9. Lila #2
We made it to the bedroom. Barely. He guided me backward, his mouth never leaving mine, until the backs of my knees hit the mattress and I sat, then pulled him down with me, both of us landing in a tangle on the double wedding ring quilt.
He caught himself on one arm, hovering above me, and the look on his face was something I wanted to memorize, want and wonder and the specific vulnerability of a man letting himself have something he'd denied himself for years.
"Tell me what you want," he said.
"You. All of you. Everything you'll give me."
He unclasped my bra and slid it off, and his gaze dropped, lingering, heavy with appreciation.
He lowered his mouth to my breast, his tongue circling slowly, and the heat of it made me arch off the quilt.
My fingers dug into his shoulders. He took his time, moving from one to the other, his hands following the path of his mouth, learning me with a patience that was itself a form of desire, until I was trembling and pulling at the waistband of his jeans.
He sat back on his knees. Unbuckled his belt, pulled himself free, and I watched his hands, those capable, steady hands, undo the button and push the denim down.
He was hard, straining against his boxer briefs, and the sight of him made something clench low and tight inside me.
I reached for him, palming him through the fabric, and the sound he made, a guttural groan, his hips rocking involuntarily into my hand, sent a rush of heat between my thighs.
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my leggings and peeled them down, underwear and all, pressing kisses to my hip bone, the inside of my thigh, the crease where my leg met my body. His mouth was soft and deliberate and devastating. He looked up at me, his eyes dark.
"I want to taste you," he said, and the bluntness of it from a man who measured every word made my breath hitch.
"Yes."
He settled between my legs and his mouth found me, warm and sure, and I stopped thinking entirely.
His tongue moved in slow, focused strokes, reading my body like a language he was determined to become fluent in.
My hand found his hair, gripping hard, and my hips lifted off the quilt.
He held me steady, one hand pressed flat against my stomach, the other sliding between my thighs, and when he slipped a finger inside me, curling upward, I came apart with his name on my lips, shaking, gasping, the orgasm rolling through me in waves that left me breathless.
He kissed the inside of my thigh, my hip, my navel. Worked his way back up my body, pressing his mouth against my sternum, my throat, the corner of my jaw. I pulled him to me and kissed him, tasting myself on his mouth, and the intimacy of it made something inside my chest crack open.
"Now," I said against his lips. "Beck, now."
He pushed his briefs off, and I wrapped my hand around the hard length of him, stroking, watching his face change, watching the control slip. He groaned, pressed his forehead against mine.
He settled between my thighs, his weight braced on his arms, his body hovering over mine. He paused there, looking at me with an intensity that felt like being held.
He pushed inside me, slow, so slow, both of us holding perfectly still when he was fully seated, the kind of stillness that isn't absence but fullness. Two people adjusting to the weight of a thing they'd been building toward since the day I walked into Station 7 and he refused to shake my hand.
"Beck." His name was the only word I had left.
"I know," he said, and started to move.
He set a rhythm that was unhurried at first, deep and deliberate, each thrust pulling a sound from me that I couldn't have suppressed if I'd tried.
My legs wrapped around his waist, pulling him deeper, and his hips snapped forward with a groan that vibrated through my chest. His mouth found my neck, my shoulder, the sensitive spot below my ear, and the combined sensation of his body moving inside me and his mouth on my skin built into something overwhelming, a pressure that gathered at the base of my spine and radiated outward.
"Don't stop," I breathed.
"Couldn't if I wanted to." His voice was wrecked, ragged, barely recognizable.
His pace increased, harder now, his control fraying, and I matched him, my nails raking down his back, my hips meeting his with an urgency that bordered on desperation.
The bed protested beneath us, and the lamplight caught the sweat on his shoulders, and when he shifted his angle, hitting a spot that made my vision white out, I cried his name and came again, harder than before, my body clenching around him.
He followed seconds later, burying his face in my neck with a sound that was half groan, half something more vulnerable, a sound I'd carry with me for a long time.
We lay there afterward, tangled in the quilt. His arm was across my waist, his face in my hair. My back was against his chest and I could feel his heartbeat, pounding at first, then slowing gradually, returning to the resting rhythm of a man at peace.
"The quilt," he said.
"Hmm?"
"You said it was ironic. The long story."
I laughed, soft, genuine, sated. "It's a double wedding ring pattern. I bought it at the thrift store the week I arrived. A week after my engagement imploded." I ran my finger along the interlocking circles. "Seemed fitting."
His arm tightened around me. His lips pressed against the back of my neck.
"He was an idiot," Beck said again. The same words he'd used weeks ago, but now they carried different weight. Now they carried the subtext of his body against mine, his breath on my skin, his hand flattened over my hip.
"Yeah," I said. "He was."
We slept. And when I woke at three AM with the old nightmare, the one where I opened a door and found emptiness behind it, Beck was there. Warm and solid and real. His hand found mine in the dark without opening his eyes.
I held on. He held on.
Outside, the mountains stood guard over a town that was starting to feel like home.