Chapter 12 #2
She takes me deeper. Her mouth is patient and thorough, the same focused attention she brings to everything, and her hand works what her mouth can't reach.
The combination is devastating. My hand goes to her hair.
My fingers close in it, holding on, because I need something to anchor me while she takes me apart.
She pulls back to the tip and circles her tongue around the ridge. The sensation sends a jolt through my hips that I barely contain. She does it again, slower this time, watching my face while she works, and the eye contact with her lips stretched around me is enough to make my hands shake.
Her mouth slides back down. Her cheeks hollow on the upstroke, tight suction that pulls heat from the base of my spine, and her hand follows her mouth in a twisting grip that finds a rhythm designed to end me.
She is good at this, deliberate, unhurried, in complete control, and the fact that Kendall Mitchell chose to put herself between my legs is doing as much to me as the physical act.
She finds a rhythm. Her head moves in a steady stroke, her tongue working the length of me on every pass, and the wet sound of her mouth fills the room alongside the crack of the fire. My hips want to move. I hold them still through force of will because she set this pace and it belongs to her.
Her free hand presses flat against my stomach, feeling the muscles clench under her palm.
She hums against me, a low vibration that runs the length of my cock, and the noise that tears out of me is not a word in any language.
My grip tightens. She responds by taking me deeper, the back of her throat closing around the head of me, and the pressure builds low in my gut like a wave gathering height.
She pulls back and runs her tongue in a flat stroke from base to tip.
Then she does it again, the underside this time, following the vein with the pointed tip of her tongue.
My thighs are locked. My stomach is a sheet of tension.
She wraps her lips around the head and sucks, her hand stroking in firm, measured pulls beneath her mouth, and the deliberate patience of it is worse than speed would be.
She is savoring me. She is taking her time with my body the way I took my time with hers, and the symmetry of it would make me laugh if I could breathe.
One last stroke takes her all the way down, her lips meeting her fist, and holds there. The heat, the pressure, the tight suction of her throat drag a groan out of me that starts in my gut. My hand fists in her hair. My hips lift off the mattress, and I feel the edge rushing up to meet me.
I know my limits.
"Stop," I say. The word comes out rough.
She looks up. Her lips are swollen and wet. The sight of her between my legs, looking at me with that expression, is going to stay branded into my memory until the day they put me in the ground.
"Problem?" she asks. The innocence in her voice is manufactured, and she knows I know it.
"Come here," I tell her.
She rises. I pull her over me, hands on her waist, and she swings one leg across my hips. She is kneeling above me, braced on my stomach, and the heat of her hovers just above where I need her.
I reach between us and position myself. She sinks down in one slow, continuous movement that takes me to the base. The feel of her, wet and burning around me, forces a sound out of my throat that I couldn't have stopped with a gun to my head.
She plants her hands on my abdomen. She rolls her hips. The movement is grinding and deep, enough to reach every nerve, and her head tips back. Her hair falls down her spine. The firelight turns her skin to copper.
"You feel bigger from this angle," she says, and the breathless quality of the observation combined with the clinical phrasing is so Kendall that I almost lose my rhythm.
"Good."
"That wasn't a compliment. That was a field report."
"Noted."
I let her ride me. She sets the pace, and the pace is deliberate.
Each roll of her hips pulls me deep, holds me there, then releases before she lifts to do it again.
The wet friction of her body on every stroke keeps me right at the edge of rational thought.
The control she's showing tells me she has been thinking about exactly this for longer than she will admit.
My hands settle on her hips. I don't change her rhythm. I follow it, pressing up to meet her when she drops, and the collision pushes her breath out in short, sharp bursts that match the slap of skin.
She picks up the pace. The rolls become lifts, her thighs working, her body rising until I almost slip free before she drops back down and takes me whole.
The angle takes me deep every time, the head of my cock pressing against the end of her.
She grips tighter with each stroke, building toward something she can't hold back.
Her breasts move with each lift. I reach up and cup one, my thumb rolling over the hardened nipple, and the contact draws a moan from her that vibrates through both of us.
She leans forward. Her hands shift from my stomach to the pillow beside my head, and the angle changes. My cock drags against the front wall of her on every stroke, and she gasps when it hits the right spot.
"There," she says. The word is barely audible.
I hold her hips at that angle. I plant my feet flat on the mattress and thrust up into her, keeping the contact against that spot.
Her gasps become moans. The moans become my name, fractured and raw.
Her arms are shaking. Sweat gathers in the hollow of her throat.
I lean up, lick it, tasting salt while I fuck her at the angle that is taking her apart.
I can feel her tightening around me. The grip of her on every stroke gets firmer, more urgent, the involuntary clench of muscles building toward release.
She is close. I can read it in the pitch of her voice and the way her nails are digging crescents into the pillow beside my head.
I reach between us with my free hand and find her clit, slick and swollen.
A few tight circles of my thumb in time with my hips and her whole body goes rigid above me.
My hand slides from between us to the place on her ribs where the bruise was.
I press my palm flat against the fading mark.
She feels it. Her eyes open and find mine, and the look that passes between us is too heavy for words.
My hand covers the place Gary broke. I am inside her. She chose every part of this.
"I want to feel you come," I say.
She comes. The orgasm takes her whole body, clenching around me so tight I see white at the edges of my vision.
Her back arches, pressing her ribs against my palm, and I feel the orgasm move through her body under my hand.
She drops forward against me, face in my neck, and the sounds she makes against my skin are wordless and raw. They belong to me.
I wrap one arm across her back and thrust up into her through the aftershocks. She grips me in rhythmic pulses, and each one pulls me deeper into the territory past control. The friction of her around me, still contracting, still holding, is more than any amount of restraint can sustain.
I drive deep, as deep as I can get, and hold there. I come with my arm locked around her, my face pressed into her hair. The force of it bows my spine off the mattress. The sound I make against her throat is low and guttural, pulled from somewhere I don't let people see.
She stays on top of me. Neither of us moves. Her breathing comes in heavy pulls against my neck. My hand is still pressed against her ribs.
The room comes back in pieces. The fire has burned down to a deep glow.
The sweat between our bodies is cooling where the quilt hasn't covered us.
Her weight against me is solid and real, and the smell of her hair fills my lungs with every breath.
Burning pine, clean skin, sex, and something underneath all of it that is just Kendall.
She shifts. Her lips press against the side of my throat, right over my pulse. The contact is deliberate. She is marking me back.
"Stay," I say.
She lifts her head. Her hair falls across my jaw, and the look she gives me is steady, spent, honest.
"I'm not going anywhere, Alex." She presses her palm flat against my sternum. "But if you snore, I reserve the right to reconsider."
"I don't snore."
"We'll see."
I pull the quilt up over both of us. She settles against my side, her weight pinning my arm. Her hand rests on my abdomen. The fire settles in the grate. Outside, the ridge is silent under snow.
I lie in the dark with this woman's breathing slowing against me. My arm tightens around her. The reflex is not new. The weight behind it is.
Her breathing evens out. She sleeps. I don't. Instead, I watch the embers fade and think about a man in Anchorage who doesn't know what's coming for him. Kendall Mitchell is in my bed. My hand is on her ribs. The bruise is almost gone.
What I'll build in its place will last longer.