Chapter Twenty #3
I reach between us and work his belt open. Then the button. Then the zipper. He unbuttons his dress shirt and under shirt and discards it all. His boxers go next as he lifts up with me still in his lap as he pulls them down. I squeal at the sudden movement and he chuckles.
He lifts his hips just enough for me to pull him free, and when my fingers wrap around him he makes a sound that sounds like a relief and pleasure.
I stroke him once. Twice. Watching his face—the way his jaw goes tight, the way his eyes struggle to stay open, the way his fingers dig into my hips hard enough to bruise when I tighten my grip and twist at the head.
"Aria." His voice is wrecked. "I didn't work out the museum so that you'd do this. You're not obligated to return anything."
"I'm not doing this out of obligation." I say, shifting over him. "I want you."
"I didn't bring condoms. I didn't think we'd get… here."
"You didn't think your wife would drop her panties after you took her on a romantic closed-museum tour? What were you thinking?"
He smiles and God help me, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"I guess I came underprepared."
"That doesn't have to stop us. I'm on birth control."
His hands slide higher up my hips. "Does my pretty little wife want me bare inside her?"
I nod and line his thick head at my entrance, and I sink down onto him.
The feeling of him bare inside me makes us both let out a groan, his teeth grind and his hands squeeze my hips unbearably tight as if willing himself to keep steady.
He's thick and hot and stretching me in a way that makes my breath catch every time like my body can't quite believe it's allowed to have this. The intimacy of skin on skin. Nothing between us anymore.
His forehead drops against my collarbone.
"Fuck," he breathes, and the word sounds like prayer.
I start to move.
Slow at first. Rising and falling in his lap, finding the rhythm, feeling him fill me completely every time I press down.
His hands grip my hips but he doesn't guide me.
He doesn't take over. He lets me set the pace while his breath comes ragged against my chest and his presses into my skin like a brand.
I take my time.
Because I want him to feel this. Not just physically. I want him to know what it's like to have someone give him something without expecting a return. Without it being an obligation or a transaction or a milestone someone else profits from.
Just me.
Wanting him.
Giving him pleasure because he deserves it and won't ask for it himself. And because no matter how much I want to pretend that my feelings for my husband aren't growing... that would be a lie.
My pace builds. The angle shifts and suddenly he's hitting something inside me that makes my thighs shake. His mouth finds my breast, his tongue swirling around my nipple. The heat, the pressure, his teeth against sensitive skin. I gasp loud enough that the sound fills the cabin.
"There," I manage. "Please—right there."
He grips my hips tighter and starts meeting me—thrusting up into me every time I come down, the force of it making my whole body jolt.
The wet sound of us fills the quiet cabin.
His mouth moves from my breast to my throat to the hinge of my jaw, and when he bites down gently on the sensitive skin below my ear I feel myself clench hard around him.
"You're close," he says against my neck.
"Yes but this is for you. I want you to come."
"I will, after you. It's my birthday and you asked me what I want. What I really want is to watch my wife get off on my cock first. That will make me come harder than anything else."
His thumb finds my clit. Presses. Circles.
I shatter.
The orgasm rolls through me in waves, my hips stuttering, my hands fisting in his shirt, my whole body clenching around him so tight he groans against my throat.
I ride it out—keep moving through the aftershocks because I'm not done.
Because this is for him and I want to feel him come apart underneath me.
His arms lock around me. His hips drive up one final time—deep, hard, burying himself completely—and he comes with his face pressed into my neck and a sound that breaks out of him like he didn't mean to let it.
I hold him through it.
My fingers in his hair. My lips against his temple. His body shaking underneath mine while the jet carries us south through the dark.
For a long time after, we don't move.
Just breathe.
His arms stay wrapped around me. My face stays against his hair. The cabin is dim and warm and suspended thirty thousand feet above a country that has slowly, irrevocably, changed both of us.
Eventually, he pulls back enough to look at me.
His expression is open in a way I've never seen.
Not the Tin Man. Not the CEO. Not the man behind the glass doors.
Just Everett.
Looking at me like I've done something he doesn't know how to repay and isn't sure he deserves.
He gets up and walks to the jet’s bathroom, coming back with a wet towel for me. He helps to clean me up and then he lays back down, pulling me back against his chest.
We lay there for a second until I can’t fight the question that I’ve been dying to know since we left dinner.
"What deal did you make with to secure the museum?" I ask.
"He wants me to keep the administration staff on a limit restructuring to none personnel. At least for the first few years."
"Did Phil ask you to do the same? Keep me on for six months? Is that why you didn’t fire me when you first took over?"
He looks at me for a long moment as if he’s trying to decide if I can handle the truth. Right now, being in his arms, I’m not sure if I could handle hearing him say that I’ve been a charity case for those six months that he wished he could have gotten rid of sooner.
"Phil asked me to keep you on in some capacity but it was only a request. That’s not why I did it."
"Then why? Why not fire me right when you started?"
"I think you already know why."
Then his eyes dip down to my lips and he kisses me again.
"Happy birthday," I say softly against his lips, between the next kiss.
He lets out a breath that's almost a laugh.
Then he kisses me—slow, deep, his hand cupping the back of my head—and doesn't say thank you because he doesn't need to.
It's already in the kiss.
In the way he holds me after.
In the way he falls asleep on the jet for the first time I've ever seen, with my head on his chest and his heartbeat steady under my ear.
I stay awake a little longer.
Watching Paris disappear behind us.
Thinking about a man who doesn't do birthdays because no one ever made them worth celebrating.
Thinking about how badly I want to be the person who changes that.
Thinking about the word I keep circling without saying.
The one that starts with L.
The one I can’t walk around.
I close my eyes and let the jet carry us home.