Chapter Twenty-Eight #2
“That’s it, Sage,” he mutters against my ear. “Let me hear you.”
I dig my nails into his back, and he groans, dropping his forehead to mine, his hips still working that same deep, punishing rhythm, unhurried but ruthless with it, like he’s got all night and intends to use every minute of it.
Every time I think he’ll speed up, he doesn’t, holding to that same maddening pace until I’m clawing at him, begging him without actually saying the words, and he presses a kiss to the corner of my mouth like he’s got all the patience in the world.
“Ghost, please.”
“Not yet.” His voice is wrecked, barely holding together, but he doesn’t give an inch.
Suddenly, he flips us, pulling me up onto his lap without breaking rhythm once, and the change punches a groan out of both of us at the same time.
His hands grip my hips hard, guiding the pace, and I brace against his shoulders, riding him slow and deep, then rougher, then slow again, both of us drawing it out on purpose now, neither one willing to be the first to break.
His mouth finds mine, sloppy and hungry, and I can feel him grinning against my lips even as he curses under his breath.
“You’re killing me,” he mutters.
“Good.”
He flips me back onto the mattress before I can get another word out, driving into me harder now, one hand fisted in the sheets by my head, the other still locked tightly around my hip, and his every drive has me gasping his name over and over like it’s the only word I know how to say anymore.
Then his elbow catches the lamp on the nightstand and nearly sends it crashing to the floor.
He curses, and I burst out laughing right in the middle of it, breathless and undignified.
“Christ, woman,” but he’s grinning against my neck when he says it, and the laugh turns into a moan the second he snaps his hips harder and shuts me up entirely.
He drags his hips back, achingly slow, pulling almost all the way out, and I feel the loss of him immediately, a whimper escaping before I can stop it. My heels dig into the backs of his thighs, pulling him back toward me, refusing to let him get far.
He laughs against my mouth. “That’s cheating.”
“Get back here.”
He resists for half a second longer, hovering, watching my face with that maddening, unhurried patience of his, and then he gives in and sinks deep again in one slow, deliberate roll of his hips, and the sound that punches out of me makes him groan right along with it.
“You’re not playing fair,” I say against his lips.
“Never said I would.” His mouth finds mine again, softer this time, and I feel him smile into the kiss even as his hips keep that same deliberate rhythm going, deep and unhurried, like he’s got all the time in the world to take me apart properly.
I drag my nails down his back, and he groans low in his throat, dropping his head to my shoulder, his breath hot against my skin.
“Ghost.”
“Patience, baby.”
“I mean it! Fuck me, asshole!”
He chuckles and picks up the pace just slightly, enough to pull a moan out of me that I don’t even try to hold back.
His forehead presses to mine, and for a moment we breathe together, foreheads touching, hips still moving, the two of us caught in something that doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere near an end yet.
His hand slides from my hip up along my ribs, and I catch it, lacing our fingers together and pinning it to the mattress beside my head, and he lets me, lets me hold him there while he keeps working into me fast and deep, watching my face the whole time like he doesn’t want to miss a single reaction.
“You’re staring,” I say.
“I like watching you.”
“That’s a lot of pressure.”
He huffs a laugh, and it turns into a groan halfway through as I clench around him, and his hips stutter, just slightly, just enough to tell me he’s not as unaffected as he’s pretending to be.
He drops his head to the curve of my neck, biting gently at the skin, and the sting of it sends a jolt straight through me.
“Ghost,” I gasp again, different this time, a warning.
“Not yet,” he murmurs, echoing himself from earlier, but his voice has lost some of its steadiness now, closer to the edge than he wants to admit.
His thumb finds my clit, and the first slow circle sends a jolt straight through me, pulling a gasp from somewhere deep in my chest. I feel it everywhere, in my thighs, my stomach, and the roots of my hair, my entire body pulling taut like a wire drawn too tight.
“Fuck, Ghost!” His name comes out wrecked, barely a word at all.
He keeps his rhythm slow, watching my face like he’s reading something written there just for him, and I can’t hide any of it from him, not the way my breath catches, not the way my hips lift to meet his hand.
My grip tightens around his fingers, nails pressing into his skin, and everything in me starts winding tighter, hotter, closer.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, low and rough against my ear. “Come for me, baby.”
The heat coils sharply and suddenly low in my belly, spreading fast, and my vision blurs at the edges.
My entire body is drawing up around the feeling building inside me, and when it finally explodes, it’s like a rush, a wave of heat and light behind my eyes, his name tearing out of me broken and desperate. “Ethan!”
He watches every second of it, something close to reverence on his face, like he’s memorizing the exact shape of me falling apart beneath him.
My pussy locks around him, and he groans like it’s been dragged out of him, too, his hips driving hard and full into me two, three more times before his body jerks, his muscles seizing, and he comes hard, burying his face against my throat, my name rough and low against my skin. “Jesus, Sage!”
His weight settles over me, both of us breathing hard, his heartbeat slamming against my chest right where mine is doing the same thing. And for a long moment, neither of us moves.
Eventually, he shifts, easing down beside me, and I curl into his shoulder, his heartbeat hammering beneath my ear before it slowly settles into something steadier. His hand stays splayed across my hip, like neither of us is ready to create so much as an inch of space.
The room is quiet for a while.
“So…” Ghost hums. “Guess we’re going to have to stop pretending we don’t like each other.” I feel his laugh before I hear it.
“That ship sailed.” I giggle.
“Probably around the time you started stalking my office.”
I tip my head back just enough to look at him. “Excuse me? I was conducting important charity business.”
“With beef jerky?”
“It was a strategic snack attack.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. “Mm…”
“Don’t ‘mm’ me!”
“Still a better option than introducing yourself.”
I gasp dramatically. “Wow. Post-sex and you’re attacking my social skills.”
“An accurate assessment isn’t an attack.”
I gawk and smack his chest. He catches my hand before I can pull it away, turning it over to press a kiss into my palm like he doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
My heart does something deeply inconvenient. “Show-off,” I mutter.
“You started it!”
“Did I?” He looks at me for a long second.
“Yeah.”
He grins. “Objection!”
I snort out a laugh. “Are you saying my name or are you objecting here?”
He doesn’t answer. He just pulls me a little closer, and I smile into his shoulder.
Turns out Ghost has been telling me how he feels for weeks.
I was listening to the wrong language.