Chapter 16
THE FIRE
Ry comes over at seven pm sharp, and he is dressed just as sharp. His rich chestnut hair is slicked back, wearing dark slim slacks and a buttoned-down dress shirt. The first three buttons are undone, showing off even more skin art beneath.
He doesn’t care about trends. His style is timeless, like a mix of all the best looks over the centuries.
He peers at me with a quirked mouth, and if looks could kill, I’d be dead and buried.
Or maybe dragged straight to hell, judging by the scars on his forehead.
And if I were religious, I’d be reciting the Lord’s Prayer right about now.
I’m wearing a mini herringbone shift dress that is the most comfortable one I own.
Picking it partly for that reason, but also because of how flattering it is on me.
I painted my lips a dusty salmon pink, and Ry’s eyes go to them first, then to my legs.
There it is. That intensity. That want. That spark that could put the whole fucking room up in flames.
Ry walks straight toward me; he takes one strand of my hair and loops it around his finger.
“How have I gone so long without this feeling of you? Whatever you are putting out…it's suffocating. But in a good way. Try to tell me you don’t feel that, too?” He murmurs in my ear, and the air between us shifts. Speaking the answers to my own questions with the urgency of his.
Not finding the words, I nod at his vulnerability. I think how morbid his description of us is, but also how it is exactly right. He cocks his head to the side at my lack of response.
“Let’s get you a fire going. I need you verbal.” He says with a wink, and my thighs clench close as my thoughts drift to the reason.
I watch him silently build a fire, and as it roars to life, so does something inside me. Something known, but hidden. Something primal, but calm—for now, at least. I have never felt this stirring from within before, but it pulls me closer to Ry. A warning? I ignore it.
I kneel and place my hand on Ry’s shoulder as he crouches down by the fire. His head turns, and he places his hand on top of mine. His eyes are questions burning into me. Asking if I know? If I can feel it, too?
He takes my cheek in his hands, and gone is the rough man from earlier.
He moves closer so our lips graze each other’s.
Although barely there physically, the electricity jumps between us like sparks dancing between flames in a fire, a heady sense of what comes next.
We may not have the answers, but I think he will do his best to make sure I feel them.
He runs his tongue along my top lip and then his mouth is on mine, grasping a handful of my hair. He wraps his hand around my lower waist and eases me down onto the hardwood floor, just warming up from the fireplace blazing beside us.
This feels concrete. Something about these moments solidifying a bond that is inevitable. He surrounds me as he places his elbows on each side of my body and sinks closer into me, breathing me in.
This rush of him on top of me is one I want to savor, and his hands—his hands everywhere.
I want them everywhere, and I feel myself arching up into the hardness of him, causing him to release a low groan.
The sound is something much like a melody of all my favorite songs combined, which I now know happen to be his favorite, too.
“Open your legs for me, Jade,” he demands. At that moment, my shift dress has moved its way up to my waist, leaving my lower half completely exposed, including my panty-less bottom. An invitation. I know exactly when Ry notices, because his eyes darken.
“Did you do this just for me?” He asks, but he knows. “How absolutely succulent you are.” He hums the words in my ear.
I giggle in response, and his hand goes in between us to the spot that has been aching for him since this morning.
He glides two fingers inside, and I gasp, needing more.
Wanting him. All of him. He takes his fingers out of me and brings them to his mouth, sucking them clean.
I watch with fascination. Did he really just taste me?
Anticipation being my favorite part of this journey, we’ve only just now started exploring.
He undoes his pants and pulls himself out.
Rubbing himself against me. My body answers him before I can.
Ry takes himself to my center and pushes just his tip into me, stretching me out, but I want more. I need more.
I wrap my legs around his torso and flip him over.
It’s not graceful, but desire never is. The mess is half the fun.
I slide down onto his full length, and he stretches me out as I ride up and down.
He squeezes my thighs so hard I know there will be bruises in the morning.
I can feel them forming now, but I want to wear all the marks of him, on my skin and on my heart.
As I move up and down, my mind flashes to a young woman putting on the ring from the jade willow. Is that me? Her world spins, and then she jumps off the banister. I gasp, my body falling back into the waves of ecstasy.
I forget the brief glimpse into the past as I focus on the sensations building within my core. Then, Ry is sitting up while I continue to straddle him. My nipple meets his hot, wet mouth. I arch and I moan. No, this is my favorite part.
“Fuck,” I rasp out.
“There are those words I was looking for. Say more, sweetheart. I want to hear you swear to me as you come around my cock,” he says as he peers up at me.
I look at him. His pupils blown wide, his gaze wild and hungry. I see him then, in a different time, wearing a soldier’s uniform, handing a girl a ring in the alley. That must be me again. Her face so similar but different. Younger.
His lips come for mine. Something about our mouths and tongues moving together, mimicking what is happening lower between us as he pushes into me, has me coming undone.
“Oh, God!” The scream releases from my lips as my sensitive insides spasm around him.
“I can be that for you. It’s not too far off.” Ry whispers in my ear as I shudder into him.
He spins me around and lifts my hips up, so my hands fall and meet the ground. My knees find it shortly after, and that’s when he pushes into me from behind. I am soaked with want, with all my most sensitive nerves screaming for him to move his dick in and out, faster and harder.
Now, I see Ry in my mind’s eye. Standing before me, but morphing into a tree as a hawk circles above him. Back and forth he goes. Man to tree. Tree to man.
He pounds me from behind. I am still sensitive from my orgasm, so it feels like everything I would want it to. Ry continues pumping, while grasping my behind in his large palm. He smacks it, which makes me scream, and I feel myself close to the edge again.
He moves faster and faster, and the Ry of my vision comes back. Man to tree. Tree to man. Man to hickory. Hickory.
At that realization, I am lost to the feelings of my needy body again. Ry grunts, and I know he is coming apart as much as I am. He falls forward above me and wraps his arm around, so his hand palms my breast and the other one lays flat on the ground holding him up.
“Oh, my love, how I’ve missed you,” he says in heavy breaths.
“From just this morning?” I question, but now unwrapping a truth that was hidden from me before. Seeing Ry as someone completely different. Something. Hickory, I think, trying to piece the last puzzle part together.
“Since before either of us knew.” His sure remark places a permanent stitch in my heart. And any silly disillusionment of what my visions played out dissipates.
We fall in an exhausted heap of limbs onto the floor. And that’s when I know his touch has woven into the very fiber of me, like trees growing too close—entwined, tangled, beautiful. Dangerous, even as one could so easily choke out the other. But that won’t happen to us.