61. Harlow #2
The first brush of his tongue has me arching up off the mattress. I’m already so sensitive, every nerve in my body feels lit up.
It’s clear he was holding back before. With no audience, he is ravenous.
Not like he’s trying to prove something to me, but more like he’s trying to prove something to himself.
When I start to squirm, he pins my hips to the bed.
He’s merciless, plunging his tongue in deep, sucking my clit into his mouth until my thighs are trembling and my hands are fisted in his hair and I’m so mindless with pleasure I can’t stop saying his name.
The climax breaks over me, and it feels like I’ve been cracked wide open. I don’t recognize the hoarse cry that escapes me. My aura is spread out wide, throwing off little golden sparks in all directions. I have never felt more out of control, and I like it.
I’ve always had an intimacy with pain—an awareness of the many ways that I could hurt. I never fathomed that my body could feel this good.
The trembling passes, and Henry draws away. He licks his lips as he stands and slides his pants off.
He’s gorgeous, bathed in nothing but candlelight that highlights the defined muscles of his torso and the deep lines of his stomach that seem to point directly to his thick cock. He strokes it lazily, his gaze raking over me, wet and spread wide for him at the edge of the bed.
“You are so beautiful.”
I slide back, and he prowls over me. He teases me, rubbing his cock against my sensitive clit until I whine.
Then he pushes into me agonizingly slowly. I want to grab his hips and pull him all the way in, but it feels so intense I can barely do anything but breathe.
He groans against my pulse, and I feel it everywhere. “Let me in.”
It’s different going slow. I’m more aware of every touch, how he’s stretching me to my limits. He draws back and then pushes deeper, and it takes my breath away.
“Henry,” I gasp.
He curses into the crook of my neck. “Fuck. Say it again. ”
He pulls back and watches my face as he draws away and pushes in again, and I gasp his name again.
He drops his forehead to my shoulder and takes a shuddering breath. “Divine dammit, you take me so well.”
Henry hikes my left knee up and rolls his hips.
The angle feels so good, my whole body clenches.
I am helpless to everything he does, moving with him like we’re floating together in the same tide, and it feels so good to be in sync, to be able to kiss him and have him so close while he moves inside me.
He tweaks my left nipple, and I arch up off the bed.
“Bleeding woods, you’re so wet for me, Harlow.”
I don’t think I’ve ever been this wet in my life, and it’s all because he’s so close. Because he’s kissing me as he moves. Because one arm is hooked under my leg, his hand braced against the scar on my lower back, and the other is gripping my shoulder. I’ve never felt this close to someone else.
I’m exhilarated and about to tip over the edge. I can’t stop clenching.
He seems to feel it because his thrusts get more insistent. He pulls back and looks into my eyes with pure adoration.
I know what he does not say because it’s in every touch. Every brush of his lips. In the way he doesn’t bite me or allow me to turn this tenderness into fucking. I know by the raw look on his face that will be burned into my memory forever.
His heart is in his eyes when he looks at me. My climax hits hard. I grip his shoulders and moan as he continues to move in a perfect rhythm to draw it out. He murmurs soft praise into the shell of my ear, and I shiver.
When I can’t take any more and my feet are cramping, I push him onto his back and straddle his hips, sinking down on him in one swift motion. But Henry’s not content to lie back and take it. He sits up and pulls me close, and I want to fight it.
It’s so unnatural, and yet it’s all I want: skin on skin without fear that I’ll hurt him.
Every movement between us is so intuitive. He finds a rhythm with me immediately, his hands cupping my ass as I grind against him. He nips at my neck, and I’m already right back on the edge again .
“Yes, that’s it. Fuck, Harlow, you’re so good.” He kisses my shoulder, murmuring something incomprehensible into my skin.
I arch back and move faster and I’m so close. Henry’s bruising grip on my hips keeps me perfectly in sync. I meet his eyes, and I know how he feels right down to my bones.
In one searing moment I’m made and unmade, by this quiet, gentle, fleeting thing between us. When I look in his eyes, I’m no longer a Carrenwell or the Poison Vixen, or even Henry’s wife. I’m transformed into Harlow.
In that reflection, I see myself for the first time how I might have been. It hurts so much and the ecstasy is so bright and blaring that I have to close my eyes and breathe through the crush of it. He groans and shoves me all the way down on his cock as he shudders and finds his release.
“I love—” It slips out in some sort of brainless sex-drunk stupor. Mercifully, I catch myself mid-sentence.
He must read the panic in my eyes. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. We’re just pretending, right? It’s no big deal, Harlow.”
But I’m not pretending anymore, and it doesn’t feel like no big deal. It feels like he’s woken me up from years of dreaming and now I don’t know how to go back to sleep.
I’m panicked. Everything that opened up in my chest wants to lock down again. I want to flee.
But he holds me firm, one hand pressed to the back of my heart and the other pressed to my scar.
He kisses my temple. “Don’t run. Stay with me.”
My instinct to fight is much more practiced than the instinct to surrender. How dare he throw my whole life off course. It’s unforgivable to leave me stranded here with no path back to my old self. I feel rattled and raw, stumbling on drunken legs.
But I let him hold me. I lean my head on his shoulder and breathe in the cold mountain scent of him. Until my heart slows enough that I can flop onto the bed.
Henry lies down beside me. He whistles as he takes one last look at me before he pulls the blanket up over us.
“I wish you could understand how fucked I was the first time I saw you,” he says.
“Divine damn me. You were so stunning. I couldn’t believe you let me sit at your table.
And then when I walked into the contract signing the next morning and saw that it was you—that was when I knew how screwed I was. ”
“Because you wanted to fuck me?”
He grins and kisses the tip of my nose. “So prickly. No, because you were as clever as you are beautiful… and I wanted to fuck you.”
“At least you’re honest.”
“Some of the time.”
He studies my face in the low light, and I pray to the Divine he doesn’t bring up my mortifying mid-fuck admission. I search for anything else to say.
“My parents have been working with Stefan, and their plan once they killed you was going to be to marry me off to him,” I blurt.
Henry’s eyebrows shoot up. “Another terrible idea on their part.”
“They have few ideas that aren’t.” I brush his damp hair back from his forehead.
“Everything will change tomorrow. The rumors about Rafe are spreading. I know it must feel so unsatisfying for you to have this lie be the thing that brings him down, instead of the wrongs he’s actually done.
But taking him out of power will only protect other women.
If it wasn’t my sister, it would have been me, and if it wasn’t me, it would be someone else’s sister. ”
He stares up at the ceiling.
“It doesn’t bring Aidia back, but it does make me feel a little bit better,” I say. “Killing him would probably make me feel most at peace.”
There’s recognition in Henry’s voice when he murmurs, “Because then you’ll know for sure he’s gone—that he can’t do it again.”
We lay there for a while in silence. He stares up at the ceiling, and I lie on my stomach, studying his profile.
“My parents are dead,” I whisper.
Henry goes so still, he’s not even breathing.
“I killed them.”
“How?”
“Slowly.”
I thought he’d be upset that I robbed him of his vengeance, but he just looks relieved.
“I guess you got what you wanted,” I say .
He lets out a surprised laugh. “Technically, I wanted to kill your father personally.”
“I’m sorry I stole that peace from you.” I mean those words.
He runs his fingers down my spine and over the bumpy topography of my scar. “Truth be told, I think you more than earned your own peace. What does that mean for South Hold?”
“Able is still alive, but?—”
Henry arches a brow. “But?”
“But he has to die too.”
Henry props himself on an elbow. “He does?”
“He knew what happened, and he’s also been friendly with Rafe in the past. He could be again. I don’t know who should be in charge. I just know who shouldn’t be,” I say.
Henry sighs. “And to think I believed I was the greatest threat to the Carrenwell family.” He brushes my hair to the side and kisses my shoulder. “I’m sorry you had to do that alone.”
“I didn’t. Technically. Kellan helped.”
His eyes widen slightly, but there’s no judgment on his face. He looks at me with resigned affection. “What about the rest of your siblings? How will they react?”
I run a hand over my face. Bleeding woods! I hadn’t given that a single thought. The rest of my siblings have always been distant figures, more scenery I observed than actual people. I knew them only enough to understand their motivations.