Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ELLIE
The hotel room door closes behind us with a soft click. While I hang my denim jacket on a hook by the door, Douglas switches on one of the bedside lamps and draws the curtains.
The bed seems even more prominent than it did before we went for dinner, the duvet smooth in the soft light, waiting for us. In fact, the entire room feels more intimate than it did earlier, but maybe that’s only because I know what we’re about to do in it.
Douglas watches me, and I’ve never seen this look on him before.
Open, intent, all his want showing plainly.
His lips are slightly parted. His chest rises and falls.
His hands hang by his sides, but not loosely.
His fingers twitch, then curl, like he’s resisting the urge to reach for me before he knows if he’s allowed.
I close the distance between us, put my hands on his chest, and kiss him.
It starts soft, tentative. His hands hover at my waist—I can feel the heat of them through my dress, not quite touching.
Then something gives. He pulls me in, and the kiss deepens so fast my head spins.
His mouth opens against mine, warm and tasting faintly of beer, and when my tongue brushes his, he makes a low, wrecked sound that I feel everywhere.
I reach for the buttons of his shirt, but my hands are shaking so much that I have to break the kiss to focus on undoing them. Even then, I fumble.
Douglas holds still, patient even now, his hands on my hips, his thumbs tracing slow circles through my dress. Finally I undo the last button and push the shirt off his shoulders and let it drop to the floor.
And then I look at him.
Oh.
He’s broad, his arms thick and strong. There’s a dusting of reddish-brown hair across his chest, thicker in the centre, then a narrow trail disappearing beneath his belt. His skin is pale where the sun hasn’t reached, freckles scattered across his shoulders, a pale scar across his ribs.
There’s softness at his stomach too, love handles above the line of his jeans. He’s not polished or sculpted. He’s real. And he’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.
I touch him, sliding my hands down slowly, over the swell of his chest, through the hair there, down over his ribs. When I brush the scar, he draws in a sharper breath, and I feel it ripple through him. Then I go lower still, over his stomach.
“You have no idea,” I say quietly, “how long I’ve wanted to do this.”
His hands come to the back of my dress. His fingers find the zip, then pause. “Can I?” His voice is lower than usual.
“Yes.”
The sound of the zip lowering is obscenely loud in the quiet room. The dress slips from my shoulders, and I step out of my sandals and help it the rest of the way. And now I’m standing in front of Douglas Fraser in nothing but my underwear.
It’s a white lacy set that Blair made me buy and which I’d never have chosen for myself. It’s nice, but it does nothing to hide my soft stomach, my thick thighs, the stretch marks on my hips—all the bits of my body I’ve spent years hiding under shapeless layers.
Every instinct I have—every single one—is screaming at me to cover myself. To fold my arms across my stomach. To make a joke. To reach for the dress, or the duvet, or anything that will put a barrier between his eyes and my body.
But I don’t. I just stand here and let him look.
Douglas’s gaze moves slowly over me—my breasts, the curve of my waist, my thighs. His throat works. “Ellie.” It comes out rough, barely a word. And that’s when I notice the front of his jeans is pulled taut, the evidence of his arousal unmistakable.
He wants me. He really wants me. Not some imagined, thinner, smoother version of me. He wants this version of me—the real one, standing here in my bra and pants. And the knowledge of that floods me with confidence.
I reach for his belt. My hands are still trembling, but not as much now. I undo the buckle, then the button of his jeans, then the zip, Douglas’s breath catching when my knuckles brush against him through his boxer briefs.
I push his jeans down but they snag on his thick thighs. He helps, kicking them off along with his shoes in a graceless manoeuvre that involves hopping on one foot and nearly losing his balance.
Under any other circumstances, I might laugh, but I’m too busy looking at him in his boxers, his erection straining against the navy cotton. My mouth has gone completely dry.
I reach out, hook my fingers into the waistband, and draw his boxers down slowly.
The cotton drags over the flushed head of his cock, then lower, revealing him inch by inch.
He’s a decent length, but it’s the width of him that makes my stomach clench.
He’s thick. My tongue slips out to wet my lips as I keep going, the waistband sliding past the dark red hair at the base.
I push his boxers all the way down, and he steps out of them, leaving himself bare in front of me. Then I wrap my fingers around him.
He’s hot, furnace-hot. I stroke him, learning the shape of him, the texture, the way the skin shifts under my hand.
My other hand cups his balls, cradling their weight, and Douglas makes a low, broken groan, his eyes closing, his hands finding my hips and gripping them.
I watch his face with something like wonder.
The way his brow creases. The way his lips part.
The way his head tips back slightly, exposing the column of his throat.
I’m doing this to him. Me.
The power of it is intoxicating. I, Ellie Macpherson, am making Douglas Fraser’s knees buckle with my hand around his cock.
After a while his eyes open again and his hands move to my bra. I let go of him as his fingers tug at the clasp. He fumbles with it, adjusts his grip, fumbles again—and a laugh escapes me, warm and fond rather than mocking. He huffs against my shoulder.
“In my defence,” he mutters, “it’s been a while.”
“Take your time.”
The clasp gives, the bra falls away, and Douglas stares at my breasts.
“Fuck,” he says.
Then his hands close over them, and the sound I make is involuntary—a gasp crossed with a moan, shocked out of me by the sensation of his palms against my skin.
His hands are rough, and their texture against the soft, sensitive skin of my breasts is electric.
His gaze follows his touch as if he’s trying to memorise every inch.
He cups me, testing the weight of me in his hands.
His thumbs brush over my nipples, teasing them into peaks.
He drops to his knees and the sight of him there nearly undoes me before he’s even touched me. Then his mouth closes around my left nipple.
His warm lips. The scrape of his scruff against the underside of my breast. The hot, wet pull of his mouth. The slow press of his tongue . . .
Pleasure shoots through me so sharply that I clamp my hands onto his shoulders, gripping hard enough to leave marks. “Douglas!”
He hums against my skin, and the vibration shivers through my breast and straight down between my legs. I am so turned on I can barely stand.
He lets go of my nipple with a soft, wet pop and turns his attention to the other, giving it the same slow devastating care. By the time he finally lifts his head again, I’m panting.
“You like my mouth on you like that?” he asks.
I can only nod.
He presses his face into the valley between my breasts and draws in a slow breath that makes heat curl through me all over again. Then he presses a kiss there—soft, deliberate, intimate enough to make my heart twist.
His hands slide down. He hooks his fingers into the waistband of my knickers and eases them down, his knuckles brushing along my thighs as they fall.
And now we’re both naked.
For a second he just looks, taking me in with an intensity that sets every nerve ending alight. There’s no hesitation in his gaze, no awkwardness. Just hunger. He brushes his thumb through my curls so lightly it takes my breath away.
Then he guides me towards the bed and lowers me onto it. He follows me down, kissing me slow and deep, his body a welcome weight over mine. One of his hands skims over my hip and down my thigh, then gently eases my legs apart. Then his hand slides between them.
I’m wet. I know I’m wet—I’ve been wet since he unzipped my dress, possibly since the walk back from the pub, maybe before even then—and when his fingers find me, Douglas groans against my lips.
“Christ, Ellie.”
My cheeks burn, but I’m far too turned on by the rough drag of his callused fingers over the most sensitive part of me to do anything but give in.
His fingers find my clit, circling it, rubbing it.
He adjusts the pressure when my breath changes or my hips shift.
He’s attentive in the same way he is with everything—quietly focused, watching for signals, his weight braced on one elbow while his other hand keeps moving between my legs, tuning into what I need before I have to ask.
He slips a finger inside me, and then another. My hips instinctively rock against his hand. The tension is building fast. I’m wound so tight, and what he’s doing to me feels so good. My breath is coming in short, ragged pulls. My fingers dig into the duvet. I’m close.
But I don’t want to come like this. Not the first time. I want him inside me.
“Douglas—” My voice catches. I reach between us and wrap my hand around his cock. “Please. I . . . need you.”
He stills at once. “Aye,” he says softly. “I’ve got a condom in my bag.” He starts to push himself up, but I just grip him tighter, keeping him where he is.
“We don’t need it. I’m on the pill. After you asked me to dinner, I went to the doctor. I haven’t been on it in years, but I thought—I mean, I didn’t assume we’d—”
He presses his lips to mine, cutting my spiral short. “You’re perfect, Ellie.”
I’m not sure anybody has ever called me perfect before. I don’t trust myself to speak, so I pull him closer instead.
He positions himself, then pushes in slowly, and the stretch of him makes me gasp. It’s a lot. It’s been a long time, and the girth of him is—God. My body tenses instinctively. Douglas stops at once. He kisses me, once on the mouth, then again on my neck.
I breathe. Adjust. Nod.
Very carefully he pushes in the rest of the way. The fullness of it steals the breath from my lungs all over again. For a moment all I can do is feel him—every inch, the weight and heat of him, the sheer solid reality of having Douglas Fraser inside me.
Douglas stays still, braced above me, giving me time. His face is close to mine, his breath warm against my skin.
I lift my hips a little. “Douglas,” I whisper. “Please.”
And then he moves, rolling his hips with a slow measured rhythm, watching my face, checking. I can see the tension in his biceps, the way he holds his weight. He’s treating me like something precious, and it’s beautiful, but I want more.
I wrap my legs around his waist and draw him deeper. Then, pressing my hands flat against his back, I arch up into him, matching his rhythm. “Don’t hold back,” I say. “I’m good now.”
Something breaks in him. I feel it, the exact moment his restraint snaps. His hand grips my thigh, hitching it higher, changing the angle so that each thrust grinds his pelvis against my clit, and—
Oh.
“There,” I manage. “Right there. Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t. If anything, he moves faster, one hand gripping my thigh to keep me open for him while the other braces against the headboard for leverage.
The pressure builds and builds, tightening low in my belly and radiating out through my thighs and up my spine.
The whole world narrows to the place where his body meets mine and the relentless, perfect rhythm of him moving inside me.
When my orgasm hits, it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt.
My back arches off the bed. My nails dig into his back.
It breaks through me in waves—deep, shuddering, enormous—and I cry out, a sound I don’t recognise as coming from me.
I’m dimly aware that I’m gripping Douglas so hard it must hurt, that my body is clenching around him, that tears are pricking at the corners of my eyes—not from sadness, not from pain, but from the sheer overwhelm of years of containment cracking open all at once.
Douglas follows shortly after, coming with my name on his lips. Ellie. I watch him, the way his brow furrows before his whole face goes slack with release.
He drops his forehead to mine, and we stay like that for a moment—connected, trembling, his breath hot and uneven against my mouth, my fingers still pressed into the muscle of his back.
He eases out, and the loss of him leaves me aching, but he doesn’t move away. Instead he stays there, suspended above me, and almost absently—as though he can’t quite help himself—takes hold of his cock and runs the head slowly along my slit, dragging it through the mingled slickness of us.
He does it once, then again, and somehow it’s both tender and erotic.
It’s not the start of something new, only a reluctance to let this moment end.
Then he lies down beside me and pulls me close.
I press my cheek to his chest and listen to his breathing gradually slow.
His thumb traces patterns on my shoulder.
The room is quiet. Neither of us speaks. We don’t need to. Everything that matters is here, in the way he holds me, in the way I let myself be held.