Chapter 38 #2
I make it maybe five minutes before I’m writhing and whimpering.
I pretend I’m annoyed, that it’s all performative, but it isn’t.
My whole body aches with need, every cell tuned to the absence of his touch.
I grind my ass against him, searching for friction.
It gets me nothing except a rough, warning slap to my ass and a muttered, “Not yet. Unless you’re ready to say your safe word, I own your greedy little pussy. ”
There’s no give in him, not when he wants something. He buries his face in my hair, breathes in slow and steady, like he’s feeding off the pulse of my desperation.
After another three minutes of torture, my personal, unending hell, I twist in his arms so I can see him.
“I need it,” I say. “Please, Hunter.”
He kisses my neck, soft and possessive. “I know you do, baby.”
He holds me tighter, hands splaying wide over my ribs, fingers tracing circles on my skin. But he doesn’t go near my tits, and he definitely doesn’t touch my pussy.
“Trust me,” he says. The seriousness in his voice steals the words from my mouth.
I nod, teeth gritted.
He waits. I can feel his cock throbbing against my ass, but he refuses to move, not even to rut helplessly against me like I would do in his position.
We lie there, bodies cooling. I go a little feral with the denial. My nipples are stiff, aching, desperate for friction. The wetness between my thighs has reached a level of embarrassing I didn’t think possible.
Finally, when I’m about to snap, he kisses my cheek, my jaw, the corner of my mouth.
“You’re doing so well,” he whispers. “I know you can take more.”
I shake my head. “I can’t. Right here, right now, I’m literally going to combust.”
He chuckles, rolls me onto my back, and cages me with his body. I reach for his cock, but he catches my wrist and pins it above my head, the pressure just shy of bruising.
“You know why I’m doing this?” he asks, voice dark.
“Because you’re evil?”
He laughs. “Because you’re going to come so hard, you’ll see god. That’s a promise.”
I roll my eyes, but the way he says it makes me believe him.
He starts at my mouth, kissing me slow and deep, tongue tangling with mine until I can barely breathe. Then he moves to my throat, biting gently, soothing the sting with his tongue. He makes his way down, worshipping every inch of skin, until he’s hovering over my chest.
He takes one nipple into his mouth, sucks it hard. I arch off the bed, desperate for more. He licks one nipple, then moves to the other, biting and sucking until both become swollen, tender, and soaked.
“Oh my god,” I gasp, hips rolling up, searching for friction. “I need to come, Hux.”
“I know you do.” He doesn’t oblige. Instead, he kisses his way down my stomach, licking and biting, leaving a trail of heat in his wake. He stops just above my clit, breathes hot against my skin.
He licks his finger and teases my entrance, sliding in slowly, then out, then back in. He adds a second finger, fucking me shallow and slow, never giving me enough.
I’m going to kill him.
He leans up, face just above mine, and watches me as he works his fingers in and out. I struggle to breathe.
“Look at you,” he says, awed. “You’re desperate.”
“I hate you,” I whisper. It’s a lie and we both know it. I’d let him do anything to me if it meant he’d finally let me come.
He grins, the evil bastard.
He doesn’t touch my clit, not even once. He keeps finger-fucking me, slow and relentless, building pressure until I feel like I’ll crawl out of my skin.
I sob, not from pain or even frustration, but from the sheer, overwhelming need.
“Hunter, please. Please. I need—”
“What do you need?”
“I need you to fuck me, please, I need to come—”
He watches me, then finally, mercifully, lines up his cock and pushes in, all at once, filling me so completely that I see stars. His piercing bumps my g-spot and my pussy spasms.
“Fuck, Hux. Fuck! Fuck!”
“Good girl,” he says, thrusting hard and deep. “That’s my good fucking girl.”
I don’t last. He holds out, fucking me slow and deep, but I can’t take it anymore. I come, body clenching around him, vision going white at the edges.
But he doesn’t stop. He keeps going, fucking me through it, drawing it out until I’m shaking and crying and begging him to stop.
When I think I can’t take anymore, he pulls out, strokes himself twice, and comes on my tits, marking me with thick, hot stripes.
I’m still shaking, body buzzing, when he drags his fingers through the mess and writes his name across my chest.
He pinches my nipples harder than before. “Ah!”
The pain sends aftershocks through my whole body. He waits until I stop shaking, then leans down and kisses my messy thighs, tongue cleaning my skin, licking every drop away.
I’m spent. Completely ruined.
But he’s not done.
He grabs the vibe from the nightstand, turns it on, and presses it hard against my clit.
I scream, the sensation too much, too intense, but he doesn’t stop. He holds it there, watching my face, waiting for the exact second I tip over into another orgasm. I’ll remember the look of hedonistic excitement on his face until the day I fucking die.
The bastard makes me come again and this time it’s so intense I almost black out. He helps me ride it out as my hips buck, my pussy clenching around nothing, every muscle activated.
He finally relents, collapses beside me, pulls me into his chest.
He holds me while I come down, stroking my hair, whispering soft nothings in my ear.
When I finally catch my breath, he kisses my temple.
“Good job, Firecracker,” he says, voice thick with pride. “Good girls get to come.”
I want to tell him off, but I can barely speak. Am I actually alive? Who knows.
“Was it worth it?” he asks.
I nod, unable to form words. He laughs, the sound low and content. I curl into him, his arms caging me in. I’m languid. Or whatever the word is that’s more relaxed than that. Not quite unconscious?
Hux kisses my shoulder like he’s been doing it for years instead of two months. He gets me in a way that most people don’t. The scary hockey enforcer and the petite bombshell. Who’d have figured?
And that’s when it hits me like a punch to the gut.
This won’t last.
This trip? It will end. Real life will rush back in. The contract has an expiration date. I can count the days we have left. The number is suddenly, terrifyingly small.
“You okay?” Hunter asks, his voice soft in the dark hotel room.
“Yeah. Just tired.”
But I’m not tired. I’m afraid of the end. Beginning to brace for it. Wondering how I’ll go back to being just myself after this. After knowing what it feels like to be part of something bigger.
After knowing what it feels like to be loved like this.
Because that’s what this is, isn’t it? Love. Real, messy, complicated love that doesn’t fit neatly into the boxes I’ve made for my life.
“Juliet.” Hunter’s voice is gentle but insistent. “Talk to me.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re spiraling. I can tell because you’re doing that thing where you try to solve problems that don’t exist yet.”
I hate that he knows me well enough to call me on it.
“What if this doesn’t work?” I whisper into the darkness. “What if we go back to Seattle and reality kicks in and this all falls apart?”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only answer I have.” He pulls me closer, his arms tightening around me. “I can’t promise you it’ll be easy. I can’t promise we won’t fuck it up. But I can promise you I’m not going anywhere.”
“You say that now.”
“I’ll say it tomorrow too. And the day after that.”
I want to believe him. There is a part of me that desperately wants to trust that this thing between us is strong enough to survive outside the bubble we’ve created on this road trip.
But I’ve experienced disappointment before. I’ve had promises broken and trust shattered. I’ve learned not to count on things lasting.
“I’m scared,” I admit.
“Of what?”
“Of wanting this too much. Of letting myself believe it’s real and then losing it.”
“What if you let yourself believe it’s real and get to keep it?”
The possibility is terrifying and thrilling in equal measure.
“I don’t know how to do that,” I whisper.
“Neither do I. But maybe we can figure it out together.”
I lie there in the dark, listening to his heartbeat under my ear, trying to imagine a future where this doesn’t end. Where the contract becomes irrelevant because what we have transcends whatever we originally agreed to.
“Hunter?”
“Yeah?”
“If this were real, if we were really engaged, what would you want our life to look like?”
He’s quiet for a long moment and I wonder if the question is too much.
Too hypothetical. Too dangerous.
“I’d want lazy mornings. Finally, he says, “I’d want late nights on the road just like this.
Waking up next to you is amazing. I’d want to watch you work because you’re fucking magnificent when you’re in your element.
I’d be excited to come home to you after games and tell you about the stupid things the guys said in the locker room. ”
“That’s it?”
“Other than fucking? That’s plenty. That’s everything.”
The simplicity, the quiet domesticity he’s describing, makes my throat tight.
“What about you?” he asks. “What would you want?”
“I’d want to feel like this all the time. All my life, I’ve wanted to feel like I belonged somewhere. I want… someone who sees all of me and chooses me anyway.”
“You already have that.”
“Do I?”
“Yeah, Firecracker. You do.”
The nickname, the certainty in his voice, the way his arms feel like the safest place in the world. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do.
Maybe I’ve had it for a while and I’m just too scared to acknowledge it.
I fall asleep to the sound of his breathing and the feel of his fingers in my hair. For the first time in weeks, I don’t dream about endings.
I dream about beginnings instead.