Chapter 4 Ash #2
Something breaks open inside me, releasing a sound so raw it borders on grief. His solid presence above me fills every hollow space, answers every wordless question my body has ever asked in empty rooms and cold sheets.
"Boone, I don't, I've never had someone—" I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say.
"I know," he says against my throat. The way he looks at me makes it clear he knows what happened between me and his son. His hand slides under my borrowed shirt, palm flat on my stomach, fingers spread wide. I arch into his touch so hard my back lifts clean off the mattress.
When he pulls the shirt over my head, the cool air whispers across my skin before his hand follows, warming every inch it touches.
His thumb traces the line of my ribs while his mouth maps the same path.
He works his way down my chest, lingering in the hollow of my stomach where my breathing quickens.
The alternating sensations of rough stubble and soft lips leave me clutching the sheets, gasping for air.
My body responds to his exploration like territory being claimed for the first time. Each place he touches becomes his, cataloged and remembered, while I strain against his pace. He gives me only what he decides I should have, one slow inch at a time, while I burn for all of him at once.
"You're going to tell me what you like," he murmurs against my hip bone.
My breathing comes out as a stuttering pant as I sink my fingers into his hair. "I don't know what I like."
"Then we'll find out together."
He hooks his fingers in the waistband of the sweats and looks up at me.
I lift my hips in silent permission as the fabric slides down my legs, leaving me bare to the cool air that raises goosebumps across my skin.
His gaze peels back layers I've spent years building, seeing through to the nights I lay motionless beneath Marcus, the times I turned my face into cotton pillowcases and disappeared inside myself while someone else moved above me.
"Look at me, Dove.”
The nickname pulls a stuttering gasp from me as I meet his eyes.
"You're beautiful," he purrs, "and my son is a goddamn fool for not treating you right.” A chuckle rumbles through his chest as he lowers his lips to my hip bone. “So, I’m going to enjoy this and take my time with you."
He traces a path inward with his tongue, his breath scorching my skin.
When he hovers just shy of where I need him most, my hips rise involuntarily toward his mouth.
His hand presses me firmly back into the mattress, the strength in his fingers revealing what his patience conceals.
Incoherent pleas spill from my lips, stripped of pride, flowing like whispered devotions I never knew lived inside me until this moment.
"Good boy."
A chemical reaction ignites in my chest, sending waves of heat through my body until my fingers tingle and my scalp burns. His mouth descends onto my cock, my mind surrendering to the sensation.
He takes me slow while his hand presses firmly against my stomach, holding my bucking hips in place as the wet heat envelops me completely.
His tongue moves with the same methodical precision he applies to everything in his life, creating pleasure so intense I barely recognize the sounds escaping my throat.
When he hums, the vibration travels along my spine, pleasure spreading through me, threatening to overflow in mere seconds. Then suddenly, the warmth vanishes as he pulls away.
"No, don't, I was so close, please—"
"I know you were." He presses a kiss to the inside of my thigh, like we have all the time in the world. "Not yet."
He leans back and strips his shirt over his head in one fluid motion, the dim light highlighting the silver hair scattered across his tanned skin.
My breath catches as he opens his jeans and pushes them down, his thick, hard cock slapping against his stomach.
Fear mingles with desire as I watch him, my body responding with an intensity that terrifies me.
Each time I've wanted someone this badly, I've paid for it afterward.
He leans across me toward the nightstand, his skin radiating heat where it brushes mine. His eyes never leave my face as he reaches for the lube, coats his fingers with the clear liquid, watching me with such careful attention that warmth builds behind my eyes.
"Have you done this before?"
My face flames. "I’ve done things.” Boone arches an eyebrow and I fight the embarrassment to give him the truth. “Yeah, but Marcus, he never, it was always fast. He didn't really—"
"I'm not Marcus. And nothing about tonight is going to be fast."
His first finger enters me, his attention fixed on my face as if my breathing holds the map to my pleasure.
I exhale when he pauses, inhale when he advances deeper.
His other hand traces warm circles on my hip while he watches me.
When my body yields around him, he presses forward.
When tension tightens my muscles, he waits.
He slides a second finger alongside the first, then crooks them upward inside me.
Lightning explodes through my body. My back arches off the mattress as whiteness flashes behind my eyes.
A raw sound tears from my throat that I try to trap behind my palm, Boone’s fingers closing around my wrist, pulling my hand away.
"Don't," he says against my collarbone. "I want to hear every sound you make. Nobody is going to tell you to be quiet in this house."
His patience borders on cruelty as he opens me, finding precisely the angle that makes my thighs tremble.
I push back against his hand, his name spilling from my lips in broken syllables.
"I'm going to add another finger," he pushes his out, his voice dropping to a lower gravel.
"You're going to feel the stretch and I want you to breathe through it. Can you do that for me?"
I nod and he presses in, a gasp tearing from my throat at the fullness.
"That's it. Just like that. You're taking me so well, Dove." His thumb strokes the inside of my thigh as he crooks his fingers and my whole body jolts. "There. Right there, isn't it? I can feel you tightening around me every time I hit that spot. You have any idea what that does to me?"
"Boone, I can't, I need—"
"You can. You're doing so good." He presses deeper and my back arches off the mattress.
"I've thought about this. Two years I've thought about having you in my bed, finding out what makes you sound like that.
What makes your hands shake. What makes you say my name like you just did.
" His mouth drags up along my stomach, his breath hot against my ribs.
"And you're better than anything I imagined, Dove.
Every single sound you make is better than what I had in my head. "
"Please, I need you, I need—"
"Tell me what you need."
"You. Inside me. Please, Boone, I can't take any more of this, I need you to—"
"I know. I've got you." He withdraws his fingers and I whimper at the loss. "I've got you, Dove. I'm right here."
"How long," I gasp, because the answer matters. This isn’t the conversation to have here but I need to know.
"Since the first Thanksgiving. You were sitting on the porch railing laughing at something Teague said and the sun was behind you and I thought, there it is. That's the one. And I've been keeping my hands to myself ever since. But now? I'm done."
My gaze trails down to his cock as Boone rolls on a condom, something erotic in the way his hand slides over his cock. My breath gets caught in my throat as he leans over me, the blunt wide pressure of him against my ass. "Breathe, Ash,” he whispers against my lips and then he pushes in.
The stretch overwhelms me slowly. I resist at first, then surrender as he fills me completely.
He advances carefully, pressing forward until I gasp, then pausing while my body adjusts to his presence.
His eyes never leave my face, reading every microexpression as he continues his gradual claiming.
When he finally settles fully inside me, my heartbeat pulses around his thickness.
My fingers dig into his shoulders with enough force to mark his skin.
I try to speak but discover my voice has abandoned me.
Nothing remains within me now except him, every hollow space inside me now contains only him.
"Okay?" he asks, his voice rough at the edges, the first real crack in all that iron control.
"Move. God, please move."
He rolls his hips, dragging against that perfect spot inside me, and my back arches involuntarily off the bed for what seems like the billionth time.
A sound tears from my throat, echoing through the room, possibly through the walls.
I cannot bring myself to care. He builds a slow, torturous rhythm, each movement so fucking deep as I wrap my legs around his waist.
Against my neck, he groans, a low, fractured sound that vibrates through my entire body. Knowing I've affected him this way makes me clench around him, and his steady pace falters momentarily.
His hand slides between us and wraps around me and I make a sound that doesn't have a name. "There it is," he murmurs against my throat, stroking me in time with his hips. "That's the one. That's the sound I've been waiting for."
"Boone, I can't, it's too much, I—"
"You can take it. You're taking it so well, Dove.
" He rolls his hips deeper and my back bows off the mattress as his free hand pins my hip back down and holds me there.
"Feel that? Feel what you do to me? Two years I've been thinking about what you'd look like right here, and you're better than every single thing I imagined. "
His pace picks up, the leash he's been holding all night finally fraying, and the force of him pushes a moan out of me that I feel in my teeth.
His fist tightens around me as his thumb drags over the head and my hips try to buck but he's got me pinned.
His hand and his cock work me from both ends, my whole body falling apart.
"You're shaking," he says, and there's awe in his voice, this man who runs a ranch with three grown sons sounding undone by the trembling in my thighs. "God, look at you. You're so close I can feel it. You're squeezing me so tight, Ash."
"I need, I need—"
"I know what you need." He drives in deep enough that I see white and holds there, his mouth hot against my ear. "I've got you. Let it happen. Don't hold anything back from me."
"I'm going to come," I tell him, and my voice sounds far away and wrecked and barely mine.
"Look at me when you do."
He pulls back just enough for my gaze to meet his, the expression there completely present that it hits me somewhere deeper than the sex.
He's here. He's not thinking about anything else.
He's not rushing toward the end so he can roll over.
He's here, with me, seeing me, and I have never in my life been seen like this while someone was inside me.
"Let go," he says. "I've got you."
A wall of sensation picks me up and pulls me under and tumbles me through the dark. I come so hard my vision whites out and my whole body locks, my body pulsing hot between us while his hand strokes me through it, still moving inside me.
He follows me over, the stutter in his hips signifying his release, the groan buried against my neck, the way his hand grips my hip hard enough to leave bruises that I'll find tomorrow and press my fingers into just to feel them again.
But underneath the orgasm, something else is happening. Something I don't have a name for. The room is getting farther away. The edges are softening. His voice is there, Boone saying my name I think, but it's coming from a distance, like he's speaking to me through water.
My body is warm and heavy and I can feel tears on my face but I can't feel myself crying. Everything goes very soft and very quiet and I'm falling, not down but in, into something warm and wide and bottomless.
His hands are on my face and I can hear him saying "Stay with me, Ash, I'm right here" but I can't answer because my mouth doesn't work and the falling is so gentle and so total that fighting it seems impossible and unnecessary. I don't want to fight it. I want to go wherever this is taking me.
I go.