Chapter 21 #2
"Maeve..." My name is both a warning and a plea on his lips, as he looks at me. I can see the struggle in his eyes, the way he wants to touch me, and I want that, too. I want it so badly it hurts.
"And maybe you're right," I continue. "Maybe you are too old for me.
Maybe you are jaded and cold. But you're also kind, even when you try to hide it.
You're patient with me. You make me laugh.
And when you look at me, I feel seen. Really seen.
Not as an heiress or a mafia daughter or some fragile thing that needs to be locked away. But as me."
His hand comes up to cup my face, slowly, as if he can’t fight it any longer, his thumb brushing away a tear I hadn't realized had fallen. "You undo me," he whispers. "Every defense I've ever built, you just walk right through them."
“What’s wrong with that?” I whisper.
He leans down, resting his forehead against mine, and we stand there for a long moment, just breathing together.
I can feel the tension in his body, the way he's holding himself back.
"There are things we can do," he says finally, his voice rough.
"Things that won't prevent an annulment.
We could be together without... we don't have to consummate the marriage.
Not if you want to keep your options open. "
The words sting, even though I know he's trying to give me a choice. "Is that what you want? To keep things unconsummated so it's easier to get rid of me later?"
“I can’t let this go all the way, Maeve. Not when…” He lets out a heavy breath. “Not when I still feel like this is wrong. Like you deserve better than me. You’re going to realize that eventually. You’ll want… something else. Someone else. You’ll want me to let you go.”
The truth is that I don't know what I want.
An hour ago, I thought I knew. I thought I wanted him, wanted this marriage, wanted to try to build something real from the forced arrangement we'd been given.
But now, with him offering me a conditional version of intimacy, a relationship with an exit strategy already planned, I'm not sure of anything.
"I don't know if I want to stay married to you," I admit, and I feel him tense. "Not if you're always going to have one foot out the door. Not if you're always going to be planning for the day when I leave. I don't want to be someone's temporary problem, Sean. I've been that my whole life."
"You're not a problem." His hands frame my face, gentle but insistent. "But I’m going to ruin this, Maeve. I fuck up everything I touch. I’m built to destroy things, not build them. And I don’t want you trapped when you see that. Hating me when I…”
“Why don’t you want to just be with me?” I whisper, and I hate how small my voice sounds when I say it.
"I want to." His thumb traces my lower lip, and heat flares through me despite everything. "God, you have no idea how much I want to."
“Then just show me,” I whisper. I can feel his touch vibrating through my body, and I’m aching for him, sensations sweeping through me that I’ve only ever experienced with him. “Sean, please—”
For a long moment, he just looks at me, and I can see him wrestling with himself. Then something shifts in his expression, some decision being made, and he kisses me, hard and desperate, like he's trying to pour all the words he can't say into it.
His hands slide into my hair, tilting my head back, and I open for him, letting his tongue slide into my mouth. Heat flares through me, and it feels like every nerve in my body is alight before he’s done more than just press his mouth to mine.
He walks me backward until my legs hit the couch, and then he's lowering me onto it, covering my body with his. The weight of him is intoxicating, making me breathless, and I arch up into him, wanting more.
"Tell me to stop," he mutters against my mouth. "Tell me this is a bad idea."
“I can’t,” I whisper against his lips. “And maybe I want to know what a bad idea feels like.”
He groans, and his hands find the hem of his T-shirt that I'm wearing, sliding underneath to touch bare skin.
His palms are rough and warm, and everywhere he touches feels like it's on fire. “Christ, seeing you in my shirt…” He pulls back enough to let his gaze rake down the front of my body. “Just these underneath…” His hand drops to my hip, tracing the edge of the cotton bikini panties I’m wearing.
“Fuck, I could come just looking at you, Maeve.”
He drops his head down, grazing his mouth over the dip of my belly. “Let me make you feel good,” he groans. “Let me taste you.”
I remember what he tried to do on our wedding night, his mouth between my thighs to get me ‘ready’ for him. The panic and fear I’d felt at the strangeness of it. I hadn’t expected him to do that, hadn’t even really thought about it being something people might do. But now…
Now the thought makes me feel molten, as if I’m burning up from the inside out.
“Please,” I whisper, and Sean groans, the sound vibrating against the smooth flesh of my stomach.
His hand slides up my ribs, stopping just below my breast, and I can feel him trembling with restraint.
"I’ve come so many fucking times wondering how your pussy tastes,” he murmurs, the words rough and so thick with lust I feel my body clench hearing them.
My cheeks flush pink… I’ve never had anyone say anything so filthy to me before, but it’s turning me on.
Everything he’s done has made me want him more.
“Then find out,” I whisper, and I feel him twitch, his entire body responding as he presses his forehead just below my ribs, breathing in the scent of my skin as one hand slides up to cup my naked breast under his T-shirt.
His fingers graze over my stiffening nipple, my breast small and soft in his broad hand, and I feel my body clench as my head drops back, my mouth opening on a ragged moan.
“Christ,” Sean swears under his breath as he drags his mouth down my stomach, his other hand hooking in the waist of my panties. “God, I’m already so fucking hard for you. I wish you could fucking feel it.”
“I could,” I whisper, and he shakes his head.
“No, this is about you. Just you, leannan. I’m going to make you come on my tongue and hear you moan my name, but I won’t take anything else from you tonight.”
I almost want to argue, to tell him that I want to explore him, too—that maybe I don’t want to stop, but then he starts to drag my panties down my hips, his breath warm against the fragile skin of my abdomen, and I feel like I can’t speak.
He slides my panties off, dropping them onto the couch as he runs his hand up my thigh.
His hands are rough and callused against my soft skin, but the difference makes me shiver, heat prickling everywhere.
When he lifts my leg to hook it over my shoulder, his nose brushing against the soft ginger curls between my thighs, I feel my entire body tense.
“Easy, leannan,” he whispers, his breath puffing warmly between my legs and making me squirm.
“This will feel good. I’ll go slow. I want to savor this sweet pussy, taste every bit of it.
I want my face soaked with you before you come for me.
” He brushes his nose against me, and a shudder runs down my spine.
“Can you do that for me, leannan? Can you be a good girl and get my face all wet before I make you come?”
I whimper, unable to think of what possible response there could be.
This is so far beyond anything I could have imagined, the words dripping from his lips in his rough Irish burr making me feel as if my mind is melting, my body surrendering to anything he wants.
I have no experience with this, nothing to compare it to, and I realize dimly in the back of my head that if Sean wants to give me a way out, he’s doing this all wrong.
Because in five minutes, he’s managed to make it so that I’m pretty sure no other man could ever compare.
His hand leaves my breast, sliding down my ribs as he pushes my other thigh a little wider, bending my leg at the knee so that it’s pressing into the couch cushions. “Stay open like that for me, leannan,” he murmurs. “I want to see this pretty pussy that’s going to come for me.”
I let out another helpless whimper, and when his fingers slide between my thighs, parting me so that I’m open for him, I gasp, my back arching as those hot, electric sensations start to jolt through me again. Sean pulls back slightly, his fingers still touching me, his gaze hot between my thighs.
“Christ, you’re so fucking beautiful,” he murmurs. And then he leans in, his fingers still parting me, and I feel the wet heat of his tongue in the most intimate place on my body.
I let out a sound that’s half-moan, half-cry, my thighs parting and hips jolting up at the shock of the sensation. “Oh my god,” I gasp, the last word high-pitched as Sean runs his tongue over me again. “Oh god, oh god, it’s so—”
“That’s right,” he almost purrs against me. “It feels fucking good, doesn’t it? You taste so sweet, Maeve. I could eat this pussy all night.”
I don’t know how I would survive that. His tongue traces my entrance, slides upward, and then he loops his arm around my thigh, his forearm heavy over my hips to keep me from thrusting upward erratically as he buries his face against me.
His tongue slides up, rolling over the tight nub where he touched me before, fluttering against it.
The sounds coming from my mouth are nothing I’ve ever made before, moans and cries, strangled and breathless as the pleasure builds and builds.
It’s incredible and almost too much, a sensation like nothing I’ve ever felt before, and I can feel how drenched I am.
I’d be embarrassed at how wet he’s made me if I had any space to think, but there’s nothing left in my head except for how good it feels.
“Don’t stop” I beg. “Please don’t stop.”
Sean shakes his head, his tongue moving faster against me. I can feel myself building to something—that tightness in my lower abdomen coiling until I know I’m about to come apart at the seams, that I—”
“Sean!” I nearly scream his name as every muscle in my body locks, a pleasure so bright and sharp it’s nearly painful tearing through me, threatening to undo me completely.
He doesn’t stop, his arm holding me in place, his tongue relentless, and I’m nearly sobbing as the waves of pleasure rip through me, my body wracked with it as I shudder and writhe.
“Good girl,” he groans against my wet, swollen flesh, his lips and tongue softening, brushing against me, as I come down.
I hear the drag of his zipper, and for one wild moment I think I’ve broken his self-control, that he’s going to fuck me after all.
And then, as I manage to open my eyes finally, I see his hand reach for my discarded panties.
I catch a glimpse of his thick,, impossibly hard length as he frees it from his jeans, and then his hand holding my panties wraps around it, moving in a frantic rhythm.
“Fuck,” he groans against me, his lips and tongue still tracing around my clit and over my most intimate flesh, drawing out every last aftershock of my pleasure. “Christ, I nearly came before I could… fuck, I’m going to—”
His groan vibrates against me as his hips jerk forward, and I realize with a fresh wave of arousal that he’s coming too, that I’ve affected him so much it took him only seconds to finish.
Sean presses his forehead against my abdomen, and then leans back, turning away slightly as he strips off his shirt with one hand and uses it to clean up, tossing it and my ruined panties aside as I hear him zip his jeans.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” he murmurs, leaning down to lie next to me on the wide, soft couch. “I was going to fucking come in my jeans like a fucking teenager if I didn’t—”
“You don’t have to apologize,” I whisper, turning toward him. His chest is bare and hot and hard with muscle, and I reach out to touch him, running my fingers over one of his tattoos—a Celtic cross on his ribs.
Sean shudders, a ripple running through his torso. “I do, leannan,” he murmurs. “I promised it’d be nothing but you.”
Suddenly, I’m exhausted. I let my head fall back on a throw pillow, the desire for sleep so strong that I can’t imagine moving. “Stay here, then,” I murmur sleepily, as I curl against his warmth. “If you want to make it up to me.”
I don’t hear his answer. I’m boneless and drained in the wake of the first orgasm I’ve ever had, the exhaustion immediate and complete. I’m asleep in his arms before he even gets the chance to speak.