Chapter 17
17
NOVA
It takes him a second.
I stand there on my tiptoes with my mouth pressed to his and I wait, both of my hands cupped gently around his jaw. I suck on his bottom lip, and he makes a sound low in his throat. I brush my tongue there and he shudders out a sigh.
Respond , I beg with my mouth against his. Show me I’m not the only one who feels like this.
My nails scratch through his hair and he shudders. I lean back to breathe, my nose brushing his, my eyes clenched tight.
I wait.
And then Charlie drags my mouth back to his and kisses me like he wants to devour me.
He’s messy with it, desperate, the hand on the back of my neck trembling. But I’m just as needy, arching away from the wall to press my body to his, a moan whimpered into his mouth when he grips me tight and pushes me right back against the brick.
“Nova,” he whispers against the corner of my mouth, a shaky exhale. “You said you wanted a one-time thing.”
I nod and slip my hands up to the collar of his coat, tugging him closer. There’s no space between our bodies but he’s been circling just out of reach all day and I’m tired of it. I want to feel the heavy weight of him caging me in. I want him tucked against me until I can’t breathe.
He gives in to my incessant yanking and slips closer, sliding his knee between my thighs and bracing his hand on the wall behind my head so my hair doesn’t catch on the brick.
“I thought once would be enough,” I explain quietly. “It usually is.”
He leans back, dark eyes watching me carefully. His cheeks are pink and his bottom lip is slightly swollen. He looks dazed and confused and deliciously out of sorts. Like I’ve just told him it’s raining pickles or I’ve filled out the wrong tax form.
“Once wasn’t enough?” he asks. “With me?” A thin note of disbelief hums beneath his words. It’s barely noticeable but there. I sometimes forget that for all his easy smiles, Charlie has insecurities too. Ones that are coming into focus the longer I look.
Something in my chest turns over and I shake my head. “It wasn’t.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
I drop my head back against the brick wall and stare at him. “I was waiting for you to say something.”
He blinks twice, still bewildered. “Were you?”
I nod. “Yes. I thought my intentions were obvious. It’s why I’ve been so cranky this morning.”
“It was not obvious, and you’re usually cranky.”
“Thank you, Charlie. You sure have a way with words.”
“How did you make your intentions obvious?” he presses. “You told me at family dinner you didn’t want to be friends, and now you’re telling me you’re mad I’m not kissing you. I’m trying to keep up here, Nova. But it’s tough to follow.”
I wince. “I know. I’m not being fair.” I toy with a button on his coat. “I’m going to work on being honest with you, even if I’m not sure what it is I want. Here’s the first thing, are you ready?”
He nods.
“Last night, in your kitchen, I thought you were going to kiss me. I wanted you to kiss me.”
Something in his face softens. “I wanted to kiss you too.”
I take a deep breath and tell myself to be brave. “I’ve thought about you every day since the night we had together.”
“Of course you have,” he murmurs. “I haven’t given you a second to breathe. I wanted you to think about me.”
“More than that,” I whisper back. We’re slowly moving closer together. My nose brushes his. “I’ve been wanting you, Charlie. I can’t stop thinking about all the things we didn’t get to do.”
He squeezes my hand still caught in his, then lifts it and presses a quick kiss to my knuckles.
“Okay,” he says, a knowing gleam in his eye. I’ve seen that look before. On a dance floor made of old rugs and in the stillness of my bedroom. A tease and a promise, all in one. “What should we do about it?”
I like that word so much. We . But I feel the implication of it like a pinch right in the middle of my chest.
“I want to bring you home with me, but—”
Charlie interrupts the rest of my sentence, swooping down and catching me in another kiss. He curls his fingers around my jaw and holds me to him, licking into my mouth. He’s demanding and rough, his teeth scraping along my bottom lip. When he pulls away, we’re both breathing heavily.
“Yes,” he says. “That.”
I squeeze my eyes shut tight, then open them with a sharp exhale. “I still don’t want a relationship,” I say carefully. I don’t want this thing with Charlie to feel like something on my list that needs attention. I want to have this with him without having to worry about what it means or what comes next. It’s selfish, but it’s all I can manage right now.
My hands clench in the collar of his coat. I smooth it down, then twist it up again. “I know it feels like I’m leading you on right now, but I want to be really clear and—”
He cuts me off again, lips gentle this time. He brushes his mouth back and forth, a smile ticking at the very edge.
“I get it, Nova. I hear you.” His hand brushes down my back, tucking me closer to his body and away from the wall, his thumb tracing over each bump of my spine through the material of my coat. “I don’t care how we categorize what we’re doing, as long as we can keep doing it.”
My hands slip from his collar to his chest. “You want to keep doing it?”
“I do if you do,” he murmurs.
“I do,” I answer quietly. “But only if you’re okay with that.”
“Something casual?” he asks. I nod my head. His hand meanders down my back with large, sweeping strokes. “Yeah, I’m okay keeping it casual. I’m only here through the end of the month anyway. That probably makes the most sense for both of us.”
I nod. “Yeah.”
“No expectations,” he says easily, a bright smile sweeping across his mouth. It never quite reaches his eyes, does it? “It’s how I do my best work.”
I frown at him. Keeping it casual has nothing to do with him and everything to do with me. That part of me feels broken, rusty with disuse. My bubble-wrapped heart.
“Maybe we can call it business casual,” I say slowly.
His hands tighten on my hips. “What does that mean?” He laughs.
“Business casual,” I say again, the idea growing on me. Yes, that’s exactly what I want. Something casual but with parameters in place so neither of us can hurt the other.
I tuck my finger in the collar of his sweater and tug him closer. “It means this only lasts as long as we want it to. It also means…” I tip my chin up and nip lightly at his bottom lip. “It also means if I’m fucking you, no one else is.”
I’m still figuring out what I do and I don’t want, but I know for a fact I don’t want to share Charlie with anyone else.
His eyes flash dark and his breath catches, an inhale that lasts an extra beat. I watch with interest as his tongue wets his bottom lip. I have no right to be possessive over him, but I am, and I think he likes it.
I think he likes it a lot.
“Are you using corporate speak to turn me on, Nova?”
“That was not my intention.”
“The results seem to be in your favor.” His fingers flex where they rest against the back of my neck. “Business casual,” he repeats, thoughtful.
I nod, wrapping my arms around his waist beneath his coat. “That’s what I can offer right now. What do you say?”
He tips my chin up with his knuckles and catches me in another kiss. I sway into him.
“I say we should go back to your place.”
?We’re probably causing a scene.
Charlie and I aren’t exactly being discreet as we speed walk down the street toward my house. He keeps his palm against the small of my back and I keep my hands buried in the pockets of my jacket, but we keep sneaking looks at each other.
“Of course I’ll check out your thermostat,” he yells when we stop at a crosswalk, the elementary school bus unloading for the afternoon on the other side of the street. “I’d be happy to.”
I stare at him. “What thermostat?”
“The one that’s broken,” he yells again.
“What is happening right now?”
“I’m creating a plausible reason for why I’m going to your house in the middle of the afternoon,” he says out of the side of his mouth.
“Do you really think anyone would care?”
“I can think of several people that might care.”
He’s right. This town cares entirely too much about what everyone is up to in their free time. This would be headline news for the phone tree. My hands fiddle with the zipper of my jacket. I yank it up and then down. Up again.
Charlie reaches over and closes his hand around mine, tugging my zipper up until it’s tight against my neck.
“Nova,” he says carefully, eyes straight ahead. “Enough with the zipper.”
“Is my stained Blondie T-shirt tempting to you?”
His eyes slant down to mine. “You are tempting to me.”
The bus drives off and Charlie steps off the curb. He doesn’t wait for me to cross with him, two of my steps for every one of his.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you walk so fast.”
“I’m highly motivated,” he tosses over his shoulder.
Motivated until we’re on the same street as my house, and the entire sidewalk is blocked by a gaggle of geese, their dark heads bobbing as they waddle their way across the pavement. There must be a hundred of them, squawking and hissing at each other. We both stumble to a stop, Charlie’s hand curled around my bicep as he tucks me halfway behind him.
“What the fuck is happening?” he mutters. “What the fuck is this?”
“It looks like a gaggle of geese.”
“Is it every goose on the Eastern Seaboard?”
Possibly. It’s certainly a lot of them. I think they’re going for the fountain on the other side of the street. Charlie tries to step forward, and the one closest to us flaps its wings in warning. The goose right behind it hisses.
I grab the back of his coat and tug him back, my arm wrapped around his middle. “It’s probably best to wait them out.”
Charlie grunts and drops his head back, his jaw and the line of his neck in stark relief against the bright blue sky. I feel a swoop low in my belly.
“If we’re waiting, you’re going to need to stop staring at me like that,” he mutters, glancing at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Like what?”
“Like you’ve got ideas.”
I blink innocently and his whole face collapses into something serious and strained. Twilight eyes. Middle of the night, Charlie above me in bed eyes. Tense jaw and a lock of dark hair over his forehead. A man pushed to the very edge. The lovely, unrestrained version of Charlie. The one that was missing when he walked into my studio this morning.
“I have lots of ideas,” I say, voice low. He makes a faint pleading sound. I laugh. “I told you. I can’t stop thinking about all the things we didn’t get to do.” I trail a single finger over his knuckles. “Would you like to hear about them?”
He grabs my hand with his and starts to tow us through the geese. One snaps at my ankle, and I make an embarrassing squeaking noise, pressing myself closer to Charlie. His hand tightens on mine and he walks faster. “You can tell me all about your ideas at your house.”
“If a goose bites me, you’re not going to hear anything.”
“Do geese bite?”
“I better not find out.”
The geese don’t bite, but they aren’t happy with Charlie steamrolling a path through them. I press my grin into the space between his shoulder blades as he grumbles and curses under his breath, his hand reaching behind him to anchor in the front of my jacket, keeping me close. Once we’re free of the gaggle, Charlie tugs at me until I’m in front of him, marching us the rest of the way down my block and up my front steps like he can’t wait a second more.
We collapse through my front door and immediately grab for each other, my hands pushing his jacket off his shoulders while his fingers yank at my zipper. Something tears, a button goes flying across the hallway, and I laugh into his chin. We are a blur of grasping hands and fumbling kisses, uncoordinated and messy and tripping over one another.
“You should have told me sooner,” he mumbles against my mouth, one hand working at his belt, the other cupped around the back of my head. I sigh and slip my cold hands beneath his thick sweater, the material bunching at my wrists. I trace his sides, his chest, the smooth muscles of his abdomen. His body goes rigid and then relaxes, a string pulled until it gives. He abandons his pants and grips my chin instead, holding my face to his.
“What?” I gasp into his mouth.
“You should have told me you wanted me again.” He drags wet kisses down my jaw to my neck, nipping at the curve of my shoulder where he yanks my T-shirt to the side. I arch and press myself harder to him. “I would have given you anything you wanted, Nova.”
I know he would have. But I want him to take what he wants too. I guide him backward until the backs of his knees hit the couch in my living room, pushing at his shoulders until he collapses. He stares up at me, legs sprawled wide, his big body taking up a majority of the couch. His sweater is half pushed up his stomach, revealing a trail of dark hair beneath his belly button. I like him like this, loose leather belt and the press of his cock against his pants. Thoroughly undone. I drag my tongue along my bottom lip.
He pats his knee once. I grin.
“Oh yeah?” I ask.
He leans forward until he can tuck both of his palms behind my thighs. “Yeah.” He yanks once and I go tumbling in his lap. I rest my elbows on his shoulders, my mouth hovering right above his as I get comfortable. I peck his nose once. Because I can. Because I want to. And because his face lights up when I do.
“Look at you being nice,” he murmurs, palms dragging up the backs of my thighs, fingers flexing against the curve of my ass. “Who knew you had it in you?”
“I’m about to have something in me.”
A laugh bursts out of him, quick and delighted. “Nova Porter, what in the hell am I going to do with you?”
I trace my fingers along his jaw, down the line of his throat to the hollow between his collarbones. It’s the best sort of indulgence to touch him like this after convincing myself I shouldn’t. Like taking a bite of apple pie after committing to strictly salads. I want to sink my teeth right into Charlie.
He leans his head back against the couch and watches me with heavy eyes, my fingertips dancing down his chest to curl in the bottom of his sweater. I tug at it once and he lifts his arms with a smirk. I tug again until it’s over his head and he’s nothing but bare skin and smooth muscle in the hazy glow of my living room. He spreads his arms across the back of the couch as I perch in his lap, arm muscles flexing. I want to bite those too.
“How would you like me, Nova girl?”
My smile turns sharp and Charlie swallows hard, Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. I sink closer to him until our hips are pressed together and my mouth is a whisper from his.
“I like when you ask me that,” I confess.
“I like asking it.” His hands flex against the top of the couch. He’s holding himself back, waiting for direction, and I like that too.
“I know you do.” I grab the hem of my T-shirt and pull it over my head. My hair tumbles around my shoulders, and Charlie releases a breath like he’s just been punched in the chest. I drag my finger down the rose between my breasts. “Would you like to touch me, Charlie?”
He’s busy looking at the lavender lace against my skin, the demi-cup bra that barely covers me. It’s fancy and impractical and I love it.
His tongue licks at the corner of his mouth. “Do you even need to ask that question?”
“You’re not the only one that likes words,” I say.
His eyes flick up to mine and hold, a flash of awareness that flares and fades like a single firework in an inky-black night sky. “Yeah, Nova. I’d like to touch you.” He pushes off the back of the couch until we’re nose to nose, his chest pressed tight to mine. One of his hands finds the middle of my back, fingertips spread wide. “Would you like to hear about all the ways I’ve thought about touching you since I left your bed?”
I nod and wrap my arms around his neck. His skin is so warm. “Yes, please.”
His other hand finds the side of my face, fingers anchored in my hair. He guides my mouth to his and brushes a gentle kiss against my bottom lip. Another when I sigh against him.
“I’ve thought about kissing you a million times. Probably more.” His thumb drags against my bottom lip, and I nip at it with my teeth. “I thought about that pretty flower between your pretty tits and kissing that too.” He huffs a laugh. “How much do you want to hear?”
“Everything.”
“Everything, huh?”
“Yeah.” I take up the abandoned effort of his pants and slip his belt through the loops, tossing it behind me. He lifts his hips while I work at the button and zipper, the both of us shifting and wiggling and tugging to get them off. They stay trapped around one ankle when his hands settle at my hips, his forehead against the rose he likes so much, his breaths panting and heavy through delicate lace.
“I wanted to kiss you in my kitchen, and I wanted to peel off your sweater. I wanted to put you on your knees and wrap your braid around my fist. Fuck, Nova.” Another breath explodes out of him. “Every time I look at you, I only want you more. I want to keep you in this lace and I want to rip it off. I want to fuck you until neither of us can move.”
I thread my fingers through his and squeeze. “Okay.”
He brushes his mouth over the petals of my red rose and looks up at me through his lashes. “Okay?”
“Mm-hmm, let’s do that. All of it.” I squeeze his hand again. “Where would you like to start?”
His eyes flash a shade darker, consideration in the set of his jaw. “I want to make you come.”
My belly clenches tight, warm, liquid heat in the place where our hips are pressed together. I shift on his lap, then shift again when I feel the hard length of him pressing exactly right.
“I’m still wearing my underwear,” I point out.
He tilts his head to the side and sighs happily, like he’s just remembered and he’s pleased by the fact. He fingers the strap of my bra, running his pointer finger beneath. He smiles at the tiny bow that holds it all together. “That feels like a challenge, Nova.”
I force myself out of the lazy trance I’ve slipped into, rocking on his lap, chasing that dizzy, warm feeling and try to follow the conversation. “What does?”
He noses at my bra, lips barely grazing my nipple through the lace. “Do you think I can make you come with your underwear exactly where it is?”
I laugh. “Yeah, probably.” I remember the last time we were together. How easy it was to lose myself with him. “Why? Are you having doubts about your abilities?”
“Nah.” He plucks at that tiny bow again, twisting it back and forth. “I’m just feeling a little competitive.”
“With who? Yourself?” I rock my hips against his harder, a rough drag that has his hand squeezing at my hip. He groans out something that sounds like my name and I feel it low in my belly. Behind my knees and tucked under my ribs. I like how he says it so much .
“It’s good to have goals, Nova.”
I snicker. “I bet I can last longer than you can.”
“Is that so?” He tilts his head to the side. We haven’t moved from the couch and I don’t think we’re going to. We’re both too impatient. The friction is exactly right like this, his body beneath mine and my knees hugging his hips. I sink my fingers into his hair and change the angle, grinding harder in his lap. “Weren’t you the one begging for me in the alley?”
“I wasn’t begging.”
He nips lightly at my ear. “It sounded like begging.”
“We’ll see who begs who.” I roll my hips against his again. “How about we see who can get it done faster?”
He grins at me, delighted. “Oh, I like this idea.” Both of his hands fall to my hips, helping me move against him. He drops his head back against the couch and watches me, blue eyes heated. “What will I win when I make you come?”
“Is my pleasure not enough of a reward?”
His grin tips wider. “I was thinking something more…material.”
“Why does it sound like you want my underwear?”
He laughs, meeting my steady rhythm with a smooth roll of his hips. For a second, I lose track of the conversation and chase the friction instead.
“You always have the best ideas, Nova girl. But purple isn’t exactly my color.”
I keep rocking over him, my hands drifting over the lace that covers my breasts. “It’s mine though. Isn’t it?”
“It really is.” Charlie’s face goes a little bit slack, gaze focused on where my fingers dance over lace. I thumb at my nipple just to watch the way desire paints his skin pink, but it feels so good I do it again, driving myself down harder against him. He swallows once, and then swallows again, catching my hand with his.
“It doesn’t count if you help.” He tugs my hand to his bare chest and presses it there, his fingers threaded through mine. His other hand cups my breast, resuming my gentle strokes with his thumb instead. “What do you want?”
“What?” I breathe.
“If you win,” he says. “What do you want if you make me come faster than I make you come?”
“You’re serious?”
“For once,” he nods, still with those maddening strokes against my breast. He tugs the cup down so it’s tucked beneath, exposing the hard point of my nipple, pushing it up. He presses a careful kiss where the lace bites into my skin. “Yeah, I’m serious.”
“For someone so serious, you’re bending the rules.” I arch my back and press myself harder into him. “You said you wanted to make me come with my underwear on.”
He folds the other side of my bra down. “You’re still wearing it, aren’t you?”
“I guess you’re right.”
“Tell me what you want, Nova. If you win.”
I consider my options. I’m having trouble concentrating when he’s touching me like this, but I think that’s the point. He shifts his hand and the sun catches against the watch on his wrist. Silver metal with a classic black face. I smile and let my head dip against my shoulder, hair curtaining us both. Golden sun beams and warm skin and cinnamon on the tip of my tongue.
“Your watch,” I say, my hands mapping his smooth skin. “I want your Rolex when you come faster.”
“We’ll see.” He pinches my nipple and my body bows over his. It’s somehow better than I remember, being with Charlie like this. Everything feels amplified, electric. His arm curls around my waist, and he tips me to the side, pressing me down into the cushions of the couch. His hands fumble with the button of my jeans and then he’s tugging them off in three rough yanks, my body moving down the couch with every pull.
“Someone is eager.” I laugh.
“Don’t act like you haven’t been aching for it since I kissed you in the alley,” he replies, face set in stern concentration, jeans tossed somewhere over his shoulder. He curls his hands around my ankles and drags his palms up, over my calves, behind my knees to the insides of my thighs. He traces all my tattoos with his eyes and then his fingers, gentle, soothing strokes that have me wiggling beneath him. I’m being memorized. Appreciated. Devoured.
His touch firms, and he lifts my leg, hooking my foot over the back of the couch. I lie there beneath him and let him move me how he likes.
“Did you think about touching me like this too?” I whisper, heart thumping wildly in my chest. The pressure between my legs is unbearable. I’ll be lucky if I last a minute.
Maybe less than that when I figure out what he intends to do. Charlie lowers himself over me, tucking his broad shoulders between my thighs. His long body stretches out across the couch, and he drags a kiss that’s more teeth than tongue to the inside of my knee.
“I’ve been thinking about this more than anything else.”
And then he sets his mouth to me over the lace of my underwear. He keeps one hand splayed low against my belly and the other on the inside of my thigh, holding me still. I expected something fast, desperate, just as messy and unhinged as our kisses while we stumbled down the hallway. But he’s slow and methodical, absolutely decadent in his thorough appreciation. The lace makes everything feel rougher, the scratch of the material and the heat of his tongue. I’ve never been consumed like this before. Never been so carefully worked over, every single minute movement of Charlie between my thighs intended to drive me higher.
And he does. Higher and higher even as I try to grasp at the edges of my control. He kisses me through the lace, and I watch him move over me, the hand on my thigh squeezing like he wants to hold as much of me as possible. His dark hair brushes against my belly, and I groan, sapphire blue eyes blinking up to mine while his mouth works me over. I make another choked sound, and he leans back, grinning into my leg.
“How’re you doing, Nova girl?” His thumb works me while his mouth sucks a mark against the inside of my thigh, right next to an inked cluster of lavender. “Hanging in there? I haven’t had my mouth on you for very long.”
“I feel like I’m, oh—” I drop my head back against the couch and roll my hips into his hand, chasing that delicious tension. I’m definitely going to come faster. I’m already on the very edge, my leg trembling where he’s hooked it over the back of the couch. “I can take it,” I wheeze out.
“Yeah, you can.” Charlie makes a pleased sound, working his mouth back up my leg to where his hand is still rubbing roughly through the lace of my underwear. He presses a kiss to the tiny bow on the front that matches the tiny bows on my bra.
“And I’m sure you’ll make up some time,” he grits out, voice low. His hand leaves my thigh, and I glance down my body, watching as he adjusts the front of his briefs. He strokes himself once and his eyelashes flutter against his cheeks. He opens his eyes and gives me a half smile. “Yeah. You’re not lagging nearly as much as you think.”
“That’s good.”
I don’t really care. I just want more of this weightless, breathless feeling. I am boneless with want, all of my anxieties somewhere else entirely. It’s just me and Charlie and all the things he makes me feel.
He seems to agree because he presses his mouth to me again without another word, his gentle, teasing rhythm slipping into something rough and desperate. He winds me up higher and higher, one hand sliding over my torso to my chest. He strokes his thumb over my rose, then grabs me roughly, pinching my nipple with two fingers. The bright burst of pain and the rough press of his mouth are enough to have me stumbling to the edge, the low grunt that vibrates between my legs sending me over it. Heat tugs at everything, a blissful pulse that rolls and rolls and rolls. I have to close my eyes against it. Have to curl both hands around the pillow by my head and squeeze so I’m not swept away.
Hands tug at my hips as Charlie rolls me over on my hands and knees. I go willingly, legs shaking and hair in my face. My body is suffused with tiny pinpricks of light. A sunbeam shot through cracked glass, rainbows spinning out across the room.
I vaguely register the sound of foil ripping, the shuffle of fabric being moved out of the way. Charlie tugs my underwear to the side and holds it there with his thumb, then pushes into me with a groaning, growling burst of breath.
“Fuck,” he says. He holds himself still against me, his hands tight around my hips. “Fuck,” he says again.
I’m all sensation. A blissed-out, half-delirious laugh tumbles out of me. He feels so good. Exactly right. Exactly what I’ve been needing. I reach back and grab his hand on my hip, needing to feel him. Needing to be connected to something while all of this golden light rushes through my body. His hand squeezes mine.
“You’re gonna win, Nova girl,” he breathes, his body moving against mine. He threads our fingers together at my hip and holds me tighter. “Fuck, you feel so good. And you look—”
His hand sweeps down my side, over the tattoos painted along my rib cage.
“You look so pretty I think I’m having a heart attack,” he mumbles. He pulls out of me, groans, and then pushes back in half a second later. If he was trying to hold himself back, he’s not doing a very good job of it. “You’re definitely going to win. I’m going to last ten seconds, max.”
Another laugh wheezes into a whine when he picks up his pace. I don’t care who wins this stupid contest. “I think we’ve both won, don’t you?”
He doesn’t answer me with words. He just moves his body into mine, a smooth rolling rhythm that picks up speed and ferocity as the thread of his composure begins to unravel. He slaps one hand on the inside of my thigh, the snap of it urging my legs wider. I fall farther into the couch with a groan, my bare breasts rubbing against the soft material with every thrust.
I feel myself start to climb again and Charlie curses behind me, something pained and hungry, his hips abandoning their rhythm for something wilder, uncontrolled. My orgasm is sweet and surprising when it grabs me again, low tremors making me tremble in his arms, one of my knees giving out and sending us both tumbling to the couch.
I laugh and screech, body flailing, but Charlie yanks me up to him with my back to his chest, chasing his pleasure and drawing out my own. The angle makes him slide deeper, my legs spread wide over his. I throw my head back over his shoulder, and he cups his hand at the base of my throat, holding me to him, his breathing harsh in my ear. I’m surrounded by him in the best of ways, held safe and tight in the cage of his arms. I stroke my fingers across his forearm and encourage his fingers to press harder against my throat, and his body goes rigid against mine. He makes a sound against my ear, thumb tracing lightly over my pulse point. Relief. Disbelief. Bone-deep pleasure.
We collapse, Charlie half on top of me. His body is overly warm, and my underwear is a twisted mess, cutting into my hip. My left leg is almost completely numb.
I am quiet and thoroughly, wonderfully undone.
Charlie lifts his arm from around my waist and I grunt my displeasure. He snickers and brushes a quick kiss against the back of my neck.
“Hold on a sec,” he explains. “You need to collect your winnings.”
Something cold and heavy slips over my wrist. I squint open my eyes to see Charlie snapping the clasp of his Rolex. It looks obnoxious on my much smaller wrist, the weight of it too heavy, the band too wide. But I tilt my arm back and forth anyway, admiring the shine of it in the sunlight.
“It suits me,” I muse.
Charlie props his head up on his fist, one of his legs thrown over mine. Our eyes catch and hold, and I get the distinct pleasure of watching his smile start at his eyes and slip over his face until his whole body is alive with it.
He drops himself back against the couch, face smooshed against my arm. He makes a deep, grumbling groan of appreciation. “It really does.”