Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
Ethan
When I return to the bedroom after a long hot shower, Ani’s fast asleep.
Lying on her side, the covers twisted around her bare limbs. With long lashes sweeping shadows onto her cheeks, she looks even younger than twenty-three.
One smooth thigh and the taut curve of her ass gleam invitingly against the pristine white of the sheets. I love that she didn’t put the boxer shorts back on. That she fell asleep waiting for me. And that she shows a trust in me I want to hold on to forever.
She looks like she belongs there, on my bed. In my life. And falling apart on my tongue. At my lips. There’s something incredibly fragile about her, especially in sleep. Even as she protests that she isn’t.
A shiver moves through me as I consider all the ramifications of what I’m doing. And how I want this to play out.
The shower only increased my sudden restlessness, as if the storm outside is feeding it directly into my veins. I could have taken myself in hand and relieved some of the mounting tension, but I’m sick of doing that. It feels like… cheating on her now that she’s in my life. When she’s made it clear that she wants all that I have to give her tonight.
Twisted, yes? But apparently, the heart wants what it wants.
I want to chase that release with her, even though I denied it when she offered.
Contrary, controlling Dr. Cross, she would say if she could hear my thoughts. And then steal another kiss from me.
The more her fervor grew earlier, the more I started retreating. Because I figured out what she’s trying to do.
She’s packing a lifetime’s worth of kisses and caresses into one night. She plans to walk away from this tomorrow morning. Thinks we can. She’s young, so I’ll forgive her.
UW nursing school… every time I think of those words, relief floods me. My brain itches for a cigarette.
But I don’t want to leave her alone. I don’t want her to wake up in a strange bed in a strange hotel suite. And a cigarette will not help me rationalize this away.
The fucking universe is giving me a fucking sign. When I kissed her that first time, I knew I wanted more than just the night. That I wanted more. But not the shape of it exactly.
But this…
She’s starting nursing school in my hometown. For the past year, I’ve been considering positions at the same university hospital, with a focus on teaching. That was the reason I made this trip to Portland: to discuss moving back to Seattle with Mom and persuade her to move in with me now that Aunt Marion is gone.
Now, this girl, who has filled the hollow spaces inside me with light, warmth, and desire, is telling me she’s going to be at the same university?
What is this, if not fate? Why else would everything fall into place like this?
My heart pounds so hard in my chest that I press a hand to it and laugh.
“Dr. Cross?” a husky voice calls from the bed.
I turn to find Annika kicking the tangled sheets. Her fingers grip the edge of the duvet, eyes puffy with sleep and faint shadows beneath. “Why are you doing that villainous laugh?”
Her suspicious expression sets me off into more laughter. Even to my ears, the sound is skating the edge of hysteria.
This girl and what she does to me… fresh desire buzzes like raw electricity through me. “I was making elaborate plans to kidnap you. Since I don’t have a mustache to twirl, I decided on the laugh.”
Her lush mouth slowly curves, gaze lingering on my bare chest. “You look happy, Dr. Cross. Are you?”
There’s that tender desperation she tries so hard to bury. She’s clearly eager to believe she contributed to it but won’t come out and ask it.
My laughter tapers off, and I rub my hand over my face. If she won’t ask me straight out, then I can’t answer. It’s not mind games. The stakes are just too high now. “I’m sorry for waking you up.”
Her smile falls before she gives me her profile. As if to stand in solidarity with her, wind gusts make the French doors rattle. “I just wanted a catnap anyway.”
My chest aches at her solemn expression. I wonder what went through her mind while she crawled into bed and waited for me.
God, the day she discovers she could have so much power over me, I’m doomed. And yet, I’ve never looked forward to my own destruction like this. “You look tired. If you want to go back to sleep—”
“I have the rest of my life to catch up on sleep,” she mumbles, but I can hear her.
A loud growl from her stomach breaks the tension choking us in a bubble. She covers her belly and her mouth, but her embarrassed laughter spills out.
“There’s nothing to be embarrassed about being hungry,” I say with mock sternness. I move toward the new tray the staff brought in. “Do you want the hot chocolate?”
Her eyes light up. “Yes, please.”
I pick up the mug and slide the box of cards into my sweatpants pocket. I’ve never been a superstitious or a sentimental man, and yet suddenly, they have become my talismans.
With my knee on the bed, I hand her the hot chocolate. Her fingers grip mine, then rub at my knuckles. She looks down at them and then up. “You’re gorgeous when you laugh like that.”
I have nothing to say to it, nothing that wouldn’t scare her, so I simply kiss the top of her head.
Once she has the mug, I slip back into the bathroom and pull on an old T-shirt. If she puts her fingers on my skin, this will all be over. I will fuck her raw and hard, like she’s been asking me to all night.
Where will that leave me and my plans? It’s not that I want to deny her. But if I give in, we’re going to be out of it. There would be no stopping, and every minute I have with her is precious.
There’s more stuff I need to learn about her. Why is she so cautiously happy about getting into nursing school? Why is she so damned stingy with details of her life?
“I saved some for you,” she says, coming to her knees on the bed and crawling toward the edge as I walk back in. Hair a wild tangle around her face, she looks like a water nymph swimming to the shore to meet her lover.
My cock throbs painfully.
I almost protest that I don’t want it and then bite it off at the last second. Something about her expression as she holds the mug aloft… I wrap my fingers around hers and drink it up.
She brings it back to her mouth, finishes the last sip, and pushes the mug off the bed. I raise a brow as it falls to the floor with a thud. “That’s not—”
Her mouth, her arms, her lush, tight body is on me before I can finish the thought. My senses overload with the bounty that she is.
Our kiss spins out fast, into erotic territory, as Annika rubs herself against me in wanton glides. I groan and grab her bare ass under the tails of my shirt, roughly grinding my throbbing erection into her soft belly.
She moans and writhes harder. The way she fits against me, the way she responds to my kiss with equal fervor, the needy little noises she makes in the back of her throat… each and everything decimates my control.
There’s nothing but my sweatpants separating us.
All I need to do is lift her until her bare pussy lines up with my cock and thrust up to claim her as mine. I can just imagine how she would squeeze my thick length based on how hungry she was for my fingers.
She tugs at my hair hard, pouting at my distraction, and nips at my lower lip. And then she’s pulling me into her gravity. I follow her lips, realizing too late what she’s about.
My breath punches out of my lungs on a wave of fear as I fall on top of her and somehow manage to avoid my limbs from crushing her. “I could seriously hurt you, Ani.”
Her hips cant up, the damp heat of her pussy rubbing up against the ridged length of my cock. Her arms lock around my neck, her mouth open against mine. “I want to feel your weight on me, Dr. Cross. And you were taking too long. Now and earlier, in the shower. It’s almost—”
I roll to the side and cup her pussy roughly. Her protest and her moan combine into an erotic sound I swallow.
“I needed a minute to think. About what the cock-tease half my age is doing to me. While I still have a grasp on reality.”
She presses up against my palm even as her fingers scrabble with the band of my sweatpants. The damn thing’s clever because while I bury my fingers inside her folds, she’s pulling them down.
And suddenly, her warm, soft hand is there and my greedy, weeping cock plops into her clasp eagerly.
I hiss out a breath at the same time she does. My fingers gather up her arousal while hers test the heft and weight of my erection.
“You’re… big, Dr. Cross,” she says, awe in her voice. “Like yes, I haven’t known too many cocks in my life and Rebecca had this scary big glass dildo that I refused to let her use on me, but damn it, this is different. You’re big. I guess the description velvet-steel is apt, huh? Also, it’s going to hurt, isn’t it?”
The anticipation as she says the last nearly makes me blow my load right there. Either the universe is playing a cruel joke on me or my life’s truly looking up.
I ravage her mouth with a rough kiss. “Stop talking about other cocks when you’re touching mine,” I bark out. The ragged edge in my voice is sharp.
“Yes, Dr. Cross,” Ani says, like an obedient little girl who’s been reminded of her limits. She pulls away from our kiss, gaze dipping toward her hand.
“Oh, you’re leaking,” she says, and then rubs her thumb over the pre-cum beading over the broad head.
I jerk and hiss and grunt and thrust my cock into her hand.
“Please, tell me what to do,” she says, eagerness shining like a flame in her eyes. “I want to make you come. I want to…” She stretches from head to toe and then licks my neck. Her breath is warm and choppy against my skin. She’s thrumming with urgency. “Please, Dr. Cross. I want to feel like I’m good here, you know? And not a failure again.”
I lose the battle. At least, it’s only her hand, I tell myself. Not her tight sheath. I look down between our bodies, and the sight of her slim, nail-bitten fingers wrapped around my erection while the broad head squeezes out of her grip makes my balls tighten.
“Squeeze me tight and hard.”
With the tip of her tongue poking at her lip, she does exactly that.
Electricity that could rival the storm skitters down my spine. “Make a fist of your fingers and move them up and down. As fast as you can.”
Again, she follows my instructions with such intense concentration that my climax is a shimmering mirage hurtling toward me.
I refuse to go over without her.
Moving my fingers from her hip to her pussy, I rub the heel of my palm against her clit. She writhes and moans and tries to bat away my hand. “I don’t want to be distracted. This is important.”
Her frown and her protest are so genuine that I chuckle. “Then let’s see who can get the other off first? Without losing to their own pleasure?”
“Like a test?” Wide eyes suddenly wary, she looks at me. “I’m not good at those, and you’re far too confident around my body.”
“I don’t think I’ve made a woman come with my fingers or my mouth in like two decades. If I ever did.”
“Oh.”
“The last time I had sex was almost eighteen months ago. And it was instantly forgettable.”
“Okay, so you’re telling me I hold better odds than I think.”
I kiss her because she’s amazing and adorable and fucking hot.
“If you want to admit defeat—”
“No way.” She leans forward and nips my lower lip. “It’s on, Dr. Cross.”
I grin and press one finger into her wet hole. Fuck, she’s tight as hell, and that’s without fighting my touch. Which she does in a second.
She squeezes her thighs together, but I’m already lodged exactly where I want to be. I plunge my finger into her cunt, and she jerks her hips away.
My cock twitches in her hand as I imagine how well and good she’s going to squeeze me when I get inside her.
As if reminded of her very important mission, she strokes me quicker.
We kiss and nip at each other, groan and jerk as we both fight the edge even as we inch toward it. It’s delicious and decadent, and I couldn’t imagine this with any other woman.
“Fuck, Ani. You’re tight and wet, sweetheart. These walls are going to choke my cock, yeah? Squeeze me so hard that it will be lights out for me the moment I get inside you.”
“That’s unfair,” she says, nipping my lower lip. A damp sheen coats her skin all over, her breasts and belly undulating against my hold. She’s a pretty canvas I want to paint with my cum. “Your dirty talk is on point.” And then she gathers the pre-cum from the head with her other hand and paints it over her lips.
The creamy streak on her bow-shaped lips is like a freight train coming for me.
“I read this in a faerie smut novel. The hero paints the heroine’s lips with his cum.” She parts her lips, the siren, even as her wrist jerks me off faster. “Should I lick it off, Dr. Cross?”
“Christ, yes, Lick it off. You better like the taste of me, Ani. Because you’re getting the full load next time.”
She licks her lower lip, hums, and smacks her lips.
I stretch her tight sheath with another finger and then hook them inside her until I hit her G-spot. Her eyes nearly roll back in her head as I hit the spongy tissue over and over. A long, rough moan hurtles out of her and pings over me.
We explode together to the background score of a particularly vicious bout of lightning. Pale blue light spills into the room, casting an otherworldly glow over our half-naked bodies, followed by a boom of thunder.
Our lips meet as our backs bend and arch toward each other.
Annika comes with a soft scream, a gush of liquid drenching my fingers.
I cover her hand on my cock with mine and aim at her lower belly at the last second. My orgasm nearly breaks me with its force. Milky white ropes spurt over her pussy, dripping down to my fingers still lodged deep inside her.
I pull out and Ani grimaces. Possessiveness has me in a choke hold as I grab strings of my cum and push my fingers back into her pussy wordlessly. I don’t know who I am with her, and I don’t care. I just want to brand every inch of her until the world knows she’s mine.
She looks at my fingers, then back at me. Her breath is still choppy as she says, “There’s someone else under all that polish. Eh, Dr. Cross?”
I shrug. “Only you bring it out in me.”
Her eyes gleam. “Who won in our contest? Because I can’t remember—”
I pull her to me roughly. Sweaty and desperate, our tongues meet and rub and glide. I’m still shaking as we pull back and study each other. She looks so beautiful that my heart stutters.
The phrase “love at first sight” rattles at the back of my head. It’s not that I don’t believe it could happen. Just not for me. Not after all this time.
“It’s possible that we could both win, sweetheart. Every single time.”
I don’t know if she understands me. She buries her face in my neck and clings to me. Sudden tremors overtake her slender body. I throw my arm and leg over her, gather her to me, and hold her tight.
I croon to her and kiss her temple as a heartbreaking sob bursts out of her.