Chapter 3 #2
"You should know I'm not the kind of man who does promises," he says. "I can't be a boyfriend, Elle. This is just tonight. No strings."
"I didn't come here for a promise." I pull back enough to look him in the eye. "I came here to feel alive."
That earns me the ghost of a smile. The kind that feels like winning something dangerous.
He closes the distance again. Slower now. His kiss isn't rushed; it's intentional. Like he's rewriting the terms.
His hands resume their exploration, careful and devastating. He unclasps my bra, tosses it aside, and dips his head to take a nipple into his mouth.
"Oh God." I clutch his hair. Silver strands between my fingers.
The scrape of his beard against the swell of my breast sends sparks down my spine, pooling low and hot in my belly. He sucks harder, then softer, then grazes his teeth across the peak, and I arch off the bed like something's short-circuiting in my nervous system.
His fingers return between my legs, gentler now, circling my entrance until I'm rocking against his hand without shame.
One finger slides inside. Slow. There's a brief sting that makes me wince, but he's patient, working me with a focus that borders on worship. When he adds a second, I moan, hips lifting to chase the stretch.
"That's it," he murmurs. "You're doing so good."
His words burn through me. No one has ever talked to me like this. No one has ever touched me like I'm something worth being careful with and destroyed by in the same breath.
Then he shifts lower on the bed. Between my legs. His hands grip my hips and drag me to the edge.
The first stroke of his tongue has me crying out so loud my hand flies to my own mouth.
"Don't." He pulls my hand away. "I want to hear you."
His tongue circles my clit, teasing, learning, before flattening against it in a way that makes my vision go white.
And his beard. Oh God, his beard. The soft scrape of it against my inner thighs is its own form of torture, rough and tender at the same time, a contrast my body doesn't know how to process except by shaking.
His fingers work inside me while his mouth drives me higher. The tension builds like a live wire coiling through every limb, pulling tighter and tighter until I can't breathe, can't think, can't do anything except exist inside the sensation.
"I can't," I pant. "It's too much."
He lifts his head just enough to say, "It gets better," and then his tongue presses flat and firm and relentless, and I stop being a person and become a sound.
The orgasm doesn't build. It detonates.
My back arches, my fists twist the sheets, and I come so hard the room goes dark at the edges. He doesn't stop. Just holds me open and works me through every wave until I'm boneless, trembling, barely coherent.
I'm still shaking when I hear foil tearing. Through hazy eyes I watch him strip off his pants and roll on a condom. His cock is thick enough that my brain short-circuits for a completely different reason.
He positions himself between my legs. Brushes his thumb across my bottom lip.
"Still not scared?"
"Terrified," I grin. "But in a good way."
He laughs, dark and quiet. Then he leans down, mouth at my ear:
"Since this is your first time, I'm going to make sure you remember it."
He enters me slowly. Inch by inch. There's pain, sharp and bright, and I bite down on it, breathe through it, grab onto his shoulders and hold on.
He pauses when he feels how tight I am. "Breathe," he whispers, lips brushing mine, and pushes past the resistance in one smooth stroke.
I gasp. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. He stills, buried inside me, and presses kisses to my temple, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth. Patient. Present. Not rushing.
"You okay?" he asks.
"This is better than I ever imagined," I manage, clenching around him, and the raw truth of it makes his jaw flex.
He moves in shallow, careful thrusts. My body bends and curves beneath his, and slowly, ache becomes warmth. Warmth becomes heat. Heat becomes a hunger that surprises me.
"More," I whisper.
He drives deeper. Finds an angle that hits something I didn't know existed, and the sound I make is so filthy it should come with a parental advisory.
He groans. "There it is."
He picks up the rhythm. Steady, then harder.
The bed protests. The air burns. His eyes are on mine the entire time, watching my face like I'm the only thing in the world that matters, and something about that gaze, those blue eyes pinning me while he moves inside me, makes the pleasure build faster than I thought possible.
I rake my nails down his back. He hisses through his teeth and drives harder, grip tightening on my hips, and we're not slow anymore. We're not careful. We're chasing something, both of us, and the room narrows to the sound of our breathing and the slick, relentless rhythm of his body against mine.
"Touch yourself," he commands, voice strained. "I want to feel you come while I'm inside you."
I slip my hand between us. My fingers find my clit and the added pressure on top of him is almost more than I can take. Almost.
"That's it." His rhythm falters as I tighten around him. "Fuck, Elle. Come for me."
The second orgasm tears through me like a summer storm.
I cry out his name, my body clenching, and it's the sensation of falling and flying at the same time, and somewhere in the middle of it I hear him groan, deep and ragged, and then he's coming too, buried deep, his forehead dropping to mine as we both shatter apart.
For a long time after, the only sound is breathing.
His. Mine. Uneven and wrecked.
He pulls out carefully, and the loss of him makes me wince. But he doesn't leave. He collapses beside me, one arm still wrapped around my waist, and pulls me into the curve of his body like it's the most natural thing in the world.
I press my face into his shoulder and breathe him in. Cedar. Smoke. Sweat. Him.
My brain starts rebooting in fragments. I just had sex. I just lost my virginity. In a hotel room. With a stranger named Nik. On my birthday.
Happy birthday to me.
His thumb traces a lazy circle on my hip. The silence isn't awkward. It's warm. Heavy. The kind that comes after something you can't take back and don't want to.
I close my eyes and let myself have this. Just this. The weight of his arm, the heat of his skin, the slow thud of his heart against my shoulder blade.
Tomorrow I'll go back to the tower. Tomorrow I'll be Elle Donovan again, locked up and looked after and slowly losing her mind.
But tonight I'm just a girl who finally, finally, felt alive.
And I'm not ready for it to be over.