Chapter 4 #2
He stops me. His hand curls around my waist, turning me to face him with just enough force I don’t feel coerced. The right amount of fingers and palm and wrist veering and guiding.
“Do you trust me?” His eyes scour my face, taking in my hesitance.
He watches me pull my lips between my teeth, and I take in the way his gaze hardens, turning determined and steely.
His other hand cups the nape of my neck, and I shiver under his confident touch.
He’s sure and hopeful, a complete contradiction to the divergent thoughts in my head.
Like two sides of a road traveling in opposite directions.
He inches closer when I don’t answer him. “Grace?”
My nod is barely a nod, but it’s there. In the way my chin tilts toward my chest and how my eyes turn eager and obedient. “I trust you,” I finally whisper.
And he kisses me.
This kiss upstages the one he gave me in the elevator.
By a mile. It ticks off every check mark he left behind.
Ones I didn’t think were possible. Like how his hands slip into my hair or how he takes control, adjusting his hips and shoulders so I know when and how to follow his lead.
He nudges me backward so my butt perches on the back of my couch, and I’m completely at his will.
Me, pressed against a solid surface while Andrew steps between my legs, and my knee hooks over his hip.
It’s mind numbing how quickly I’ve relinquished every ounce of control to someone who knows exactly where to touch me.
Like the dip in my collarbone or the back of my thighs.
The knowledge that he knows what the fuck he’s doing slithers down my spine, looping down to the pit of my stomach where it feels tingly.
Deft fingers tickle my nape, blindly searching for the single button holding my dress up. I feel it peel away from my back, the cornered edge curling toward my shoulder. Time stands still as he glides his thumb over my collarbone. Time that feels phantom.
“I don’t think you realize how fucking beautiful you are,” he whispers. And he does the most intimate thing a man has ever done to me. He leans down and kisses my shoulder. But he doesn’t just kiss me. He reassures me. He calms me and comforts me into letting me trust him with my entire body.
My hands shake as they undo his buttons. Starting at the top, trembling more and more with each button I meet. He finds the last two, gripping my hands in a firm hold.
“You don’t need to be nervous,” he whispers, his lips pressed behind my ear.
“I can’t help it,” I whimper. A helpless, wretched whine squeezes through my lips.
He pulls away and takes my wrist in a gentle hold.
He turns my palm over, holding it up and creating a safe distance of space between us.
A small break from the heated moment. When he presses his lips to my palm, he calms my anxiety.
When those lips travel to my pulse point, he replaces that anxiety with anticipation and thrill.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asks sincerely.
I shake my head. “No.”
A flash of a smile, and he asks, “Where’s your room?
” He slips off his dress shirt, exposing his wide chest and broad shoulders.
Metal glints off his neck under the low light from my kitchen.
A silver chain. Vines of black ink peek past a stretched undershirt I want to tear off and pile on top of his tossed aside shirt on the floor.
I gesture a loose hand toward his bicep, attempting to hide my efforts to catch my breath. “Is that new?”
He looks down at his arm, examining the object of my evasion tactic. “Kind of. I got it about a year ago.”
I nod. “Looks…interesting.”
His pinky brushes my knuckles. “Are you stalling?”
“And what would I be stalling?” I ask, avoiding his question.
“Since you said you don’t want me to stop, I’m really not too sure,” he muses.
“Well, I’m not.”
“Then tell me where your damn room is.”
“Down the hallway,” I finally answer, smiling like a horny fool. “Second door on the right.”
With one strong sweep, he hoists me up, forcing my legs around his waist. The world seems to tilt and spin as his feet stumble toward the hallway leading to my room.
It’s my home, my hardwood floor and recessed lighting guiding us, but it doesn’t feel like any part of this moment is mine.
Andrew takes control in a way that I don’t even need to remember my own name.
He leans into the slightly open door with his back.
And then there’s my bed, cloaked in shadows, stashing away the neat, orderly state of my room and replacing it with the racy, wanton dungeon I’ve been dragged into.
There might as well be a large billboard hanging above it that reads “SEX HERE.” Because we’re going to have sex. There’s no question about it.
He still has me in his arms when he climbs on the cushy comforter covering my bed.
Over the stark white duvet cover, one knee after the other.
He lays me down gently, lowering me so I sink rather than plop.
I watch him reach back behind his shoulders and slip his T-shirt over his head, the last of the layers separating us.
I see more tattoos lining his ribcage and chest, and he sees me eye them.
He gives me the time to study the lines and curves, the details I trace with my fingertips.
“You like them, huh?”
“Didn’t think I would, but yeah. They look nice,” I admit.
He smirks a devilish smile, and I have a sudden urge to taunt him.
Meet his smug smirk with something just as haughty and arrogant.
I don’t get a chance to, of course, because when he hovers over me, I forget all about his cheeky grin.
All I see are his hooded lids, zoning in on my lips as a soft sigh squeezes through them.
But he’s just a hairbreadth too far away for a kiss.
It’s a tease, to provoke or torment me, I don’t know.
So I tug his torso closer using his silver chain.
And the resulting kiss leaves me breathless.
“I didn’t think I liked jewelry on men either, but here we are,” I whisper through small gasps, hoping I sound as light and airy as my words.
My hands fumble with his belt and the zipper.
My legs part, my knees falling open, while I reach into his pants.
It sounds crass, but the only way I can explain what I feel is ample and packed.
“Jesus, you’re going to have to spend some time getting me ready if you plan to shove that thing inside of me. ”
“You make it sound like that’d be a chore for me.” His lips meet the hollow space below my ear, and I feel his fingers go low. Past my dress and nudging aside my panties. “But judging by how wet you already are, I don’t think it’s going to take much.”
He strokes his fingers, moving like he’s carefully learning every crease and ridge.
He does it with an intensely rapt intellect.
Like he’s going to be tested later, and he’d have to pick out my pussy in a blind lineup.
And I hope he aces it. With flying colors.
With his free hand, his occupied one remaining diligent elsewhere, he peels off the rest of my dress.
Again, with an intentional deliberation almost as if it’s too overwhelming for him to rip it all off, and an inch at a time is all he can handle.
The impatience starts to claw at my chest. I want nothing between me and him. I want bare skin against bare skin. My arms slip out of the sleeves with urgency, and I discard the low-back ligature that masqueraded as a bra, the only piece of undergarment that worked with this dress.
“Enthusiastic, are we?” he asks as my bra lands on the floor with a soft thunk. His words are playful, but his eyes flare with heat as he takes in my bare chest.
“Shut up,” I shoot back.
His response, though as effective as a cocksure retort, is his studious finger pushed inside me.
I might as well sign over my soul to him.
I feel everything tense and seize when he trails his kisses down my bare chest. He pulls my nipple into his mouth, letting his tongue rouse me, and I don’t remember ever feeling anything this satisfying in my entire life.
“Holy shit.”
“That’s it, Grace,” he coaxes, feeling my body respond to his touch.
“Just relax, baby. Relax.” His thumb against my clit has my eyes rolling to the back of my head, and my nails rake down his back.
The fog in my mind creates a dreamy cloud of ecstasy, and I can’t even shift my thoughts to worry if I’ve drawn blood.
“Ohhh my fucking god,” I exclaim. “Ho–how are you so good at that?” My voice falls desperately, the sheer volume of it growing and amplifying within the walls that encase us in this moment. A moment we both know we can’t revisit in the future.
He doesn’t acknowledge my unintended flattery.
He doesn’t chuckle a pompous laugh with a smug smile or a victory pose.
Instead, determination flares his nostrils, and I feel myself tensing.
He smothers my lips with his, swallowing the sounds coming from me as if that was his whole purpose.
He patiently lets my orgasm tear through me, and it spreads all the way to my fucking toes.
Jesus, if he can make me come like this with his fingers, I can’t imagine what his dick can do.
“Do you have a condom?” he suddenly asks.
“Yeah, yeah,” I answer, a flash of clarity in my lust-filled mind. In the blur of our tryst, I’d forgotten to think about protection. I point to my nightstand. “Bottom drawer.”