Chapter 16 Matt
SIXTEEN
MATT
Teach me.
Every hair on my body stands at attention. My mind runs a two-minute drill in fast-forward. A million scenarios. A thousand what-ifs.
Can I follow through with this?
She needs someone forever. That’s not me. Not now.
If her brothers find out, I’m out my best friend and my job.
If her dad finds out, I’m a chalk outline.
If she wakes up tomorrow regretting this, I’m the guy who ruined the only good thing I’ve had in years. Not to mention my friendship with Greyson and my coaching position with the Armadillos.
I weigh all of it against one undeniable truth: being here with her feels right in a way that terrifies me. For the last couple of years, my rule has always been no strings. No one that makes me want more than a fuck.
I swallow. “Butterfly…”
She’s watching me like I’m a cliff she’s decided to jump from. No flinching. Brave in a way that makes my chest hurt.
“Let’s find out what you like first,” I say, because that’s the only play that matters.
Her breath catches. “Okay.”
I brace a forearm by her head, roll my palm down her side, slow and deliberate—over ribs, to waist, back up in a lazy pattern that lets me listen. She’s on her back, hair messy against the pillow, pupils dark and wide. The room hums with the air conditioning and the sound of both our breathing.
“Talk to me,” I murmur, keeping my voice low. “If you want more, you pull me where you want me. You’re calling the plays.”
Her mouth tips up. “You’re really going to make this a sports metaphor?”
“It’s my love language.”
She laughs—soft, shaky—and I feel it where my hand rests at her waist. “I like that. I understand it.”
I sweep my thumb just under the curve of her rib cage. I feel the fine shiver that runs through her core, and I store that information away: right there. Good. Again, slower. She exhales like I found a live wire.
“Here?” I ask.
“Yeah,” she breathes. “There.”
I keep a gentle rhythm, then shift, tracing the line of her collarbone with my knuckles, down the slope of her shoulder, up the tender inside of her arm to her palm. I lace our fingers and bring the back of her hand to my mouth, pressing a kiss there. Her lashes flutter.
“You’re…gentle,” she whispers, like it’s a discovery.
“I can be,” I say. “I can be anything you need me to be.” Lord knows I want this more than once.
Color rises in her cheeks. She squeezes my hand and nods at the narrow band of fabric across her back.
“Can you—” She swallows. “I don’t know where my arms are supposed to go.”
“Wherever you want.” I sit her up enough to slide my palm along her spine. “May I?”
Her yes is a whisper that feels like a vow.
I find the clasp on her silky bra and work it with careful fingers. There’s a soft give, fabric easing. I don’t rush. I’m not here to tear anything away; I’m here to erase every bad play Brooks called and draft a new one.
“Still good?” I ask.
She nods, eyes on mine, all trust.
I shift my touch to safer borders—collarbone, sternum, the clean lines of her shoulders—mapping without taking. She arches a fraction, like her body’s answering something it didn’t know to ask.
Her breath hitches. She bites her bottom lip in concentration, as if she’s listening to herself.
“What are you feeling?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Your touch is…it’s all so foreign to me,” she says, voice hushed. “Like…I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Me either,” I admit, honest in a way I don’t recognize from my old life. “But I’m not going anywhere right now.”
Her eyes shine and her lips curve upward.
I kiss her—slow, patient, a steady cadence instead of a scramble. She leans up into it, and I feel her hand slide around the back of my neck, her thumb finding a rhythm at my pulse like she’s calming herself by counting me.
I whisper against her mouth and she shivers. “I love the way your breath hitches when I kiss you.”
She says, “I like it when you kiss me… but I keep waiting to mess it up.”
“You can’t mess this up.” I drag my nose along her cheek, the curve of her jaw. “It’s all about staying in the moment.”
I explore in inches—her jawline, the dip beneath her ear, the slope where her neck meets her shoulder. Each time I pause and ask; each time she answers in a sound that makes my chest go tight.
“Here?” I murmur, brushing my mouth down the line of her throat.
“Yes,” she says, the word a sigh that slides through me like a heatwave. She tilts, offering more, and my self-control hits a wall I have to breathe through. I keep it slow. Not because I’m a saint. Because she deserves slow. She deserves to feel chosen at every single step.
“Matt,” she whispers, one hand fisting in the duvet, the other tugging at me until I settle half on my side, half braced above her, so she has weight and space. Safe, not pinned. Present, not crowding.
I thread our fingers and press them back to the pillow, just like she liked before. “You’re still in control.”
She nods. “I like… when you hold my hand like that.”
“Copy that.” I lace them tighter. “What else?”
“I like when you… talk,” she says, embarrassed by how earnest that sounds. “When you tell me what you’re doing. I don’t feel lost then.”
I could kiss her for that alone. “I can talk.” My mouth curves. “I can coach.”
She snorts a laugh that turns into a gasp when I glide my palm down her side again, slower, letting the heel of my hand warm her through her shirt.
“Breathe,” I say, matching her inhale with mine. “In through your nose, out through your mouth. Don’t chase it. Let it come to you.”
She mirrors me, pupils wide, her chest rising in time with mine. “Like this?”
“Perfect.” I mean it. Christ, I mean it.
The self-recriminations try to crowd back in—her brothers, the job, the age gap, the way my body has been running on reserves I don’t like admitting—but none of it holds in the same room as her trust. None of it is louder than the sound she makes when I trail a line of slow kisses down to her chest. I kiss the bouncy mounds of flesh, careful not to get close to the nipple.
I want her desperate for my touch. She arches and shimmies on the bed, attempting to move where she wants my mouth.
“Tell me more,” I ask, my voice rough with need.
“I like… when you slow down right at the spot that makes me want to rush,” she says, discovering it as she speaks. “I never knew that part.”
“Slowing down is how you feel everything,” I say. “Rushing is how you miss it.”
She looks at me like I said a thing she needed to hear in places that have nothing to do with tonight. I feel it land. I catalog it for later, something to come back to and talk about. Does she feel she’s been rushed through life and hasn’t been able to stop and smell the roses?
I move carefully, sitting with my back against the headboard and bringing her up with me, settling her across my thighs so she has height, leverage, and my shoulders to hold on to.
She blushes at the new angle, then relaxes when she realizes I’m just…
there. Breathing with her. Letting her look at me the way I’ve been looking at her.
“Better?” I ask.
She nods. “I don’t feel so… observed. I feel… with you.”
With you. The words knock around in my ribs like they’re searching for a home. I grip her hip and squeeze once, a promise.
“Tell me if you want me to move.” I tip my head against the wall and smile. “Or tell me to stay right here and just let you get used to the view.”
Her eyes flick down my chest and back up, and that blush goes pretty and defiant. “Maybe I am looking.”
“Good.” I rest my free hand over her heartbeat and feel it kick. “Look all you want.”
She does. Her palm skates over my shoulder, down my arm, and returns to the spot high on my chest she’s already claimed. I don’t correct her, don’t steer. I let her explore, the same way I want for her. When she sighs, I answer with a low sound I don’t bother to swallow.
“You like that?” she asks, a little wonder sneaking in.
“I like you, figuring it out in real time.” I angle my face until our mouths are only a hairsbreadth away. “I like your voice when you tell me what you want.”
She bites her lip, then lets it go. “I want… more of your mouth on my skin.”
“Where?” I ask, soft.
She points, shy but sure, and I follow—from her neck to the pulse point down to her gorgeous, stunning breasts. Not big by any means, but they have the most beautiful light-pink nipples, hardened by desire. I work my way down and give each breast the attention it deserves.
Noelle arches into me, wanting it harder, so I nibble on each perky peak until she’s grinding against me. My dick is so hard it’s aching, and with every front-to-back movement, her body weight takes over and her center covers me.
She melts against me in slow increments, a long surrender that feels like a trust fall. I’m so gone I forget to breathe until she says my name, and I find oxygen again.
“Still good?” I ask.
Grinding. Dry rubbing has never felt this pleasurable.
“Better than good,” she says, her breath punching out on the last word. “This…this feels like I’m here. Not trying to be what someone else wants.”
My jaw tightens on its own at someone else, but I let it go. This isn’t about him. This is about her, and the way she’s unfolding in front of me is like a play you designed that finally worked.
“Noelle.” I choke out her name, my voice full of emotion, and I notice a slight shake to it. “You’re the kind of woman that any man in his right mind would want.” I smile into her sternum, kissing her dead center. “The best part about sex is designing your own plays. Making your own playbook.”
She huffs a watery laugh. “You’re such a dork.”
“And you like me that way.”
“I really do.”
I kiss her again to shove these emotions far back.
Be in the moment. Don’t ruin this.
The weight of everything I haven’t said sits heavily in my chest, but I hold the line, keeping it where it belongs—inside me, not between us.
“Teach me how to please you.”
“You are pleasing me. I’ve never been so fucking pleased.”