Chapter 41
Get used to that, darling
Rafe
She let out a small squeak as I reached down and lifted her up onto the granite surface, then stood in between her legs, letting her feel how hard I’d been for the entirety of this conversation, how hard I was most of the time around her.
“Does that feel like I don’t want you?” I growled, moving against her now as she let out a small moan.
“Rafe,” she said in a needy voice. “Oh God, I-I…”
“Have you been as frustrated as me?” I asked, still with that growl in my voice.
“Being around you and having to hold myself back from touching you like I want has been the worst form of torture.” My mouth moved to hers, but not for the usual light kisses I gave her.
No, I took her in a deep, hard, demanding kiss which she returned, her hands gripping onto my shirt and her hips moving against mine in needy, desperate little jerks. “God, I missed you so much, baby.”
“Rafe, please.” Her voice was breathy and had a pleading quality which matched my own desperation.
“Please what, darling?” I murmured as I kissed from the corner of her mouth to her ear, taking the soft lobe in my teeth.
“Ugh, I can’t…” she broke off in a long moan as I rocked against her centre.
“Use your words, Clara,” I teased. “Tell me what you need.”
“I need you inside me,” she choked out. “Please, Rafe. I can’t wait. I feel like I’m burning from the inside out.”
“Good girl,” I muttered. “Let me take the edge off first, though.”
“Rafe, I—”
She broke off as I pulled her leggings and knickers down until they were on the floor. Her jumper and t-shirt were the next to go until she was just in her bra.
“What are you… Oh!” I gently pushed her back so she was leaning up on her elbows as I pressed her legs open wider and kissed down from her jawline to her breasts, pulling down the cups so that I could close my mouth over her nipples, then continuing down the flat of her stomach.
“Rafe, I need you to… ah!” Her hands gripped into my hair as I used my tongue to cover her in one broad lick.
“Holy shit,” she breathed when I used the flat of my tongue to focus on her clit whilst my fingers entered her in one smooth motion and she contracted around me.
“Fuck, you’re so tight,” I muttered against her before focusing back on her clit, my finger pumping into her in controlled movements.
“Oh God, Rafe. I can’t… ah!” She flew over the edge with a scream as the pulses of pleasure shot through her onto my tongue and fingers.
I stayed there, milking the last of the contractions out of her until she was practically boneless, then I moved up her body to cover her mouth with mine, the taste of her still on my tongue.
“Oh my God, you’re good at that,” she breathed, and I smiled against her mouth. The glazed look in her eyes started to clear and she stiffened. “Rafe! It’s the middle of the day! What if Martha comes in?”
“You’re right,” I said, scooping her up so that she was straddling me and then carrying her out of the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” she said through a laugh which went right through my chest, flooding me with warmth. “We can’t…”
“We can do whatever the fuck we like,” I told her as I jogged up the stairs, kicked the door of my bedroom open and then slammed it behind me with my foot.
“Rafe, I… oh!” I dropped her on the bed and followed her down so that my body was covering hers.
“We’ve got about an hour until we have to leave to pick Ozzie up,” I said in between kisses, moving to the side so that the heel of my hand could press against her core again and she let out another moan. “So we don’t have much time to spare if I’m going to make you come twice more.”
“Twice?” she breathed.
“Yes, baby. At least.”
“Holy shit.” She arched against me as I increased the pressure on her core and my mouth fell down to her breast. “Rafe, y-you… I need you—”
“I know what you need, baby.”
“Clothes. Off.” Some bossiness was leaking into her tone now and I loved it. She then shocked the shit out of me by slapping her hand on my shoulder. “Now, Rafe.”
I raised my head from her chest and grinned up at her before reaching back to pull my t-shirt over my head and throw it to the side.
“You’re so beautiful,” Clara said in a reverent whisper as her fingers traced over my pecs and then down over the ridges of my abdomen.
I managed to unbutton my jeans and throw them on the floor, then I covered her body again and kissed her.
The feel of her skin on mine was beyond amazing.
My cock was pressing against her now and she moaned.
“You are so stunning that sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe,” I told her against her lips before I pulled back to scan her face, both my hands coming up to push her hair back.
“Being around you and not having you has been torture, Clara. I haven’t been able to take a full breath in over a month. I love you. Do you understand me?”
“Rafe, I—”
“And you’re mine, understand?”
“Yours.”
“Too fucking right,” I snapped as I pushed forward, filling her in one smooth thrust. She let out a muted scream and arched against me.
“God, yes!” she semi-shouted. “Like that. Please, Rafe. Harder.”
“Fuck, you feel so good,” I gritted out as I powered into her, unable to hold anything back. “I missed you so fucking much. Tell me again that you’re mine.”
“I’m yours, Rafe.”
“Tell me that you’ll stop talking about leaving.”
“Christ, yes, anything, please.”
“Say it, Clara.” I thrust deep inside and then pulled nearly all the way out. “Tell me you’ll stay.”
She clawed at my back, her legs tightening around me. “Rafe!”
“Tell me, Clara.”
“I’ll stay! Of course I’ll stay. Please Rafe…
ah!” I started my rhythm again, my thrusts so brutal they shook Clara on the bed, but she moved with me, begging me for more until she fell over the edge, letting out another scream as she contracted around me.
The feel of her coming pushed me higher until my thrusts became uncoordinated and I came with a deep shout.
Pleasure I’d never known before flooded through my system.
Everything I had was focused on making her mine. Nothing else mattered but Clara.
I kissed her as we both came down, letting her take my weight for a moment but then pushing up to look at her face.
“You okay?” I asked softly.
“Wow,” was her only reply and I let out a relieved chuckle.
“That doesn’t exactly answer my question, darling. I was rough. Are you okay? I didn’t hurt you?”
She frowned up at me. “That was perfect, Rafe Sterling. I’m not made of glass.”
I grinned then levered up to push off the bed.
“Wait there,” I told her, not fully trusting this Clara that had promised to stay with me.
I stalked to the bathroom to grab a flannel and wet it with warm water.
When I came back, Clara was in the bed with the covers hiked up to her chin.
She was flushed and some embarrassment had crept into her expression.
“You didn’t stay,” I accused as I stalked towards her.
She rolled her eyes. “I’m not staying splayed out on the bed naked in the cold light of day.”
I pulled the covers back and reached to part her legs. She squeaked.
“What are you doing?”
“I didn’t use a condom,” I said as I cleaned her with the flannel before throwing it onto the side table and moving fully into the bed to take her in my arms.
“Oh,” she replied, stiffening in my arms as I rested back against the pillows, pulling her onto my chest so that her head was resting under my chin and her leg was thrown over mine. “I’m sorry.”
I chuckled again. “One day you’ll learn not to apologise for shit that’s not your fault. Clara, the condom is my fuck up. I’m clean. I was tested a couple of months before we met, and I haven’t slept with anyone since then.”
“You haven’t?” she asked in surprise.
I frowned. “Of course not.”
“Didn’t you and Ophelia? I mean, I assumed…”
“There’s been nobody but you, Clara.”
“Oh.”
“So we don’t have to worry about that. But I’m sorry I didn’t protect you pregnancy-wise.”
“Pregnancy?”
“Yes, Clara. Contraception. The possibility of a pregnancy doesn’t bother me, but…”
“Oh, I… I’m on the pill. I started it back when we… I mean… when we started, er… and I thought I’d carry it on. Just in case.”
“Okay,” I said, kissing the top of her head.
“It wouldn’t bother you if I were to get pregnant?”
I paused, not wanting to say the wrong thing and also really not wanting to sound like too much of a caveman. “No, Clara. I love you. I’d be bloody ecstatic if you were pregnant. But of course, I wouldn’t want you to be upset. And it was irresponsible of me to—”
“You love me?” The tentative quality in her voice broke my heart.
How this amazing woman had ever been made to feel unlovable made me furious.
I tamped down the familiar flash of anger towards her useless fucking family.
Those bastards never deserved to breathe the same air as Clara.
How dare they ever make her feel she had to hide, make her feel like she had to be small?
And how fucking dare they lay a finger on her?
How could anyone hurt anything so precious?
“I love everything about you, Clara,” I told her as I shifted us and then flipped her onto her back, hovering over her to search her uncertain expression.
“I love the way you feel, the way you smell, the way your nose crinkles when you disagree with me but don’t want to say, the way you nurture the kids in your class, the way you love my son, the way you eat Branston Pickle straight out of the jar, the way you bite both of your lips when you’ve done something you know will piss me off.
” She rolled her eyes but there was a smile on her face.
I grinned back at her, then my smile faded as I held her gaze.
“I love your quiet humour, your kindness, the way you stand up for what you believe even if doing it terrifies you, your strength—”
“I’m not st—”
“Darling, you’re the strongest person I know,” I told her firmly.
“What you did to save your brother and your mother will have saved other people too. The ripples will be felt throughout London. You did that. And you’ve protected your brother his whole life.
There are very few people with that level of resilience, with that strength. ”
She shook her head. “I don’t think you see me clearly.”
“It’s you who doesn’t see yourself clearly,” I told her firmly. “But we’ll have plenty of time to turn that around. You’ve agreed to stay here with me, remember?”
“Rafe, that was under duress!”
“You promised.”
“You cheated to get your way.”
I grinned. “Get used to that, darling.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. I waited, knowing that I had to let Clara say what she needed to say in her own time. She looked away for a moment, then swallowed before her jaw set at a determined angle and she turned back to me.
“I love you too,” she said, her voice just as determined as the set of her jaw but still with that slight shaky quality. I smiled down at her.
“That’s my brave girl,” I praised, lowering my head to kiss her, softly at first then deeper.
I flipped us back in a sudden movement so that Clara was straddling me, her hands braced against my chest as I hardened again underneath her.
“Right, we’ve got about twenty minutes left for you to show me just how much you love me. ”
Clara let out another laugh that I felt straight down to my soul. I would never get tired of that sound.
Then she showed me how much she loved me before we both left to pick up Ozzie.
And again after he went to bed that night.