Chapter Twenty-Four #2
And then he kisses me, his hands tightening on my waist as he kisses me back with something that isn't soft at all. Something that's been building since the shower—since my hand wrapped around him and he made himself stop, since he said trust me, we'll get back to this.
Now we are. But there's so much more between us now.
His hands slide under the hem of his T-shirt —the one I'm wearing, the one that smells like him. He pulls it over my head in one smooth motion. I'm not wearing anything underneath because this is how he said he wants me... all day. Just his shirt and bare skin.
He stops. Steps back just enough to look at me. His eyes move over me slowly—not rushing, not performing. Just taking me in like he wants to memorize what I look like standing naked in the room he built for me, morning light pouring through the north-facing windows.
"Come here," he says.
Before I can take a step, his hands are on my waist. He lifts me and sets me on the drafting table —the big one, solid oak, the kind that doesn't budge when a grown man leans on it.
The surface is cool under my bare skin and I gasp, but he's already stepping between my legs, his mouth on my neck, his hands sliding up my thighs.
The table doesn't move. Not even slightly. Whatever he paid for this thing, it was worth it.
His mouth drags down my throat. Open and hot, his tongue pressing flat against my pulse point, and I feel my whole body flush under his lips. He can feel it too—the heat rising off my skin—because he makes this low sound against my neck that vibrates through me.
His mouth finds my breast. Wet heat, then the scrape of teeth, and my fingers knot in his hair as my back arches toward him. I can feel how hard he is through his briefs, thick and straining against me, and my hips roll forward on instinct—grinding against the length of him until we both groan.
"Off," I say, tugging at his waistband. "Now."
He pulls them down without breaking contact with my skin. When I feel him hot and bare against me —the full thick weight of him pressing between my thighs—the sound that leaves me isn't quiet.
His hand moves between us. Fingers sliding through my arousal, coating his knuckles as he parts me. Wet and swollen and ready. He drags two fingers through the slick of me, slow, like he's savoring it.
"Already?" he says against my collarbone, low and almost reverent. His fingers glisten when he pulls them away.
"You built me a studio and an apartment for my father," I say. "What did you expect? You're lucky I haven't come already."
Something close to a smile presses against my throat. His mouth opens on my skin… teeth, then tongue, sucking lightly at the spot where my neck meets my shoulder until I'm squirming. Then his hands grip my hips and he lifts me off the table, turns me around, and bends me forward over it.
My palms land flat on the oak surface. The view hits me. The north-facing windows, the tree line, the morning light flooding the room in gold and green. This is what I'll see every time I paint here. This view. This light.
He's behind me. His chest warm against my back as he leans over me, one hand flat on the table beside mine, the other trailing down my spine slow enough to make me shiver.
I can feel his cock, hard and heavy resting against me from behind.
Just resting there. Not pushing in. Just letting me feel how much he wants this.
My body responds before my brain does. I'm slick enough that when I shift my hips, I can feel my arousal coating the length of him where he's pressed against me. He exhales sharp through his nose.
His mouth finds my ear.
"I want you to think about this," he says, his voice low and rough and right against my skin. "Every time you're sitting here painting. Every time you look at that view. I want you to think about how I fucked you right here."
A sound comes out of me that's somewhere between a moan and a laugh because only Everett Kauffman could make a statement of intent sound like a business proposal and still make my entire body clench.
His hand slides down between my thighs from behind.
His fingers find me again, circling, pressing, spreading me open, and my forehead drops to the table.
I'm so wet his fingers slip through me with no resistance, and I can hear it.
The obscene wet sound of his hand working me.
In the quiet of this brand new studio with its perfect acoustics, every slick movement echoes.
"Everett—"
"Not yet," he says. "I'm not done."
He works me with his hand until I'm trembling, until my thighs are shaking against the edge of the table and my hips are pushing back against him and my breathing is loud enough to fill the room.
His other hand grips my hip, holding me steady.
His mouth drags across my shoulder blade—pen, wet, his teeth grazing the skin and then his tongue soothing the sting.
Then he pulls his hand away and I feel the thick head of him notch against my entrance from behind.
He pushes in slow. So slow I feel every inch of him stretching me open, and the angle is deeper like this—bent over the table, his hips tight against me, his hand sliding up my back to press me gently down against the oak surface.
I'm so wet he slides in without stopping, my body pulling him in, coating every inch of him as he fills me completely.
I moan into the table. The feeling of him this deep, this full, steals the breath out of me.
How thick he is. How my body has to stretch to accommodate all of him and still wants more.
My legs are trembling already. Just from him being inside me.
Just from the weight of him filling me so full I can feel him everywhere.
He holds still. One breath. Two. I can feel him fighting not to move, his fingers digging into my hip, his jaw pressed against the back of my shoulder. His cock twitches inside me and I clench around him, involuntary, and the sound he makes is wrecked.
I love that I do this to him. That the man who controls boardrooms and billion-dollar deals has to stop and breathe because being inside me is too much.
Then he moves.
He pulls almost all the way out, slow enough that I feel the drag of him through every nerve ending, then pushes back in with a thrust that rocks the table.
I gasp. He does it again. And again. Each time pulling out until I whimper at the loss, then filling me back up so deep I can feel him in my stomach.
He fucks me bent over the drafting table he just bought for me, inside the studio he built for me, with morning light pouring through the windows and the view he wants me to remember every time I pick up a brush.
My palms slide on the oak. His grip on my hips is the only thing keeping me grounded because every thrust drives deep enough to pull another sound out of me.
His mouth is on my throat again—he's leaned over me, his chest pressed flush against my back, his lips dragging up the side of my neck while he moves inside me.
I can feel my body coating him with every stroke, wet and hot, the slide of him so slick now that the sound of our bodies connecting fills the room between my moans and his ragged breathing.
This man. Who negotiated a deal to get me a private museum showing.
Who took a day off that I doubt he's ever taken to drive me to a small village to find my mother's apartment.
Who built an apartment for my father so he'd have a place when he's ready.
It's not just the studio. It's that he knows what my father means to me and he wants me to have a place where I fit—with him.
His hand wraps into my hair and pulls gently, arching my back. His mouth is on my shoulder, my neck, the spot behind my ear where he bites down softly and then sucks until I cry out.
"More," I whisper.
He gives it to me.
The pace turns hard enough to steal thought.
My thighs press against the edge of the table.
I reach back and grip his forearm just to hold onto something because the feeling of him hitting that spot over and over is making my vision blur.
My legs are shaking and I can feel my body starting to tighten around him with every thrust. Clenching.
Gripping. The muscles deep inside me fluttering around his cock like a warning.
He feels it. I know he does because his hand tightens in my hair and his rhythm stutters for half a second before he picks it back up harder.
"Fuck," he breathes against my neck. "I can feel you about to come."
His hand slides around my hip and between my thighs. Finds me where we're connected. Where I'm stretched around him, swollen and soaked. One firm circle with his thumb over my clit, then another. His cock drives deep at the same time and my whole body locks.
"Come for me," he says against my ear. "Right here. In your studio."
That's all it takes.
I break with a cry that echoes off the new walls. My whole body clenches around him—tight, pulsing, pulling him deeper while I come so hard my legs give out entirely. My hands grip the table edge, my back arches into his chest, and I can feel myself clamping down on him in waves.
He groans loud, broken, nothing controlled about it, and drives into me one last time, burying himself as deep as he can.
I feel him come inside me. Hot. Flooding.
His cock pulsing against my walls while his cum fills me up and his hand grips my hip hard enough to leave marks and his forehead drops to my shoulder.
His whole body shudders against my back.
We stay like that.
Bent over a drafting table. Breathing. His chest rising and falling against my back. Him still inside me, softening slowly, and the warmth of him spilling out of me when he finally shifts. His hand smoothing down my side like he's soothing an animal or himself, I can't tell which.
Eventually he pulls out slowly and turns me around and lifts me back onto the table so I'm sitting. He steps between my legs and brushes the hair from my face and kisses my temple. Nothing like the man who used to grimace at my coffee.
Then he walks over to the small sink and grabs one of the clothes all neatly folded like an interior designer set this room up as a showcase, and wets it in the facet and then heads back for me.
He gently cleans me, and then reaches down for his t-shirt and pulls it back over me.
"So," he says. "Do you like the room?"
I laugh, because of course that's the next thing he asks after what we just did in here.
"I like the room."
His grins, satisfied with his surprise. "Good. I hope it makes you feel more at home here."
He lowers me gently. My legs wobble when my feet hit the floor, and he catches me immediately, hands at my waist, steadying.
I look around the studio again.
The easel in the morning light. The canvases waiting for my touch. The windows that will fill this room with every shade of color that the Pacific Northwest has to offer.
He built me this.
Not because the contract required it. And not because it made business sense.
Because he saw me painting him on a beach and decided I deserved more than stolen hours and a folding easel.
Because that’s how Everett Kauffman relays feelings he can’t say out loud.
"So," I say, "about that shower sex you still owe me."
One brow lifts.
"You’re insatiable, aren’t you?" he asks.
I smile. "With you? Yes."
Something shifts in his eyes—dark, warm, a promise that hasn’t expired.
He crosses the studio in two steps, bends, and lifts me off my feet. I yelp, then laugh, my arms looping around his neck as he carries me out of the studio and down the hallway toward the master bath like a man with a debt to settle.
"Breakfast after?" I ask against his neck.
"After," he agrees.
The shower turns on.
The door closes.
And breakfast waits.