Chapter 29 David
David
Ifind the bedroom by instinct and momentum more than knowledge.
Nora laughs once when I shoulder the door open, breathless and half gone already, and then I set her on her feet just long enough to get the rest of my clothes out of the way.
Her room is warm and lived-in: soft daylight over rumpled bedding, a stack of books on the nightstand, a cardigan over the chair. It should register as separate details. It doesn’t. Not really. Everything narrows to her.
To the flush high in her cheeks. To the way her hair falls wild around her bare shoulders. To the fact that she’s looking at me with no hesitation in it at all.
I kiss her again before I can think.
She meets me with equal force, hands sliding into my hair, down my back, over my chest like she’s relearning me by touch and doing it fast. I walk her backward until the backs of her knees hit the mattress and she goes down with a small gasp, taking me with her.
This isn’t the frantic collision we’ve had before. This is better. Slower in the places that matter, rougher everywhere else.
I drag my mouth down her throat and she arches under me, fingers digging into my shoulders hard enough to leave marks. “David.”
Just my name, but the sound of it strips something essential out of me.
I get my hand between us, push her jeans down, and she helps, impatient with denim, seams, and the stupid inflexibility of some clothing.
By the time I get her jeans over her hips, she’s breathing hard, watching me with blown pupils and flushed skin, and I have a violent, almost disorienting surge of gratitude that this isn’t one more thing I imagined wrong.
“Nora,” I say, because I need her looking at me for this part.
“I’m here,” she says.
It does something to me, that answer. So simple. So immediate.
I hook my fingers into the sides of her underwear and drag them down her legs, and she kicks them away with zero dignity and even less patience. Then she reaches for my belt, gets it half undone before losing interest in precision entirely and shoving at my trousers with both hands.
Under other circumstances I’d make a joke about hostile negotiations. Right now I’m too far gone for wit.
I strip the rest of the way out of my clothes while she pushes herself up on her elbows to watch, and the look on her face when her eyes drop to me nearly unmans me on the spot.
“Jesus,” she whispers.
“Good to know your standards remain low.”
Her mouth curves. “I’m serious.”
“I know.” I brace one knee on the mattress and crawl back over her. “That’s why I’m trying not to let it go to my head.”
“It’s a little late for that.” Her fingers rake over the muscles on my chest, my shoulders, my back. Then she palms me once, and every coherent thought I have detonates.
“Fuck,” I bite out.
Her eyes flash. “That’s promising.”
I catch her wrist and pin it lightly to the mattress over her head, not to stop her so much as to keep myself from embarrassing us both inside thirty seconds. “You’re being extremely unhelpful.”
“That seems unlikely, given the evidence.”
I kiss her before she can say anything else, hard enough to make the bed shift. She opens for me instantly, all heat and want, and I grind down against her just enough to make her gasp into my mouth. Her free hand slides down my back, nails dragging, and the sharp sting only makes me harder.
I want everything at once. Her under me. Her around me. Her coming apart because of me. The whole impossible, greedy catalogue.
Instead of giving in to the first violent impulse, I drag my mouth down her body, over the swell of her breast, across the hot silk of her stomach. She writhes under me when I bite lightly at her hip.
“David.”
The warning in it is thin. The need is not.
I spread her wider with my hands and look at her.
Christ.
She’s flushed, open, and breathing hard, hair everywhere, eyes dark and fixed on me. I have to put a hand on her thigh to steady myself.
“You’re beautiful,” I say, because the truth slips out before I can dress it up.
Her expression changes for a beat—softens, almost painfully—and then I put my mouth on her, and softness dies a quick, merciful death.
She jerks with a cry, both hands in my hair, and I flatten one hand over her stomach to hold her there while I taste her properly.
She’s warm, slick, and so fucking responsive that every small movement of my tongue gets a result. A gasp. A tremor. Her thighs tightening around my shoulders like she can’t decide whether to hold me there or run from the intensity of it. I make the decision for both of us and settle in.
“Nora,” I say against her, just enough to feel her shudder, “keep your legs open.”
She makes a sound that is not remotely verbal and obeys anyway.
That does something ruinous to me.
I keep going, slower than either of us wants, because I want her worked up, helpless with it, all that careful composure stripped away. I want the woman who can dismantle a room full of anxious parents with one look to fall apart in my hands. In my mouth.
Her fingers tighten in my hair. “David, please.”
“Please what?”
She lifts her head enough to glare at me, which would be more effective if she weren’t flushed to the chest and panting. “You trying to make me beg?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
She lets out a broken laugh that dissolves into a moan when I circle her clit with my tongue.
Her whole body snaps tight. “Yes,” she says, and it comes out cracked, furious, helpless. “That. God, David, that.”
I do it again, slower, watching her face this time. Her eyes squeeze shut. Her mouth falls open. She’s trying very hard not to writhe off the bed and failing in a way I find both admirable and deeply arousing.
“Good,” I murmur against her. “Use your words.”
She laughs once, breathless and appalled. “I hate you.”
“No, you don’t.”
“No,” she gasps as I suck gently, “I really, really don’t.”
I slide two fingers down, gather the slick heat of her, then push one inside her slowly. She arches hard enough to lift off the mattress.
“Holy fuck.”
I add a second finger. Her hips jerk.
“David. Please.”
“Look at me,” I say.
It takes her a second. When her eyes finally open, they’re dark, dazed, and fixed on me with such complete surrender that my pulse slams against my throat.
“That’s it,” I say quietly. “Tell me what you need.”
“You know what I need.”
“I do. I’d still like to hear you say it.”
She glares at me again, but there’s no force behind it now. Just want. “Don’t be smug while your head is between my thighs. It’s unbecoming.”
“I’ll work on it.”
“David.”
I curl my fingers and her whole body jerks.
“More,” she says, voice gone rough. “Just—more. Please. Please.”
That second please lands somewhere primitive.
I give it to her. More pressure, more rhythm at the exact angle that makes her cry out and clutch at the sheets. I keep my eyes on her while I work her open, while I drag my mouth over her clit and feel her shaking start to build in earnest.
“There you go,” I murmur, because I can’t seem to stop talking when she sounds like this. “That’s my girl. Come apart for me.”
The words are out before I examine them. Nora’s eyes fly open, blown wide and bright, and the look that passes over her face is so wrecked it nearly does me in by itself.
“David—”
I suck harder. Curl my fingers again. She breaks.
Her back bows off the mattress. One hand flies to the back of my head, and the other clamps around my wrist as if she can’t decide whether to hold me there or shove me away.
The sound she makes is sharp, helpless, and so fucking beautiful I feel it in my spine.
Her thighs tremble around my shoulders. I keep going through it, exactly as long as she needs, until the violent edge of it softens into aftershocks and she’s panting my name.
When I finally lift my head, my own breathing is rough.
Nora looks annihilated. Hair everywhere, chest heaving, skin flushed from throat to breasts. She drags in a breath and focuses on me with visible effort.
“You,” she says faintly, “are completely insufferable.”
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. “You seemed conflicted.”
She gives a sound that might be a laugh if she weren’t still trembling. “I was busy having my central nervous system rewritten.”
“That’s a strong review.”
“It’s a deserved one.”
I climb over her before the distance between us becomes unbearable. She reaches for me, palms sliding over my shoulders, my chest, down my stomach, and when her hand closes around me again I have to brace myself, and every muscle in my body locks.
“Jesus, Nora.”
Her mouth curves, slow and wrecked. “That’s twice now. I think you might be having a spiritual experience.”
“I’m having several.”
She strokes me once, twice, and I drop my forehead to her shoulder because dignity has left the building entirely. Her skin is damp and warm under my mouth. I kiss the base of her throat, bite lightly, and she makes a pleased sound that I feel in my cock.
“I need you inside me,” she murmurs, guiding me between her legs.
“Condom.”
The word barely makes it out before she catches my face in both hands.
“You know you don’t need one with me,” she says, breathless and certain.
I understand exactly what she means—what she’s offering—and the history behind it. The medical reality she’s had to accept. The ex-husband who couldn’t. The way she’s learned to state it plainly, without flinching, even though I can see the old wound still there in her eyes.
My expression must shift, because her fingers soften where they’re wrapped around me, and something guarded flickers across her face.
“Don’t do that,” she says quietly.
“Do what?”
“Look at me like I just broke in half.” She swallows. “I’m telling you, you can stop thinking for one second and just be here with me.”
My chest tightens. God.