Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
SAGE
“I wasn’t a nun, Dawson.”
I’ve spent every year since Cornell building a life around never saying that, and out loud it comes worse than I rehearsed it, blunt and a little too loud for a living room this quiet.
We’re both still on our knees on the living room floor, my hand still caught in both of his.
His tear-streaked face does one quick thing and then locks.
Braced, like a man bracing for a blow he’s already decided to take standing, except he’s kneeling in front of me still cracked in half from what he just handed me.
“I know,” he says.
“No, you don’t. You know the sentence.” I pull my hand free and press it flat against my own sternum, like I can hold the rest of it in by force. “There were men. Real ones. Chosen ones. I picked them on purpose, because picking felt like the opposite of what you did to me.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not finished.” My voice comes out rougher than I want it to.
“I let men fall asleep next to me. I woke up next to them. I liked some of it. I liked the espresso guy in Ithaca more than I’ve ever told anyone, and the second-year law student even more than that.
” I make myself hold his eyes, because looking away now would be a lie of its own.
“But every one of those nights, right before I fell asleep, I thought about what it felt like to fall asleep against you. Not most nights, Dawson. Every one.”
He doesn’t say anything. His eyes move back and forth between mine. He doesn’t fill the silence, and the not-filling it is the thing that finally undoes me a little.
“Nobody got the version of me that puts her glasses on and makes bad jokes about community property. Nobody got the girl on this porch. I kept her locked up so tight I forgot I still had her, until I found my own book with your handwriting in the margins and I found out I’d been renting her out to strangers in pieces the whole time.
” My eyes go hot and I let them. “I love you. That was never the problem, Dawson. Trusting you with it was.”
He comes up off the floor so fast I don’t have time to brace for any of it, his arms already banding around me, lifting me clean off my feet and pressing me down onto the sectional before I’ve even registered leaving the ground, his mouth never once leaving mine.
“Dawson, the stairs are right there.”
“I know exactly where the stairs are.” He drags my shirt over my head in one motion, mouth already finding my collarbone. “I’ve spent years being careful with you. I’m not walking away from this room to be careful about it one more time.”
He strips me bare against cushions that have never once seen anything like this, his hands shaking against my skin, like a man who’s spent a decade rationing himself and just found out the rationing was never necessary.
“Cricket’s right there,” I say, half laughing, half gone already.
“Cricket’s seen worse. She’ll survive.” He settles between my thighs and looks up at me once, dead serious under all that hunger. “Tell me something. The nights you were alone. Did you ever use any tools on yourself?”
Heat crawls straight up my throat. “That’s a bold question for a man who was just crying on his own living room floor five minutes ago.”
“Don’t act surprised. You married a man who reads contracts for fun.” His hand finds my hip, thumb dragging along the bone. “Answer the question, Sage.”
“Yes.”
“Did you say my name when you came?”
I squirm under his hands, a flush spreading up my chest that has nothing to do with his mouth and everything to do with what he’s asking. I could lie. I don’t want to. “Every time.”
Something dark and satisfied moves behind his eyes, gone stormy in the low light. “How often?”
“Often enough that I should probably be embarrassed telling you this.”
“Don’t be embarrassed. Be honest.” He drops lower, mouth finding my clit, tongue dragging torturously against me before he pulls back just far enough to speak, his breath hot against slick skin. “You’ve been saying my name into an empty room for years. Tonight you get to say it into a full one.”
“Dawson.”
“From now on,” he demands, “you use my name every single time. Mine. I want to hear it, Sage. Every time you come, for the rest of your life, I want my name in your mouth.”
“That’s a lot of confidence from a man who hasn’t even gotten inside me yet.”
“Give me thirty seconds.”
He doesn’t need thirty. He needs about ten, his fingers finding me already soaked, and I arch off the cushions at the first drag of them, biting down on a sound that isn’t his name yet, just to see if he’ll call me on it.
He does. “Try again.”
“Dawson.” I say it on a gasp this time, no fight left in it. “God, Dawson.”
“Better.” His mouth closes over my nipple, tongue circling once before he sucks, hard enough that my hips buck up chasing friction he isn’t giving me. “You’re going to earn every filthy thing I want to do to you tonight by saying that word like you mean it.”
“I always mean it.”
“Then prove it.” He drags two fingers through my slick heat and pushes them in, curling until I’m gasping his name against his throat, no room left in my body for anything else. “Fuck, you’re so wet for me already.”
“I’ve had a lot of feelings tonight, Dawson.”
“I noticed.” His thumb finds my clit and circles once, lazy and wicked at once. “I’m about to give you a lot more of them.”
I push against his chest and he lets me, barking out a laugh when I shove him back into the cushions and climb over him instead.
“My turn to decide something tonight,” I say, sinking down onto him in one long slide that pulls a groan out of both of us.
“By all means.” His fingers dig into my hips, gripping hard, letting me set the pace and not fighting it once. “Take whatever you want, Sage. I’m not going anywhere.”
I ride him how I want to, hard and fast and completely on my own terms, his molars clenched, his eyes locked on mine like he’s never once seen anything he wanted more.
“Look at you,” he says, voice gone rough. “Taking what you want off me like you’ve got somewhere to be. I could watch this for an hour.”
“Please don’t. I don’t have an hour.”
“Since you asked so nicely.” His hips buck up to meet me, driving deep, and I lose the rhythm for a second, and he takes it from me without asking, flipping us in one motion, hauling my hips up until I’m braced on my knees and forearms, driving into me from behind hard enough to tear a sound out of me I don’t recognize.
He sets a rhythm fast from the first thrust, one fist with my hair wound tight, the other gripping my hip hard enough to leave marks.
“Oh God,” I gasp, and his hand reins in my hair, pulling my head back sharp like he’s riding me hard.
“Wrong name. Not God. Mine.” He punctuates mine with a brutal thrust that leaves me clamping down more.
“Dawson.” I correct myself on a moan, and he rewards me by driving deeper, a growl breaking loose from somewhere deep in him. “Fuck, Dawson, right there.”
“That’s it.” His voice has gone wrecked, all that careful discipline burned clean off. “Say it again.”
“Dawson.” I’m babbling it now, matching his rhythm with my hips. “I’m close. I’m so close, don’t stop, please don’t stop.”
“I’m not stopping until you scream it.” His thrusts go deeper, one hand sliding around to find my clit and circle it in time with every stroke. “Let me hear you scream when you come, Sage. I want the whole valley to know who’s doing this to you.”
“Dawson, please, I’m going to come, I’m—”
It hits me like a wall coming down, his name ripping out of me on a scream I don’t try to muffle, my whole body convulsing around him hard enough that he curses, loud and primal, his rhythm stuttering before he drives in one more time and holds there, deep, groaning my name into my shoulder blade.
He stays there, both of us shaking, his chest against my back, his mouth pressed hot against my spine.
“I’m going to make love to you until neither of us can walk tomorrow.” His voice scrapes rough against my skin. “I’ve got eight years to make up for and zero interest in being efficient about it.”
“That’s very ambitious for a man with one working arm.”
“I’ve got two working arms. One’s just supervising.
” He scoops me up off the sectional like I weigh nothing at all, and I laugh, actually laugh, my arms looping around his neck while he carries me up the stairs.
Cricket lifts her head off the hallway rug just long enough to watch us pass, humphs, and settles back down.
He lays me out across our bed like something worth taking his time over, already hard again, thick and eager against my thigh before he even lines himself up. He settles between my thighs and pushes into me slow, both of us groaning at the change in angle.
“Fuck.” My back arches off the mattress, stretched around every inch of him. “I used to dream about your cock, Dawson. It’s bigger than I remember. Thicker.”
Something dark and pleased moves across his face, and he drives it home in answer, watching me the whole time like he’s memorizing it.
“You have the filthiest mouth I’ve ever heard,” he says, dragging deep. “I love it. I want it wrapped around my cock next, right after I’m done fucking that mouth’s owner senseless.”
“You inspire it.”
“Good. Keep talking. Tell me what you want.”
My heels dig into the backs of his thighs, pulling him in, my breath already ragged. “I want you to fuck me until I forget every other name I’ve ever said.”
His whole body goes tight at that, a guttural sound tearing out of him that isn’t words at all, and his pace turns punishing, my legs locking around his waist to pull him deeper still.
“Say it again,” he growls.
“Dawson. Fuck, Dawson, don’t stop, I’m going to come again.”
“Yes, baby. Say my name when you do it.”
I do, louder this time, no shame left anywhere in my body, and he follows me over, my name rough against my throat, both of us shaking through it together.
When I reach for the towel on the nightstand, his hand catches my wrist.