15
“Yes, I suppose I do look rather affectionate.” Maria peered down at the blogger’s tablet, where a particularly popular gif
of her smiling at Peter during a con panel played over and over. “He is quite a good person, if you don’t consider the various ways in which he’s actually a terrible person.”
In all the Gates press junkets the two of them had endured, they’d never been asked to watch and provide commentary on gifs that theoretically
revealed their undying devotion to each other. Not until this very special moment, during their last interview of the day.
Even for her, this was awkward. Peter looked ready to chew metal, despite that stiff smile splitting his dark beard. From
the audible rumbling of his stomach, the chicken Caesar wraps they’d wolfed down during a hurried lunch were now a distant
memory. He kept rubbing his forehead in what appeared to be an unconscious gesture, so she figured he had a killer headache
too.
Not to mention his poor dick. It had to really, really hurt by now.
Late in the afternoon, in an act of gracious goodwill, she’d stopped readjusting her position on the love seat, for fear his
head—either of them—would literally explode.
“ I’m a terrible person?” His poke of her ribs was half-hearted at best. “Which one of us intimidated our entire crew by threatening to beat everyone with glass jars of pickled herring? Because I can assure you, Pippi, if I were to choose a bottled food product for bludgeoning purposes, I’d find something less smelly. ”
He was the only one she menaced with jarred sill , and they both knew it. Threats of herring-assisted violence were her love language.
Not that... not that she loved him. Obviously.
His brow creased as he turned to face her. “And where do you even store those jars, anyway? They appear out of fu— uh, freaking
nowhere.”
“Like this?”
Promptly, she produced a jar from her usual spot. Everyone else in the room visibly jolted in surprise, to her immense satisfaction.
She shook the sill maybe a millimeter from Peter’s nose. “I could tell you, skitstovel . But then I’d have to kill you. By thwacking you over the head with an extremely heavy glass jar of tasty herring, naturally,
in accordance with ancient Swedish tradition.”
A blatant lie. She was never telling Peter where she kept the jar. It was too much fun to terrorize him.
“Then I’d eat the herring. It would taste like victory.” She paused, then smiled slowly. Delightedly. “And murder. Delicious,
fishy murder.”
From across the room and behind the camera, the PR rep stared at her. Hard.
Maria waved.
That did the trick. Peter started laughing. Those deep furrows between his brows disappeared, and if she was reading the clock
in the distance correctly—
“I’m afraid we’re out of time,” the PR rep told the blogger, then began politely but firmly steering him toward the door of the hotel suite. “Thank you so much for coming. You should receive the footage by the end of the week. If you don’t, please contact us, and we’ll make sure you get it.”
After it was strategically edited, no doubt. Or maybe not, since Marter fans loved it when she and Peter went off script,
which the very competent PR team had surely recognized by now.
“Thank you ,” the blogger managed to get out. “Nice to meet you both!”
Then he was gone. And in a matter of minutes—during which Peter devoured a leftover wrap or two and brushed his teeth before
returning to the little sofa—the very small, very efficient crew was gone too, as was their long-suffering PR rep. The camera
and a few other pieces of equipment remained in place, ready for the next day’s gauntlet of interviews.
The door slammed shut behind the boom op, leaving the suite in absolute silence.
Peter said nothing. She said nothing. They simply sagged against the inadequately cushioned love seat as they gathered the
energy for speech and/or movement.
He might still be hungry, his head hurt, and cheerful chattiness with strangers wasn’t exactly his default setting, so he
had to be exhausted. And while she was a more social creature than Peter, she’d also spent the previous night at the Stockholm
airport, waiting impatiently for a flight that got delayed three separate times, then flown almost halfway across the world
and raced to the hotel, where she’d had only ten minutes to shower, dress, and ready herself for an entire day of interviews.
Fy fan , she was tired.
Also horny. But mostly tired.
She’d deployed strategic squirming to work him up all day, with the full intention of tackling him like a rugby player the
minute they were alone, but now...
A nap sounded really, really good.
Peter sort of flopped onto his side so he could face her. Expression guarded, he studied her for a long moment, his gaze skimming
from her comfy flats to her high ponytail, then returning to linger on her bare legs.
His forefinger grazed the hem of her dress. “You fucked with me all day.”
“I did.”
No point in denial. She’d wanted him to know, hoping the realization—that her wiggling was entirely deliberate, a taunt intended
just for him—would turn him on even more. And gods above, all that teasing had kept her flushed and tingling for hours.
He palmed her right leg, and his thumb slipped beneath her hem, skimming in slow arcs over the sensitive skin of her inner
thigh. Her breath shuddered. Her bones turned liquid.
Her desire for a nap disappeared.
Now that they were alone, his restless lust seemed to have dissipated too, along with his headache and any lingering hunger
for food. He was a man with all the time in the world. All the patience.
He watched himself touch her and said nothing.
That tiny arc of flesh under his thumb never widened. Never drifted higher. But each sweep prickled and burned, the heat burrowing
beneath her skin and lapping upward with every passing moment, until it settled between her legs.
Her thigh began to tremble.
The rhythm of his thumb didn’t alter. His face remained hard and still, bent to his work.
After another minute, his other hand clasped her left knee. As he guided that leg a hairsbreadth wider, he flicked her a single
upward glance.
“You going to let me fuck with you?”
It was a rumble, deep and quiet. Meant for her and her alone.
Her eyelids drifted shut. “Yes.”
When his thumb stilled, she managed to lift them again.
He held her gaze, his eyes dark and implacable. “Yes?”
“Please,” she whispered.
His jaw ticked. “Then open up.”
She spread her legs, and he exhaled slowly. Without another word, he slipped off her panties and shoes with impersonal efficiency,
then stood and arranged her exactly how he wanted, his hands firm and steady and hot.
In moments, she was propped in the corner of the love seat, her left foot on the floor. The right he lifted and placed with
exquisite care flat on the seat, her knee bent high and pressed against the sofa’s back cushions.
Sprawled, flushed, and entirely open to him, she waited.
He stared, and his throat worked in a hard swallow.
Then he dropped to his knees.
His palm glided up the length of her left leg in a leisurely, torturous exploration, from ankle to calf to knee, then higher.
At her upper thigh, though, he paused. Ran his thumb over a spot she couldn’t see, again and again.
“Freckles,” he murmured, then looked up at her. “Lift that skirt, Maria.”
She did, centimeter by centimeter, watching his face the entire time.
When the cool hotel air washed over her pussy, high color streaked across his cheekbones, and his chest heaved. Once, twice.
She didn’t stop until she was bare to the waist in front. Then she stretched her left leg out wider and smiled at him. A cat’s
smile, pleased and provocative.
He made a sound deep in his throat.
“ Fuck .” Tipping his chin back, he squeezed his eyes shut. “You’re the most— Christ . How do you do it? How do you unravel me like this?”
It was mutual. Gods above, he could undo her so easily. So quickly it was terrifying.
His eyes were still closed, his expression pained, and her patience abruptly ran out. She slid a hand between her legs and
stroked. If he wasn’t going to satisfy her, she could take care of herself. Gladly.
She was beyond wet. So slick her fingertips slipped over her clit with zero effort, and she dragged in a harsh breath at the
bolt of pleasure.
Then her hand was batted away.
Peter’s replaced it. And apparently he’d lost patience too, because he didn’t tease or delay. Before the next beat of her
pulse could echo in her ears, two long, blunt fingers sank deep inside her. Her body offered no resistance.
His thumb pressed against her clit.
“Ride that,” he told her. “Fuck yourself on my hand.”
That would be—very literally—her pleasure.
While he watched, his face flushed, his nostrils flared, his jaw stony, she rode his fingers as they bent and twisted inside
her. It took a startlingly short amount of time before that familiar pressure built between her legs, and she started to shake,
her nails biting into slick upholstery as she ground against that rough, implacable thumb.
Her moan echoed in the room, and he was breathing hard now too, lightly slapping her inner thigh every time she tried to close
her eyes, forcing her to hold his hot stare.
“Peter,” she gasped. “I need—”
He pushed a third finger inside her and circled his thumb against her clit as he bent down and nipped her inner thigh, and that was it. That was what she needed.
She bucked her hips and came with a breathless cry, her body tight and pulsing around his fingers. He watched her intently
as he worked her through her orgasm, stroking her clit with light pressure while she shook against him and panted out helpless
sounds of pleasure.
It was a longer, harder orgasm than she’d expected, and at the end of it, worn out and damp with sweat, she collapsed into
the corner of the love seat.
A full minute must have passed before she realized his fingers were still inside her.