. He groans again. “I had a checkup a while back. Haven’t been with anyone since. So yes,” he says and lifts himself onto his elbow, “we can try fucking without a condom. Although I don’t think there’ll be much trying involved.”
I love it when he looks like this, hair mussed, olive skin, those brilliant green eyes, and so big and warm above me. Like he belongs to only me. A version of reserved for my eyes only. Aiden, when he’s no one but himself. Not the CEO, not the brother, not the figure in front of a crowd.
I reach for the hem of his T-shirt.
He lets me undress him and uses the moments in between to kiss me. To ease down the zipper of my jeans and to run his big hands over my body until the ache inside me spikes.
When I reach into his pants, he’s already hard. I grip him tight and revel in the sound of his breath hitching.
“Charlotte,” he mutters. “Say again what you told me earlier.”
I arch into him, my nipples against his chest. “What part?”
“That you’re… falling for me. That you don’t want to stop what’s happening between us.”
I rest my forehead against his. “Okay,” I whisper. I repeat the words and feel him twitch in my hand.
He groans again and then pulls away from me completely.
“I’m already too close,” he mutters and reaches for my panties. He shimmies them down my legs and pushes my thighs apart. Any lingering self-consciousness in me is long since gone.
It’s been replaced by the warm blanket of need he surrounds me with.
“So pretty,” he murmurs and leans between my legs. This time, I surrender right away to the sensations his tongue produces. Let them sweep through me until tears well in my eyes for an entirely different reason. He curls his fingers inside me and sucks on my clit, and I break apart like he’s taught me to do, effortlessly and without any shame. There’s enough of it out in the real world.
It doesn’t belong in bed with us, too.
I rake my hand through his hair. His dedication to my pleasure has been the most surprising thing in all of this. I had no idea sex could be like that.
“Come here,” I murmur, pulling him between my legs. I want to see him. Feel his skin against mine.
Aiden braces himself on an elbow beside my face. His shoulders are broad, the hair on his head and chest the same brown color. In the dimmed spotlight, his green eyes are dark.
He reaches between us and grips himself. Notches against my entrance and then, slowly, with his eyes on mine, pushes inside me.
I love this part.
He groans when he’s fully seated, his forehead resting on mine.
Both of us are breathing hard.
When he starts to move, it’s with slow, rolling thrusts that I feel deep within. I wrap my legs around him and lock my ankles behind his lower back. Run my nails all over his back.
Aiden reaches out to his bedside table and grabs my vibrator, the small one that has been my solo companion during all my trips.
He tucks it between our bodies, against my clit.
“Lowest setting,” I tell him and stretch my arms out above my head. Luxuriating in him, in the heat, the feeling of being filled. “I want to come when you do.”
Aiden groans. “It’s like you were made for me.”
The vibrations and his deep thrusts make my breath hitch. Oh. This won’t take long at all.
He settles atop me, my nipples brush his chest. “Stay,” he says in between thrusts.
“I’m here.”
“After the memoir’s done.” He kisses my neck. “Stay in LA to write your own book. Live here. Figure it out.”
A wave sweeps through me. It’s desire, it’s need, and it’s something else I can’t name. All I know is that it’s big and terrifying and delicious.
The fire inside my chest is scorching, and I have to close my eyes against another sudden swell of tears.
“Stay here with me,” he repeats. He’s everywhere—deep inside me, above me, around me.
We have things to figure out. Things to talk about. But right now, all that feels trifling, and my brain can’t hold on to a single thought.
I grip him tighter against me. Arms, legs. Flex my inner muscles around his cock, and he groans against my neck.
“I’ll stay.”
Aiden growls and his hips stutter. Once, twice, pushing the vibrator firmly against my clit. My climax takes me by surprise. My fingers turn into claws digging into Aiden’s shoulder blades.
His body goes rigid, and then he groans against my flesh, muttering my name in his hoarse voice. His hips stutter into me as he finds his release.
An eternity later, we lie sweaty and panting on his bed. He’s still on top of me, inside me. Warm and handsome.
I run my hand over the muscles of his back. My eyelids feel heavy. “I didn’t know you could feel it,” I murmur. “When a man comes inside you? But I did, this time. Without the condom.”
Aiden’s still buried inside me, and I feel a faint twitch. He groans against my temple. “The death of me,” he mutters again.
I nuzzle against him. “Are you gonna pull out?”
“No,” he says and tugs me firmly against him. “We’re gonna sleep just like this.”
His mouth returns to my temple, and his hand sweeps in slow circles over my hip. Soothing and warm. I’m close to sleep when I hear him mumble in my ear.
“You said you were falling for me, Chaos?”
“Mm-hmm, yeah. I did.”
“I’ve already fallen.”