Chapter 11 #2
He came back to me without hesitation, bare skin against bare skin, the weight and warmth of him pressing me into the mattress.
The shock of it stole my breath, and the realization that there was nothing separating us—no barrier, no pause, no pretense—made my pulse trip hard and wild.
It was want and danger and truth tangled together, and I didn’t want an inch of distance between us.
He came over me on his forearms, big enough to block the world, careful enough not to crush a thing.
He kissed me slow again, letting me taste myself on his tongue, which should have embarrassed me and didn’t.
He rocked once against me, just the length of him sliding along my slickness, and we both groaned, a matched sound, helpless.
“Tell me if this is too much,” he said. “Tell me if you want more.”
“More,” I breathed, already.
He pressed in, a slow, deliberate stretch that made my mouth open on a silent O. He was big—thick and unyielding in a way that made my breath catch, the kind of size you had to take inch by inch until your body learned how to handle it.
He watched my face, stopping when my fingers bit his shoulders, waiting until the shock settled into a deep, insistent fullness, until my nails loosened and my legs lifted to bracket his hips tighter, hungry. He pushed the rest of the way with a curse that sounded like my name.
We stilled. The room did, too. I could hear the ocean. I could hear the house. I could hear us, breathing.
“Hazel,” he said, like he couldn’t help it, like there was worship in it, like there was warning. “You feel—” He didn’t finish, and the unfinished was better than poetry.
“Move,” I said, because patience had turned to ache.
He did, and I learned a new thing about him: he could be slow while being thorough, unhurried while being relentless.
He set a rhythm that felt like a path my body already knew, hips rolling, the length of him gliding in and out with a friction that made stars pop at the edges of my vision.
He found an angle that grazed something inside me that had me clutching at him and biting his shoulder to stay quiet.
“That,” he hissed, adjusting to hit it again. “There?”
“Yes,” I gasped, shameless now. “There.” The word dissolved on a moan when he obeyed.
He dropped a hand to my thigh and lifted it, knee bent, opening me wider, and the change in depth was obscene. I arched off the bed, and his arm wrapped around my back, hauling me to him like he thought I might try to leave my own body without permission.
“I’ve got you,” he said into my mouth, into my skin, into my bones. “Don’t run. Stay with me.”
“I’m here,” I promised, though I wasn’t sure how long that would be true if he kept doing that with his hips, that measured, expert ruin. My orgasm sluiced back like a tide returning faster than anyone expected. I clutched his hair, his shoulders, the sheet, anything, everything. “Gideon—”
His hand slid between us, finding my clit with unerring aim, thumb pressing in rhythm with his thrusts, and precision turned to overwhelm.
I shattered around him, the sound that ripped out of me reckless and real.
He cursed, low and filthy, hips punching once, twice, again, chasing me as I closed convulsively around him.
“That’s it,” he gritted, a thread of control fraying at last. “Take it. Fuck, you’re—”
I dragged him closer, teeth at his jaw, nails scoring his back like I wanted to keep proof. “Come,” I told him, unfamiliar with being generous and drunk on it, anyway. “Come in me. I want to feel you.”
He faltered, the command hitting like a strike.
“Hazel,” he said, ragged, like I’d done something to him that rewired time.
He thrust once more, deep, and let go. The groan he made against my throat was the kind of sound you don’t plan, the kind that tells the truth whether you want it to or not.
He pulsed inside me, body dropping an inch heavier, the weight of him not a burden.
We lay there while the world reassembled—his breath gusting against my collarbone, my pulse in my ears like surf. He kept most of his weight on his forearms, considerate even wrecked, and kissed the hollow below my ear like thanks offered to an altar.
When he finally slipped out, both of us flinching at the hypersensitive aftershock, he rolled to his side. He hooked an arm under my shoulders and dragged me against him, skin to skin, a gather I didn’t know I’d needed until I made a small sound and felt him smile against my hair.
“Okay?” he asked into my crown.
I nodded, throat tight, then realized he couldn’t see that. “Yes.”
“Good.” He was quiet for a beat that felt like a heartbeat stretching into something else. “You didn’t ruin anything.”
I huffed a laugh that had too much feeling in it. “I noticed.”
He stroked his palm down my back once, heavy and slow, like he was smoothing temper from metal.
He tipped my face up with a knuckle and kissed me again—quiet now, grateful. When he pulled back, his eyes were clear. “You tell me when you want more,” he said. “Or less. Or different. I’ll listen.”