15. Imogen
Imogen
Ashton leans back in and this time there’s no war behind his eyes.
Whatever he was fighting in that last half-inch of air between us is gone, and what replaces it is nothing I’ve seen on his face before, no armor and no exit plan, just him coming back to me with both hands, thumbs at my jaw, kissing me like he’s spent two weeks deciding not to and has finally run out of reasons.
His mouth is warm and sure of itself, and I stop doing the math on reasons and kiss him back.
“Finally,” I breathe against his mouth.
“Don’t start.”
“I’m not starting anything. I’m marking the occasion.”
He answers that by hauling me up off the floor, hands gripping the backs of my thighs, lifting me like my weight is beneath comment, and I wrap my legs around his waist and stop arguing because some arguments aren’t worth winning when a man’s holding you like that.
My arms go around his neck. My fingers find the short hair at the back of his head.
The flex of his shoulders moves under my hands as he crosses the room with me wrapped around him, and the ease of it, the lack of any effort at all, sends a hot pull low through my belly.
He drops me onto the bed. I bounce once on the mattress before he follows me down, his weight covering me, one forearm braced by my head. His other hand moves from my hip to my ribs, his thumb pressing into the soft skin at my side. His mouth goes to my throat and I tip my head back, letting him.
The stubble drags across my pulse point, and I feel it low in my belly, the same pull I’ve been lying to myself about since he caught me eating his cake in the dark and stood there in the doorway with no shirt on, watching me forget how to hold a fork.
I get my hands on his chest, finally, the chest I’ve been not-looking at every time he forgets a shirt exists in this house.
His skin is hot under my palms, the muscle in his stomach jumping when I drag my nails down the center of his sternum, following the trail of dark hair toward his waistband, toward the hard length of his cock straining against his pants.
My fingers curl around him through the fabric and his breath goes through his teeth.
“You went straight for my cock,” he says against my collarbone.
“Shut up.”
“You’ve been thinking about it.”
“I’ve been thinking about a lot of things.” I get my fingers into his hair and pull hard at the root. The sound he makes this time is low and rough at the back of his throat, sending the heat through me. “That’s purely instinctive.”
He lifts his head. In the dark his eyes are very dark, pupils blown wide.
“Instinctive,” he repeats.
“Involuntary nervous system response. Nothing personal.”
The corner of his mouth moves. Then he drops his head back to my throat and bites down where my shoulder starts, not hard, just enough to make me gasp.
When I gasp he does it again in the same spot, and then half an inch lower, and then lower again, working his way down my collarbone with his teeth and his mouth until I’ve got both hands in his hair and I’ve stopped forming coherent thoughts about nervous systems.
My shirt comes off over my head. He sits back on his heels to look at me for one moment, just one, just long enough that my face goes warm.
It’s the look of a man who’s been holding himself back and has finally, finally stopped.
His shirt follows, and I press my palms flat against his chest, his stomach, learning the shape of him in the dark, the line of muscle in his abdomen going tight under my hands as I move lower.
Then his hands are on me. Down my ribs. Over my hips, gripping harder than before. Under the waistband of what’s left, pulling it down, and then his hand moves between my thighs and finds out the precise extent of how badly I want him.
The sound he makes against my neck when he feels how wet I am is possessive and quiet and goes straight to the base of my spine.
“Don’t be smug about that,” I tell him.
“I’m not being smug.” He drags his thumb across my clit and my hips come off the mattress. My fingers dig into his upper arm, my nails pressing in hard. “I’m being thorough.”
He spreads me open with two fingers, his thumb circling in slow, even passes, and I feel every nerve ending I own lighting up in sequence.
He’s watching my face in the dark, reading every reaction, but giving nothing back.
He pushes two fingers inside me, curling up and forward, coaxing out a sound that comes embarrassingly close to a whimper.
I’m gripping his forearm with both hands.
I don’t remember reaching for it. He adds a third finger and crooks them all at once and my back arches off the mattress, my breath going out in a sharp rush.
He keeps his thumb moving. Keeps the pressure exactly where it is on my clit.
My hips roll forward chasing it and he lets me work for it, just enough that I know he’s watching, before he curls his fingers again and his thumb presses down hard and I come apart, my thighs shaking around his hand, four small crescents pressed into his shoulder from my nails, his name somewhere in the sounds I make.
I’m still catching my breath when he pulls back and stands. I watch him in the dark as he hooks his thumbs into his waistband and pushes his underwear down his hips in one movement, stepping out of them, and then straightens up.
He’s fully hard, thick and heavy, longer than my hand could manage with any comfort, the head flushed dark and already slick at the tip. My mouth goes dry.
“You’re staring,” he says.
“I’m taking it in.”
“Take your time.”
I reach down and wrap my hand around him, fully, no fabric between us, and his breath goes out slow through his nose. He’s hot in my hand, the skin smooth and tight, and when I tighten my grip and drag slowly from base to tip he twitches against my palm, his hips pushing forward without permission.
“Still taking it in,” I tell him.
“Imogen,” he warns.
“Almost done.”
He takes my wrist, not pulling my hand away, just stilling it, and bites the curve of my jaw. “Now,” he says against my skin.
I let go. He lines up, the head of his cock pressing against me, and I feel the specific weight of this moment before it becomes something else.
His eyes are on my face, just watching me, that total attention I’ve been on the receiving end finally directed at something neither of us can pretend is professional.
He pushes in.
Slow. The first inch is a stretch that makes me pull a sharp breath through my teeth, my hands going to his hips, not stopping him, just holding on.
He pauses, gives me two seconds, and then pushes deeper, steady, not rushing, watching my face the whole time.
I feel every fraction of him, the drag and the heat and the fullness building by degrees until my head tips back and my fingers press bruises into his hipbones.
He doesn’t stop until he’s fully seated, his hips flush against mine, and the depth of it pulls a sound out of me that I’d be embarrassed about if I had any capacity left for embarrassment.
He stays there. Both of us breathing. His forehead drops to mine.
“Still with me?” he asks.
“Barely.” My voice comes out lower than I intended, my whole body adjusting around him, the stretch easing into fullness, the fullness easing into a deep, aching pressure that makes my hips tilt forward seeking more. “Move. Please.”
He pulls out and then in again in one long, slow push that doesn’t stop, filling me by degrees.
I feel every inch and by the time he bottoms out I’ve got both hands fisted in his hair, my head tipped back, and I’m not thinking about a single thing except the fact that this is the best decision I’ve made since I signed his ridiculous contract.
My heels press into the backs of his thighs, pulling him the last fraction deeper, and his breath comes out against my temple in one hard, quiet exhale.
He continues moving in long, deep strokes and doesn’t slow down, his chest against mine, his mouth at my jaw, and the pace he sets is relentless from the first thrust. No easing into it, no warmup, just his full weight and his full attention and every withdrawal followed by a drive forward that pushes the breath out of me.
I feel every inch of him on every return, the drag and the heat and the wet slide of it, my body gripping him tight each time he pulls back like it has opinions about him leaving.
My hands can’t settle. His hair, his shoulders, the sheet twisted in my fist, his hips where I can feel the flex and snap of his muscles every time he drives forward.
I try to set a counter-rhythm with my own hips but he doesn’t let me, his hand pressing down on my hip bone, pinning me to the mattress, keeping the pace his.
I stop trying to take anything back and just take it.
He reads every sound I make and adjusts. Shifts his angle when needed and does it again until I’m making sounds I’d have been embarrassed about twenty minutes ago.
I get my hands on his ass, the ass I told Bex I hadn’t noticed and she didn’t believe me, and I dig my fingers in and pull him deeper. The groan that comes out against my throat is rough and has nothing polished in it. Nothing boardroom about it.
He shifts my left leg higher over his hip and the new angle hits somewhere different, deeper, more direct. My fingers go tight in his hair and I pull hard without meaning to and his hips snap forward.
The orgasm crests fast and breaks over me in a long, rolling wave, starting deep, my nails dragging four lines down his back, my thighs locking around his hips. He doesn’t slow down and instead rides it with me, his mouth at my ear. When I stop shaking he pulls back and checks my face in the dark.
“Are you okay?” he asks.
“Perfect.” I pull him back down by the back of the neck. “Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop.