Chapter 18 #2
I reach between us and take him through his boxers. He is more than big. I can’t even fathom how all that is going to fit. But I’m nothing if not flexible.
‘Yes… please. Now. Scottie—’
‘Protection. I have… Trousers… wallet—’ He leans to the side and fumbles.
A packet crinkles. I shove his boxers down, wrap my fingers around his full girth, and stroke him root to tip. He swears, his body jerking forward.
He catches my wrist. ‘But if you keep doing that, this is going to be over in about five seconds.’
‘Okay, okay. I need you inside me. Now. I’m serious.’
He tears the packet open, drops the foil to the floor, rolls the condom on with shaking hands. This mountain of a man, and his hands shake. For me. He curses, then he is back over me, braced on his forearms. The blunt head of him is right there. My whole body draws strung-out with want.
‘Look at me. I want to see your face when I—’ His voice breaks. ‘When I finally… Christ, Ava. I’ve wanted this so long I don’t know how to—’ His Adam’s apple bobs.
‘Me too.’ And I do. I do look at him. There’s fear in his eyes. Want and wonder. The same cocktail that’s been swirling in my gut since I walked through his door.
Can this be real?
He notches himself at my entrance. For a heartbeat, neither of us dares to breathe. Then he surges forward.
The first inch is a shock.
I knew he was big. But knowing and feeling are two different universes, and what I feel is my body splitting open around him, every nerve screaming ‘yes’ and ‘wait’ in the same breath. It burns. A burn that lives right next to pleasure, one breath from tipping either way.
‘Shit. Shit. Oh god, that’s… You’re so—’
He sinks deeper. There is no room left for thought. Only the thickness of him. For this.
‘Okay?’ The word is barely a rasp. ‘Am I hurting—’
‘No.’ I grab his jaw, making sure he can’t look away. ‘You’re everything. You are… god—’ My voice splinters. ‘Ah! Yes… Keep going. Like that. Like—’
His brow drops to mine, and he exhales into my mouth. We’re still. One. His heart almost beats in my chest, that’s how close he is.
‘Move, for the love of God. Move.’ I tilt my hips because I’m dying. ‘Please.’
‘Fuck. Ava, wait.’ The veins in his arms are straining as he braces above me. ‘Stop moving. I can’t hold back if you do that.’
I clench around him deliberately. He hisses, a harsh, fractured sound.
‘Ava! You’re going to make this embarrassingly fast.’
‘Bet you I beat you to it.’
‘Challenge accepted.’
The first full thrust punches a moan out of me. He retreats until only the tip remains. My hips follow him on instinct, refusing to let him go.
‘Oh! Oh, yes. Scottie… So good… So… Yes…’
His low grunts of effort match my gasps. My nails rake lines down his sweat-damp back. He hisses and pounds harder. The sting spurs him on.
He covers my mouth to stifle the moan I can’t hold back. ‘Tell me this is real Ava. Tell me I’m not dreaming this. Tell me I get to keep you.’
I pry his hand from my lips, pressing his broad palm against my cheek. His eyes stay locked on mine even as my body rocks with each thrust. ‘You’re not… Ah—not dreaming. I’m here. I—’ He spears deeper and the words scatter. ‘Don’t stop. I want to feel this tomorrow. I want—’
‘Christ, Ava. Why must you feel so perfect?’ His large hands bracket my jaw, tipping my head up until I’m trapped in his stare. ‘I want to watch you. Want to see your face when you—’
The pleasure is winding to a scream, blisteringly hot and fast and tight – a fist of heat in my belly.
‘I’m going to— I’m going to… I’m coming. I’m… Ah—’
‘I know. I can feel it. Feel how tight you’re getting around me.’
‘Ah! Ohhh god…!’
He slams so deep my vision fractures. The second wave barrels through me, more wracking than the first. My mouth opens on a silent scream.
Desperate, uncoordinated thrusts, his face twisted with the effort of holding on.
He buries himself to the hilt, and I feel him come inside me.
The muffled groan he buries against my neck is utterly mine.
We collapse together. He doesn’t pull out yet, and I don’t want him to. I want to feel him softening inside me. His weight is crushing, but I hook my ankles behind him and hold him there. With me.
Eventually, he eases out and rolls to the side, discarding the condom somewhere. He is back before I can say Nutcracker.
I rest my cheek against his chest, listening to his rapid heartbeat slow down while the sweat cools on my skin. His fingertips wander down my bare back. The movement is rhythmic and soothing. I’m wrecked, exhausted, and…giddy.
‘Well,’ he says eventually. ‘That box is definitely ash.’
‘Was there ever really a box?’
‘Wet cardboard.’ He shakes with a quiet laugh.
I prop myself up on one elbow to look at him. In the dim light of his reading lamp, he looks younger and sweeter. The hard lines of his face have softened. He is smiling, a real smile, not the guarded one he wears for the world.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘Hi.’
As if we’re meeting for the first time again. As if we’re starting over. Which we are, in a way.
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. ‘So you’re in my bed.’
‘True.’
‘And you’re naked.’
‘Always the observer.’ I stretch, arms above my head, lifting myself and letting the sheet pool at my waist.
‘And you came. Twice. I’m trying to process. That was…’
‘Oh, it was. It definitely was.’
‘Ava.’
‘Mm?’
‘I need you to understand something.’ He waits until I find the courage to look at him.
‘This wasn’t scratching an itch. You asked if you could sit next to me.
Asked permission to take up space in an empty cinema.
’ He dusts his lips across mine. ‘Now you walked into my room all on your own. You know why? Because you don’t need to ask.
Not anymore. You know you belong here. You belonged with me the moment you put that finger to your lips. ’
The pressure behind my lids stings until tears make my vision swim.
His index finger catches under my eye. ‘Hey. Why—’
‘No one has ever said that I belong with them. Not in twenty-four years.’
His expression turns fierce. ‘Then everyone else was fucking wrong.’
I listen to his breathing. Sense the warmth of his skin on mine. There’s no word for what he is. Not boyfriend, not lover. No single fitting word for the man who carried me across ice and waited until I was ready for him.
I curl into Scottie, and there’s no fear, no complications, no shadow looming.
But if… If this goes up in flames – if he decides I’m too much drama, too fresh from disaster…
I bury my nose closer into the crook of his neck.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’ I lie because the truth has always cost me.
‘You literally went stiff in my arms.’
Damn him for always noticing everything.
‘I’m okay. I’m…thinking.’
‘About?’
About how the last man I let close hurt me. About how if you break my heart, I’m not sure there will be enough pieces left to reassemble.
‘What happens in the morning.’
His palm pauses on my spine. ‘What do you want to happen?’
I want to wake up next to you. I want breakfast and all my Christmases with your family. I want you to look at me the way you looked at me in the studio. Every day.
‘Not sure,’ I say. ‘But I’m scared, generally speaking.’
He is quiet. Then he shifts and tilts my chin up until I’m forced to meet his gaze.
‘You think I’m not? You think I’m not fucking terrified that you’ll wake up and realise this was a mistake?
That you’ll look at me and see the man who punched your ex and made your life even more complicated? That we’re risking our friendship?’
‘Scottie—’
‘It’s so real it scares the hell out of me. But I’d rather be scared with you than safe without you.’
I want to believe him, with his body warm against mine and his eyes so open.
But as I settle back against him, watching the grey light strengthen towards dawn, a splinter of dread burrows itself under my skin.
Part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop.
My instincts don’t know how to process feeling safety and care.
I know that voice. It’s the one that told me to stay small, complacent, and grateful. Silent and invisible. But lying here with Scottie, I’m almost starting to think that voice is full of nonsense.
Almost.