Chapter 24 #3
“I, um, I need to take a shower before bed.” She licked her lips and headed into the bathroom, he followed behind her.
He used to think about sex the way he thought about music theory, as a system, a multi-level puzzle, an equation to be mastered for results.
There was a time when he’d get off on the precision, the timing, the rhythm, and the feedback loop of pleasure and performance.
But with her, none of those metrics mattered, because every time she brushed against him, all the structure fell away, and it was just chaos and heat and nerve endings going haywire.
He’d barely kept his hands off her for the last two days, and she was fresh out of the hospital.
His body had basically switched into permanent low-grade arousal every time he was near her, as if his hormones had retroactively gone full primitive man, the biological impulse triggered by the idea of his genetic material being propagated and protected.
He stopped, waiting outside the bathroom. She wasn’t just home from the hospital and unsteady on her feet. But she was still getting a little woozy and could need his help.
She took out a waterproof bandage and secured it in place, then pulled her shirt up and over her head, letting the fabric fall to the floor before she stepped out of her underwear and sweats.
After turning on the shower, she glanced over her shoulder. He forced himself to keep his eyes above her shoulders and not allow them to drift down to her perfect, heart-shaped bare ass. “Coming?”
A deep groan rumbled in his chest. He didn’t trust himself to get into that intimate space with her. The past forty-eight hours had been a long torture session of foreplay.
“I’ll wait here.”
“Please, just come in here with me,” she asked softly, but with that pointed edge that always made him ache.
He stepped into the humid air of the bathroom, blurring the lines of their bodies, as if the world outside had faded and left only this space, this heat, this wanting. She was already under the spray, droplets running down her flesh.
“All the way in.”
He hesitated because it was the right thing to do. He hesitated because the entire room had gone thick with steam and he was so hard it actually hurt. He hesitated because if he didn’t he might cross a line.
“Please, I need you to wash my hair.”
He started to move to help her, but she put her hand up.
“I don’t want to get your clothes wet again.”
Fuck. She was actually trying to kill him.
AJ peeled off his t-shirt, sweats, and boxers with quick, economical movements, careful not to let his gaze linger on the way her skin gleamed as water ran over the curves of her body.
But he saw it anyway, the way heat rose up her chest, the scattered droplets as they slithered down the sensual lines of her hips and thighs.
He stepped into the glass stall, feet braced on cold tile.
The space was small and close, their bodies almost touching, every breath amplifying the tension that had been simmering between them.
He tried to focus on the task, not on the pulse of want that threatened to short-circuit his brain every time she blinked or shifted or looked at him.
He reached for the shampoo, squeezing a dollop into his palm, and began to work it through her hair.
Being gentle was difficult, he wanted to fist his hands in her hair and drag her against him, but instead he used careful, measured pressure, fingers massaging her scalp, slipping behind her ears and tracing the line of her neck.
She arched into his touch, her back curving, and the movement caused her ass to brush against his engorged tip. The contact was almost too much, and he bit down on the inside of his cheek, determined not to let her see how out-of-control he felt.
She sighed, the sound vibrating through both of them. “That’s really nice,” she murmured, voice thick with pleasure. “That feels so good.”
He focused on the lather, on the way her hair slipped between his fingers, on the simple ritual of taking care of her.
He rinsed the shampoo, kneading her head as the soap ran down her back and shoulders in shimmering rivulets.
When he repeated the process with the conditioner, she leaned back even further against him, her head resting on his chest, her hands braced on his thighs for balance.
He nearly lost it—the sensory overload of her skin against his, the heat, the scent, the primal way his body wanted hers.
With more self-control than he even knew he possessed, he finished with her hair, but she didn’t move away.
Instead, she reached behind her back and her fingers wrapped around his shaft and squeezed.
His hand reached out and braced on the wall as his knees nearly buckled.
She began to move her hand up and down, up and down, and he wrapped his arm around her waist, his hand slipping between her legs and finding her swollen clit.
She gasped as his fingertip flicked over the swollen nub.
Instead of replacing the showerhead, he switched it to a more focused spray and brought it down between her legs, the spray against her clit as his finger also teased her.
She managed just three more strokes, and then she grabbed his hips with both hands and pulled him flush against her.
His rock-hard cock nestled between the cheeks of her ass, and she ground back against him, slow and deliberate.
Keeping the spray between her legs, he moved his other hand up her torso and cupped her breast, thumb and forefinger rolling her nipple until she gasped, then pinched it, squeezing just hard enough to make her arch her ass into him.
He thrust his hips, grinding into her, fucking her ass cheeks, as he watched her shudder and tense and soften, watched her body translate sensation into pleasure until there was nothing left but her and the moan that spilled from her lips.
Every sound she made, every tremor in her body, was a feedback loop to his brain.
His steel rod slid up and down, swelling against the friction of her firm fleshy mounds, feeling the heat of her body, the slickness of the water as it dripped down her back, and the wild need that matched his own beat for beat.
The pressure was building in his balls as a lightning strike of bliss shot through him. He was about to lose control when he felt her legs begin to quake and quiver, her stomach flinch, and her nails dig into the muscle on his upper leg.
Her orgasm hit her in waves, one after another, she cried out until her limbs went limp.
As soon as he was sure she’d come, he let himself go.
Pleasure whipped through him in a tingling tornado as every muscle tensed.
He held her tightly to him while he shot white-hot spurts onto her lower back.
His chest pressed to her spine, his mouth buried in the curve of her neck as his fingers wrapped around hers, keeping her in place.
The groan that escaped him was guttural and unrestrained, the kind of noise he’d never made before, not even in the privacy of his own head.
When he began to recover, he floated back to reality, and her hands were braced on the tile as she panted, catching her breath.
With infinite care, he rinsed her lower back and turned off the water.
He wrapped her in a towel and lifted her off her feet, carrying her to the bedroom as though she were made of the finest China.
She was limp in his arms, her muscles loose and spent, her expression soft with the afterglow of pleasure.
He dried her off with gentle, methodical movements, then pulled a clean shirt over her head.
She didn’t resist, just watched him, eyes heavy with sleep but still sharp enough to catch the way his hands trembled.
That was an experience unlike any he’d ever had before.
“Do you want me to braid your hair?” he asked, knowing she couldn’t sleep with loose wet hair.
She shook her head, her heavy-lidded eyes already closing. “I’m too tired.”
He leaned down to press a quick kiss to her forehead but lingered just a second too long, breathing in the smell of her, the warmth of her skin.
He started to move away, to give her space, to sleep on the couch where he’d been sleeping, but she caught his arm in a grip that was surprisingly strong for someone who’d just been wrung out in every possible way.
“Stay. Just tonight. Please. Stay.”
He had no intention of leaving, but the raw vulnerability in her voice made his chest ache and made him want to build her a fortress out of his arms and never let anyone or anything get to her again.
“Here. With me.”
His chest ached as he climbed into bed, and she curled into him like she belonged there, like she’d always belonged there. She fell asleep almost immediately, breathing slowly and evenly, her cheek mashed against him.
AJ stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours, counting the tiny cracks in the plaster, thinking about all the ways this could go wrong, but also about all the ways it already felt right.
He’d never felt more needed or more afraid of fucking it all up.