Chapter 21 #2
His smile is tender, and he seals my admission with a kiss, long and heady.
Plunging his fingers in and out of me, the sound of my arousal echoes around his bedroom, and I’m not embarrassed.
I want him to know how much I want him, how much I need him.
I break the kiss, and grab the side of his neck, panting and desperate.
“Please, make love to me. Please, I can’t–” I shake my head as my toes curl, my orgasm about to slam into me.
“I want to come with you,” I tell him, my body starved for him, to feel him throb, pump and release inside me now that we’re here, now that we’ve said these big words to one another. “Please, Mr. Mercer.”
I don’t know why ‘Mr. Mercer’ slipped out like that. But I guess old habits die hard. He eases back just enough to look at me, his nose and lips flushed from the hungry scrape of our kiss. His trademark slow, sexy smirk curves his mouth as our eyes lock.
“You feel that?” he murmurs, voice low and rough, shifting his hips so the hard, thick length of him presses even more insistently into my belly.
“My cock’s right there, sweetheart. My fingers are buried deep in your tight little pussy.
And in a few minutes, you’re going to fall asleep full of my cum.
It’s going to make your thighs sticky all night. ”
I nearly lose consciousness at the filthy promises coming from him. His smile deepens, dangerous and tender all at once, sending heat curling straight through my limbs. “So,” he whispers, brushing his lips over mine. “You can call me Ford.”
“Okay,” I manage, my head nodding frantically as I cling to the last fraying threads of self-control. My body is already his and I can’t wait another second. “Then fuck me already, Ford.”
Reaching down, I boldly collect his cock in my hand, and turn on my side, matching his position. My arm works as I pump him, and he does the same, curling his fingers inside me as he takes my mouth in a frantic kiss.
“Condom,” I breathe, hating the word. Loathing it, actually.
I don’t want anything between us. I want to feel him inside me again, bare, like that night.
But that night sparked him leaving, and I know that Ford has been with a lot of women.
As much as I want to just take him, I know we need protection. “Do you have a condom?”
He stills, his motions ceasing for a moment before he slowly withdraws his hand from my body. He dusts a kiss over my lips, and reaches down, wrapping his hand around mine. We pump him slowly, together.
“I have condoms, and I have no problem wearing one,” he says, “if that’s what you want.”
Our arms move in unison, and I’d love to slip my hand out and look down, and finally learn what it looks like when Ford Mercer touches himself. But I can’t take my hand away, because he’s holding me to his cock so tightly, pumping us so deliciously slow, it rewrites my brain entirely.
“I know that night we took it off but…” I kiss his chin, then his lips. “It’s probably better, until we can both be tested.” I know I don’t have to be jealous, he’s made that clear, but still, I know his past.
He groans as he increases the stroke speed. “You used protection with… your former partner,” he says, avoiding my ex’s name.
I nod. “We did. And I’m on the pill, for cycle regulation.” I don’t want to say another man’s name when I’m naked and in the arms of Ford, so instead I say, “we never did anything without a condom.”
But peering up into his gaze, he’s concerned, his brows hanging low over his eyes.
“Sweetheart, you know before, the night of the wedding, how I left because I said what I was feeling was just so potent and real?” he asks, and I nod my head.
My stomach knots nervously. He continues to jerk himself off with our joined hands, and heat sears my seam as his eyes flutter closed, precum rolling over our fists.
I could come from giving him a hand job. I want this man so much.
He clears his throat, and lets my hand take over, removing his. He brings it to my shoulder, and pushes hair away, stroking his thumb along my bare skin. “I hadn’t made love to anyone since my late wife. Until you, that night.”
Laughing is a reaction that comes on its own, but when he doesn’t even crack a smile, and his hand stills over my bicep, I know he’s not joking.
“Ford, I–” I stop, trying to understand what he’s saying and all the ways in which I know it isn’t true.
And why would he lie? “It’s okay. I know your past and as long as you’ve tested recently, I trust you if you say your results show you’re healthy.
” I shake my head and smile, uncomfortable with him using a lie to bring me to ease, surprised that he’d do that, too. “It’s okay, baby.”
“No,” he starts, his voice gaining volume.
“Juliette, you are the first woman I’ve slept with since Katherine.
I went out, I took women out all the time.
Part of that was for my image, you know, for Velvet and the magazines and things.
But the other part was to make sure Cade and Kat never worried.
I never planned on looking for love again.
I didn’t think I’d find it twice. So I took women out on repeat to assuage everyone’s concerns that I was sad and lonely. ”
I blink up at him, trying to calibrate this new information.
I think about all the times Ford came home when Kat and I were studying or watching movies in her room, how the perfume always followed him down the hall.
He’d pop his head in, sometimes come sit on the bed.
He’d rub Kat’s feet and talk to us about our day, what we’re watching, and ask engaging questions, like which actor is the heartthrob and which boys at school we’re crushing on.
And every time he’d leave, the perfume would linger.
Kat and I even joked that most women in the city wear Calvin Klein and Estee Lauder.
But did we ever hear them? Was there ever a creaking bed or moaning woman?
Have I seen a woman stumble out of his house in the morning, high heels pinched in her fingers, hair mussed, makeup melted?
No.
And a million faces flash through my mind. Mara. Amber. Dominique. That one woman from the news bodega by the bagel shop. Christine. Ava. Every receptionist I’ve ever met at Mercer Properties. There have been so many.
“You never slept with any of them?” I ask, still trying to make sense of this revelation.
He shakes his head. “I did not. And until recently, only my brother and Elle were privy to that information.”
I don’t know what to say, but there’s a flutter from somewhere deep in my chest.
“I told Kat and Cade a few days ago, and explained to them that I didn’t want them to worry about me and that always being in the company of women seemed to give them ease.
And it wasn’t bad for business, either, I can’t deny that.
” He strokes his fingers down my arm, and I pump my hand down his length again, still hard, still hot.
“They also needed to know how I was so sure about you, about us. To Kat, our history was simply not enough for the suddenness of us. So I told her and Cade the truth, that I know it’s the real deal with you because I’ve only felt this one other time, and that you’re the first since Katherine that I’ve felt intimacy with.
” He shakes his head a little. “I don’t only mean sex, either. ”
I can’t believe it. I can’t believe that all these years, Ford hasn’t been sleeping with everyone. He’s been… “You’ve been… celibate? For…” Mental math isn’t my strong suit but in this situation, it’s easy, because it’s about Ford. “Twenty-two years?”
I don’t think he’s a liar. He wouldn’t lie. In fact, when I was under the assumption that he was lying, it felt wrong. Ford is definitely telling the truth but it’s just so hard to accept. That means- “you’ve been lonely for that long?”
He smiles. “I’ve been alone since Katherine passed, yes, but I wouldn’t say I was lonely.
” He strokes his fingers through my hair as I keep him hard, which seems easy, despite the emotional rollercoaster of this talk.
“I haven’t been a complete angel, Juliette.
I’ve been with women in other ways. Enjoyed them in other ways.
But this,” he says, moving his hand to the warm place between my legs, sliding his middle finger inside me with ease.
“This need to make love to you, to take you bare, to put my cum inside you, to make babies with you, to put my fucking ring on your finger, to make you my wife, to claim you as mine–this feeling is new, and as I said, something I can’t ignore.
After all, the first time I felt this way, I got everything I wanted.
A wife, children, a home, happiness. I still want that. Again. With you.”
My brain is spinning and as Ford climbs over me, nudging my legs open then back, hands pressed behind my knees, I know that I will give this man anything he asks of me.
Urgently, desperately, I grab his ass and pull him as he sinks inside me in a single, rough stroke.
He roars as he fills me, and he’s so big, and I’m so tight, I can’t help but moan.
“Ford,” I breathe, his name alone feeling like foreplay.
He’s said so many things, my mind is going to so many different places.
Today I woke up single and now, midday, I’m beneath Ford Mercer and he wants to spend the rest of his life with me. I can’t. I can’t handle any of it.
My face burns as Ford’s hand comes down over my forehead, pushing my hair back, bracing it there as his eyes come to mine.
His hips slow, but they don’t stop, and I’m grateful he doesn’t quit fucking me because the delicious burn between my thighs is the only thing keeping me from erupting into tears.
“Are you okay?” he asks, concern lining his features.