Chapter 33 #2
“Fuck—you’re—oh my god—Hunter, I’m—” I break off as the orgasm hits, sudden and overwhelming. It’s not the usual tidal wave, but a series of sharp, rolling aftershocks that leave me trembling and gasping, clutching at his arms and begging him not to stop.
He doesn’t. He pushes me through the crest, then straight through another, coaxing every shudder from my body before he finally comes up for air. His chin and mouth are slick with my wetness. He grins like a cat who ate the fucking cream, unrepentant.
He hovers above me, bracing himself on his forearms. He kisses me, letting me taste myself on his lips. I feel raw and open, barely able to catch my breath. He watches me with that fierce, possessive look, like he wants to memorize me at my most undone.
The most crazy part is that I want him to.
“You good?” he asks. His voice is so low it’s almost a growl.
I nod. I can’t speak yet. He nestles down next to me, gathering me into his arms. He strokes my hair like I’m something fragile. The gentleness after such violence undoes me. It’s like he’s letting me know I’m safe, even after everything.
But I’m greedy. I feel empty without him inside me, a hollow ache that pulses between my hips.
I want more, want all of him, want to see him lose control.
Just the way he made me come. I recover just enough to roll over him, straddling his hips.
His hands settle on my ass, encouraging, but I catch them and flatten them above his head, pinning him for a change. He raises his eyebrows, amused.
“Hunter,” I whisper against his mouth. “I need to ask you something.”
“Yeah?”
“Have you been tested? Recently?”
He pulls back to look at me. “Yeah. When we first moved in together. Just in case.” His cheeks flush slightly. “Have you?”
“Yes. Before I moved in.”
The admission hangs between us, heavy with implication. We both planned this, both hoped for this, even when we were pretending it was just business.
“I want you,” I say simply. “All of you. No barriers.”
“Fuck, Juliet.” His eyes search mine. “I’ve never done that.”
“Neither have I. But everything we do feels like the first time,” I admit. “I want to feel you, Hux.”
He shudders, kissing me hard.
It’s different this time and I know it the moment I let him in.
All the way in, nothing between us, no latex or pretense or half-measures.
There is a terrifying freedom in it, a dizzying sense of reckless possibility, as if I’ve stepped out past the edge of the familiar cliff and am now in freefall, arms outstretched, trusting that he’ll catch me or at least fall with me.
If we have to plummet straight down to our certain death, at least we’ll do it together.
I’m on top of him, knees on either side of his hips, and I spit on my hand to lubricate his cock a little extra. He bites his lip and gives me a lustful, hooded expression. “You gonna fuck yourself on my dick?”
“Yes, Hux.” I position his cock at my entrance, shuddering with anticipation. “I’m going to burn us both to the ground.”
He thrusts up as I impale myself, his cock pushing inside me, raw and perfect, every inch a shock to the system. His piercing hits my g-spot just right, feeling so damn good. I brace myself with hands on his chest, his heart thundering under my palms. I ride him, my pace starting slowly.
My intention isn’t to dominate or punish. I want to be seen. I want, for once, to not be afraid of what a man will do with all of me. Hux didn’t hold back earlier when I was on my knees for him. The least I can do is give him everything I’ve got.
His hands roam my thighs, gripping tight, then softening, then gripping again as if he might lose his place.
He reaches up and cups my tits with both hands, thumbs teasing my nipples until I arch my back and moan.
Maybe he already knows that they’re my secret weakness.
My cheat code. He works it without mercy or hesitation.
Each brush and pinch sends a jolt of pleasure straight to my core, winding me up tighter and tighter as I grind down onto him, chasing the friction that will tip me over.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he croons, low and amazed, like he’s still not sure this is real. “Look at how well you’re riding my cock. God, your tits, your mouth, your thighs. I can’t. I’m losing my mind.”
Every word, every curse, is like cool water being poured over my sunburned flesh.
I crave his words, his praise, his coming apart.
Every inch of my body flushes, sweat beading on my skin as I move harder, faster, drunk on the way we fit together.
The bed creaks beneath us, wood hitting drywall with a slow, steady rhythm that grows frantic as we do.
My lips tip up as I wonder how hard I’ll have to work to get him to demolish this frame, too. How long will it last? Not long, I hope.
He sits up, burying his face in my chest, licking and biting.
Then he’s sucking my nipples until I moan, until I scream, until I can’t remember my name.
The sensation is so sharp, so good, that I almost sob with it.
I clutch his head to me, tangle my fingers in his sweat-damp hair, and fuck him with everything I’ve got, wanting to be ruined by it.
Fuck it, I am ruined by him.
He’s close. His hips jerk, and desperately grinding deeper. He wants to make me feel it, like he’s trying to get under my skin. I want him to lose control. I want him to break.
When I come, it crashes over me like a tidal wave. Violent, relentless, washing away every defense I ever built. I scream his name, not even bothering to muffle it. I dig my nails into his shoulders and ride him through the aftershocks, shaking, grateful, stunned.
But he doesn’t stop. He shifts, twists us so I’m flat on my back and he’s above me.
He pins my wrists to the mattress and pounds into me with a single-minded focus that borders on obsession.
There’s sweat dripping from his forehead, his jaw clenched as if he’s in pain, his entire body vibrating with the need to let go and the fear of what will happen when he does.
“Come for me again,” he growls. “Give it to me, Firecracker. I want to watch you fall apart.”
He lets go of one wrist and brings his hand down between us.
He rubs my clit in hard, tight circles. The world whites out.
Stars behind my eyes, toes curling, lungs empty of air.
I shatter for him, again. And this time it’s not just physical.
It feels like something is breaking open inside, like he’s touching parts of me that have never seen daylight.
It feels like being baptized and born anew.
He loses it. Burying his face in my neck, he clutches my waist. He comes so hard I feel it in every cell, every vein, every nerve ending.
His hips snap, pumping, as he fills my pussy with lashes of his hot cum.
His cry is low and desperate, my name muffled in my hair.
I hold him as he trembles through his orgasm, his hands tightening on my body until I’m sure he’ll leave marks.
“Oh, Monroe,” he mumbles. Tension seeps from him as he kisses me, fumbling, desperate. “Fuck, baby. Fuck.”
I smooth a hand over his messy dark blonde hair. I’m not sure I can speak yet, so it’ll have to do. He carefully shifts his weight so that I’m lying partially on his body, our limbs tangled, our breath hard.
God, that was reverential. It was life-changing.
Everything that usually swirls in my brain is gone. He makes the static in my brain quieter.
I notice a sketchbook half-hidden in his bedside drawer. Without thinking, I reach for it and flip it open.
The drawing on the current page takes my breath away.
It’s me. But not sexual or idealized. It’s intimate in a way that goes deeper than physical. Emotional and honest. He’s captured something in my expression that I didn’t even know was there, some softness I only show when I think no one is looking.
“Huxley,” I breathe.
He tries to take the notepad from me, his face flushed with embarrassment. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“Don’t.” I hold it away from him, still staring at the drawing. “This is beautiful. This is how you see me?”
His mouth flexes as if he’s not sure what expression he wants to make. “Sometimes. When you think no one’s watching.”
“I love it.” The words come out more intense than I intended, but I mean them. “No one’s ever looked at me like this, let alone drawn it.”
He relaxes slightly, but I can tell he’s still self-conscious about showing me this side of himself.
“I used to write and sketch a lot,” he says quietly. “Before everything got complicated. It’s the only time my brain shuts up.”
I flip through a few more pages, seeing sketches of his teammates, letters scrawled in his intense, blocky half-cursive, diagrams of X’s and O’s on a hand-drawn hockey rink outline.
Arrows cut across the diagram, tracing a path that feels less like strategy and more like choreography.
There’s control in it, discipline, and an instinct for movement that goes far beyond brute force.
“You’re really talented, Hux.”
He tries to downplay it. “It’s just a hobby.”
“It’s more than that.” I close the notebook carefully and set it back inside his bedside table. “I get to look at myself how you see me.”
“I hope I did a good job of making you look like a smokeshow,” he jokes. “I would draw your brain too, but it might be a little weird.”
“I like weird things.” I lay my head against his shoulder.
We lie there in comfortable silence for a while. I think about how this weekend was supposed to be part of the strategy. A move on the chessboard. A way of selling our relationship to the world.
But it’s become something terrifyingly outside the bounds that we tried to set up.
Something real.
Lying there with him, feeling more exposed and more safe than I have in years, I realize I don’t know what scares me more. Losing this thing we’ve built, or letting myself keep it.
Because keeping it means admitting this was never fake. Means acknowledging that somewhere along the way, I stopped playing a role and started falling for the man behind it.
Means risking everything on the possibility that he might choose me when this is all over.
And Juliet Monroe doesn’t gamble with her heart.
Except apparently, she does.
Apparently, she already has.