Chapter 13 #2
“Stop me,” she says again, taking one step closer. “Tell me no. Tell me to go take a shower and get in bed and put the pillows between us. Tell me we’re going back to Chicago tomorrow and this ends here.”
I should. God help me, I should. Instead, I let go of the door handle.
Her eyes drop to my hand. My chest tightens. I look down too and slide my ring off before I can pretend I’m better than this.
Laurel’s face changes. Pain and heat and something like grief.
“Don’t do that for me,” she whispers.
“I’m not.”
I walk to the nightstand and set it down. The sound is small. Metal against wood.
A second betrayal.
“I’m doing it because I can’t touch you with it on.”
Her lips part. Then she crosses the room and kisses me.
I catch her face in both hands and kiss her back like the whole day has been a fuse and she finally struck the match.
Her shoes come off. My jacket follows. Her fingers tear at my tie, and I let her pull it loose, let her drag it from my neck and toss it somewhere behind us.
“Laurel,” I breathe against her mouth.
“No.” She pushes at my shirt. “You don’t get to say no now.”
“I wasn’t saying no.”
Her hands still. Our eyes meet. The last of the restraint disappears from her face.
“Good.”
She kisses me again, and this time there is no slow build. No careful question wrapped around every touch. We already know the answer. We already crossed the line. Now we are running back to it like sinners who learned exactly how good damnation tastes.
I back her toward the bed, my hands on her waist, her hips, the full, soft curves that haunted me through every meeting today. She gasps when the backs of her knees hit the mattress.
I break the kiss long enough to look at her.
“Tell me,” I say.
Her eyes are dark. “What?”
“That you still want this.”
“Yes,” she says, voice breaking. “I want this. I want you.”
That is all I need.
I pull her blouse from her trousers, and she lifts her arms before I even ask. Buttons scatter under my hands because I am not gentle enough with them, not tonight. The blouse falls open, revealing bare skin and lace, and my mouth goes dry.
“Christ.”
She looks down. “What?”
“You.” The word comes out rough.
Color rises in her cheeks, but she doesn’t hide. Not this time. She reaches behind herself and unclasps her bra, letting it fall between us like a dare. My hands close around her waist. I lower my mouth to her breast, and the sound she makes nearly drops me to my knees.
Her fingers slide into my hair, holding me there, and I give her exactly what she asks for without words. My mouth. My tongue. My teeth, lightly, until she arches against me and says my name like she forgot she was angry. I love that sound.
She tugs at my shirt. “Off.”
My shirt comes off. Her hands are on me immediately, sliding over my chest, my stomach, my back.
Curious. Greedy. Not careful. I close my eyes because her touch feels like forgiveness and punishment at the same time.
She kisses my chest. My stomach. Her mouth moves lower, and I catch her chin, stopping her. Her eyes lift to mine.
“Not tonight,” I say.
A flash of uncertainty crosses her face. I hate that I put it there this morning. So I kiss her. Slowly this time. Deep enough to make her melt against me.
“Tonight,” I say against her mouth, “I need you to know this isn’t about me taking.”
Her breath catches as I push her gently onto the bed.
I strip the rest of my clothes off with hands that are not as steady as I want them to be. Laurel watches every movement, eyes lowering, widening, then snapping back to mine.
I come down over her, and the full press of my bare body against hers knocks the air from both of us.
She’s warm.
Soft.
Everything.
Her thighs part for me, and I settle between them, kissing her neck, her jaw, her mouth.
My hand slides down her body, over the curve of her stomach, her hip, her thigh.
I take my time because I want to know all of her.
Every place that makes her gasp. Every place that makes her tense.
Every place she thought a man like me might not worship.
I worship all of it.
Her nails bite into my shoulder when my fingers finally find her. She’s soaked. My control fractures.
“Laurel.”
“I know,” she whispers.
“You’re so wet.”
“For you.”
The words hit me like a blow.
I lower my forehead to hers, breathing hard while my fingers move slowly, then deeper, learning the rhythm that makes her hips chase my hand.
“That’s it,” I say. “Don’t hide from me.”
“I’m not.”
“No.” I kiss the corner of her mouth. “You’re not.”
Her body tightens around my fingers. Her breathing breaks. I watch her face as she falls apart, and it is the most beautiful, damning thing I have ever seen. She comes with my name on her lips, her body shaking beneath mine, and I hold her through all of it.
Then she reaches for me and I settle between her thighs again. The head of my cock presses against her.
“Tell me to stop,” I say.
She touches my face. “No. I want you inside me.”
The words snap whatever is left. I push in slowly.
So slowly it hurts. Her mouth falls open.
Her fingers dig into my back. Mine grip the sheets beside her head because if I hold her too tightly, I’m afraid I’ll forget how much smaller she is beneath all this want.
She stretches around me, tight and wet and perfect, and when I’m fully inside her, I stop.
Laurel’s eyes shine up at me. Not with tears. With the same guilt burning through me. Then she lifts her hips.
“Move.”
I do. The first thrust drags a broken sound from both of us. The second makes her wrap her legs around my waist. The third takes the last lie out of my mouth.
I was wrong this morning.
This was never going to be the last time.
Not after knowing what she feels like. Not after hearing her say she wants me. Not after having her body open beneath mine like it was made to ruin every decent thing I thought I had left.
I thrust deeper.
Harder.
She takes me, meets me, pulls me closer with hands and heels and breathless little demands that unravel me faster than anything gentle could.
“Sin,” she gasps.
My name. Not Mason. Sin.
I bury my face in her neck and lose what remains of control. She’s everywhere. Around me. Under me. In me.
The room is full of the sounds we make together. Skin. Breath. Her voice breaking when I hit the right angle and stay there.
“There,” she cries. “Right there.”
I give it to her. Again. Again. Again. Until her body tightens around mine and she comes apart for me a second time, harder than the first, her nails raking down my back, my name torn from her throat.
The feel of it nearly ends me.
I keep moving, chasing her pleasure until she’s shaking and oversensitive, until she presses her mouth to my shoulder to muffle the sounds she can’t control.
Then I let go.
My release hits violent and deep, ripping through me until I forget the city, the conference, the panel, every argument I made in my head about why this could still be stopped.
There is only Laurel. Only her body holding mine.
Only my name in her mouth. Only the terrible knowledge that I am already lost.
When it’s over, I don’t move.
I can’t.
My forehead rests against hers. Our breathing is ragged. Her hands are soft now on my back, no longer pulling, just holding. That’s worse. Because sex I can blame on lust.
This feeling in my chest has no excuse.
Eventually, I pull out carefully. Laurel lies on her side, watching me.
The ring is still on the nightstand between us and the door. Neither of us looks at it. Not at first. Then she does and her expression closes.
I pull her against me before she can disappear somewhere I can’t reach. She lets me.
For a long time, we say nothing.
Then she whispers, “You said never again.”
I close my eyes.
“I know.”
“You meant it.”
“Yes.”
“And this happened anyway.”
My arm tightens around her waist. The guilt is still there. It sits in my chest beside the want, beside the tenderness, beside the terrifying certainty that what happened tonight was not weaker than my shame. It was stronger.
“Yes,” I say.
She’s quiet for a moment. Then, so softly I almost don’t hear it, she asks, “What does that make us?”
I look at the ring on the nightstand. Then I press my mouth to Laurel’s shoulder.
“I don’t know.”
It is the coward’s answer, but it is also the truth.
Laurel’s hand covers mine where it rests against her stomach.
She doesn’t forgive me.
She doesn’t absolve me.
She just holds on.
And because I am selfish, weak, damned, and more alive than I have felt in years, I hold on too.