Chapter 15 #2
He was careful in ways that should have felt clinical but somehow didn’t.
His fingers traced the waistband of her jeans, waiting for permission.
When she lifted her hips, he slid them down slowly, his mouth following the path of newly exposed skin.
She felt herself trembling—not from cold, not from fear—from the sheer overwhelming sensation of being touched like she was precious.
“You’re beautiful.” He said it the way he said everything—direct, factual, like he was reporting data. But his voice cracked on the word, and she understood that for him, this was poetry.
When he finally settled between her thighs, she pulled his face up to hers and kissed him again. Slower this time. Deeper. Tasting coffee and something sweeter underneath, feeling the tension in his jaw, the restraint he was fighting to maintain.
She could feel him hard against her, the length of him pressing where she needed him most. She rocked her hips, a wordless request, and heard his breath catch.
“I want you,” she whispered against his mouth. “I want to feel you.”
He groaned—a low, raw sound that vibrated through her. His hand slid between them, fingers finding her center, stroking through the slick heat he encountered there. She gasped, her hips jerking involuntarily, chasing the pressure of his touch.
“You’re so wet.” He had wonder in his voice, like she’d given him something precious.
“For you.” She barely recognized her own voice—breathy, desperate. “Please, Lincoln. I need—”
She couldn’t find the words to finish her thought, but she didn’t have to. He gave her what she needed.
He slid on a condom from his wallet, then pressed into her slowly, inch by inch, watching her face the whole time. The stretch of him made her moan, her body opening to accommodate him, welcoming him deeper. He paused when he was fully seated, his arms trembling with the effort of holding still.
“Okay?” The word came out strangled.
“Yes. God, yes.” She answered by rolling her hips, pulling him impossibly deeper. “Move. Please.”
He did.
Long, slow strokes at first—pulling almost all the way out, then sliding back in until she felt him everywhere.
She wrapped her legs around his hips and urged him faster, harder, and he gave her that too.
His control was slipping; she could feel it in the way his thrusts grew more urgent, less measured.
The headboard knocked against the wall. Neither of them cared.
She was drowning in sensation. The friction of him moving inside her.
The weight of his body pinning her to the mattress.
The scrape of his stubble against her neck when he buried his face there, breathing her name like a prayer.
His hand found her breast, thumb circling her nipple until she cried out, the pleasure sharp and bright.
“God, Morgan.” His voice was wrecked. “You feel— I can’t—”
“Don’t hold back.” She dragged her nails down his spine. “I want all of you.”
Something broke loose in him. His rhythm turned ragged, almost desperate—deep, hard thrusts that hit something inside her that made stars explode behind her eyes. She was making sounds she’d never heard herself make, half sobs and gasps and his name over and over.
The data in her head went quiet.
There was only this—the coiling heat in her belly, the slick slide of their bodies, the way he filled her so completely there wasn’t room for anything else. She wasn’t Mercury. Wasn’t Randall’s asset. Wasn’t even Morgan-with-the-perfect-memory.
She was just a woman, in this moment, with this man who had come for her when no one else would.
Her climax built like a storm gathering—pressure and heat spiraling tighter with every thrust. Lincoln seemed to sense it. He shifted his angle, grinding against her with each stroke, his thumb finding her clit above where they joined.
“Let go,” he murmured against her throat. “I’ve got you.”
She shattered.
The orgasm tore through her in waves, her inner walls clenching around him as she arched off the bed.
She heard herself cry out—his name, maybe, or just sound without meaning—and felt him follow her over the edge.
He buried himself deep and went rigid, pulsing inside her, groaning her name like it was the only word he knew.
Afterward, she lay with her head on his chest, listening to the rapid drum of his heartbeat slowly returning to normal. He curved his arm around her, his hand tracing absent patterns on her shoulder that sent small aftershocks through her sensitized skin.
The fear hadn’t disappeared. She could feel it there, waiting at the edges of her consciousness—the gaps in her memory, the fuzzy details, the horror of summoning Ms. Delacroix’s face and finding it blurred. It would still be there in the morning. It would demand to be addressed.
But right now, in the dark, with Lincoln’s warmth seeping into her bones, she could breathe.
She should tell him. About the memory problems, about the way she was losing pieces of herself to make room for Randall’s data. She would. Soon.
But tonight, she let herself have this.
His hand kept moving across her shoulders and back—slow circles, unconscious patterns, the rhythm of someone who wasn’t used to this kind of closeness but was trying anyway. She felt his breathing even out, felt the tension drain from his muscles as his body relaxed into the mattress.
Morgan closed her eyes.
She was asleep before she could stop herself.