Chapter 3 – Lev #4
She tasted like mint and danger and everything I’d ever wanted but been too afraid to take. Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer, and I could feel her heartbeat racing against my chest like a trapped bird.
When I pulled back, we were both breathing hard, both staring at each other like we were seeing something impossible made real.
“I told you,” I said, my voice barely above a whisper, “our first time wouldn’t be against a wall.”
She nodded, understanding passing between us without the need for more words. I took her hand and led her through the dark hallway to my bedroom, each step feeling like crossing into forbidden territory.
The room was as stark as the rest of the apartment—black sheets, minimal furniture, nothing personal enough to reveal the man who lived behind the carefully constructed image. But tonight, it felt different, charged with possibility and the promise of something I’d never allowed myself to want.
My gloves came off—the ones that had become as much a part of me as my own skin. She didn’t recoil when she saw the scars—just traced them with fingertips that were gentle enough to break my heart.’
“They don’t hurt anymore,” I said, catching her hand in mine.
“These aren’t the scars that hurt,” she whispered, pressing her palm flat against my chest. “Are they?”
She was right. The physical marks were nothing compared to the damage that lived deeper, in the places where trust used to be before I learned that everyone you love disappears eventually.
We stumbled into the bedroom together, all tangled limbs and desperate hands and the kind of hunger that came from years of denying what we both wanted.
The door barely closed behind us before she was pulling at my shirt, fingers fumbling with buttons until she gave up and just yanked it over my head.
I heard something tear, but neither of us cared.
“We shouldn’t—” I started, but she bit down on my earlobe and whatever protest I’d been forming died in my throat.
“Don’t you dare,” she warned, pulling back to look at me. “Don’t you dare tell me we shouldn’t. Not now.”
I tried to be gentle, tried to remember that she deserved better than the rough edges of my grief, but she wouldn’t let me hold back. When I hesitated, her hands framed my face, and she looked at me with an intensity that made my breath catch.
“I’m not made of glass,” she said against my mouth, and the words destroyed the last of my restraint.
I kissed her like I was drowning and she was air—deep and consuming and absolutely necessary. She tasted like wine and want, and when she bit my lower lip hard enough to sting, I groaned into her mouth.
“Fuck,” I muttered, my hands finding the zipper of her dress. “I’ve thought about this so many times.”
“Yeah? Tell me.” She watched me drag the zipper down slowly, the fabric pooling at her feet. “Tell me what you thought about.”
She stood before me in black lace that left almost nothing to the imagination, and I had to close my eyes for a moment because the sight of her was almost too much—the curve of her breasts straining against the delicate fabric, her nipples already hard and visible through the lace, the shadow between her thighs that made my cock throb painfully against my zipper.
“Open your eyes,” she commanded softly. “Look at me.”
When I did, she was watching me with something raw and vulnerable in her expression, but also hungry—so goddamn hungry it made me ache.
“Don’t look away,” she whispered. “Not tonight.”
“Never,” I promised, my voice rough. “God, you’re so fucking beautiful.”
“Show me.” She reached behind her back and unhooked her bra, letting it fall. “Show me what you’ve been thinking about.”
I kept my eyes on hers as I traced the curve of her waist, as I learned the map of her body with my hands and mouth. She shivered when I kissed the hollow of her throat.
“More,” she gasped. “I need more.”
I took her breast in my mouth, sucking and teasing until she moaned and threaded her fingers through my hair.
“God, yes,” she breathed. “Just like that.”
My hand slid down her stomach, fingers tracing the edge of her panties. “Can I?”
“Please,” she whimpered. “Please touch me.”
When I hooked my fingers into the lace and pulled it down, I felt how wet she already was, and it nearly undid me.
“Fuck,” I groaned against her skin. “You’re so wet for me.”
We tumbled onto the bed, and she rolled on top of me, straddling my still-clothed hips. She ground against me deliberately, and I thought I might come right there like a teenager.
“These need to come off,” she said, working my belt open with practiced efficiency. When her hand wrapped around my cock, I hissed through my teeth. “God, you’re so hard.”
“What did you expect?” I managed. “Look at you.”
She stroked me slowly, deliberately. “I’ve wanted this for so long. I’ve wanted you for so long.”
The confession undid something in me. I flipped us over, pinning her beneath me, and she arched against me with a moan.
“Tell me what you want,” I said against her ear.
“Everything,” she breathed. “I want everything. I want you inside me. I want you to fuck me like you’ve imagined doing all these years.”
“Jesus Christ,” I groaned. “You’re going to kill me.”
“Not yet,” she said with a wicked smile. “I have plans for you first.”
I kissed my way down her body, determined to taste every inch of her first. When I settled between her thighs, she sucked in a sharp breath.
“What are you—oh God—”
I put my mouth on her, and she cried out, her hips bucking off the bed.
“Oh, fuck! Oh, fuck,” she gasped, her fingers tightening in my hair. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
She tasted like salt and honey and desperate need. When I slid two fingers inside her while my tongue worked her clit, her thighs trembled around my head.
“Right there, yes, right—I’m going to—” She came apart with a cry that echoed off the walls. “Oh, God. Oh, God—”
“So fucking beautiful,” I murmured against her skin as I kissed my way back up her body.
She pulled me into a kiss, tasting herself on my tongue. “I need you inside me,” she whispered urgently. “Please, I need—”
I positioned myself at her entrance. “You sure?”
“If you don’t fuck me right now, I swear to God—”
I pushed inside her, and we both groaned.
“Oh, fuck,” she gasped.
I had to stop for a moment, buried to the hilt, just breathing through the overwhelming sensation. “You’re so tight. I need a second, or I’m going to—”
“Move,” she demanded, digging her nails into my shoulders. “Please move. I don’t care if it’s quick; I just need you to move.”
I pulled back and thrust deep, and she wrapped her legs higher around my waist.
“Harder,” she gasped. “Don’t hold back. I want to feel you tomorrow.”
“Fuck, the things you say….”
“You like it,” she panted. “I can feel how much you like it.”
She was right.
I fucked her with all the pent-up longing and grief and desperate need I’d been carrying for years. The headboard slammed against the wall with each thrust.
“You’re taking me so well,” I groaned. “So fucking perfect.”
“Harder. Fuck me harder.”
I shifted the angle, and she cried out. “Right there—oh, God, right there—don’t you dare stop—”
“Here?” I hit the spot again.
“Yes! Fuck, yes, right there—I’m so close—”
“Come for me,” I urged. “I want to feel you come around my cock.”
“Oh, God! Oh, God, I’m—” She screamed my name as she came, her whole body going rigid, her pussy spasming around me.
The sensation was too much. “Fuck, I’m going to come—”
“Yes,” she gasped. “Come inside me. I want to feel it.”
I buried myself as deep as I could go and came with a groan that seemed to tear itself from my chest.
For a moment, we just lay there, trembling and breathless. Then she kissed me—soft and sweet.
“That was—” she started.
“Yeah,” I agreed, still trying to catch my breath. “Yeah.”
“I want you again,” she whispered against my lips.
“Already? I need a minute to—”
“Then let me help,” she said with a sly smile, and I felt her hand wrap around me.
“Fuck, you’re going to be the death of me.”
“What a way to go,” she teased.
This time, I pulled out and turned her over, pulling her hips up.
“Oh, God, yes,” she moaned as I pushed back inside her from behind. “This angle—fuck—”
“You like this?” I gripped her hips and fucked her steadily.
“Yes, yes, I love it—God, you’re so deep like this—”
“Touch yourself,” I told her. “I want to feel you come around me again.”
“Bossy,” she gasped, but I felt her reach between her legs.
“You love it.”
“I do,” she admitted breathlessly. “I love it. I love—oh, fuck—”
Within minutes, she was shaking, her moans getting higher and more desperate.
“That’s it,” I encouraged. “I can feel how close you are. Come for me. Let me feel it.”
“I’m going to—oh, God, I’m—” She came with a broken cry, and I felt every flutter and pulse of her orgasm.
I pulled her up against my chest, one arm wrapped around her waist, the other hand on her breast. “So fucking perfect,” I groaned as I emptied myself inside her.
We collapsed onto the mattress together, both of us sensitive and spent.
“Holy shit,” she breathed after a moment. “That was—”
“Incredible,” I finished.
She turned in my arms to face me. “I’m not done with you yet.”
“You’re insatiable.”
“Only for you,” she murmured, her hand sliding down my body. “I want to taste you.”
“You don’t have to—”
“I want to,” she insisted, already moving down my body. “I’ve thought about this too.”
When her mouth closed around me, I groaned. “Fuck, your mouth—”
She took me deeper, her tongue doing things that made my vision blur.
“Just like that,” I gasped. “God, just like that.”
She looked up at me while she sucked me, and the sight was the most erotic thing I’d ever seen.
“I’m going to come,” I warned her. “You should—”
She just took me deeper, and I came with her name on my lips, my hands gentle in her hair.
She crawled back up and kissed me. “See? Not so bad.”
“Not so bad? That was fucking incredible.”
“Good.” She settled against my chest with a satisfied smile. “Because I plan on doing it again. Many times.”
“You’re going to ruin me.”
“Good,” she said again, softer this time. “We can be ruined together.”
Eventually, exhaustion caught up with us. We lay in the wreckage of what we’d been before, her head on my chest and my fingers tracing idle patterns on her bare shoulder.
The scars on my hands caught the light from the hallway, but for the first time in twenty-seven years, they felt like just another part of me instead of a constant reminder of everything I’d lost.
“Stay,” I said into the darkness, the word torn from somewhere deep in my chest.
She lifted her head to look at me, and in her eyes I saw the reflection of my own desperate hope, my own fear of what the morning might bring.
“For tonight,” she said finally, her thumb tracing my jawline. “I’ll stay for tonight.”
“Tonight isn’t enough.”
“It’s all I can promise right now,” she said softly. “Is that okay?”
I pulled her closer, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “Yeah. It’s okay.”
It wasn’t a promise of forever. But in a world where I’d learned that forever was a lie anyway, tonight felt like everything.