Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
DOUGLAS
The lamp on Ellie’s side of the bed is still on, casting a low amber glow across the ceiling. I should probably reach over and switch it off, but that would mean moving, and I’m not moving. Not a chance.
Ellie is beside me, on her side, her cheek resting on my chest. She’s still awake—I can tell by the gentle brush of her eyelashes against my skin when she blinks.
My body is heavy in a way I’m not used to.
Not tired, although I am that too, but spent.
Properly spent. Every muscle loose, every tension I’ve been carrying in my shoulders and my jaw and my back just .
. . gone. And underneath the heaviness, something warm.
Something that keeps pulsing through me in slow aftershocks every time I think about—
The way she clenched around me when she came. The sound she made.
Christ.
I close my eyes and the memory plays again, vivid and immediate.
The tight, slick heat of her. Her nails in my skin.
Her back arching off the mattress, her whole body pulling me deeper.
And then the way she looked at me afterwards—flushed, slightly dazed—like I’d done something extraordinary, when all I’d done was lose myself with her.
I let out a breath.
This is real. She’s real. The warmth of her along my side, the weight of her leg against mine, the smell of her hair—something floral mixed with sweat and sex and the clean cotton of hotel sheets. All real.
A thought pops into my head. The twins. Are they okay?
They’re fine. They’re with Lachlan, Blair, and Finn tonight. They’re probably asleep by now, or at least pretending to be while whispering to each other in the dark.
I let the thought go.
Ellie’s thumb moves against my ribs. A small, slow stroke.
I pull back and look at her, and she looks at me. Those grey-blue eyes. Those swollen lips. There’s a mark on her collarbone—my scruff, probably. Her hair is half across her face, half across the bed, nothing like the careful waves she arrived with.
She’s a mess. She’s gorgeous.
She smiles, almost shyly. I smile back.
Then her hand moves. Down from my ribs. Across my stomach. Her fingertips trail through the hair below my belly button, slow and unhurried, and the muscles there tighten under her touch.
Lower.
Her fingers find me. Tentative. Curious. A question rather than a statement.
My cock responds before my brain has time to weigh in, thickening and swelling in her hand. Given how knackered I am and the fact I came about fifteen minutes ago, this is a minor miracle.
Ellie’s smile widens. She strokes me slowly, base to tip, her thumb brushing over the head, and my hips shift towards her before I can stop them.
“Ellie—”
She kisses me, softly, just the press of her mouth against mine, her hand still on me, still moving. I return the kiss, one hand coming up to cradle the back of her head, my fingers tangling in her hair.
She releases me then puts her palm on my chest and pushes me flat onto the mattress. She moves over me, throwing a leg across, settling her weight onto my thighs. I look up at her and my brain empties.
Her hair falls loose around her face, messy and wild in the lamplight.
Her breasts are full and heavy, and they shift as she adjusts her position.
I can’t stop looking at them. The soft, pale skin.
The pink of her nipples. The sheer size of them, more than my hands can hold, and my hands aren’t small.
I reach up and cup them because I can. Because she wants this, and so do I, and I’m not wasting the chance.
She arches into my palms, and the sound she makes—a low, breathless thing—goes straight through me.
My thumbs brush her nipples, and she shudders. Her hips rock forwards, grinding against me, and the slick heat of her drags along the underside of my cock.
Fuck.
She reaches down between us, taking my cock in her hand and lining it up, the wet heat of her pressing against the head.
Then she lowers herself, taking me in inch by inch, and the sensation—the grip of her body around me—is so intense I have to press my head back into the pillow and breathe through it.
My jaw clenches. My fingers slide to the soft curve of her hips and hold them tight.
She stills, her hands flat on my chest, her fingers spread wide. She’s adjusting. I can see it in her face—the stretch of it, then the moment it shifts from too much to just right. Her expression softens. She looks down at me, and moves.
A slow roll of her hips. Forwards and back.
Finding the angle, the rhythm. I watch her because I can’t do anything else.
I’m mesmerised by the sight of her. The way her body moves above me.
The way her breasts sway with each rock of her hips, heavy and hypnotic.
The flush spreading down her neck and across her chest.
Two weeks ago, I thought of her as the quiet lass from the library. How did I not see her? The thought hits me hard. This woman has been in my life for years—in my town, in my library, playing at the Ferryman’s Rest—and yet I never really saw her.
And now she’s above me with her head tipped back and her hips rolling, and I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.
I sit up, the movement instinct more than decision.
I need to be closer, need to feel more of her.
Ellie gasps, grabs my shoulders, her nails digging in as the angle changes and I go deeper.
I wrap my arms around her, pulling her against me, chest to chest. Her forehead touches mine. We’re breathing the same air.
“Hi,” she whispers.
“Hi.”
We find a rhythm together. My hands move from her hips to her waist, then slide up her back before moving down to squeeze her arse. The pace builds slowly. Not frantic, not desperate. Something steadier than that.
She looks at me. I look at her. And the eye contact is almost too much. Too honest. No walls, no excuses, no deflection. Just me, looking at her, letting her see all of it.
Neither of us looks away.
Her breathing changes. Shorter. Sharper. I feel her tightening around me—small involuntary pulses that make my vision swim. Her fingers clench in my hair. Her rhythm loses its steadiness, becoming urgent, uneven.
I know what she needs. I can read it in her body the way I read a shift in the swell. I tilt my hips to meet her, grip her waist, and give her something to push against.
“Let go,” I murmur. “I’ve got you.”
She comes. Her body locks around me and she cries out, desperate and raw, and the rhythmic clench of her around my cock pulls me over the edge too.
It hits hard, deep, a shuddering release that empties me out, dragging a groan from somewhere in my chest. I hold on to her, arms tight around her, my face pressed into the curve of her neck, and I let it take me.
For a few seconds, there’s nothing. Just warmth, and her, and the sound of us breathing.
Ellie collapses forwards onto my chest. I catch her, hold her, her heart hammering against mine. Small tremors run through her body and into mine, aftershocks that neither of us tries to control.
Eventually—after a minute, maybe five, I’ve no idea—she shifts, sliding off me and settling beside me. I pull the duvet up over us both.
My hand finds her hip. My thumb traces circles on her skin.
Her breathing slows. Deepens. And somewhere between one heartbeat and the next, she falls asleep against me.