Chapter 22 #3
He blew out a breath and surveyed the swath of naked from my knees to my waist. Then he yanked my underwear and jeans back into place, not bothering with the button or zipper.
I yelped at the pressure of form-fitting clothes against super sensitive skin.
Noah slapped my thigh, saying, “Upstairs. Now.”
“Wait.” I reached for him but he gathered my hands and looped them around his neck. “What do I taste like?”
He nuzzled into the crook of my shoulder and replied with a soft growl. “My wife.”
“That’s not a taste.”
“Mmm. It is now.” He turned me around and set one hand low on my belly where my jeans gaped open, the other on my shoulder. “Remember what I said about being quiet?”
“Yeah, it’s why I have a perfect impression of my teeth on either side of my thumb.”
“I’ll have to kiss it and make it better.”
He walked me up the stairs like we couldn’t risk making a single sound.
The pressure to maintain this silence swelled inside me, pressing at my breastbone and pulling my shoulder blades tight.
I didn’t realize until we reached his bedroom, on the opposite end of the house from Gennie’s, that this feeling was anticipation.
It was a delicious kind of stress—just like the drive home—and I was all the way back to simmering again.
When he opened the door to his room, a breath whooshed out of me at the sight of his big bed complete with a navy and white quilt and two layers of pillows of the appropriate size and quantity.
“What was that for?” he asked, his broad chest warm against my back.
“You have pillows. Real pillows.” I looked up at him. “Men never have real pillows.”
He glanced between me and the bed as he closed and locked the door. “Yeah. That’s interesting.” He shifted the hand on my belly lower until his fingers cupped me between my legs. “Is this okay?”
I dropped my head back to his shoulder. “Yes.”
He moved his other hand over my shoulder to my breast. He was hard against my ass. I couldn’t miss the solid ridge of him or the way he rocked between my cheeks. “What about this sweater?”
I wiggled to free myself from the sweater but Noah wasn’t having that. He gave my pussy a rough squeeze and whispered, “Slow down.”
Motioning to the bed, I whined, “But I don’t want to slow down.”
He pressed his mouth to my neck, saying, “We have to discuss a few things before we take another step toward that bed, sweetheart. I need you to talk to me about protection and I need you to tell me what’s off-limits for you.”
Suddenly shy, I fixed my gaze on the quilt. “I had all the tests done in July after my—well, after my last situation went down in flames. Everything came back clear.” I forced all memory of the ex from my mind. He wasn’t entitled to destroy this too. “And I have an IUD. So.”
“I haven’t been with anyone in months. Since before Gennie moved in. No one since my last check-up.”
“So, then,” I started, forming bold words from nothing, “we can skip the condoms.”
“Is that what you want?”
“I—um.” I had no idea what I wanted. No, that wasn’t true. I wanted to be held down again. Pinned in place in his truck, backed into the corner of the kitchen. Trapped yet completely safe. And I wanted him over me, around me, inside me. But that wasn’t the question. “Yes. Is that okay with you?”
“That works.” He stroked my cheek, my jaw. “What’s off-limits?”
“After what happened in the kitchen”—a laugh burst out of me—“nothing.”
“I don’t believe that.” Noah traced around my nipple, careful to never circle too close and accidentally give me what I wanted.
“You’ll stop me if you don’t like something.
Understand? I want to hear you. I don’t want to hurt you or freak you out or—look, it matters to me that it’s good for you, Shay. I need you to talk to me.”
I could’ve lied to myself and said he didn’t have to worry about making it good for me. I could’ve said this was meaningless sex. Casual. No strings. What happened tonight didn’t have to matter. It didn’t have to be important.
I could’ve lied and told Noah as much.
“Yeah. Yes. Okay.” I bobbed my head. “I’ll talk to you but only if I’m allowed to touch you.”
“Why do you want to touch me?”
He asked this question while dragging his finger along the outer edges of my underwear, the scrap of fabric a second away from officially being declared an island since I was wet like an ocean between my legs.
And he asked this question as if there was something fundamentally curious about me wanting to rub my hands all over his body.
“Because this thing you’re doing, the plaid shirts with the rolled-up sleeves and the broken-in jeans, the beard, the ball caps, the growling—god, can’t forget all the growling—it’s impeccable.
Flawless. And when you touch me and do all these things to me, I don’t want to feel them alone.
Does that make sense? I don’t want to be alone in this. I need you with me.”
His first response came in the form of him spanking—yes, spanking —my pussy. An open-handed slap that echoed off my clit and folded me over at the waist as a garbled cry of “Gahhhhfuck” rattled out of me.
His second response was spoken directly into my skin. “You’re not alone, wife. I’m right here with you and I’m not going anywhere.”
Noah tugged the sweater over my head as he walked me toward the bed. He yanked my jeans and underwear down, kicked them free from my ankles while I unclasped my bra. With a hand between my shoulder blades, he bent me over until my cheek was flat on the quilt.
I was aware of every inch of skin on display, every quiver and kick of my internal muscles, every breath puffing out of me.
A sliver of doubt shivered through me. This felt wrong. Or, more specifically, it felt like it should be wrong. I shouldn’t spread my legs wider. I shouldn’t press up on my toes. I shouldn’t rub myself against the quilt. I shouldn’t want it like this.
That shiver grew into a gasp, a throb, a shudder when I heard the rattle of his belt, the rasp of his zipper. His jeans hit the floor and then his shirt.
“I want to keep you like this,” he said, skating a finger down my spine, between my cheeks. “But not this time. No, this time, I need to see you.”
He moved closer, held my hips, rocked against me. He hadn’t stripped off his boxers yet.
“Give me a second,” he said as if he could read my mind. “Your ass is shaped like a heart and I can still taste your pussy on my tongue. I need to pull myself together, Shay.”
I grabbed at the quilt, tugging it down to reveal smooth blue sheets. Nice sheets too. “Pull yourself together under the covers,” I said. “With me.”
He released me with a groan that seemed to violate all the regulations on quiet.
I climbed into the bed, between the cool linen sheets, and held out my hand to him.
He didn’t take my hand. He prowled toward me on his hands and knees, tossing back the sheets as he came, his gaze midnight dark and jaw locked like he was seconds away from snarling.
This was my first chance to get a look at him without clothes, and whew .
Did not disappoint. He had a glorious farmer’s tan, his upper arms and shoulders pale while his forearms were sun-kissed.
His chest was wide and strong, a bit of dark fuzz there and running down the center of his abs, which led me to—
Oh my god.
I reached for the erection tenting his boxers, closing my fingers around him and giving him long, thorough strokes while he dropped his head between my breasts. It felt good being the one doling out the torture for a minute.
“ Shay, ” he gasped. “Sweetheart, you’re going to kill me.”
“I don’t think so.” No one with a shaft like this could die from a few strokes. That was absurd. Almost as much as him walking around with an almighty baseball bat in his trousers and keeping it all to himself. “Have you always had this?”
He lifted his head and gave me a wry grimace. “As far back as I can remember, yeah.”
I twisted my hand over his crown and back down again. A triumphant smile broke across my lips when he sighed foul curses into my breasts. “And you never thought to mention it?”
“Tell me how that conversation would go. Something like ‘Hey, hi, welcome back to town, want to see if you can get your fingers all the way around my cock?’ I can’t see you loving that.”
I pushed the boxers over his hips. He kicked them away. There was nothing else between us now, and here, beneath the sheets and the quilt, there was nothing else in the world. “Maybe not the initial conversation but definitely one we should’ve had within the first month or two.”
He laughed and it seemed to recover some part of his resolve. He pressed my legs open with his knees, planted his hands beside my shoulders. “You have no idea how much I want you right now.”
I was shaking but only on the inside. Noah couldn’t see it.
It was better that way. He’d stop if he knew about the simmering in my blood and all over my skin.
He’d hold me close and demand an explanation.
An accounting of this situation. But I didn’t want that.
I didn’t need that. I needed him to take charge the way he did in the kitchen. In the truck. Everywhere.
I gave him a squeeze. “I have some idea.”
“And what about you?” he asked, his gaze unfocused as I worked him. “What do you want?”
I dragged him through my wet heat, sliding back and forth until he bucked into my hand, until he leaned down to groan into my breast. “This,” I said, notching him against my opening. “I want this. I want you .”
He stared between us for a long moment. “I’m gonna bite that thigh when I’m done with you.”
I released his shaft to draw my fingers along the crease where my leg met my ass. “Right here?”
“Right there.”