Chapter 9 Angelina #2
Don't think about what it means. Don't think about tomorrow. Just feel this.
His thumbs press into the hollows above my hipbones, the same place that made me freeze before, but there's no force behind it this time, just contact, just presence, just him letting me know he's here.
Not like before. Nothing like before.
"Harder," I breathe.
That dangerous smirk crosses his face, the one that promises things I'm not sure I'm ready for. My walls clench around him involuntarily, and he hasn't even moved yet.
Then his hips snap up into me, hard, deep, exactly what I demanded, and the sound that tears from my throat is too loud, too raw, too exposed.
His hand clamps over my mouth.
Every muscle in my body locks. and my vision narrows. The pressure of his palm against my lips, the seal cutting off the sound— Adrian's hand when I screamed, when I begged him to stop, when he—
"Eyes on me." Cole's voice cuts through the rising panic, low and steady. "Angelina. Eyes on me."
I force my eyes open. His face hovers inches from mine, dark eyes locked on mine with an intensity that grounds me, anchors me to the present instead of the past.
"Chesca's down the hall." His thumb strokes my cheek, gentle despite the firmness of his grip. "You want to wake her?"
Right. Chesca. The house. Focus on that.
I shake my head against his palm.
"I'm not going to hurt you." His eyes don't leave mine. "But you have to be quiet for me. Can you do that?"
The way he phrases it, for me, shouldn't make my stomach flip the way it does. It shouldn't make the fear recede, shouldn't replace the panic with something that feels almost like trust.
But it does.
I nod.
He doesn't remove his hand. Instead he thrusts up again, and I moan against his palm, the sound vibrating through his skin. His eyes darken with something that looks like hunger and reverence all at once.
I ride him harder, chasing the pressure building low in my belly, using the rhythm I set and the angle I found. He meets every roll of my hips with an upward thrust that drives him deeper, fills me more completely, hits places I forgot existed.
His free hand slides down between us and his thumb finds my clit with unerring accuracy.
The first circle of pressure shatters me.
Oh god. Oh god. This is—I'm going to—
The orgasm crashes through my body in waves, eight years of numbness breaking open all at once like a dam finally giving way.
Coming in my bedroom days earlier was just a teaser.
My teeth sink into the flesh of his palm, and he doesn't flinch, doesn't pull away, just keeps thrusting up into me while I fall apart around him.
I collapse forward with my mouth finding his, moaning into the kiss because I can't hold it in anymore. His hand slides from my lips to cradle the back of my head, and he swallows every sound I make like they belong to him.
When I finally surface, I'm boneless against his chest and floating somewhere outside my body. My heartbeat thunders against his ribs and his cock is still hard inside me, pulsing.
He hasn't come yet.
His hands slide down my back and settle at the top of my ass, patient and waiting.
"I want—" I start, then stop, not sure how to ask for what I'm about to ask for.
"Tell me."
"I want to feel you over me." The words come out barely above a whisper. "I want — I need to know it can be different. That it doesn't have to—"
I don't finish the sentence, but he understands.
The world tilts and my back meets the mattress, and suddenly I'm under him with his weight settling over me, forearms braced on either side of my head, holding most of his body off mine. Not crushing. Hovering. His cock still buried inside me.
Different. This is different.
My chest tightens. Breath comes shorter.
He stops moving completely and his eyes search my face in the dim light.
"Okay?"
The question hangs between us. He's giving me an out. Again. Always giving me outs, letting me decide, never taking what I don't offer freely.
He's not Adrian. Look at him. His eyes. The way he's holding himself so carefully, like I might break, like I'm worth protecting even from himself.
My hands slide up his back and pull him down to me.
He kisses me, slow, deep, thorough, and starts moving again. Long, deliberate strokes that make my toes curl against the sheets. The angle is different now, hitting places that make my breath catch and hold and stutter.
"Don't stop."
He doesn't. His hips roll into mine with steady, certain rhythm, building me back up impossibly fast toward something I didn't know I could feel again. I thought the first orgasm was an anomaly, a fluke, my body short-circuiting after eight years of neglect.
But this is building too, tighter and deeper than before.
A sound escapes me — too loud, broken.
His hand covers my mouth again.
This time I don't freeze. This time I press my lips against his palm and moan into it, using his hand to muffle the sounds I can't control.
"I won't hurt you. But you're going to wake Chesca."
Chesca. Right. She's down the hall. Focus on that.
A laugh bubbles up, shaky, half-hysterical, but real. The absurdity breaks through the fear.
"Then shut me up."
His eyes darken. His hand returns to my mouth, but everything's different now. This isn't silencing. This is safety. Trust.
Cole's rhythm changes, his hips snapping harder, deeper, and I wrap my legs around his waist to pull him closer, needing more, needing everything.
Seven years of watching. Now he's having. And I'm letting him.
"Angelina—"
My name sounds like a warning. Like he's close and trying to hold back.
"Don't you dare stop."
His hips slam into me and I bite his palm to muffle the sound tearing from my throat.
"Look at me." His voice is strained now, the first cracks in his control finally showing. "I want to see you when you come."
My eyes meet his and hold there as the pressure builds and crests and finally breaks.
The second orgasm rolls through me different than the first — deeper, fuller, like something cracking open that's been locked tight for eight years. My body clenches around him and he follows me over the edge with a groan buried against the curve of my neck, his hips jerking as he spills inside me.
And then I'm crying.
The second orgasm rolls through me different than the first. Deeper. Fuller. Like something cracking open that's been locked for eight years. My body clenches around him and he follows me over, his groan buried in the curve of my neck.
And then I'm crying.
I can't stop it, can't control it. Tears slide down my temples into my hair and I'm shaking with something that isn't sadness, exactly, but isn't joy either. It's release. It's grief for all the years I lost. It's terror at how much I just let myself feel.
Cole doesn't pull out. Doesn't ask why. Doesn't try to fix it or explain it away. He just wraps his arms around me and holds me together while I fall apart, his thumbs finding my face to wipe away tears without comment.
"I've got you," he murmurs against my hair. "I'm right here."
His weight settles more fully over me, not crushing, just present. Solid. Real.
He stayed. He's staying.
The tears slow eventually. My breathing evens out. His cock softens inside me but he still doesn't move, just holds me like I'm something precious instead of something broken.
"That was..." I don't know how to finish the sentence. What word exists for eight years of nothing breaking open in a single night?
"Yeah."
His chest rises and falls beneath my cheek. Steady. Real.
I could stay. He's warm. Solid. I felt safe. I felt—
No, I should move. My limbs feel like they're made of warm honey, loose and heavy, but I should move because staying means something different than sex. Staying means intimacy beyond the physical, and I don't know if I'm ready for that.
That's the line. I can give him my body, like I gave him my body years ago in a different life. But sleeping next to him is different territory. That's a different kind of naked.
I can fuck him. I can't wake up next to him. Not yet.
"I should check on Chesca."
His arms loosen immediately, releasing me without protest, without making me explain why I need to leave when every part of my body wants to stay.
I pull away from his warmth and the chill hits immediately. My clothes are scattered across the floor and I find them in the dark, shorts inside out, tank top somewhere near the door. It doesn't matter. No one's going to see me in the hallway.
The bedroom door opens silently under my hand.
"Angelina."
I look back. He's propped up on one elbow, watching me with an expression I can't read in the dim light.
"I'll see you in the morning."
"I know where you live," I say, and we both huff a laugh at the dark humor of it, the stalker joke that shouldn't be funny but is.
The hallway stretches quiet and dark in front of me. Chesca's door is cracked exactly how I left it, nightlight casting its soft purple glow across her sleeping face. One arm thrown over Aaron Bear. Chest rising and falling in the steady rhythm of dreamless sleep.
Safe. Untouched by any of this.
I stand in her doorway counting her breaths the way I've done since the night she was born.
Uno, due, tre, quattro...
Forty-seven breaths before I make myself walk away.
My own bed feels arctic after his body heat. I slide between cold sheets and stare at the ceiling, trying not to notice the soreness between my thighs or the way my whole body still hums with aftershocks. Evidence of choices made and his smell clinging to my skin.
I chose him tonight. Chose to lead him down that hallway. Chose to call him back when he would have left. Chose to leave when he would have let me stay.
Three choices. All mine.
My body still hums with aftershocks. Memory of his hands, his mouth, the way he stopped every time I froze and waited for me to decide.
I hear a door click somewhere in the house and wonder if Cole is also awake, watching security screens instead of staring at ceilings. Probably. He doesn't seem like the type to sleep soundly after something like this.
Something like what, Angelina? What was this?
Sex. It was sex. That's all. You scratched an itch that's been building for eight years and now it's done and tomorrow you can pretend—
Pretend what? That you didn't cry in his arms? That you didn't let him hold you while you fell apart? That you didn't feel safer with him inside you than you've felt in a decade?
Shut up. Go to sleep.
The ceiling doesn't have any answers. Neither does the cold space beside me that I'm deliberately keeping empty.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But my body knows the truth my mind won't admit. I'm already thinking about tomorrow night.