Chapter 25 Stormy
I wake up to the biggest smile I've ever seen.
Tex is propped on his elbow, facing me, and he's grinning. This grin is so wide and so bright it's almost stupid, the grin of a man who knows something wonderful and is barely containing himself.
"What's going on?" I say, my voice rough with sleep. "Why do you look so happy?"
He leans over me carefully. Propping his weight on his arm so his body hovers above mine without pressing down on me.
He's always conscious of his size, always making sure I have room to move, room to breathe, room to leave if I need to.
Even now, even in this bed that's ours, he holds himself above me, not caging me in.
"Oh, nothing," he says. "I'm just smiling because I'm waking up to the most gorgeous man in the world in my bed."
He kisses me slowly as if he's got nowhere to be and nothing to do except this, his lips soft against mine, his beard brushing my chin. When he pulls back, his eyes are twinkling.
"And," he says, "I got a text early this morning."
My heart stops. Starts again. Hammering hard.
"We're both negative and good to go. All is good with the world, baby."
The words land on me and for a second I can't process them. They just hang in the air, too good to be real. I search his face for the catch.
There isn't one.
"Both of us are clean?" I ask. "Me too? You're sure?"
"Both of us. Double-checked the portal again this morning.
Negative across the board. Both of us. I've been lying here for an hour waiting for you to wake up.
An hour, Stormy. Do you know how hard it is for me to be quiet for an hour?
That's a personal record. The previous record was eleven minutes and that was because I had laryngitis.
Sheila called it the best week of her life. "
I'm clean.
The word moves through me like warm water. It starts in my chest and radiates outward, through my ribs and my stomach and my arms and my legs, washing through every dark corner where the shame has been living, flushing it out, carrying it away.
Clean.
The men who hurt me, who used me, who took and took and took, they didn't leave this behind. They took years of my life, but they didn't poison my blood. They didn't plant something inside me that would follow me forever, that would hurt the one person I love.
My body is all mine now. Undamaged in this one way that I was so terrified to check.
"Hey," Tex says softly. "You okay, darling?"
I don't answer with words. Instead, I put my hand on his chest and push hard.
He goes backwards. He lets me move him because he always lets me set the pace, lets me decide what happens and when and how. He rolls onto his back and I follow, swinging my leg over him, straddling his hips, sitting up so I'm looking down at him.
I can feel him beneath me — half hard already, thickening against me through the thin cotton of his boxers — and the heat of him between my thighs sends a pulse through my whole body. His hands come to my thighs, light, just resting there, and his eyes are dark with desire.
"Stormy—"
"My turn," I say. "I've been wanting to do this. Forever. Let me."
His hands tighten on my thighs. His chest rises and falls under me. "Anything," he says. "Anything you want, baby. I'm all yours."
I lean down and kiss him. Not the soft morning kiss he gave me.
This kiss is mine. I set the angle and the pressure and the pace.
My mouth on his, my hands in his hair, and I kiss him the way I imagined kissing him.
The way I wanted to kiss him the morning I woke up, traced his tattoos and was so scared I might give him something.
Now that I know I'm negative, I'm not holding back anymore.
He groans into my mouth. His hands slide up my thighs to my hips and his fingers press into my skin.
I roll my hips, grinding down against him, and the friction through the cotton makes us both inhale sharply.
He's fully hard now. I can feel the length of him pressed against me and the size of him should scare me but it doesn't. It makes me want more.
I break the kiss then start again at his jaw. My mouth moves along the line of it, through the beard, feeling the coarseness against my lips, tasting the salt of his skin underneath. His neck. The pulse point that jumps when my tongue finds it.
He makes a sound, deep and involuntary, and his head tips back against the pillow, giving me access, giving me everything.
I kiss the hollow of his throat. The broad plane of his chest, my lips moving across the hair, across the muscle, tasting him with my mouth.
I find his nipple and I drag my tongue across it, slow, circling, then close my lips around it and suck gently.
His hips buck under me and his hand flies to the back of my head, not pushing, just holding on.
"God, Stormy." His voice is already wrecked and I've barely started. "You have no idea what you're doing to me."
But I do. I can feel exactly what I'm doing to him.
He's hard and straining against my thigh, his hips making small involuntary movements, his body asking for more than his mouth will demand.
And the power of that, the clean, beautiful power of making Tex fall apart with my mouth, is intoxicating.
This is what it was supposed to feel like.
This is what desire is when it belongs to me.
I move lower. Down the center of his chest, following the line of dark hair, kissing each ridge of his stomach.
His abs tighten under my lips and his breathing goes ragged and his fingers are in my hair.
I trace the trail of hair below his navel with my tongue, following it down, and I feel the muscles in his stomach jump and quiver under my mouth.
I can smell him — warm skin and arousal and the clean soap from our shower — and it makes my mouth water.
I reach the waistband of his boxers. I stop.
I look up at him. He's looking down at me, propped on his elbows, his chest heaving, his face flushed, his eyes dark and burning and so full of want that it takes my breath away.
The outline of him strains against the cotton, and I press my mouth against him through the fabric.
A slow, open-mouthed kiss along the length of him and the sound he makes is almost pained.
"Can I?" I ask.
"You never have to ask me that." His voice is barely a whisper. "But yes. God, yes."
I pull the boxers down. He lifts his hips to help and then he's there, all of him, thick and flushed and hard, curving up toward his stomach.
I wrap my hand around the base and his whole body shudders.
The weight of him in my palm, the heat, the way he pulses against my fingers.
I don't feel fear. I feel desire. I stroke him once, slow, base to tip, and watch his jaw clench and his eyes flutter shut.
I lower my mouth to him.
The sound he makes when I take him in is a sound I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
It comes from somewhere deep and raw and unguarded, a sound that has everything to do with being undone.
His head falls back against the pillow, his hand tightens in my hair and his hips tremble with the effort of holding still.
"Stormy. Oh God. That feels... you feel..."
I go slow at first, learning what he likes, feeling the way his body responds to pressure, to pace, to the drag of my tongue along the underside, the swirl around the head. I take him deeper, relaxing my throat, and his hand fists in the sheets beside him.
He talks to me the whole time because he's Tex and Tex always talks and right now the talking is its own kind of intimacy, raw and unfiltered.
"You're incredible. You know that? You're so incredible, Stormy. The way you... oh God, right there. Just like that. Don't stop. Please don't stop."
I hollow my cheeks and take him deeper, one hand working what my mouth can't reach, the other flat on his stomach feeling the muscles clench and release under my palm.
I look up at him while I work and his eyes are on me, watching me with his cock in my mouth, and the expression on his face is between ecstasy and reverence, like he can't believe this is happening.
I pull back to the tip. I let my tongue work the slit, tasting the salt of him, and he swears and his hips jerk up. He catches himself and presses back down, the effort of restraint visible in every muscle.
"I'm close," he manages. "Stormy, I'm close, you don't have to—"
I take his hand from the sheet, lace my fingers through his and hold his hand while I take him apart.
I take him deep one more time, my lips stretched around him, my throat opening, and his whole body goes rigid — spine arched, hand crushing mine, a sound torn from his chest — and he comes in my mouth, hot and pulsing.
I swallow around him and hold him through it, my hand in his.
I'm not pulling away. I'm choosing to be here, choosing this, choosing him.
He lies there breathing like he's just run a marathon. His eyes are closed, chest heaving. His hand is still gripping mine, our fingers locked. His cock softens slowly against his thigh, still twitching with aftershocks.
"Come here," he says. His voice is destroyed. "Come here right now."
I climb back up his body. He pulls me down to him and kisses me hungrily, tasting himself on my mouth and not caring. His tongue pushes past my lips and the kiss is filthy and tender at the same time. The contradiction of that, the rawness and the love together makes my chest ache.
He rolls me over gently, and now I'm on my back. He's above me, holding his weight up, looking down at me with those dark brown eyes. I'm painfully hard. I've been hard since I had him in my mouth and the ache is a living thing between my legs.