Chapter 22 En Prise
The moment the door to Faust’s hotel room clicks shut, the air between us begins to evaporate.
He doesn’t turn on the lamps. Stark-Benzin has him on the top floor, and one corner of the penthouse is entirely windows overlooking the water, city lights, the dark.
I slip off my flats, slowly turning as he stalks around me.
That’s really the word for it. As he carefully removes a suit jacket that must be circulating the internet like wildfire—Faust in florals, actually groundbreaking—I feel small. Surrounded. I like it.
“So.” I cross my arms in front of my chest, not knowing if I should start peeling off my all-black workwear, too. “We’re here.”
Faust watches, setting the jacket down on a sleek armchair. “Is this still something you want to do?”
“I—yes.”
“And you’ll use the safe words?”
“Red, yellow, green. Yes.”
“You will need to stay tonight, after.”
I blink. “For?”
“Aftercare. Is that okay?”
“Sure? You’re really amping this up, huh?”
Wrong thing to say. Or, right? He walks over to me, almost silent.
My eyes flutter shut as he takes my face, and the last thing I think is at last and thank goodness and we’re so overdue for this.
Since that day at the pool, a tiny piece of me knew we’d end up in a room, wrapped around each other.
This has been an obsession. All my running, all his chasing, all to get here.
I reach up to kiss him first, just to do it. I want him to know that I want this as much as he does.
More than him, possibly.
The growl that rumbles deep in his throat makes my toes curl.
Not quite annoyed. Very surprised. Then Faust wraps one arm around the small of my back and we’re crushed together, his lips an endless press against mine.
My mind whites out, gone. I only exist where he’s touching me—his teeth on my lower lip, his tongue against mine, never painful, like he’d said, but so much.
He kisses like the first cold day in November, when the clocks roll back and the world goes dark. Winter, inescapably here.
A whine smolders in the back of my throat as he nudges me toward the bed with his hips. Just having his legs on me, against me, makes my knees weak, and I’d be slipping onto the mattress if it weren’t for his hand. He helps me down carefully, directing my movements. Each touch, orchestrated by him.
He stays standing. His fingers going to his belt. “I never answered your question, Arcadia.”
“I… which?” I can’t stop looking at him, undoing his belt. The tendons on the back of his hand flexing, his face authoritatively calm.
“You asked if I think I’m lucky.” The buckle clicks. “I don’t think I am.”
“Oh. I didn’t…”
“Can you be quiet for me?”
My thighs squeeze together like he’s closed them himself. I nod dumbly, my mouth dry.
“Very good.” With a slight smile, he slips the belt off.
He leaves his pants on, though, as he starts working on my shirt.
“I might have bad luck—but I’ve always seen my destruction coming.
And you. I knew you were going to ruin my life.
But I couldn’t… couldn’t resist. Seeing what happened.
Keeping an eye on you.” He slips off button after button, nudging a curved finger against my stomach before pulling my shirt off.
I’m hot everywhere he touches, jumpy. “You know what I thought when we met? When you walked up to me in that black dress, looking like an angel who’d hold a knife against my throat? ‘Ah, fuck, this one’s going to hurt.’ ”
He slides his hands down my thighs. “But I couldn’t look away from you. I looked for you. You burned a hole through me that first night. Your face, and nothing else. Nothing compared.”
He’d looked for me? After Bernard’s wedding? I inhale, ready to ask what he means, then remember I’m quiet.
Faust glances up from my legs. Notices that I’m silent for him. “Green?”
I nod; he nods back.
Then he’s moving on, back to us, like I’m not falling a bit more for him with every word he murmurs.
“You don’t even see it. How you bring color back to people.
How you’re here and then—it’s all fucking gray when you’re gone.
” His mouth finds the stretch of skin behind my ear.
“I want to be around you all the time. Will you let me?”
I’m squirming against where his fingers are wrapped around my thighs. All the way. “Mmhm.”
“Every day?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” He unbuttons my pants. “Stand up.”
I do, and then he’s undressing me, leaving me in my thin cotton bra and underwear.
Comfort and breathability had taken precedence over any seduction today.
But Faust lets out a strangled groan like I’m in the laciest French lingerie set, garter belt, stockings, the whole nine yards.
He bends, and a kiss brushes over my ribs.
Beneath my bra band, over my tattoo. He mumbles something against my skin that I don’t quite catch—might be in another language—and then he’s sitting on the bed, pulling me into his lap, my legs split around his waist.
I’m exposed. He isn’t. My fingers clench around his shoulders for support, feeling the smooth fabric of the shirt I designed, blood rushing to my head and between my thighs.
“Beautiful.” His tone is proud, possessive.
But maddeningly restrained, too. “So beautiful for me.” His hand sneaks between my legs, two fingers crooked up, and he strokes me over my damp underwear with enough expertise to make my whole body start to shake.
“Faust.” I hide my head in the crook of his shoulder, my face red.
“Yes?”
“You don’t need to do that.”
“I do. I want to.” His middle finger pushes against my seam, and I feel how embarrassingly wet I am already. And he must, too, because he clicks his tongue. “Think you want me to touch you, too. You’re soaked, baby. Don’t you feel it? Right here?”
It’s such a Faust thing to say. Simple and direct and, somehow, the hottest thing I’ve ever heard. Electricity thrums between my legs, my body turning into a reactor programmed to his touch, and I nod against his shoulder, speechless.
“That’s what I thought. You’d have to feel it.” With a hum, he tugs my underwear to the side, cups me. “But I’ll stop if you want me to.” His hand is cold against my heat. “Do you want me to stop?”
“N-No.”
“Because you’ll tell me if you do?”
“Yes.”
“So, what do you want?”
Like I would know. But he actually waits. For me. To reply to him. His fingers don’t move, his palm so close to me that he must feel my pulse. Every slick twitch of my legs. “I… you could…” I swallow, but there’s nothing in my throat.
“So close, sweetheart.” Fingers press soothingly into the small of my back. I hadn’t noticed that he’s snaked his other hand around my back, helping me straddle him. “You can do it. It’s okay.”
My nose bumps against his shoulder. “I—I want you to touch me.”
I could wave a green flag for him, too. Blink some red lights.
Fuck, I don’t know why I have to be like this.
He has to be reconsidering his desire to sleep with me, the most Trojan Horse of a fuckbuddy as there ever was.
Or worse, he’s reconsidering me, period.
I’m not being confident, or cool, and I’ve definitely lost my grip on my own control if looking at him between my legs makes me turn—
Faust pulls me closer, stopping my thoughts. “I want to touch you, too. So come here.” One of his fingers slips inside me, his thumb circling my clit. “You’re going to ride my fingers until you’re close, and let me enjoy you.”
I sink down onto his finger with a gasp. It’s nothing, I know, but his hand is so big, and it’s been so long, pressure grabbing my core. “Easy.” He traces a circle over my spine, fingernails light on my skin. “Let yourself adjust.”
And maybe I’ve always needed rules here, too, guidelines to keep me in one place, since next thing I know I’m nodding and shifting.
And then it feels good. I turn into the static between radio stations—scattered white noise, breaking into smaller pieces—as he pushes into me, teases me, soft, then firm.
“You,” he sighs against my neck, and the sound is like licking a live wire.
Finally tightly wound, so frustrated. “Feel like heaven.”
“Thanks,” I breathe out. “You”—I gasp. His teeth skimmed my skin—“do, too.”
Really, he feels like God has decided to punish me specifically, real and addictive and deep, though I don’t have time to tell him that. Because then he’s asking, “But what do you taste like?” and I’m somewhere else. Definitely not here.
“Oh. I don’t—you really don’t need to worry about that.”
Not that I have a wealth of experience getting eaten out.
Usually requires at least one other person in bed with you.
Faust leans back just far enough that we’re looking at each other again, face-to-face, his finger sheathed inside me, my whole world his deep brown eyes and burning honesty.
“I’m not worried,” he says, deadly serious.
“I don’t worry about wanting to drink you.
I don’t worry about making you come against my mouth. ”
Then, as if to prove his point, Faust drags his hand from me to his mouth. Slips one wet finger between his flushed lips.
And moans.
“Perfect.”
I’ve forgotten every single word I know. My muscles tighten, my body fluttering with emptiness, need, his hand back on me. Filling me. When he touches me again, I’m dripping, my eyes transfixed on the deep scarlet blush staining his cheekbones before I’m too shy to look at him anymore.
Faust builds me up, closer to the edge, faster than I’d thought was possible.
My legs shake. I grab his head, fingers winding in his hair.
And right as I’m almost there—wherever there is with someone like him—he leans back.
Circling my clit slowly, watching me. “Where do you want to come?” he says, jaw tight and eyes dark.
“Faust—please.”
His hand doesn’t stop. “That didn’t answer the question. Fingers, mouth, or cock.”
“Fuck.”
“Closer, but still waiting.”