Chapter 18 #3
They stumbled back toward the bed, neither quite sure who led whom, and when Olivia’s knees hit the mattress, Emma caught her and eased her down like something sacred, something too precious to drop.
Still clothed, they kissed like it was breath, soft and then sharp, each stroke a sentence, each sigh a promise.
Emma slid her hand under Olivia’s thigh, pulled it up and over her own hip, grounding their bodies together as she kissed a path along her jaw, her neck, down the slope of her collarbone.
Olivia’s hands threaded through Emma’s hair, anchoring her and tilting her head back with a soft, broken sound that cracked something wide open inside them both.
“I missed you,” Olivia whispered, voice hushed and hoarse, as though the words had to be dragged up from someplace deep.
Emma responded with her mouth, not her voice, pressing kisses over her heart, her ribs, the underside of her breast, slow and reverent, until Olivia was trembling beneath her, arching and gasping and gripping at her like she was drowning in want.
Clothes peeled away with maddening slowness.
Fingers slipped under fabric, mouths lingered over skin still too unfamiliar despite the days they’d once shared.
Emma took her time, not because she doubted what Olivia wanted, but because she needed her to feel it, to remember with every nerve, every breath, what it meant to be touched and worshiped.
When Emma finally slid down Olivia’s body, she went with intent, her hands firm on Olivia’s knees as she guided them apart, thumbs pressing along the insides of her thighs to open what she needed to see.
She paused there for a heartbeat, breathing against warm skin, and pressed a kiss high on one thigh, then the other, tasting heat and a faint mineral tang.
Olivia’s hips lifted without permission; one hand fisted the sheet, the other covered her own mouth to catch the sound that escaped anyway.
“Is this good?” Emma asked, voice low against the soft place where thigh met hip.
“Yes,” Olivia said, the word breaking. “Don’t stop.”
She sealed her mouth where it mattered and took her time. The first stroke of her tongue was long and slow and then she began to devour her. Olivia’s breath hitched; Emma’s hands slid higher to anchor her, fingertips digging lightly into the curve of her hips when Olivia tried to grind for more.
“Stay,” Emma murmured, and held her there.
When Olivia’s body softened open, Emma slipped two fingers between slick folds and pressed up and in, slow enough for the body to take her, deep enough that Olivia’s back arched off the mattress with a startled gasp.
Emma paused inside for a beat, feeling the wet, helpless clutch around her, then curled up and in again.
Her mouth never broke rhythm—tongue and curl, tongue and curl, patient and remorseless—the heel of her hand pinning Olivia’s pelvis so the metronome didn’t fracture.
Olivia’s free hand left the sheet and found Emma’s hair.
“Right there,” she managed, breath catching on the words.
Emma answered by keeping everything exactly the same, adding only the smallest increase in pressure, the smallest adjustment in angle, listening to the way Olivia’s thighs trembled and the sound in her throat thinned from breath to plea without ever forming a stop.
“Eyes,” Emma said softly, lifting her head long enough to catch Olivia’s gaze.
The contact lit a new streak of heat low and sure.
Emma went back to work, relentless now in the steadiness of it, mouth drawing, fingers stroking and curling on the pull, again and again, until the tension strung tight through Olivia’s belly snapped into inevitability.
The crest hit clean. Olivia’s legs clamped hard around Emma’s shoulders then opened; her body clenched around Emma’s fingers in fast, pulsing grips as a raw sound tore free and was swallowed by her own palm.
Emma held her exactly there through the first shudder, then the second, easing only when Olivia flinched from the sensitivity, tongue shifting to softer, smaller circles that turned the white-hot edge into a rolling afterglow.
Emma kissed the inside of a shaking knee and slid up the length of her mouth leaving a dotted line of warmth along Olivia’s stomach and ribs.
She didn’t say much, she didn’t need to.
She pressed her forehead to Olivia’s, breath steady, fingers still inside until the last tiny pulses ebbed, then withdrew with care and laced their hands together on the sheet.
When Olivia spoke, it was Emma’s name, whispered like a confession, and Emma caught it with her mouth, kissed it back to her, and held her open to the quiet that followed.
They didn’t speak after.
Emma rose slowly, slid beside her, and pulled Olivia into her arms. Their bodies were slick with heat and a new kind of knowing.
This was more than lust now; maybe it had always been more.
And when Olivia finally looked up, her face pressed to Emma’s neck, her voice was so soft Emma almost didn’t catch the word.
“Stay.”
She did.
And in the silence that followed, nothing felt unfinished.