Chapter 24
A Small Death
IVY
I’m not in a hurry. I tell myself I am not even sure this is what I am about to do, though my body, which is several minutes ahead of my brain, has already decided.
I run my palm across the soft cotton of his shirt over my belly, feeling the fabric against my skin and the weight of my own breasts under it, the heaviness, the way my nipples push at the cotton.
I cup myself through the shirt, both hands. I run my thumbs over my nipples and feel them harden further under the friction, and a small jolt of sensation goes from there to a much lower part of me.
I think about Alistair's mouth.
The very specific weight of him bending to take a nipple between his lips—the heat of his tongue, the slow circle of it, the moment he closes his teeth gently and I lose track of what room I am in.
I think about him doing it last night, in his office, against the steamed glass.
I think about him in the dungeon, while the rope held me still.
I think about him doing it the very first time, in the suite at the hotel, when I was concussed and bleeding and could not believe my luck.
My hand slides lower. Under the shirt now, palm flat against bare skin, dragging slowly down across my stomach.
I am not yet touching myself where I want to be touched.
I am making myself wait, the way Alistair makes me wait.
The cotton bunches around my hips. The cool air of the room finds the bare skin between my thighs and I shiver.
I open my legs slightly. My fingers find the inside of one thigh, slow, light, the way Alistair would, and trace a long deliberate line upward without arriving anywhere.
My breath catches. I do it on the other side, slower this time, and feel the heat rising and the slow uncoiling of something low in my belly.
I think about Alistair's hand. The specific shape of it.
The width of his palm, the length of his fingers, the calluses where he holds a pen, the gold of his wedding band.
I think about the way he braces my hip when he has me from behind and the way his thumb sometimes finds my clit at exactly the right moment, and I groan into the pillow, and my own fingers finally slide between my thighs and find me.
The first touch is electric.
I am hot and ready. My fingers feel small and unfamiliar and not quite right, but my body doesn't care. My hips lift. I drag two fingers slowly along the length of myself, parting, exploring, gathering the slickness, and the sensation is enough to make me arch my back off the bed.
I think about Alistair's mouth.
Not on my breast this time. Lower. The shock of him going down on me on the jet, the slow patient work of his tongue, the hot wet pressure of him drawing me out of myself stroke by stroke until I was begging.
I think about his hands holding my thighs apart.
I think about looking down and meeting his eyes mid-act and the dark deliberate satisfaction in them.
My fingers circle my clit. Light at first. Almost not touching. The ache there is enormous and I am extending it, drawing it out, the way he would.
A different memory arrives uninvited, surprising, the way memories like this do.
The jet pool at the resort. Spain. Matt's hands on my hips.
Sarah kneeling in front of me with that deep groan she made when Alistair was inside her.
The way Sarah's fingers had felt inside me, slim and certain and not anything like Alistair.
The four of us tangled together. Madison watching from the side of the pool, wine glass in hand, with her good for you, darlin' expression.
My fingers move faster.
I think about the moment Sarah's mouth had found mine, soft and sweet and tasting of Singapore Slammer, while Alistair was inside her and Matt was inside me but we were all touching each other.
The four of us in a single chain of sensation.
The way I had lost track of whose hand was where.
How it had felt to be pressed between two men I wanted so deeply.
And Alistair had watched me the entire time, making sure, making it clear: it was permitted because he permitted it, and the permission was its own erotic charge.
I press the heel of my hand against my clit and circle hard, thinking about Matt's hands on my hips, Alistair’s hungry eyes on me.
The width of Matt’s shoulders behind me.
The cock that had been thicker than I expected, splitting me open with a stretch that had made me cry out into Sarah's mouth.
I picture Sarah's eyes. Her almost pained expression when she came, and how her flush had spread up her throat, her lips had parted.
I think about Alistair watching all of this. Watching me. The look on his face that I had only registered fragments of at the time. The pride and the fierce possession and the underlying only me. Even with Matt inside me. Even with Sarah's mouth on mine. Only me.
The thought of him watching me, even now, knowing what he would think if he could see me lying in this bed in this empty room with my own hand between my thighs and his name in my chest, the thought of his eyes on me, sends another sharp pulse of sensation through me, and I groan.
The first time comes faster than I want it to.
It is not enough. It is not nearly enough. It is a small bright shudder, my hips lifting once, my thighs clenching around my own hand, a tiny shocked release that takes the edge off without taking anything else. I lie panting in the dim room and the hunger underneath has not even noticed.
I roll onto my stomach and press my hand under me and grind down against my own fingers, the duvet bunched beneath me, my face turned into the pillow that smells faintly of him. I am working myself harder now. The first orgasm has unlocked rather than satisfied me. The ache has deepened.
I think about Alistair's body weight pinning me. The crush of him over me, his hand at the nape of my neck, the way he says my name into my hair. I think about him saying good girl. The way that two-word phrase, in his mouth, reduces me to something nearly speechless.
I bite the pillow.
I think about him fucking me in his office.
The cold glass, the hard timber of the desk, the heat of him pushing into me from behind.
The fingers of one hand in my mouth, the other on my breast, and the way I had to strum my own clit because both his hands were occupied.
I had loved it. The making myself useful while he used me.
My fingers move faster underneath me.
I whimper into the pillow.
I think about Sarah again. Specifically the moment I had taken her clit in my mouth, sweet and salty and slippery, her thighs trembling against my ears, her hand in my hair, and the way she had cried out and Alistair had watched it and liked it.
The way that had been one of the most intensely erotic things I had ever experienced.
I think about Matt's cock dragging slowly out of me and slamming back in.
The second one starts to build and I let it build.
I do not chase it. I let it gather. My breath is uneven and the pillow is damp where my mouth has been and my hips are working against my hand of their own accord, and the heat is climbing up my spine, and somewhere very low in my pelvis is the deep gathering pulse of something getting ready to break.
I think of Alistair groaning into my mouth.
My fingers move faster. I am no longer in the mood to be patient with myself.
The second orgasm hits me like a freight train, sudden and hard and shuddering, my back arching, my thighs clenching tight around my hand, a sob tearing out of me, and it goes on for what feels like a very long time, ripples and pulses and aftershocks, my whole body taut and then trembling.
The third time I am no longer building anything. I am chasing.
I roll onto my back. The shirt is twisted around my ribs and my breasts are bare and my hair is damp at the temples.
I push two fingers inside myself and curl them upward, not the same as him, never the same as him, but there is a shape there my body recognizes, and I work the heel of my other hand against my clit hard and unrelenting.
I think about Alistair's voice. Look at me. Good girl. You take it so well. Open up for me. You’re so fucking wet.
I think about the deliberate rolling rhythm of him, the inch-by-inch fullness, the way he stretches me.
I think about him making me come three times in a single hour, the way he sometimes does, watching me come apart with that quiet deeply pleased expression, and the way the third one is always the one that feels like a small death.
I think about him on our honeymoon, only days ago, beside me in the jet pool while another man's cock pushed inside me, holding my gaze with his, the absolute steadiness of his ownership of me even then, even with Matt's cock driving into me, even with Sarah's mouth between my legs and then my mouth between hers.
A hot sharp wave of love for Alistair, of missing him, of how absurd and absolute and entirely my own this man is, moves through me alongside the desire and amplifies it, makes it more.
I work myself harder.
I think of him walking through the doors of Burgundy's right at this moment, in a suit, with his face faintly menacing, and the surge of wanting that the image produces in me is so large and so contradictory that it tips me over.
The third one breaks slowly. It begins as a low pulsing, almost manageable, almost containable, a slow hot tide rising in my pelvis and unfurling outward, and then it is suddenly enormous and unstoppable and I am clenching around my own fingers and arching my back and biting down on my own forearm to keep from waking Alex in the next room.
It goes on, and on, and on. A long shuddering pulse.
When it finally finishes I am damp at the temples, breathing hard, my fingers slick, my thighs trembling, the duvet half-kicked off the bed.
I lie in the empty bed in his shirt with my body cooling and my chest aching and I think: please come home. Please come home. Please come home.
Would this be the time he doesn’t make it home? Over a gambling debt, of all things? I find myself resenting Christopher. At least Henderson is with them. That comforts me enough to close my eyes, and eventually I sleep a little.
I drift, not sure for how long. The light at the windows changes—the grey of late afternoon thickening into the slow blue of the early evening, and then the deeper blue of dusk, and I move in and out of consciousness with no real grip on either side of it.
I dream about water, about being pushed off a yacht.
When I wake with a start, I’m still alone in bed. The house is silent. I lie absolutely still and listen, but there is nothing.