Chapter 4
4
JACOB
K nowing the odds are very good that we’re both going to die has two redeeming qualities.
A quiet voice in the back of my mind says dying will hurt Catherine a lot, which is not in any way redeeming.
The same voice changes tack a second later. You won’t be able to hurt Catherine again, which is where the redemption starts to take shape.
Not being able to cause Catherine any more pain is undeniably a good thing.
The second redeeming quality of being aware of my probable imminent death is that everything is amplified. Catherine tastes sweeter. She smells sweeter. The wedding band on my left ring finger has more weight, and the weight carries the memory of Catherine sliding it on, happy tears in her eyes and a gorgeous flush to her cheeks and her veil a translucent ivory lace over her red hair, and joy like I’ve never felt expanding the air in my lungs until I could breathe again.
We pause near the bed, Catherine’s hands working quickly at the buttons of my shirt. I concentrate on stripping her top over her head and promptly lose myself in the curve of her shoulder and her delicate skin under my lips and it isn’t until she puts her fingers under my chin and says Jacob, help that I can focus on the task at hand—getting my wife naked and then devouring her until she begs for me to stop.
I can’t say how we make it to the pillows, only that Catherine does, arching over the comforter and spreading her thighs so I can bury my face between them. She’s sweeter here, too, saltier, wetter, and I shouldn’t be proud of that—I shouldn’t be glad that I make her feel this way, unashamedly desperate for me—but I am proud. This, unlike almost everything else I’ve done in my life, is worth taking pride in.
That she wants me.
That she can’t let go of me.
That she doesn’t try to hide her pleasure in it.
Catherine moans, soft little humming things that rise and fall with the pressure of my tongue. I lick her everywhere. Explore the soft pink folds of her until she starts rocking her hips. That’s my cue to center my attention on her clit and tease it with the tip of my tongue until I earn her first orgasm, which is usually a smaller peak—she’s sensitive, and works her way into pleasure like she climbs into a swimming pool. One step at a time.
Her sounds get lower and more urgent as the aftershocks fade. Her thighs tremble on either side of my face while I lick and suck and stroke her up to a second peak. Every move she makes feels imprinted into my brain. Every flex of her ass under my hand. Every tense-release-tense of her thighs. Every dig of her heel into my back, just below my shoulder blade. Catherine pants when she’s about to come the second time, makes these high, desperate noises that almost drive me over the edge, grabs for my hair. She tilts her hips as she goes over, letting the sensation do what it will, and the moment is saturated with color and sound and time running out.
Does my hand on her hip make Catherine turn over, or do I find my hand on her hip because she turns over? I don’t know, and it doesn’t seem to matter once she hugs a pillow to her chest and arches her back.
When her pussy makes contact with the head of my cock, it punches a feral sound out of me. I drag my crown over her opening and lean down to kiss the spot between her shoulder blades. I’m never going to forget the delicate curve there, or the exact height of every ridge of her spine, or how her hair falls to one side. How the view changes as she breathes.
Catherine wriggles back onto me, and I drop my forehead to rest on her temple and push in slow. Her body is hot around mine, tight and wet and clenching. Sweet Jesus, sweet fucking holy Jesus, it would be better if I died right this second.
Only I’d have to stop opening her on my cock if I died right this second. I’d have to stop feeling her heat and the way she stretches open for me. I’d have to stop feeling her , and I can’t do that.
It’s a conundrum.
But not much of one, because I’m fully committed to the act now.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper into her ear. “I’m sorry, kitten.”
She lets out a little whine as I bottom out, then pull back and search for a rhythm. I can’t decide if I want to fuck her hard and fast or as slow as possible.
“Don’t be— sorry ,” Catherine gasps on my first real thrust, one of my hands on her hip and the other threaded in her hair. “I’m—not— sorry . Nobody’s going to make me feel— sorry —on my wedding—my wedding night.”
Her fingers slide over my cock. Now I have to fuck her slow so she can feel what I’m doing. Is she trying to memorize this, too? Is she trying to disconnect herself from the plane and the pilot and the bleak unknown at the end of the flight?
Catherine spreads her fingers and then they’re gone. Her balance shifts, her hand still underneath her, and then her pussy contracts, contracts again, fuck, she’s getting herself off. She moans out an orgasm into the pillows all around me.
It has to last.
This has to last .
I slow down as much as I can and drag my fingers over hers so I can move her hand out of the way. There’s me. There’s her. The wet boundary where we’re joined together takes my breath away. I think about cold showers and waking up hungover and pain, just— pain —and manage to stop myself from filling her up.
Catherine reaches back for one of her cheeks, and I hold my breath. She spreads herself open that much farther and I rock into her?—
There.
Fuck.
There.
Look at that.
The plane’s bedroom has a bedside table, and I fumble for the drawer. I can’t take my eyes off where my cock slides into Catherine. She’s so pink, so wet, so tight, practically pulling me in when her muscles clench. I put my other hand over hers to balance myself. My hand looks huge in comparison. Catherine whines again, arching her back that much more, and my fingers close around a bottle of lube.
She makes a questioning sound when it lands at the very top of her crease, then lets out a lower moan when I circle the pad of my thumb through the clear, glistening slick and tease it lower.
“Oh, God.” Her voice is soft, blending with the rush of the wind. All of her is soft. I lean down over her, pushing myself as deep as I can, working my hand between us, and kiss her temple.
“I don’t have to touch you here, kitten. We can leave it for later.”
Catherine shakes her head. “Don’t leave anything for later. Do it now. I want to do it now.”
I’m only a man who’s in love with her. There’s no chance I’ll deny her. Not now.
I slide my other hand between her and the bed and tug on her wrist until it’s freed from underneath her and she curls her fingers into the blanket. Catherine lets out a contented sigh when I find her clit and fuck her with slow, shallow thrusts, relishing the perfect wet slide of her cunt around my cock.
“Jesus, you’re sweet,” I tell her, and she makes a pleased little noise and rocks into my fingers at her clit, then back onto the pad of my thumb. “You feel so lovely here. Did you know?”
“No,” she breathes.
“You do.”
Teasing her asshole and fucking into her gently—it’s our wedding night—is an exercise in coordination, and thank God, because I need all my focus to be on her. I don’t want to think about the miles of darkness between us and the unforgiving ground. Or ocean, I suppose, though the water wouldn’t be any more forgiving than asphalt.
Catherine melts in my hands, the furl of her asshole giving up its nervous tension. Everything about her is a marvel, but the way she tiptoes into opening up is a miracle. Given her past, given her life , I wouldn’t be surprised if she refused all pleasure and all risk.
Not with me.
She does this for me.
With me.
Maybe it would be better if she didn’t trust me. Maybe it would be better if she hated me.
She wouldn’t be here if she hated me, and I find even the thought intolerable.
Catherine makes an impatient noise when I lift the pad of my thumb from her hole. I only make her wait a few seconds before I’m back with a lube-covered finger at her entrance.
“Breathe out,” I tell her. “Push against me.” She does, and my finger slides into her hole to the first knuckle. I have to dedicate part of my attention to my own breathing. It would be too easy to pass out from the heat of her pussy and her grip on my knuckle. “That’s it. That’s it , kitten. Push?—”
My finger slides in farther, and Catherine pants, trembling from head to toe, but she hums like she’s reassuring herself and relaxes again.
“I’m sorry I waited so long to do this. You’re so—relax, kitten. Yes. Another deep breath. You’re taking my finger so well. I’m going to give you another one. Slow, slow… there . You have no idea how much I’ve wanted you. And I should have?—””
Catherine lifts her head from the pillow, changing the gorgeous curved line of her back, and turns her head for a kiss. She shouldn’t be the one convincing me that everything’s going to be fine, but that’s what her mouth does to me.
The low oh oh oh that escapes her when I have two fingers inside her as far as they’ll go does to me.
I fuck her even slower and drop kisses to her nape. I’d started to pull out, and nothing in the world is better than pressing in.
For a minute, I manage to lose myself in the rock of her body against mine and her heat . She’s hot as a furnace now, everywhere I’m inside her, and it’s delicious.
The sensation collides with the knowledge that the end is coming, and it’s coming fast. It’s like being dropped into cold water. Ironic, because we’re more likely to burn if we don’t bleed out first. There’s plenty of time to be aware of what’s happening while a plane plummets to earth and bursts into a fireball.
I am not thinking about the crash, or the shot, or whatever is going to end us.
I’m concentrating on Catherine. My mind keeps trying to throw itself out of the plane and into whatever’s next—the ocean, the ground, a fireball—but the rest of my body only wants my wife.
“Please, Jacob. Please.” She circles her hips, clenching on my fingers.
I don’t know what I say to her. It’s probably all nonsense. Catherine’s breath hitches when I pull my fingers out. All my muscles tighten with the effort of leaving her, even briefly, but it’s worth the sensation of laying my cock over her crease and letting her feel it.
Catherine breathes deep. It doesn’t stop her from trembling.
“I’m right here.” I put one hand on her hip and run the pad of my thumb in an arc over her lower back while I line myself up. “It’s a different angle this way, kitten, so you?—”
“Let me find it.” Her hair falls over her shoulders as she arches, spreading her thighs another inch and making tiny circles of her hips until the head of my cock is firmly notched against her hole. “Okay,” she whispers to herself. “Okay.”
“More than okay. You’re doing so well. You’re—fuck.”
Catherine leans into me, and the head of my cock sinks into her. I have never experienced this level of awe. Never . I’m lightheaded watching her work herself onto me until my crown pops inside her.
“Stay there. Right there. Give yourself a minute. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, you’re so good. So perfect. Get used to me.”
“Okay.” Catherine’s voice wavers, but then she repositions herself ever so slightly and bears down.
“Oh, kitten, fuck, that feels so good.” It feels so good that my chest aches. My thighs engage, wanting to pin her to the covers and fuck her, but no, no , I’m not an animal. I’m a bastard and a fool who fell in love when I shouldn’t have and I am a fucking gentleman.
Catherine reaches for my hand, and I get the hint immediately and find her clit.
Then it’s a dream. Then there’s no plane at all, just me buried balls-deep in her ass while she fucks herself on my cock. I have to close my eyes to hold myself back from an orgasm. Can’t keep them closed, though—I can’t shut out the sight of her body moving in slow, sensual curves that get faster as I give her clit more attention. My fingers are soaked with her. My head is nothing but Catherine—her sounds, her hair, her body, her sweetness all over my fingers, her thighs trembling?—
Her rhythm falters. Catherine’s making breathless mmm mmm mmm sounds that I’m almost certain she’s not aware of. They mean she needs to come. She made the same sounds in the forest after we fell off the horse, and then she rode my thigh until she pushed herself over the peak.
I wanted to fuck her that day. I distinctly recall having a lot of thoughts about lines being crossed and how terrible those things made me and how desperately I wanted more of her, monstrous as it was.
And then, naturally, I came in my pants, standing in the snow, bowled over by the beauty of Catherine’s pleasure. I’m far more desperate than I was that day.
“You’re going to come on my cock,” I say into her ear, my fingertips working and working and working at her clit. “You can do it, kitten.”
Catherine’s hands turn to fists in the blankets. She’s such a pretty, trembling thing, her knees barely holding her up.
“It’ll feel—” A pleading noise interrupts her. “Like so much.”
“You can take it. But you don’t have to. I’ll pull out right now.”
“ No. Mmm—stay. Stay. ”
“I’m staying. Yes, you gorgeous thing. Let it happen. Oh, I can feel how close you are. All over my fingers. All over my cock?—”
A gasp that sounds very much like my name comes out on a high, shaky breath, and then Catherine comes.
It’s an obliterating pleasure, so strong that my own orgasm takes me by surprise.
“Oh, God,” Catherine says, sounding far away. “Oh, Jacob, that’s hot. It’s so hot.”
I can’t think. I can only ride it out, then collapse to the covers and find a pillow for our heads.
“I felt that down to my toes,” I tell Catherine, sounding like a shocked virgin.
“I didn’t feel it in my toes,” she laughs. “But everywhere else.”
We kiss, after that, both of us covered in a thin sheen of sweat. My vision comes back in stages. My heart doesn’t know what to make of the fear-pleasure roller coaster and switches between pounding and beating so slowly I wonder if I’ve already died.
Nothing seems real but Catherine.
We shower. Dry off. Put our arms around each other on the bed and have slow, soft sex. Catherine ignores the tears that sneak into my eyes every so often. I ignore the way her voice gets thick and her words break in the middle.
We shower again like two newlyweds with nothing but time. I don’t know how much time passes.
We pull down the blankets on the bed and lie on the clean, dry sheets, pillows propping us up. Catherine finds glass jars of nuts and dried fruits in one of the drawers, and we mutually decide that we should eat. The plastic crinkles in her hands as she opens one of the packets.
She eats a cashew, then looks into the jar, thoughtful.
“Do you think we’d be doing the same thing if this was really our honeymoon?”
“I wouldn’t have left it at baked truffle nuts.”
Catherine huffs. “I think they’re pretty good.”
“They are good, but I’d choose a full provisions box.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” She nudges me with her elbow, fond and familiar, and for a moment it is real. This is our honeymoon. Catherine is my wife because that’s what we both wanted. We’re flying at night so we can land in paradise and watch the sun come up. There’s nothing wrong. There’s nothing wrong at all. “There’s granola, too, in the little basket. Do you think?—”
The plane bumps over a pocket of turbulence. Catherine pinches her bag of snack mix shut, then tries again.
“Do you?—”
She doesn’t get to finish, because the pitch of the air speeding over the plane’s skin changes along with the hum of the engines. The bed tilts on an angle. My ears pop.
We’re descending. And we’re going down fast.