Chapter 10
10
NOVA
Charlie scoops me off the kitchen table like a stack of mail, both of his big hands under my thighs, squeezing just shy of too tight. His eyes dart between the hallway and the oversized sectional that takes up a majority of my living room, jaw clenched.
“Bedroom or couch?” he asks.
I shrug and sift my fingers through the hair at the back of his head, nails scratching. His big body tenses and then releases beneath me. The couch has its benefits—proximity being one—but I want room to move. I want to spread out against my buttery soft sheets and feel his weight tucking me down into my mattress.
“Bedroom,” I answer, like he’s not already moving in the direction of the stairs. He kicks off his boots at the bottom with enthusiasm, one hitting the edge of my couch, the other tipped sideways. But he doesn’t care, too focused on powering us up the steps, the hands on my thighs shifting until he has my bare ass cupped in his palms, fingers squeezing every other step like he can’t quite help himself.
“What kind of underwear are you wearing?” he grits out, sounding furious. His socked feet move faster up the stairs, and his fingers go searching until he finds the thin lace band at my hips. “Jesus Christ,” he mutters.
I expected this part to feel weird. Something about being too familiar and knowing the details of him—like how he eats his breakfast pastries in three giant bites. Or how he color codes his spreadsheets at fifty percent opacity. I don’t think I’ve ever known the spreadsheet preferences of a bedroom partner before.
But it’s good. It feels good to be wrapped around him like a vine. Better than good when I feel the press of Charlie’s hard cock between my thighs. He’s thick and big and hitting me exactly right on every step up, and we haven’t even started yet. I curl my hands around his shoulders for leverage and roll my hips, delighting in the way he stumbles up the last three stairs, almost dropping me completely.
He props me up against the wooden banister at the top and eyes the four closed doors like one is the gateway to Narnia and the others are a highway to hell. I lean forward and catch the tip of his ear with my teeth, the exact spot that flushes red every time I say something that shocks him.
He sucks in a sharp breath. “Which door, Nova?”
“Pick one and find out.”
He makes a grumbling, groaning sound. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so out of sorts. His hands squeeze my ass again. “Now is not the time to be cute.”
“Why? I’m having—oh.”
Charlie drags me up his torso, one arm under my ass while his opposite hand cups gently around my jaw. He grips me there, and I get a glimpse of bright, burning blue before he yanks my mouth to his and kisses me.
It’s to shut me up, I think, or to force me to make a decision. But it doesn’t work because Charlie is kissing me like he can’t wait another second for it. Like he’s mad I’ve already kept him waiting this long. His mouth is hot and wet and lush and—usually it’s slower than this. Kissing someone for the first time. It’s a tease, a tentative give and take. I’m used to partners who slowly try to figure out what I like, and what they like, and how we can fit together.
Not Charlie. Charlie kisses me like he’s had a plan on how to do it the entire time he’s known me. He slots my bottom lip between his and sucks, catching it with his teeth and then soothing with his tongue. I open my mouth to his, and my hips punch forward for friction, my arm tossed over his shoulders, trying to pull him closer. We slide our tongues together like we can bicker like this too, starting out forceful but settling into something slow and thorough. A wet, obscene press of our mouths that has me moving against him as much as I can, desperate to ease the tension between my legs.
Charlie stumbles his way over to a wall and presses me there, the force of our impact stealing the air from my lungs. A painting tumbles to the floor. Another tilts precariously to the side.
Charlie ignores it. So do I.
The hand on my face shifts and his thumb finds my jaw, pressing until I open wider for him. He guides me exactly how he wants me, a pleased sound rumbling in his chest when I go pliant against him. His palm slips down my neck, fingers fanned out, his thumb resting gently against the frantic flutter of my pulse. He holds me there, his hand cupped against my throat, his touch devastatingly careful.
I want him to stop being careful.
“Nova,” he pants into my mouth, his other hand fisting in the material of my skirt. “Tell me which one is your bedroom.”
“Or what.”
“Or I’ll fuck you on your hallway floor.”
There’s a deep clench between my legs, a flood of electric heat down my spine. I drop my head back against the wall and grin. His hand flexes against my throat, his thumb gliding up and then down. “That’s not the deterrent you think it is,” I tell him.
“Nova.”
I tug on the ends of his hair and drop a kiss to his mouth. His bottom lip is swollen and I bet mine is too. I don’t think I’ve ever been kissed so thoroughly in my life. “Kiss me again, first. Just—real quick.”
I can’t stand the idea of not doing it again, immediately, over and over. Kissing Charlie has taken all the cluttered thoughts in my brain and tossed them to the wind. I’m nothing but sensation. Shades and colors and hot, liquid feelings.
He gives in to me, finding my mouth with his, the hand collared around my throat holding me still as we move together. I catch his bottom lip with my teeth and a pained sound echoes somewhere in his chest. I want to reduce him to cinders. I want us both boneless and stupid.
“You taste like cherries,” he mumbles, nose digging into my cheek, mouth pressing sloppy, wet, distracted kisses along the line of my jaw. I tip my head up to give him more room, looping my legs tighter around his waist.
“And you taste like peanut butter,” I breathe.
Peanut butter and dark chocolate. Whatever spiced cider he was drinking at the bookshop. I roll my hips into his, and he pushes back, friction exactly right for a half a heartbeat. Then he angles himself away and tugs me off the wall, my body clinging to his.
“Bedroom, Nova,” he grunts again, just below my ear this time. “Which one?”
“Last on the left,” I manage, voice airy and tight. I scratch my nails down his neck and his teeth bite at the curve of my shoulder.
He turns to the right instead and almost sends us both tumbling into a linen closet. I shriek and wrap both arms around his shoulders as pale blue hand towels and a bath mat shaped like a succulent tumble down around us. I think a box marked CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS lands on his foot.
“I said the left.” I laugh, trying to direct him with my hands in his hair. We’re an overeager pinball, pinging back and forth between light-up bumpers. Colors and sound and a high-pitched ding, ding, ding echoing in my ears.
“You have too many doors,” he mutters, spinning and finally finding my bedroom, nudging his way through the door and kicking it shut with his foot. He tosses me on the bed, and a few pillows slip off the edge as I bounce, my hair half in my face. Charlie plants one knee on the mattress and climbs after me. Moonlight from the gap in my curtains illuminates the hunger in his eyes, the smooth cut of the muscles through his shirt.
“Nova,” he says as he situates himself between my open knees, his palms braced on the bed by my head. One hand lifts to brush the rest of my hair off my face. “I don’t know what to do with you like this.”
“You don’t know what to do with me?” I shimmy beneath him, spreading my legs wider to make room for him, my skirt inching up my thighs. The very tops of my tights are visible, a strip of black lace with dainty butterflies stitched overtop. “I find that hard to believe.”
Charlie inhales a deep breath through his nose.
“I don’t know what to do with you being so agreeable,” he tells me. He shifts closer and lifts himself to his knees. His fingers catch the edge of my skirt and he lifts, his tongue appearing at the corner of his mouth. “I like this.”
“What? The tights?”
He nods, then shakes his head, then nods again. “The tights, yeah, but I was talking about your art.” His thumb traces the curve of the sun at my hip, its bright, golden rays shining down to a garden in bloom across the top of my thigh. The tights are an afterthought. I love that he called it my art and not my ink, because that’s what I think of it too. All the things that swirl around in my heart painted across my skin.
“Oh. Thank you.”
He huffs a laugh. “See? That’s what I mean.” His hand drifts to the other side of my skirt, lifting it until he can see the heavy storm cloud inked on my opposite thigh. A crescent moon peeking out from behind. “I don’t think you’ve ever agreed with me on anything.”
“Well—” I lose my train of thought, focused instead on the way he’s inching my skirt even higher. He tucks it up until it’s a black band around my waist, pretty beige underwear to match my pretty beige bra. Butterflies here too.
Charlie sighs like he’s endured something.
“I like your butterflies,” he says, voice rough.
“So you’ve said.”
“Have I?” he asks, his eyes not moving away from the way the lace stretches over my skin. “It bears repeating.”
I toy with the edge of my high-cut underwear. “They were very expensive.”
“A worthwhile investment.”
I grin up at him. “Thank you. I think so too.”
He blinks down at me and his hand curls around my thigh, squeezing once. “Do you usually wear pretty underwear like this?”
I nod. “Yeah. Usually.”
I like the way it makes me feel. I like putting on something just for myself. I like the dainty fabrics and the different colors. I like looking at myself in the mirror when I get dressed and seeing the lace draped over my intricate designs. It makes me feel powerful. It makes me feel strong.
Charlie makes a sound. “I’m going to have a hard time with that.”
I glance at his pants and the thick, hard line of his cock pressing against his fly. “It looks like you’re having a very hard time.”
He ignores me, his grip abandoning my thigh for the hem of my sweater instead, slipping beneath to curl around the bottom of my rib cage. He squeezes once. “Knowing that you like to wear stuff like this underneath your clothes, thinking about it, wondering what it might look like—” He breathes in deep through his nose. “It’ll be a miracle if I focus on anything else ever again.”
I tip my chin. “Sorry for the inconvenience.”
“I’m not,” he replies without a lick of hesitation. His eyes flick to mine and hold. We stare at each other in the stillness of my bedroom, and I’m delighted by how easy this is, how good it feels, having Charlie like this. A half smile tugs at one side of his mouth. I think he feels it too. “All right, Nova girl. How do you want me?”
I arch an eyebrow. “Do you need instruction?”
He shrugs and starts undoing the buttons of his shirt, fingers working nimbly against the light blue material. “I don’t need it, but I like it. I’d like to hear you tell me what you want.”
A surge of heat bursts like a rocket in the middle of my chest. I don’t know if I’ve ever had a partner willingly hand over control before.
Charlie pulls off his shirt with a roll of his shoulders, his torso flexing as he tosses it to a far-off corner of my room. I sit up beneath him on my elbows so I can get a better look. I’ve always known he was strong. Those suits he wears are tailored perfectly to his body, hugging the curve of his biceps and the span of his shoulders. But his body is…it’s something else, seeing it like this.
He’s all smooth, unblemished skin. A dusting of dark hair in the middle of his chest down to his belly button. His belt is undone, his pants hanging low on his hips, a cut line of muscle angling in. I run my fingers there, back and forth—until he tips his head back and grunts up at the ceiling, his throat working in a heavy swallow.
“What if I just wanted you to watch?” I sit up farther to drop a kiss to the center of his chest, then rest my chin there, staring up at him. He drops his head back to look at me. “Would that be okay?”
His eyes flash. Lightning in a storm. “That would be very okay.” He scoops all of my hair up in his hand and then releases it, watching the strands fall over his fingers. “Is that what you want? Do you wanna show me how you like it first?”
The idea has its merits. I’d love to test all that meticulous control of his. But I think I want something else more.
I tap his thigh and slip from the bed, pointing at the headboard until he follows my wordless command with a gruff chuckle. He crawls his way up there, hair a ridiculous mess, shoulders flexing. He collapses into my pillows, legs sprawled, looking like every indecent thought I’ve ever had. He flicks open the top button of his pants and tucks his arm behind his head.
“This is more in line with what I expected,” he says.
“What?” I shimmy out of my skirt and toss it in the same direction as his shirt.
“You, bossing me around.” He watches with interest as my hands curl in the hem of my sweater. I tug it over my head.
“Glad I could meet your expectations.” I prop one foot up on the edge of the bed and reach for the top of my tights. Charlie sits up.
“Don’t,” he says.
My hands still. “Don’t, what?”
He drags his hand down his jaw, palm working at the scruff he’s started sporting since he started farm life. I like it. It suits him.
I want to feel it between my legs.
“Leave the tights on,” he says, voice low. His eyes dance their way up my body until they hold mine. “Please,” he adds.
“So polite.” I leave them where they are and crawl back on the bed. Charlie watches me move up his body. He curls his hands around my hips when I finally settle in his lap, thumbs tracing indistinct shapes against my waist. I peck a kiss on his waiting lips. “Such a good boy.”
Charlie makes a low rumbling sound, the hands on my hips clenching tighter. “Nova. You need to tell me what you want.”
My lips brush over his again. “Or what?”
“I don’t know,” he breathes against me, eyes shut tight. I like this unraveled version of Charlie so very much. “I didn’t really think through the second part of that statement.”
“How about this?” I wrap my fingers around his wrists and guide his hands up to my breasts. I place them there, over my lace bra. He peeks open one eye, and then the other. I smile at him. “Because you like my rose.”
“I love your rose,” he tells me. “I might love these more though.” He squeezes my breasts, testing their weight, his thumbs rubbing circles over my nipples through the material of my bra. My back arches and he drops his mouth to my neck. “That silver dress almost killed me, Nova.”
I laugh and shift in his lap, chasing the friction. There’s an ache low in my belly. A thrumming right beneath my skin. “You already know how I feel about the suspenders.”
“Should I have brought them?”
Maybe next time , I almost say, but I bite the words back. There won’t be a next time. There will be only this time. Just once, to get it out of our systems. Then we can go back to spreadsheets and taxes and meaningless flirtations over cider while Montgomery and Gus bicker about pumpkin displays.
But I don’t want to think about that now. I only want to think about Charlie’s fingers urging the strap of my bra over my shoulder, carefully peeling the lace cup down until there’s nothing between his mouth and my skin. He presses a kiss to the rose between my breasts, licks a hot stripe across it, and then pulls my nipple into his mouth. My body shivers and my hips press down, the zipper of his half-open pants biting into the soft skin of my thighs.
“Charlie,” I whisper.
He doesn’t bother pulling down my bra on the other side, just catches my nipple with his teeth through the gossamer material. Impatient. I grind down on him, hips circling.
“I don’t think you need direction,” I say, sounding winded. My room is silent except for the wet sounds of his mouth, my panting breaths, the soft swish of my thigh highs against the comforter as I try to climb higher on his lap. I want to give him more of me. I want his big body to spread my thighs wider. Charlie helps, his mouth still working at my breast while his hand guides my hips in a smooth rhythm.
“Take off your pants,” I breathe out, hand slipping in his open fly. I curl my hand around him as best I can with the angle and his entire body goes rigid before melting into smooth, languid lines. He watches me with heavy eyes as I stroke him once. Twice.
“It’s hard to take off my pants when you’re doing that.”
“Do you want me to stop?”
He presses his hips into my touch. “I didn’t say that.”
I could watch him like this forever, I decide. Chest heaving, hair sticking up every which way. Cheeks flushed pink and his hands clenched into fists on top of my thighs. He moves with me, body chasing mine when I pull away, relaxing back into the pillows when I squeeze.
I rub my thumb over the tip of his cock and his body jolts. He tips his head back into the pillows, eyes closed. His eyelashes are a dark fan against the slope of his cheekbones. If I were painting him, he’d be streaks of purple in the muted moonlight. Loops of lavender in between.
“No more teasing,” he says from between clenched teeth.
I give him another long stroke with my hand. “I believe it’s called foreplay, Charlie.”
His eyes blink open, and he leverages himself up beneath me until I’m flipped back, a squeak of surprise that I’m not entirely proud of tossed over his shoulder. He grips my thigh and tugs it wide, his hips slotting in between. He grinds against me and I grasp at his shoulder blades.
I feel the rumble of his chuckle against my breasts, his breath a hot puff against my neck. He leans up and sucks a kiss right below my ear, sending shockwaves all the way down to the place between my thighs where he’s hard and heavy against me.
He props himself above me with the palms of his hands, arms flexing, his forehead pressed to mine, face angled down so he can watch our bodies move together. I look too, a moan caught in the back of my throat when I see the way his body looks pressing mine down into the mattress. The way my knees hug his hips, my skin flushed. All my ink pressed up against his pale, smooth skin.
“I can’t wait to watch how you take me, Nova.” He rolls his hips against mine, his cock hitting just right. I could come like this and he knows it. His smile is all predator, his easy charm replaced with something else. Something a little darker. Desperate. He leans forward and drops his mouth to mine.
“No more teasing. It’s my turn now.”