25. Chapter 25
Chapter 25
David shut the door behind him, then locked it and listened to the silence in the loft. “Paige?” he called out loudly.
“I’m in your bedroom.”
She was sitting on his side of the bed, her face pale, her expression a mixture of uncertainty and apprehension, as if afraid he might go nuclear on her. Setting her phone on the nightstand, Paige got to her feet when she saw him and he immediately crossed the room to engulf her in a hug, the need to hold her absolute. “Jesus, I’ve been so worried about you. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she replied, the words coming out barely louder than a whisper; he was squeezing her so tight, it was actually hard to take a breath. “I feel like a total asshole for leaving, though. I’m so sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Yeah, about that,” he said gently. “What happened?”
Even though it was difficult, she pulled back to look at him, his question reinforcing her confusion. “You were there. You know what happened.” She swallowed hard and forged ahead. “I was … raping you.”
It took him a second to register the word raping, and then another second to realize she was dead serious. “What? Jesus, is that what you thought?” He was stunned. “You weren’t raping me, Paige.”
Her eyebrows drew together at his utter sincerity. “You were saying, ‘No,’ and begging me to stop—”
“Yes, I was, but—”
“—so you obviously didn’t want it.”
He put his hands on her face and pulled her in for a hard kiss. “I did want it. Holy Jesus, did I want it. I just didn’t want it like that. I wanted you to stop so you could take the cuffs off me. That’s all.”
“That’s … all?” Paige blinked at him in consternation. So what she had thought had happened, had all been in her head? She’d been thinking she’d violated him, but she really hadn’t? It was like finding out the earth was actually flat. “Really?”
“Yes.” He kissed her again, this time with more finesse and felt himself stirring. “Your, um, take-charge attitude was more than welcome, and I was totally on board with your initiative until I realized our only real connection was my dick, and I couldn’t participate like I wanted to. I couldn’t do anything to make it good for you, or even touch you. I felt … helpless.”
She thought about how she’d have felt if their roles had been reversed and almost missed what David said next.
“All I could think about was wanting our first time together—or rather, our second first time together—to be something we did together. I was afraid that if we weren’t both actively involved, then it wouldn’t be as good as it could be. And if it wasn’t as good as it could be, then maybe that would be damaging to you. To us.”
“Oh.” Paige felt like she was going to cry again. “Well … fuck.”
“When you left, I thought you’d been triggered in some way.”
“I wasn’t triggered. I was ashamed and … I disassociated, I guess. I barely remember leaving, to be honest.”
“Where did you go?”
“I ended up at Walgreens.”
“Walgreens?”
She nodded slowly, then told him about her call to Jules from a pay phone because she’d left her phone at the loft.
“Well, shit. That explains a lot. I was thinking …” he trailed off, shaking his head.
“You were thinking I was ignoring you.”
“Yeah. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. What else were you supposed to think?” She looked down for a moment, then back up. “So, you really went to my apartment?”
He nodded with a half-grimace and proceeded to tell her about his encounter with Mrs. Harte.
“I’m sorry this night was such a disaster,” Paige murmured.
“Yeah, it probably could’ve played out better.”
She almost laughed at his ludicrous understatement.
“But, it also could’ve played out worse,” he added. “I mean, my phone could’ve been in the living room, leaving me without Siri to call Dick and he could’ve been unable to come by—”
“Oh, my God. That’s how you got out of the handcuffs?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.” Her expression was pained. “That must have been extremely embarrassing.”
“Well, let’s just say Dick won’t be letting me forget about it any time soon. But, I’m more than willing to put up with that because he saved me from having to call my mom.”
She made a sound like an animal with its leg caught in a trap and he flinched at the high-pitched delivery. It was obvious that scenario hadn’t occurred to her, which made David feel bad to have brought it to her attention, even if he’d done it in jest; he was trying to lighten the mood, but apparently it had backfired. “I was just kidding,” he quickly assured her before trying again. “I would’ve chewed through my arm before calling her.”
“David.”
Well, hell, that hadn’t worked either, so he decided to change the subject altogether. “Anyway, enough about that. It’s over and done, so let’s put it in the rearview mirror—”
“Just like that?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Because you should be pissed at me?”
“But I’m not pissed at you.”
“David, I fucked everything up—”
“You didn’t fuck everything up. It’s all good.”
“It’s all good? What?”
She was thinking way too much and he didn’t want that. Mainly because he didn’t like seeing her in distress, but also because he thought there were better things they could be doing, specifically things that would be a more pleasurable use of her time. Their time.
He pulled her in for another kiss. “It’s all good,” he repeated. “Now let all that shit go, okay? Well, everything except for the part where I was inside you, because I wouldn’t mind getting back to that.”
“Are you serious?”
Her tone was more Yes, please than No, thanks so he put his hands on her ass and aligned their bodies so she could feel his growing erection. “I’m very serious.”
Paige was experiencing a bit of whiplash; thirty minutes ago she’d been certain she and David were headed for the dumpster, but now he was making it clear she was wrong. He also seemed to be waiting for her to make the next move, and it took her only a few seconds to come to the conclusion she wouldn’t mind getting back to the part where he was inside her, too.
Holding his gaze, she tugged on the hem of his shirt, pulling it up, and off. From there, it became a bit of a race as they removed each other’s clothes until they were both naked, at which point David whispered, “Are you ready?”
“Ready for—”
He tossed her on the bed and was on her almost instantly, maneuvering smoothly in between her legs, his weight pressing her down on the mattress.
“No foreplay,” she told him.
“No foreplay?”
“I don’t need it. I only need you.”
It wasn’t quite begging and it wasn’t quite a command, but the words were sweet, indeed, and made David’s chest swell with emotion as he heard Paige speak them for the first time. “Okay,” he agreed, his voice rough. Then, even though she’d hopped on him earlier without a condom, he’d been raised a gentleman, so he was compelled to ask, “Condom?”
Rather than verbally answering him, she reached down and took his heavy, hard cock in her hand, then maneuvered it to where he was just inside her, figuring he’d get the message. He did. Before she could draw in a quick breath, he’d tilted his hips forward and was entering her slowly, looking down at her intently as if for any sign that she was pulling back, or not into it.
He needn’t have worried because she was totally into it. To show him just how much, she wrapped her legs around him and dug her heels into his ass, pushing him forward to get him where she wanted.
“Oh, Jesus,” he muttered, when he was buried all the way inside her and his eyeballs were practically rolling back into his head. “You’re so fucking tight. I mean, I thought that an hour ago, but I wasn’t really able to enjoy it then.”
He deepened his strokes and established a steady rhythm, feeling himself getting sucked into all things Paige: her scent, her soft skin, her plush mouth, and her incomparable brown eyes. “You still with me?”
“Yes. This feels so good,” she whispered, feeling every inch of him stretching her, filling her. “But I think you’re holding back.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You won’t,” she told him, tightening her legs around him even more before arching up to meet his thrusts, essentially humping the hell out of him from underneath.
“Shit, slow down.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m serious. Slow. Down.”
“I’m serious, too. I can’t. And don’t you dare slow down.”
Unfortunately, he couldn’t have, even if he’d wanted to. The feeling of her underneath him, with her hard nipples rubbing against his chest and her intermittent moans filling his ears, along with her hot, wet warmth was too much for him to withstand. “No, not yet, not yet,” he said with dismay, trying to hold off his orgasm but knowing he wouldn’t be able to, as molten heat gathered in his groin, tightening his balls.
When he passed the point of no return his thrusts become faster and shorter and his eyes closed as he powered into her. Instinctively, Paige gripped her thighs as tight as she could around his hips as she felt his entire body lock up, followed by a thick pulsing deep inside her as he came with a strangled groan against her mouth. With each successive pulse, he eased back, then pushed in hard and when he was finished and finally still, he remained inside her, holding his upper body so as to not crush her.
His hair hung down, tickling her face, and she reached up to tuck it behind his ears before kissing him. “Oh, my God.”
He took in her serene smile and hoped it was the truth. “On a scale of one to ten, what’s ‘Oh, my God’?”
“I’d say a solid … seven.”
That gave him pause. Based on her expression, he’d been expecting an eight, or maybe a nine. “A seven?”
She nodded. “I had to dock you a few points because I wasn’t able to enjoy it for very long.”
The deadpan dig at his stamina had him narrowing his eyes. “Uh huh,” he said blandly, knowing she had to be busting his balls right now. “I tried to make it last longer. You heard me trying, right? When I was asking you to slow down? Right. So, I’m taking those points back. And you know what else? I’m giving you a seven, so there.”
She pursed her lips in indignation. “Why am I only getting a seven?”
“Because you wouldn’t follow simple directions and slow down. That’s why.”
“Well, if you’re taking your points back, then so am I.”
“Oh? On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that you can’t penalize me for being actively involved, when you said if we weren’t both actively involved, sex wouldn’t be as good as it could be, remember? So there.”
“I remember. But there’s being actively involved, and then there’s being actively hindering—”
“Did you just imply I was ‘hindering’ during sex?”
“I wasn’t implying anything. You were hindering.”
Paige’s expression turned pensive. It was starting to make him wonder if he’d taken their sparring too far, when she disavowed him of that notion by patting him on the cheek like he was five years old and saying, “Well, I hate to tell you this, but that might be how I do sex now, so you’re probably just going to have to get used to it.”
He half-chuckled and kissed her. Normally, he would’ve pulled out by now, especially since he had softened considerably, but he wanted to just lay with her, enjoy the intimacy between them, and bask in the afterglow—
“Clean up on aisle five.”
Paige’s teasing tone, as well as the playful rocking of her hips underneath his brought him out of his reverie and back to reality, where the aftermath of sex without a condom was messy, and didn’t clean itself up.
“I’m on it,” he told her, reluctantly easing out of her, bringing a little rush of fluid with him. In the back of his mind, he started to lament not having a towel handy already, but then remembered the waterproof mattress pad.
Paige unabashedly watched him with the eyes of a new lover as he strolled, naked, to his ensuite bathroom, then watched as he came back to the bed with a couple of towels, deciding that while the back view was pretty great, the front one was even better. His wide shoulders, nicely defined chest and arms, his strong legs … and his cock, now mostly at rest, but still impressive.
He stopped next to the bed, utterly stunned at the expression on her face. He stared back at her and knew, with zero doubt, that this was what he wanted for the rest of his life—to have her gazing at him like this, full of hunger and adoration.
“You’re so beautiful, David. Truly. You have an amazing body,” she said reverently, meaning every word. “It’s nothing short of perfection, and I’m so sorry I wasn’t able to appreciate it before. For you and for me, because that hurt us both. I was scared of it, I think. And I was afraid of you wanting me, but I’m not afraid of that anymore.”
He cleared his throat, now stunned by her words. “You’ve never said anything like that to me before. It’s … nice to hear.”
Still shocked, he kneeled on the bed and situated one of the towels underneath her. He became transfixed by the sight of his semen glazing the most intimate part of her, and found himself oddly reluctant to wipe it away. When he was done, he lay half on her, cradling her face with his hands and proceeded to kiss her with an intensity that was fueled by how she’d looked at him and the words she had spoken. He plundered her mouth, feeling like a feral beast; he was pretty sure he resembled one, too.
The scent of sex was all around them, and the thought of another man knowing this and experiencing it with her was unfathomable to him. And as he spread her legs and entered her again, he vowed they would do this as often as possible, until it was unfathomable to her, too.