CHAPTER 13 #3
June gripped his jaw. The stubble scraped her palm. She kissed him harder, taking back every bit of pressure he gave her until the metal tray rattled beneath her hip.
Luca’s hand slid down her back and closed over her ass.
He pulled her against him.
His cock was hard beneath his pants, thick and unmistakable where it pressed against her stomach. June rocked into it once, testing. His mouth broke from hers on a harsh breath.
“Shoulder,” she said.
“Functional.”
“That wasn’t my assessment.”
“Then climb on top.”
The bluntness of it went through her like a current.
June reached between them and opened his pants. Button. Zipper. The mechanical sequence gave her hands something precise to do while the rest of her stopped pretending this was anything but what it was.
She pushed his pants and underwear down far enough to free him.
His cock filled her hand, hard and cool against her palm. Luca’s head tipped back. His jaw clenched as she stroked him from base to tip, learning his weight, the ridge beneath the head, how his hips moved despite the control holding the rest of him still.
His gaze returned to her face.
“You keep doing that,” he said, “and this will be over faster than either of us wants.”
June tightened her grip. “Is that a warning or an observation?”
His mouth curved. Barely.
Then his hand went between her legs.
He cupped her through her jeans, pressing the heel of his palm firmly against her pussy. The smile disappeared when he felt how wet she already was.
“Observation,” he said.
He opened her jeans one-handed. June helped him push them and her underwear down, impatient with fabric that had become an unnecessary obstacle. She kicked one boot free, then the other, stripping everything below her waist far enough to step out of it.
Luca’s eyes moved over her.
Not quickly. Not politely.
June had spent most of her life refusing to be self-conscious about a body built for work instead of display. Strong thighs. Practical underwear. A scar along one knee from an animal that had objected to being vaccinated.
Under Luca’s attention, none of it felt merely practical.
His hands closed around her hips and pulled her forward until she stood between his spread knees. He kissed the inside of her thigh. Once. Then higher.
“Luca.”
He looked up at her from inches away from her pussy. “Do you want something?”
She put her hand in his hair. “Your mouth.”
He gave it to her.
His tongue dragged slowly through her wetness before settling over her clit. June’s other hand hit the metal table behind her, bracing hard as his mouth closed around her.
There was nothing cautious about this. He licked her with the same deliberate focus he gave everything else, learning what pressure made her hips jerk and what rhythm made her fingers tighten in his hair. When he pushed two fingers inside her, she gasped.
He curled them forward.
The pleasure was immediate and exact.
“Again,” she said.
He did it again. His fingers fucked her in a steady rhythm while his tongue worked her clit, and June stopped trying to remain quiet. Her breathing broke into rough sounds that filled the carriage house and came back to her from the old wooden walls.
The lamp buzzed overhead. The treatment tray dug into the back of her hand. Somewhere beyond the building, wind moved through the trees.
None of it mattered.
Luca sucked her clit harder. His fingers curled inside her, stroking the place that made her thighs begin to shake.
“Don’t stop.”
He didn’t.
The orgasm hit her fast and brutally, her pussy clenching around his fingers as pleasure tore through her. June gripped his hair and held his face against her, riding every contraction until her legs nearly gave out.
Luca caught her before they did.
He brought her down onto his lap, careful of his injured shoulder despite his claim that it was functional. June straddled him, still breathing hard, her wet pussy resting against the length of his cock.
He kissed her. She tasted herself on his tongue now, mixed with the fading trace of blood.
“Condom?” she asked.
“In my jacket.”
His jacket lay over the back of the stool. June reached for it, found the wallet, and located the condom without comment.
She tore the packet open and rolled it down his cock.
His hands tightened on her hips.
“June.” Her name came out lower this time. Rougher. “Once you start…”
“I know how sex works.”
A sound escaped him that might have been a laugh under less strained circumstances.
June rose onto her knees, positioned him at her entrance, and lowered herself onto his cock.
The first stretch stole the next thing she might have said.
She stopped halfway down.
Luca went completely still beneath her. His fingers spread across her hips, holding without forcing, his eyes fixed on her face.
“Too much?”
“No.”
She sank lower.
Her pussy opened around him inch by inch until she was seated fully on his lap with his cock buried deep inside her. The fullness bordered on pain, but only at the edges. At the center was heat. Pressure. The hard pulse of him surrounded by her body.
June braced one hand on his uninjured shoulder and moved.
The first stroke was slow. Up almost to the head, then down until her clit rubbed against him.
Luca’s eyes closed.
She did it again.
His control lasted three more strokes.
Then his hand slid into her hair and dragged her mouth to his. He fucked up into her as she rode him, meeting every downward movement with enough force to make the cot frame strike the wall.
June moaned into his mouth.
He swallowed the sound. His hand moved between them, his thumb finding her clit with infuriating accuracy. He rubbed tight circles over it while his cock drove into her, each thrust hitting deep enough to send a jolt through her stomach.
“Harder,” she said.
His eyes opened.
“Your shoulder…”
“Harder, Luca.”
He obeyed.
The next thrust tore a cry from her. June gripped the back of his neck and rode him faster, taking him as deep as her body allowed. The room filled with the slap of skin, the creak of the cot, and the wet sound of his cock moving inside her.
His mouth found her throat. Not biting. Just teeth against skin, the threat of it as sharp as the real thing.
Her pussy tightened.
Luca swore against her neck.
June had never heard him lose command of his voice. The sound pushed her closer than his fingers had.
“Do that again,” she said.
“What?”
“Lose control.”
His hand closed over her ass. He held her open and drove into her hard enough that the cot struck the wall again.
Her orgasm built low and fast, tightening every muscle through her pelvis. She pressed her forehead to his and watched the restraint strip away from his face one piece at a time.
“Come inside me,” she said.
The words broke whatever remained.
Luca fucked her through the first contraction. Then the second. His thumb stayed on her clit, rubbing until June came hard around his cock, her body locking over his as pleasure burned through her.
He thrust once more and held himself deep.
His cock pulsed inside the condom. His face buried against the side of her throat, and the sound he made was low, raw and entirely unlike the controlled man who had sat down on the cot.
For several seconds, neither of them moved.
June’s heart pounded against his chest. His hands remained on her: one at her hip, the other still wrapped around the wrist she had offered him. A thin line of blood had dried across the base of his thumb.
Luca raised that wrist to his mouth again.
Not to drink.
He pressed his lips over the closing punctures and held them there while their breathing slowed and the carriage house settled around them. He released her. Sat back. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. A gesture so slight it barely qualified as movement.
June pulled her wrist back. The punctures were already closing.
Two neat holes, side by side, smaller than they had any right to be.
She reached for an alcohol pad and wiped the site.
The sting was negligible. She capped the pad, dropped it in the bin, and went back to cleaning up, the last sixty seconds filed away as a procedural step she’d simply forgotten to document.
The carriage house held its quiet. The lamp buzzed.
The splinter sat on the metal tray. Luca’s shoulder was almost closed, the wound reduced to a thin pink line that would be gone by morning, and the blood on his chest had dried to a dark map that nobody had bothered to wipe away because wiping it would have required acknowledging it, and some things were better carried than discussed.
Neither of them said anything about the wrist. The quiet between them carried its own charge. Not the empty kind. The kind that was full of things that had been exchanged without being named and naming them would have cost more than the exchange had.
Then, because neither of them had ever been good at leaving a charge unspent, June found the last inch of space between them and kissed him: soft, unhurried, nothing like the two before it, the kind of kiss that came after wanting had already been answered and only tenderness was left to say.
Luca’s hand came up to the back of her neck, careful of nothing but her, and for a moment the carriage house held only that: warmth, and the sound of the lamp, and two people who had run out of reasons to pretend otherwise.
June finished cleaning up. The kit closed with a soft click.
Marcus was gone. He’d stepped out at some point during the procedure, the door closed behind him, the sound lost under the work.
She didn’t remember hearing it. Didn’t matter.
The carriage house was theirs now. The lamp.
The tray. The splinter. The quiet that followed when something necessary had been done and the doing of it had changed the air between two people in ways that would keep until someone decided to address them.