4. Sunnie
SUNNIE
His mouth was warm against my throat, and I forgot every reason I’d ever had to be afraid of this.
I’d been afraid for a long time. Years. I’d built my dating life around the idea that I wasn’t the kind of woman who got to have this—that intimacy was a thing other women earned by being bolder, prettier, more obvious about wanting things.
I’d convinced myself I was content. I’d been a woman who read books on couches and watched her friends fall in love and told herself she preferred it that way.
I had not preferred it that way.
Ross moved his mouth lower, down the line of my collarbone, and my hands tightened in his hair. His beard scratched against my skin in a way I felt all the way down to my hips. He kissed the hollow at the base of my throat, and I made a sound I had never in my life heard myself make.
He lifted his head and looked at me. “That a good sound?”
“Yes.”
“All right.”
He went back to my throat.
His hand was at the side of my ribs, just under my bra, his thumb running slow back and forth across the skin there. He wasn’t moving up. He wasn’t rushing. He was letting me catch up to him, and the patience of it was almost worse than if he’d gone fast.
I could feel every place he wasn’t touching me. I could feel the warm air on my stomach. I could feel the blanket under my back and the heat of the sun on my shoulder where his head wasn’t blocking it.
I wanted his hand higher. I’d never wanted anything that specifically in my life.
I reached down and put my hand over his and moved it up. He paused and lifted his head again.
“Sunnie?”
“Yes?”
“Are you telling me what you want?”
“Yes.”
“Keep doing that.”
He kissed me. Deep. The kind of kiss that wasn’t asking a question anymore. His hand cupped my breast through the bra, and I arched up into it. He made a low sound against my mouth that did something to me I hadn’t known a sound could do.
I reached behind my back and unhooked the bra. He pulled back. His eyes were dark and his mouth was wet and the expression on his face was something I wanted to savor.
“You sure?” he asked.
“Stop asking.”
“I’m going to keep asking.”
“I know.”
He drew the bra off me and dropped it on the blanket next to my tank top. He looked at me for a long moment. Just looked. His hand was flat on my stomach and he didn’t move it. He looked at me like a man who was memorizing something.
“Ross.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re staring.”
“I know.”
I laughed. A real one this time. He smiled—actually smiled, the first real one I’d gotten out of him—and it transformed his whole face. He looked younger by a decade. He looked like a man who’d been holding still for a long time and was finally allowed to move.
He bent down and kissed me again, and this time, his hand moved up to my breast with nothing between his palm and my skin.
I felt the difference like a current. I felt it through my whole body.
My toes curled against the canvas of the bedroll.
My hand went to the back of his neck and held him there.
He lowered his mouth to my breast, and I lost language for a minute. His hand was on my other breast, his thumb circling, and I had the distant thought that I was going to come before he’d even gotten my shorts off.
“Ross.”
“Mhm.”
“I don’t?—”
He lifted his head. “What?”
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
“You’re doing fine.”
“I might?—”
“Might what.”
“I think I might be close already and you haven’t even?—”
He smiled against my skin. “That’s not a problem.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
“It’s not.”
He moved his mouth down. Across my stomach, slow, kissing each rib.
My breath was coming in short. I’d never been touched like this.
Slowly, deliberately, like every inch of me deserved the attention.
My eyes were closed and my hand was in his hair and I was no longer a woman who read books on couches.
I was a woman on a bedroll on a flat rock by a river, half-naked, with a man’s mouth on her stomach, and I was going to come because of it.
He got to the button of my shorts. He looked up at me.
“Yes,” I said before he asked.
He undid the button. Drew the zipper down.
He hooked his fingers in the waistband and slid the shorts down my hips, slow enough that I had time to lift them, slow enough that I could have stopped him at any second.
He took my underwear with them. He dropped both onto the blanket, and then he was kneeling between my legs, fully dressed himself, looking down at me.
I lay there on his blanket with the sun on my skin and a man between my knees who was looking at me like I was the only thing in the world. I had no idea who this woman was, but I liked her.
“You’re beautiful,” he said.
“You said that already.”
“I’m going to keep saying it.”
He lowered himself down. He kissed the inside of my thigh. The other thigh. He took his time. When his mouth finally moved to where I needed him to be, I made a sound that wasn’t a word, and he made one back, and his hands wrapped around my hips and held me still, and I lost track of everything.
His tongue was slow at first, teasing, exploring every slick fold like he wanted to memorize me. Then he found my clit and latched on with perfect, steady pressure—hot, wet, and relentless.
Heat exploded low in my belly and rushed outward in pulsing waves. My back arched sharply off the blanket as my thighs started to shake. I gripped the bedroll on either side of my head, knuckles white, while desperate, broken sounds I barely recognized poured from my throat.
“Ross—”
“Mmm?” The vibration against my swollen clit made me cry out.
“I—I can’t?—”
“You can. Let go, Sunnie.”
He didn’t change a thing—just kept that same devastating rhythm, sucking and licking until the pressure coiled tighter and tighter inside me.
My inner walls fluttered and clenched around nothing.
My breath came in sharp, frantic gasps. Every nerve in my body pulled taut until I felt like I might snap.
Then it broke.
A devastating wave of pleasure crashed through me.
My entire body bowed violently as I came hard, pulsing and flooding against his mouth.
I cried out loud enough to scare every bird along the river, my thighs clamping around his head while spasms ripped through me again and again.
Ross held my hips down firmly, never stopping, drinking every twitch and flutter until the pleasure finally ebbed and left me limp, trembling, and gasping.
When I floated back down, my body was still twitching with aftershocks. He pressed one soft kiss to the inside of my thigh, then climbed up and gathered me against his chest. I buried my face in his shoulder, breathing in soap, coffee, and warm male skin, my heart still hammering.
“That was…” I whispered.
“Yeah,” he murmured, the low rumble of his voice vibrating against me.
After a long, hazy minute, I pushed away and looked at him, desire already stirring again. “You’re still wearing clothes. That’s not fair.”
A slow smile curved his lips. “I was getting to it.”
“I want to see you,” I said, voice husky. “All of you.”
He held my gaze for a beat, then pulled his shirt off in one smooth motion.
The sight stole my breath. Black ink swirled across his broad chest and down his ribs.
His body was powerful—shoulders wide, stomach ridged and hard from real work.
I pressed my palm to his chest and felt his heart pounding as wildly as mine.
He climbed off the rock, unbuckled his belt, and shoved his jeans and boxers down. His cock sprang free—thick, heavy, and rock-hard, the flushed head already glistening. He was bigger than I’d imagined, pulsing with need. A fresh wave of heat flooded between my legs.
I reached for him. He let me pull him down onto the blanket, then covered me with his body, keeping most of his weight on his forearms. The heat of his bare skin against mine was addictive. His thick cock rested hot and heavy against my stomach as he kissed me, slowly and deeply.
“Sunnie,” he breathed against my lips. “I’m going to be careful with you.”
He reached between us and stroked my soaked folds, circling my still-sensitive clit with his fingers until I was whimpering and lifting my hips, aching for more.
“Now,” I gasped. “Ross, please—now.”
He positioned himself at my entrance and pressed forward—slowly, carefully, stretching me open inch by inch.
The initial burn was sharp, but I breathed through it, and the pain melted into a deep, breathtaking fullness.
When he finally sank all the way in, we both groaned.
I felt impossibly full, every thick inch of him throbbing inside my tight heat.
He stayed still, arms shaking with restraint, watching my face. “You okay?”
“Move,” I whispered.
He did—long, slow thrusts that dragged against every sensitive spot deep inside me.
The stretch turned into delicious friction, and the friction turned into liquid heat.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, heels digging into his back.
He shifted his angle and slipped his hand between us, his thumb finding my swollen clit again with perfect pressure.
The coil inside me wound tighter, faster this time. My walls fluttered and clenched around his thick length, gripping him rhythmically. Heat flooded my core. My breath turned into desperate little cries as the pleasure built higher and higher.
“Ross—I’m?—”
“Come on my cock, baby. Let me feel you come again.”
His words, combined with his deep thrusts and steady circles on my clit, pushed me over the edge.
The second orgasm slammed into me even harder than the first. Pleasure shattered outward from my core in a violent wave.
My pussy spasmed around him, milking him in powerful, rhythmic pulses as I came with a raw cry against his shoulder.
Only when my orgasm finally started to fade did Ross let himself go. His thrusts grew erratic and deeper. A low, guttural groan tore from his throat as he buried himself to the hilt and came hard, pulsing hot and strong inside me while he held me tight against him.
We stayed locked together, panting, trembling, skin slick with sweat, hearts hammering in sync.
The river moved past.
After a long minute, he lifted his head and looked down at me. His hair was damp at the temples. His eyes were soft in a way I hadn’t seen yet.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You’re sure.”
“Yes.”
“Sunnie.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t say anything for a beat. He just looked at me.
“I’m in love with you,” he said.
I went still.
He didn’t take it back. He didn’t try to soften it. He just held my eyes and let it sit there between us, on a rock by a river in the middle of an afternoon I was never going to forget.
“I know it’s fast,” he said. “I know it sounds insane. I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t. I’m telling you because it’s true, and I’m not going to let you walk out of this thinking it wasn’t.”
I reached up and put my hand on the side of his face. “I love you too,” I said.
He closed his eyes.
He pulled me close and held me there for a long time. The river kept moving, and the sun moved a few degrees across the sky, and I lay under him on a bedroll on a flat rock and held the side of his face and knew, with a clarity I’d never had about anything in my life, that I wasn’t going home.