Chapter 29 #2
"Watch," she whispered. And started riding me harder.
I watched. Couldn't look away. My eyes moving between her face in front of me and our bodies in the mirror, the dual perspective making everything twice as vivid, twice as real, and the pleasure ratcheted up so fast my vision blurred.
"There," she gasped. "Right there. Don't move."
"I'm not going anywhere."
"Promise?"
"Promise."
The word landed different during sex. Heavier. More honest. A vow spoken with her body wrapped around mine and nothing between us except the truth we'd finally managed to tell.
She rode me harder. Faster. Her breasts bouncing with every stroke, her ponytail swinging, her nails raking down my chest hard enough to leave marks I'd feel tomorrow and want.
I sat up straighter, wrapped my arms around her, buried my face between her breasts, and the shift in angle made her scream.
"Matt. Oh fuck. Matt—"
I slid my hand between us. Found her clit, swollen and slick, and rubbed tight circles while she rode me, and the combination made her go rigid, her whole body clenching, her rhythm faltering as the pleasure overwhelmed the coordination.
"I'm there," she panted. "I'm right there."
"Let go. I've got you."
She let go.
Her orgasm hit like a wave breaking. Her walls clamped around me in deep, pulsing contractions that squeezed so tight I nearly blacked out.
She cried my name, loud, unguarded, her back arching, her hands gripping my shoulders, her whole body shaking as the pleasure rolled through her in wave after wave after wave.
In the mirror I watched her spine arch, watched her head fall back, watched the orgasm move through her body like electricity, and the beauty of it, the raw unperformed beauty of watching the woman I loved come apart from two angles at once, was the most incredible thing I'd ever seen.
And watching her, feeling her, knowing that I'd put that expression on her face, knowing she trusted me enough to fall apart and let me see it from every angle, that was what broke me.
My own release hit with a force that took my breath.
I buried myself deep and came hard, pulsing inside her, groaning her name into her skin while her body milked every last shudder from mine.
The pleasure was so intense it traveled through my whole body, lighting up every nerve, and for a few seconds there was nothing except her warmth and the pulse of our bodies finishing together and the quiet that followed.
We collapsed backward onto the bed. Her on top of me. Still connected. Still wrapped around each other. Both of us trembling, both breathing like we'd just played a double-overtime game and won.
I held her. Felt her heart hammering against my chest, felt her breathing slow in stages, felt the tremors running through her body like aftershocks.
My own eyes were stinging. Not from the physical release.
From everything underneath it. A week of silence.
A month of fighting. A lifetime of building walls that this woman had climbed over and knocked down and walked through like they were made of paper.
And now she was in my arms and my body was still inside hers and the war was over and I was crying.
Not a lot. Not dramatic. Just my eyes wet, and a single tear that tracked sideways across my temple and disappeared into my hair. She lifted her head, saw it, and her face did something soft and devastating.
She didn't say anything. Just kissed the spot where the tear had been. Then rested her forehead against mine and breathed.
"Wow," she breathed against my chest.
"Yeah."
"That was—"
"I know."
"The mirror thing was—"
"I know."
She laughed. A small, exhausted, completely satisfied laugh that I felt vibrate through her body into mine.
I ran my fingers through her ponytail until the elastic loosened and her hair fell across my chest in a blonde curtain.
She traced lazy patterns on my ribs with her fingertip, and I memorized the feel of it, the lightness of her touch after the intensity of what we'd just done, the way tenderness always felt bigger after the wildness.
My body was heavy in the best way. The post-game soreness was nothing compared to this. Every muscle spent. Every cell quiet. The constant tape that ran in my head, the replays and the worries and the what-ifs, finally, fully, blessedly silent.
"We should have been doing that all week instead of being idiots," she murmured.
"Agreed."
Bob barked once from the living room, a single editorial comment on whatever he'd heard through the walls, and we both laughed.
And the laughter was the thing I held onto.
Not the sex, not the orgasm, not even the mirror.
The laughter. Two people in a messy bedroom, tangled and sweaty and ridiculous, laughing because a dog had opinions about their love life.
That was the picture I was going to carry.
"Can we promise something?" she said.
"What?"
"No more running. No more pushing each other away when things get hard. No more letting fear win."
I cupped her face. Tilted it up. Looked into her eyes, brown and warm and gold-flecked and mine.
"I promise. No more running."
"Even when your team finds out?"
"Even then."
"Even when Kyle tries to destroy us?"
"Especially then."
She smiled. Kissed me softly. "And the article? The one he wanted me to write?"
"What about it?"
"I'm not sending it. I'm quitting. Monday morning. Walking in and resigning."
"You don't have to—"
"I do. I've known for weeks. This job has been asking me to be someone I don't want to be, and I kept doing it because I was afraid of having nothing. But I'd rather have nothing and keep my integrity than have a promotion built on destroying the people I love."
I pulled her closer. Kissed her forehead. "Whatever you need. I'm here."
"I know you are." She rested her head on my chest. "That's why I love you."
We lay there in the quiet. Still tangled. Her heartbeat against mine, slowing together. Bob barked again, softer this time, and settled.
"Matt?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm really glad you showed up at my door tonight."
"I'm really glad you opened it."
She pressed her face into my neck and breathed, and I held her, and the city went on being loud and complicated outside her window, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I didn't need anything to be different than exactly what it was.