Chapter 24 #2
I am standing here watching Lennon make obscene little sounds around my goddamn lollipop while another man fucks her, and I am somehow still the most morally compromised person in this kitchen.
Nevan thrusts into her harder, and her eyes find his, which is somehow the last straw.
I need her lucid, and I need her eyes on mine.
Stepping up behind Shaw, I set one hand on his shoulder and ease him to the side, even though every instinct is screaming to yeet him through the nearest window again. Instead, I make sure he’s no longer buried to the hilt inside her.
He stands there, still hard, still glistening with her, wearing the vague, agreeable quality of a dream character who hasn’t been given instructions.
I’m making an effort. Progress.
Lennon whimpers at the sudden emptiness, hips twitching, chasing what’s gone.
“I know,” I say, trying for reassurance as I make my way back to her. “But he’s had his turn, and you’ve got to find me first.”
I let the lollipop trail down her throat and along her collarbone. She shivers, and I watch her skin prickle in the wake of it. Down the inside of her arm, to her wrist, and back up again.
I keep my hands to myself and tell myself that that part matters. She’s not lucid, and I won’t touch her with my hands until she is, until she knows it’s me and consents to me touching her. The lollipop is safer. Easier to keep controlled.
It’s also the only thing keeping me controlled right now.
“You’re so needy.” I keep my voice low, easy, like this isn’t costing me every scrap of restraint I have left. “Look at you. All that want and nowhere to put it.”
She squirms, thighs pressing together, then parting again like she can’t decide what she needs more.
“Greedy girl.” The lollipop traces the swell of her breast, circling lazily, but not touching where she wants it. “All this and you still want more. You’re insatiable, you know that?”
“Ridge.” She reaches for me again.
“Not yet.” I redirect her hand. “Find me first.”
The candy dips lower and leaves a glistening trail across the soft curve of her stomach. Her hips lift off the marble, chasing the contact.
“So pretty when you’re desperate,” I murmur. “So soft. You have no idea, do you, what you look like right now?”
She arches, every inch of her begging without words. The lollipop circles her navel. Her ribs. Her tits. I bring it up and trace her lips with it again, and she chases it, but when I pull it back, she frowns at me.
There.
A flicker.
The shift happens behind her eyes. I watch as the glass clears, awareness flooding back.
She lifts her hand, stares at her fingers, before her gaze widens and snaps to mine, making me freeze, and every muscle locks up.
I’m ready to step back, drop the lollipop, and put three feet of space between us, the second she decides this is too much, too weird, too me.
But Lennon is just panting, flushed pink from chest to cheeks, her eyes still blown dark and wide, but now they’re focused on me. She looks at the candy, then back at me, but she doesn’t move away, doesn’t tell me to fuck off. Then her arms move inward with the instinct to cover herself.
There she is.
“Hey,” I say it quietly and wait until her eyes find mine again. “Don’t.”
“I’m…” She stops and swallows, then puts an arm over her stomach. “This is…”
“Don’t hide. I already saw everything, and you’re beautiful. You with me?”
She nods, a small, shaky one.
Yeah, that’s not enough for what I want to do to you.
A nod from someone still finding their footing isn’t a yes, it’s just the absence of a no, and I don’t want the absence. I need her certainty. I want her asking, no, begging for me.
“Lennon, look at me. Are you lucid? Are you sure you know where you are, who’s touching you?”
Her eyes flick to mine again, clearer now, searching. She nods once more, firmer this time.
“Words, sweetheart. I need words.”
“Yes,” she breathes out. “I’m here. I’m lucid.” Then she adds, quieter, “I know it’s you.”
The way she says it, not surprised or embarrassed by that part, relaxes me a little.
“Do you want me to stop?”
She hesitates. And in the hesitation, I can see her doing the math—the self-consciousness on one side, the ache on the other. I don’t rush her. I wait.
“No. I need… God, I need—”
“What do you need, Lennon?”
“Just, don’t stop.” Her voice cracks on the last word. “Please.”
Holy-fucking-shit.
My dick jumps hard enough that I have to shift my stance. Apparently, my body didn’t get the memo that we’re still trying to be the responsible one here.
But Shaw, or Nevan, whatever, did his job too well. All that slow edging left her so wound up that even now, lucid and staring straight into my eyes, she’s prioritizing the ache between her legs over the fact that it’s me touching her over whatever fragile line we’re about to obliterate.
This is for her.
Mostly.
And a little bit—okay, a lot—for the selfish, greedy part of me that’s been dying to hear her say my name like that while she’s awake enough to mean it.
“Good.” I let the lollipop trail down her sternum. “Then stay with me.”
She closes her eyes—maybe overwhelmed, maybe savoring—then opens them again, locking on mine as if it’s the only thing keeping her grounded.
I drag the candy lower over the soft swell of her breast.
Her breath catches, and she grabs the counter.
“Shh. No thoughts in that pretty head,” I tell her softly, watching her face as I let the candy slide down her stomach, over her pelvis. “Just feel.”
The lollipop finds her clit, and she gasps, startled, her entire body tensing.
“Ridge.”
“I know.” I keep the pressure light, then tap softly. “I’ve got you.”
The little whimper she makes in answer goes straight to my dick like a fist. I have to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from groaning out loud.
“Please,” she breathes out. Her hips roll against my hand. “Please, I need—”
“I know what you need, sweetheart. Let me show you.”
I tease the lollipop around her entrance, dipping it inside her pussy. Her moan fills the entire dream, and she tilts her hips, arching into it like her body’s begging for more. My vision tunnels.
I work it slowly, in and out, causing her to make sounds that are doing irreversible damage to my ability to think in complete sentences.
“Such a pretty mess,” I say quietly, almost to myself. “Look at you.”
I pull the lollipop out, watching how she squirms, the slick shine of her coating the candy in the kitchen light.
Then, without breaking eye contact, I bring it to my mouth and suck.
The taste explodes on my tongue. Any trace of the sour lemon candy is gone, replaced with what I can only describe as sugary sweet Lennon.
Goddamn.
She watches me suck, eyes wide, and lets out this soft, helpless whimper again.
“You taste even better than I imagined,” I mutter against the candy.
Her hips jerk, chasing nothing now, just pure want.
“Oh, are we greedy? You have to learn how to share, Lennon.”
Nevan is still standing there a few feet away, wearing that blank, agreeable dream-character stare, and something territorial and ugly moves through me before I can stop it.
I lean down, close enough that my lips whisper against her jaw. “You like that? Or are you wishing I’d fill you up?”
She’s flushed, panting, and reaching for me, not him, even though he was inside her a few minutes ago, and I don’t know what to do with that except apparently turn it into a question.
“Tell me something.” I let the lollipop drag slowly across her inner thigh, watching her shiver. “Do you want his dick inside you right now?” I keep my voice easy, almost conversational, like the answer doesn’t matter. “The one that was buried in you when I walked in. Say it.”
She shakes her head then whimpers, the sound cracking in the middle.
“Words,” I almost growl out. “Use your words.”
Her lips part. “Yo-urs…” The word comes out broken, barely audible, but it hits me like a freight train. “I want… yours…”
Fuck.
I slide the lollipop back inside her slowly.
In. Out. In. Out.
“Ridge.”
“Lennon.”
“Please. I want you so badly.”
Fuck.
I can’t think about what she just said.
Because she’s fully here now, eyes locked on mine, choosing this, choosing me, and my brain keeps snagging on that.
She’s choosing me.
She clenches every time I push home, and it makes my cock throb painfully.
I’m running out of arguments with myself.
Every reason I had for keeping this contained feels thinner than it did five minutes ago, worn through by the sounds she’s making and the look in her eyes—like I’m exactly what she was reaching for all along.
God, just thinking about replacing this stupid stick with my dick, sinking into that sweet heat, feeling her stretch and flutter around me instead, hearing her say my name like she just did, but wrecked, properly wrecked.
I want her so badly it’s rewriting my priorities in real time.
That should terrify me.
But somehow, it doesn’t.
Precum leaks steadily now, soaking through my boxers. She chose. Me. Not the stamina champ standing there like furniture. Me.
But I’m not done.
“Nuh-uh. You don’t get the real thing yet.”
I bring the candy back to my mouth, suck it clean again, her taste flooding my tongue, sour, sweet, and mine, then I press it straight to her clit. Her thighs start shaking, and I can’t stop myself. I slide one finger inside her wet heat, and my name on her lips drowns out my groan.
“Ridge.”
It takes all my concentration to keep a slow, even pace, sliding my finger in and out, while I increase the pressure of the lollipop against her clit, then pull back and repeat the rhythmic pulse.
Watching as my finger disappears inside her has me on the edge and questioning how I let it get this far, but then she moans, and I realize it doesn’t matter. Only she does.
Every panting breath of hers is close enough it’s as if I can taste the lemon and salt on her lips.