Chapter Fourteen #2
We break the kiss long enough for me to pull my club cut over my shoulders, placing it on the nightstand, then yank my shirt over my head, and she reaches for the hem of hers at the same moment.
For a half-second, we both fumble, knocking elbows.
She laughs, bright and breathless. I laugh too, then the shirts are gone, I’m pulling her back to me, she’s pressing her palms flat to my chest, and we’re kissing again, urgent and uncoordinated in the best possible way.
Her fingers rush to my belt as mine go for the button of her jeans, both of us moving too fast, getting in each other’s way.
She laughs softly against my mouth. “Wait, wait.”
We slow just enough to make it work, shedding the rest, and then we’re standing there in the low light with nothing between us… and the frenzy stops.
I go still.
She goes still.
I look at her, and something happens inside my chest that I can’t explain.
She is so beautiful it sits in me like an ache, and she looks up at me with her eyes wide and her hands resting lightly on my forearms like she’s steadying herself.
And I understand, suddenly and completely, that I have been in too much of a hurry.
That she deserves better than frantic. That this moment has been two years in the making, and I am not going to rush through it now that I’ve finally arrived here.
My grip on her loosens while I reach up and brush the hair from her face, my thumb grazing her cheek, and I watch her eyes soften at the change in register.
“Will,” she whispers.
“I’ve got you,” I say. “We’ve got time.”
I ease her back onto the bed, and she settles against the pillows, her hair fanning out, her eyes watching me with that soft, open expression that makes something in me go quiet and awed all at once. I move over her, keeping my weight on my forearms, and I start at her throat.
My lips press to the pulse point just below her jaw, and I feel it, the quick flutter of her heartbeat against my mouth, and I stay there a moment, just feeling it, letting her feel me feeling it.
Her heart is racing. So is mine, though I’m keeping that to myself for now.
Two years of wanting this, wanting her, and now I’m here, and she is here, and I need to be worthy of it.
I need to be everything she deserves in this moment, and she deserves a hell of a lot more than a man in a hurry.
She exhales, long and slow, her chin tipping back to give me more room, and I take it.
I trace my mouth down the line of her throat, unhurried, following the soft slope to her collarbone, where I press an open kiss to the ridge of it.
Then I drag my lips along the length to her shoulder, and she makes a small sound, not quite a sigh or a word, just something that escapes her before she can think to hold it back.
Her fingers come up and slide into my hair, not pulling, just resting there, like she needs something to hold onto.
I know the feeling.
I work my way down, my mouth moving over the swell of her breast, and I give my full attention to her nipple, my hands and my mouth learning her in the slow, deliberate way she deserves, reading every breath, shift, and unconscious arch of her body toward me.
I have thought about this more times than I’d ever admit out loud, more times than was probably good for me during the long stretch of months where I was supposed to be keeping a respectful distance.
I imagined it would feel urgent, frantic, all that pent-up wanting finally let loose.
And it did, for those first few minutes in the dark.
But now that I’m here, now that she’s real, warm, and trusting me with this, something in me has gone deeply, almost fiercely calm.
I want to know her.
All of it.
Every sound, every place that makes her breath stutter, every small thing that is uniquely and completely Millie.
When she gasps, and her fingers tighten in my hair, I take note. When she turns her face to the side and bites down on her own lip to keep quiet, I take note of that too.
My hands travel the soft skin of her stomach, palms flat, feeling the way her muscles flutter under my touch, the way she sucks in a breath when my thumb traces the curve of her hip.
She is so soft here, and the trust in how she lets me touch her, unhesitating, unguarded, sits in my chest like something almost too big to hold.
I press my lips to the jut of her hip bone, feeling her stomach dip sharply inward with a sharp inhale, and I smile against her skin.
This…
This is what I was waiting for.
Not the ceremony, not the patch, not the moment I became a full brother. This right here, her and me, and no more careful distance between us. This is the thing I didn’t let myself name until I couldn’t avoid it anymore.
“Will,” she breathes out.
I look up at her from where I am, and she’s staring down at me with wide eyes, flushed cheeks, and slightly parted lips. I hold her gaze and lower my mouth to the inside of her thigh, pressing a slow, deliberate kiss there, and her head drops back against the pillow.
“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she says softly, as if she’s surprised that she didn’t know it could feel like this.
She didn’t know.
The thought moves through me with a tenderness so fierce it almost hurts.
I want to give her this.
I want to give her every version of being cared for that she hasn’t had yet, every good thing she’s spent being too patient and selfless to ask for.
I take care of her with my mouth, my tongue flicking against her clit in careful strokes, learning the sounds she makes, the way her breathing changes, the way her hand tightens in my hair and then loosens and then tightens again as I find what works and stay there, giving her nowhere to rush to and no reason to hurry.
She’s trying so hard to be quiet, but she is not entirely succeeding, and every small sound she fails to swallow makes something fierce tighten in my chest. I am acutely, almost painfully aware of the house around us, Jonas’ door down the hall, the fan still running, the stillness of the place.
But I am more aware of her.
More aware of the way she says my name when she stops trying to hold herself back. More aware of the way her free hand finds the sheet and grips it like she needs to be anchored to something solid.
I want to be that for her.
Not just tonight.
In every way that counts.
Her thighs tremble on either side of me, and I feel the tension building.
Her whole body is drawing inward and tightening, her breathing coming in short, uneven pulls that she’s trying desperately to keep controlled.
Her hand in my hair stops its gentle resting and grips, her knuckles pressing against my scalp, and I stay where I am and give her exactly what she needs.
“W-Will.” My name comes out fractured, barely a whisper, more breath than sound, and I feel her thighs press inward against me like she can’t help it, like her body is making decisions entirely independently of her brain.
I slide my hands up the outside of her thighs, and I feel the exact moment she stops fighting it. The moment she stops trying to manage it and just lets it take her.
Her back arches off the bed, a long, slow curve, her free hand flying up to cover her mouth, pressing hard, her eyes squeezing shut.
A sound rises in her throat that she catches just in time behind her palm, muffled, desperate, and unmistakable.
Her whole body shudders, one long rolling wave of it from her core outward, her heels pressing into the mattress, her hips rolling against my mouth before she can stop them, chasing it, riding it out.
I don’t stop. I ease Millie through every last second of it, gentling gradually, reading her, staying with her as the trembling slows, the tension unravels, and her body sinks back into the mattress, as if every bone in her has gone soft.
Her hand falls away from her mouth, and her fingers in my hair loosen, and her chest rises and falls in long, unsteady breaths as she tries to find her rhythm again.
I press a kiss to the inside of her knee, then her inner thigh, then I rest my cheek against her skin for a moment and let her breathe.
Then she laughs, and it is the most wrecked, breathless, delighted sound I have ever heard in my life, muffled against the back of her wrist, her shoulders shaking slightly with it, and I feel it land somewhere deep under my ribs and take up permanent residence.
I lift my head and look at her. She’s staring up at the ceiling with her forearm still resting across her face, her chest heaving slightly, and she says, in a voice that is thoroughly and satisfyingly ruined, “Oh my God.”
“Yeah?” I say.
She moves her arm and looks down at me, her eyes glassy and bright all at once, and says nothing for a moment. She doesn’t need to.
God, I love that laugh. The thought arrives without fanfare and sits in my chest as though it belongs there, and I don’t examine it too closely right now. I’ll do that later, when I can afford to sit with it properly. For now, I just let it be.
She reaches for me, her hand finding my face, pulling me up to her, and I go willingly, settling over her, and she kisses me with a softness that is somehow more undoing than everything that came before it.
Her hands smooth up my back, tracing the lines of muscle, and she pulls back just far enough to look at me, her eyes dark and certain.
“Hi,” she whispers.
“Hey,” I say back.