Chapter Thirty #2
He leverages himself to his knees without hesitation and I’d laugh if I wasn’t just as eager.
Our easy affection melts into frantic desperation, his fingers working at his buttons from the bottom while mine work from the top.
He rolls his shoulders back and tears the material from his body, exposing smooth skin and a smattering of dark chest hair.
Lean muscle and a heavy cut at his hips. A body honed by work, honored by time.
I press up on my elbows and brush my mouth against the middle of his chest, right where his heart is thundering out a furious rhythm. Both of his hands tangle in my hair, holding me against him.
Like this, he doesn’t feel like a spirit at all. He feels like a man. Warm skin and rough sounds. Scars littered across his chest and arms.
Like this, he feels like mine.
“Harriet,” he bites out from between clenched teeth when I sink my nails against his hips. He’s kneeling above me, straddling my left thigh, and I can’t get close enough.
“What?” I whisper, drifting my mouth lower, licking at a scar just above his hip. I undo the buckle of his belt and his whole body jolts. He sucks in a sharp breath when my knuckles drift over his cock.
“I can’t—” he says. “I won’t be able to—”
I stop and rest my chin against him, staring up along the length of his body. My arms wrap around his torso, holding him close. “What is it?”
His eyes grow heavy and his hands sink into my hair. He looks decidedly—deliciously—disheveled.
“I want to be inside you when I come.”
Everything beneath my belly button tightens.
I blink. “Oh.”
“And if you keep doing what you’re doing, it’s likely we won’t get that far.”
He lifts his hand and cups my face, his thumb tracing over my mouth.
“Oh,” I say again.
I part my lips and let his thumb slip inside. His face collapses into stern lines, attention focused entirely on my mouth. He dips his thumb farther inside and I curl my tongue around it. He grunts.
“Fuck,” he whispers. He pulls his hand away from my mouth, his eyes wild. “I need more.”
“I want more,” I say quickly. I want it so bad it feels like I’ll crawl out of my skin waiting for it. I lay back against the pillows. “Come here.”
Nolan lowers himself on top of me, his arms straining on either side of my head.
He dips his mouth to mine, kissing me like I’m the one who is meant to disappear.
Both of my hands anchor in his hair, our mouths working hot and wet and slow.
I try to stretch out every moment until I’m warm and pliant beneath him. Aching, in all my hollow places.
My back arches. I fumble with the zipper at the base of my spine. “No.” He roughly pins my hips back down. “Keep the dress on.”
“Why?” I whine.
He tugs at my skirt until it’s folded up over my hips in a puddle of silk. I’m wearing pale pink underwear, cut high around my hips, and he whispers another low fuck under his breath. His tongue drags along the inside of his cheek.
“Because,” he says, “I want to have you exactly like this.”
Then he pushes himself off my bed, drops to his knees, and drags me down the length of my bed by my thighs.
I shriek at my ceiling as he settles my hips at the very edge, my legs dangling uselessly over the side.
He arranges me exactly the way he wants, roughly tipping my knees wide before slotting himself between them.
I can only see the top of his messy hair, bowed over me.
“I need this,” he whispers, and any thoughts of self-conscious hesitation drift away with the raw desperation in his voice. He presses a soft kiss just below my belly button. “Can I have this, Harriet?”
I open my legs wider.
“Yes,” I whisper. “Please.”
He doesn’t hesitate. He hooks two fingers in the front of my pretty, lacy underwear and tugs the material to the side, pinning it against my thigh with his thumb. Then he drops his mouth against me and lightning rockets up my spine.
It’s messy and honest in the way Nolan always seems to be and I can’t breathe through the intensity of it. The way he opens his mouth wide against me, tongue licking, mouth sucking. It’s like he’s trying to taste as much of me as possible, as quickly as he can.
My hands hover over his head. I want to thread my fingers through his hair, but I don’t—I’ve never—
He takes in my hovering hands from between the cradle of my thighs and my favorite crinkles appear. He grins and guides one of my hands to the back of his head.
“Go on,” he says. “Show me where you want me.”
I thread my fingers through his hair and his eyes slip shut.
I pull and he moans, face crumpling in agonized pleasure.
Overcome and out of control, I press my hips down against his mouth and rock.
I expect him to hold me still, make me take what he gives me, but he surprises me again.
He blinks open heavy eyes and stares at me lazily, letting me grind against his mouth. Letting me take what I need.
He’s always letting me take what I need.
I press myself up on one hand so I can see him, the angle better like this, the other still in his hair so I can hold his mouth tight between my legs. I roll my hips again. Again and again and again.
It’s the most selfish I’ve ever been.
It’s fantastic.
Heat pulls tighter in my belly and my head drops, the ends of my hair tickling the bare skin of my lower back as I work myself against him.
“Nolan,” I whine. “Yes.”
He pulls away with a gasping breath and his fingers take the place of his mouth, swirling wide, wet circles against my clit. He sucks a mark in the crease of my hip and I hear the clink of metal, his belt buckle dropping against hardwood.
“’S good,” I breathe, scratching my nails against his scalp, trying to guide his mouth back to where I want him. I’m so close I’m vibrating with it. “Please. I need you.”
His face darkens and he drops another kiss, right above where his fingers work at me. “Pull your top down,” he grinds out.
I yank my arms free of the straps and the dress pools around my middle, a thick, tangled band of silk. Nolan grips it and he uses it to tug me flat to the mattress. He yanks again until I’m positioned exactly the way he wants me.
Which is hanging half off the bed, my thighs propped on his wide shoulders, hugging his ears.
If he was using any restraint before, it’s gone now, his attention focused on sending me over the edge as fast as possible.
One of his biceps nudges against the inside of my thigh in a quick, tight rhythm and I roll my hips to match. It’s so good. So, so, so good.
I close my eyes and give in to it, whimpering and moaning and whispering his name, tracing my fingers through his hair, over the tops of his ears, across the back of his neck, and down his jaw to where his mouth is warm and wet against me.
I choke on nothing when I feel the wet slide of his tongue across my fingers, my orgasm tightening in my belly.
“Nolan,” I breathe. “Nolan.”
“Don’t be polite, Harriet.” Dark blue eyes meet mine. “Take it.”
Then he ducks his head down and makes me.
It’s slow and thick. Indulgent. It dances up my spine before easing low in my belly, snaking down my legs, and making my thighs tremble.
I break apart while Nolan watches, leaning back to rock the palm of his hand firmly where his mouth just was, letting me grind my way through the rest of it.
He knows exactly what I need without my even having to ask, amplifying the pleasure until it feels like my orgasm has been going on for hours.
I’m sweating, incoherent. I whimper nonsense as my hips work, my body unspooling like thread beneath him.
Nolan arches over me when I finally quiet, one hand pressed next to my hip, the other with a firm grip around his cock. His teeth clamp down on his bottom lip as he strokes up and then down, the tendons in his neck standing out in sharp relief.
“This is enough,” he pants. He edges forward and his knuckles bump where I’m wet and sensitive, the blunt tip of his cock pressing down against me. He grinds there, his hand still working. “This is more than enough.”
I urge my knees wider and shake my head. “Not for me,” I say. “Want you inside.”
He makes a wounded sound and falls on top of me, catching my mouth with his in a messy, furious kiss. I can taste myself on his tongue and it makes me burn hotter, my desire reigniting, my body demanding more.
“Harriet.” He moans. “I don’t think I can—I won’t last.”
“That’s okay.” I push my hands into his hair, trying to soothe him. “It’s good. It’s so good.”
He nudges against me again, mumbling under his breath. I catch words like beautiful and incredible, his accent a rough scratch somewhere under my ear. Then he tilts my hips up and presses his way inside, a thick slide of heavy heat.
He goes slow. So slow I’m wiggling and pushing for more by the time his hips are flush with mine.
Both of our bodies are sticky with sweat, my dress still caught between us.
Nolan props himself above me and hooks one finger beneath the tangled, ruined material, a sly smile curving at the edge of his mouth.
With a flash of heat, the dress is ribbons against my skin, his magic a tingling aftershock.
A single strand loops around my torso, a pretty bow knotted between my bare breasts.
“A gift,” Nolan pants. “Just for me.”
I laugh and Nolan brushes my hair away from my face with trembling hands, smiling with a barely there quirk of his lips.
He keeps watching me as he moves his hips, his jaw going slack.
His rhythm is slightly sloppy, unpracticed, but everything feels better because of it.
The friction. The press of my thighs at his hips.
The way his fingers catch and tug at my hair.
I’m reduced to feeling everything in pieces because I’m not sure I can handle the whole of it.
How thick and hot and syrupy sweet it is to be pinned beneath him like this.
To lie here and take it. To give him what he needs.
Nolan’s forehead creases, his hips moving faster, and I know he’s close.
“Show me,” I whisper, and he shakes his head, clenching his teeth. “Let me see,” I beg.
He wedges his hand between us, fingers searching.
“Not yet,” he orders. “Need to feel you again. Need to feel you on my cock.”
He already knows how to touch me, I think somewhat deliriously as his thumb rubs. He knows exactly what to do. “You don’t have to—”
“It’s not for you,” he bites out. “I need it.”
He flips his hand and drags two knuckles on either side of where he’s still moving inside me, trapping my clit and forcing friction, and that’s—that’s it. The pleasure chokes me, sweeping me under. A sharp, furious orgasm burns through me like a storm, stealing my breath.
Somewhere through the haze, I hear him groan, his hips punching against mine as he chases his own release. I drag my nails lazily up and down his bare back as he tenses, his muscles rigid as he works his way through his pleasure.
He looks beautiful. Furrowed brow. Open mouth. Hair damp at his temples and his bottom lip swollen from my kisses. I cup his face in my hands, watching the way his face collapses in relief.
When his eyes blink open again, they’re a startling shade of blue.
One I haven’t seen before. His magic lurks at the corners with flecks of gold and I beam at him.
He grins back, chest still heaving, and then the both of us are laughing like love-drunk idiots, our mouths bumping together as we try to kiss our way through it.
When he finally collapses at my side, I’m kiss-bitten and beaming. Nolan looks equally stupefied, his hair practically standing on end.
Remember this, I tell myself as he laces our fingers together, his eyes closed as he tucks my hand against his mouth. He drags a kiss across my knuckles and I slot it in the secret place right next to my heart.
Please, please, please.
Remember him.