Chapter 5
CHAPTER 5
T hey rushed inside, naked and laughing. Kicking the door behind him, Theodore backed his tall beauty against the wall, hands at her hips.
He’d been so afraid of making her uncomfortable, of being too greedy for touch. And yet, there wasn’t an inch of him that she shied away from, didn’t ask for under heavy, panting breaths. And God, did that make him want to rise to the occasion in every sense of the word.
Brushing away a rain-soaked curl that had fallen into her eyes, Theodore cupped her cheek and rose on the balls of his feet to kiss lips still perfectly, and miraculously purple, no matter how many times he sucked them into his mouth, so sweet and full like slices of plum. She moaned softly against his mouth.
He spread first her legs, then her folds with his fingers. Without water to interfere, she was perfectly wet for him, and he was able to ease himself in with steady rocking motions from his hips, sliding into the hilt without further hindrance. “Is this what you need?”
She sucked in a shaky breath, thick thighs quivering around him before settling onto his hips. “Yes.”
He did his best to hold and support her, hands hooked under her legs, despite their size difference. Society had things to say about what it meant to be a man. Being smaller than the woman he was with wasn’t one of its ideals, but he gave her his all, and hopefully that would make up for what he lacked in stature and strength. He was a bit self-conscious about it, yes, but it only enhanced his resolve to give her the pleasure she deserved.
Ardruina rose and fell, the deep cut of her muscles flexing in his hands.
Thrusting upward, he pressed his forehead to the space between her breasts and clavicles. Fucking hell, she felt so good, and that she draped an arm across his back and entangled her fingers in his hair, holding him to her, only encouraged him further.
Every needy sigh and hitched breath between them were music to his ears. And just because he was the shorter of the two didn’t mean they didn’t fit well together, their bodies notching in all the right places.
“This enough?” he breathed, working through the burn in his thighs, desperate to make her fall apart around him.
“More than. You feel so good, Theodore.”
They were moving in sync, bodies pitching forward and back. Upward and downward. A happy, affirming squelching sound originated from between her legs, and she didn’t seem to mind that what he was packing was on the smaller side of average. He began mentally reciting mathematical equations to keep himself from blowing his load again too soon, all while threading his fingers between them, to lavish her clit with attention. It didn’t matter that he came already, outside in the spring. It really didn’t. Being with Ardruina like this was drawing him to the brink again.
A delicious ache overtook his legs as he sped up his thrusts. He dug into that sensation. God, he’d fuck her right, even if his body gave out to do it.
“Theodore,” she panted. “Theodore!”
Pleasure mounted. And sweet fuck, he wasn’t going to last if she kept that up. Nothing made him want to come again more than Ardruina singing his praises. But he only had the one condom, something he added to his wallet when he re-entered the dating scene. They’d have to make this last, because he sure as shit didn’t know whether he’d have another chance to do this with her.
“Tell me what you need, Ardruina.”
A flood of warmth pooled between them as she got wetter. “That,” she said. “Keep talking to me.”
He liked learning what she wanted. And maybe he was a fool to think that meant he’d get another opportunity to fuck her, but damn it, he was going to roll with that optimism. “You’re a goddess. Like the warrior Athena,” he said, punctuating each word with a deep thrust, while his fingers worked overtime on her clit. “If I could do this forever, I would, but you make a man want to come so hard he can’t see straight.”
“Really?”
He wasn’t expecting the self-conscious breathlessness in her tone, so he drove in with a particularly unforgiving thrust, hoping it effectively illustrated his sheer hopeless need of her. “I’ve been doing advanced math in my head almost this entire time to keep myself from coming too soon.”
Something between a laugh and a hearty moan erupted from Arduina’s lips. “I’m that desirable?”
It was a completely unvarnished question, so he fired off some vulnerability of his own, because the last thing he wanted was her to feel less than perfect. “Fuck yeah, you are. And I so desperately hope to make you come again.”
This time, when she said his name, her voice broke. She hunched all around him, then clenched, her pussy fluttering, and nothing, not even expert-level Calculus, could keep him from blowing.
He swore out loud, filling the condom.
When the blissful mental fog that enshrouded his mind finally dissipated, he said, “I’m sorry. That wasn’t even respectably close to forever.”
“Don’t downplay this.”
He rolled his forehead against her chest, reluctantly withdrawing from her slick, heated flesh. “Wouldn’t dare.” He should chuck the used condom, but goddamn, he needed a minute.
Snaking an arm around his waist, and holding him flush, Ardruina said, “I grabbed your glasses.” She presented them in offering. “Thought you’d like to see.”
“You were holding onto those this whole time?” Grinning, he accepted the frames, pushing them onto his face, saying not a single word about how badly smudged the lenses were. Or that he would’ve liked to have seen her orgasm in hi-definition.
“Wasn’t thinking straight.”
“Yeah?”
“Too handsome,” she purred, leaning in for another kiss. A flash of green caught his eye.
“Wait, wait, wait!” He held her steady, and she stiffened, her hurt expression cleaving his heart.
He didn’t know why she asked him to be careful around her green ribbon. Whether it was purely cosmetic, or sentimental, or hiding something she was self-conscious about, he promised to take care wherever it was concerned.
And right now, it was coming undone.
They must have jostled it loose in their romantic enthusiasm.
“Shh, easy sweetheart. Your pretty ribbon’s unraveling. Want me to fix it?”
She froze, the first time he ever saw fear in her eyes. It took him a second to realize she wasn’t even breathing.
“Sweetheart?”
A tear rolled down her cheek. He barely knew Ardruina, that was true, but in their short time together, she didn’t strike him as the type to cry, much less let someone else see it. She didn’t even try to wipe the tear away.
“Please,” she whispered, barely twitching a muscle.
“I’ve got you,” he soothed, and gently pulled the sides that would tighten the base knot first. Once that felt secure, he pinned it in place with a pinkie, looped one side, then the other, and tied them together snugly, but not so much that the fabric cut into her skin. “There, how’s that?”
Touching a hand to her throat, she sucked in a relieved breath, and hugged him so tight, the air whooshed out of him. “Thank you.”
He smoothed his hands over her back, mapping her topography, where every hard muscle met soft valley. “I’m sorry for the nickname. ‘Sweetheart’ kind of just came out.”
“Don’t be, you earned it.” She tucked her face into the crook of his neck. “And besides, I think I actually like it.”
Theodore didn’t know what had just happened between them but setting the ribbon to rights was important to Ardruina. He didn’t need to understand the finer points of her relief and gratitude to appreciate the weight of it.