Chapter Twelve #2
‘I’ll sleep with you every night, until then,’ she confirmed, and that ache inside him… That thing he didn’t know to ask for, because he didn’t recognise it, what he needed to soothe it…
It shifted inside him.
‘You will kiss me,’ he breathed.
‘I will,’ she said and stepped closer to him.
Her toes, so small, so dainty, moved in front of his. His heart thudded as her long, slender fingers reached up to cradle his cheeks.
Then she was on the tips of her toes and her mouth found his.
Konstantinos closed his eyes. He couldn’t move. He stood rooted. The pressure of her mouth, it was so soft. So gentle. Her lips lingered on top of his. Feathering over the seal of his. As if she were learning the shape of his mouth. As if this was new. A first kiss.
His hands went to her hips. He cradled them in his palms. Drew her in closer. The tips of her breasts met his chest.
He moaned. A guttural thing, it escaped his lips. Her mouth opened. She breathed it in. Breathed him in. As if he was supposed to be in there. A part of her.
His brain was addled. Fuddled by too many hormones, he told himself, and pushed his tongue into her mouth. Deeply.
‘Konstantinos,’ she breathed into his mouth, and whatever sense—whatever rationality that remained—disappeared.
He picked her up and she wrapped her legs around him. He turned them both around, dipped them beneath the warm water and found the wall beyond it. He held her there.
He dragged his mouth from hers. ‘I can’t wait,’ he admitted, because he couldn’t not admit it. ‘I need to be inside you, Poppy. So badly.’
He didn’t recognise it. His voice. The desperate edge to it. It was gritty. It wasn’t the voice of a man in control. It was the voice of a man who didn’t know what control meant. As if he hadn’t spent his life living by its definition.
‘I need that, too,’ she said, and kissed the edge of his lip, and then the other. ‘I need you.’
He raised her bottom. The hard length of him arrowed to where it longed to be. Sheathed inside her. He dipped his hips forward and up.
Konstantinos thrust.
‘Yes!’ Her nails tore through his back. ‘More! Please, Konstantinos. More.’
Mindlessly, he thrust inside her. Again, and again. Chasing oblivion with her locked around his hips. Needing to find it.
‘I’m going to come,’ she half-screamed, half-sobbed. She sank her teeth into his shoulder.
He needed to slow down. He needed—
‘Oh, Konstantinos!’ Her intimate muscles clamped around him. Urged him to find his orgasm with her. And so desperately did he want to. So desperately did he want to come inside his wife. Inside her.
A war raged inside him.
He couldn’t do it. He would not allow himself to lose himself so completely. To put her at risk. Instead he held her still, waited for the tremors to slow, for her breathing to return to some semblance of normal. Only then did he lift her. Break the intimate seal of their bodies.
‘Konstantinos—’
‘It is wet,’ he told her. ‘Mind your footing.’
He steadied her on her feet.
She looked down at his still hard, still straining erection, glistening with the evidence of their shared desire.
‘You didn’t come,’ she said.
‘The condoms are in the bedroom. We will go to bed,’ he said, ‘and I will make you come again,’ he promised thickly.
‘No,’ she said, and she took him in hand. Stroked him.
He hardened. He was so hard he did not know it was possible for him to be so hard. So big was he, she could barely enclose her palm around him.
‘I want to make you come,’ she admitted. ‘I want to kiss you. Here.’
Konstantinos stiffened. She’d offered him her mouth twice. And twice he’d denied her. He knew now, this wasn’t a game of power, or of control. But still, he hesitated. Still, he remembered how it had made him feel before. Vulnerable.
Why should he not allow her to taste him?
Soon she’d be gone. Soon he’d let her go. Why shouldn’t he allow himself this?
It would be a newness.
Not surrender.
‘Yes, please, Poppy,’ he said.
She fell to her knees, and took him into her mouth.
He braced himself on the wall above her with two hands.
The water hit his back, shielding her from the spray.
It was pleasure. It was pain. It was…everything. The tightness of her mouth. The flick of her tongue.
It was a gift.
Konstantinos watched her caress him. She braced herself on his thighs. He planted his feet as her head bobbed, and he prayed his knees wouldn’t buckle as her caress deepened. So deep did it become, it had no end.
He closed his eyes. So intense was it, the sensation building inside him. He had no choice but to try and control it. But he couldn’t.
It tore through him like a firework.
‘Poppy!’
She didn’t release him. She closed her mouth tighter around him as he spasmed inside the warm embrace of her mouth. Until it was over. Until the aftermath washed over him. Until the pulse of him was softer between her lips.
She released him from her mouth.
He looked down.
She looked up.
‘Thank you,’ he husked, and reached down for her. Helped her to her feet.
He shut off the shower.
‘You’re most welcome,’ she said, almost shyly. As if she felt it too. The firsts. The newness.
He scooped her up in his arms.
She laughed. ‘It’s too wet for you to carry me!’
Konstantinos didn’t laugh. He stared at her mouth. The sound it had made. Her laugh. So long had it been since he’d heard it. And this laugh… He wasn’t sure he’d heard it before.
He wanted to hear it again.
His heart hiccuped.
He was a fool.
He moved back towards the bedroom.
‘Where are we going?’
‘Back to bed,’ he said, and that was where he’d keep her. Where they would stay, until they could no longer stand the sight of it. Until they’d drained any newness from each other.
Until it was time to say goodbye.
Forever.