Chapter 4 #2
I let go of her wrists. Reached behind her, unclasped her bra, and watched it fall.
And then I put my hands on her. Both of them.
Ran them from her shoulders down over her breasts, her ribs, her waist, her hips, learning the landscape of her with my palms. Feeling the heat of her skin, the give of her flesh, the way she trembled under my touch.
I took my time. I'd spent years being a man in control and I was going to use every bit of that patience now, because she needed to feel what I saw when I looked at her, and the only way I knew how to say it was with my hands.
She reached for my shirt and I let her pull it over my head.
Her fingers traced the scars across my chest, the ones I'd stopped seeing years ago, and the concentration on her face while she mapped them made my heart do something painful.
She wasn't performing. She wasn't trying to be sexy.
She was just... touching me. Learning me the way I was learning her. And it was undoing me completely.
I walked her backward to the bed and laid her down. I stood over her for a second, just looking, and the sight of her spread out on my sheets and her body open and waiting made my hands shake.
I undid her jeans. Pulled them down her legs, her underwear with them, and she let me.
No covering up, no turning away. She was watching my face, reading what was there, and whatever she was finding was doing something to the uncertainty because it was fading.
Slowly. Being replaced by something hotter and braver.
I undressed. Her eyes tracked down my body and back up and I saw her swallow, saw her pupils blow wide, and the naked want on her face was the most honest thing anyone had ever given me.
I lowered myself over her. Skin against skin. The shock of the contact ran through both of us and she arched up into me, instinctive, pressing her softness against the hard planes of my body. The sound she made was quiet and involuntary and it burned through me like a current.
I kissed her throat. The hollow at the base of it, I kissed her collarbone, her shoulder, and the top of her breast. I took my time working down her body, my mouth and my hands learning every curve, every soft place she'd tried to hide from me.
The underside of her breast where the skin was impossibly soft.
The swell of her belly where she tensed until I pressed my lips there and felt her relax under my mouth.
The inside of her thigh where her skin was warm and she shivered when my stubble brushed against it.
I felt her fingers thread into my hair when my mouth reached the center of her. Her thighs tensed around my head and I pressed them open, gentle, held them there, and put my mouth on her properly.
She arched off the bed. Her fingers tightened in my hair and a sound came out of her that I wanted to hear for the rest of my life, broken, breathless and so raw it made my chest ache.
I worked her slow, deliberate, reading every shift of her hips, every catch in her breathing, learning what made her shake, what made her gasp and what made her say my name like she'd forgotten every other word she knew.
I didn't rush. She was close, I could feel it.
I could feel the trembling in her thighs, the way her breathing had gone shallow and fast, and the way her body was tightening around something that hadn't happened yet.
I brought her to the edge and held her there, my hands on her hips, my mouth gentle and relentless, until she was making sounds that weren't words anymore and her whole body was shaking.
When she came, her back bowed off the bed and her hand pulling my hair hard enough to sting, and I didn't stop until she was gasping, oversensitive, pushing weakly at my shoulders.
I kissed my way back up her body. Her hands found my face, pulled me to her mouth, and she kissed me deep and the sound she made into the kiss was enough to make me lose my mind.
"Angel." My name, ragged, breathless. “Please, I want you now.”
I settled between her thighs, the heat of her against me, and I looked at her face.
"Look at me," I said.
She did. Her eyes, those fierce, devastating eyes, locked on mine, and I pushed into her.
Slow. Inch by inch. Feeling her stretch around me, feeling the heat and the tightness and the way her mouth fell open on a silent breath. Her hands gripped my arms, fingers digging into the muscle, and I watched her face the entire time. Every flicker, every shift, every second of it.
I moved. Deep, deliberate strokes that I felt in every part of my body.
She was wrapped around me, legs around my hips, arms around my shoulders, pulling me closer, pulling me deeper, and the sounds she was making against my neck were undoing all of my self control.
Small, breathless sounds. My name, broken into syllables.
Words that might have been yes or might have been more or might have been nothing at all, just the sound of a woman who'd stopped thinking.
I was forty-three years old and somehow had never had sex that had felt like this.
None of it had been this woman, this body, this specific combination of softness and heat and the way she looked at me like I was the only solid thing in her world.
The way her breath caught every time I pushed deep.
The way her fingers traced the scars on my back, the way her lips found the side of my neck and she whispered don't stop, don't stop against my skin with her voice cracking on it.
I shifted my angle, found the place that made her gasp, and stayed there.
Deliberate. Consistent. Reading her body the way I'd read everything about her since the day she walked through my gate.
She tightened around me and I felt it everywhere, felt her getting close again, felt her body climbing toward something and pulling me with it.
"Let go," I said against her ear. "I've got you."
She came apart. Her whole body seized against mine, her back arching, her nails dragging down my shoulders, and the sound she made was the rawest, most beautiful thing I'd ever heard.
I felt her clench around me in waves and I followed her over, burying my face in her neck, my hands fisted in the sheets, the release tearing through me with a force that whited out everything else.
I held myself over her on shaking arms. Both of us breathing hard, both of us wrecked, her body still pulsing around mine in small aftershocks. Her hand came up and cupped the back of my neck and she pulled me down and kissed me, slow, soft, lazy with the aftermath.
I rolled onto my back and pulled her with me.
She settled against my chest, her head in the hollow of my shoulder, her leg thrown over mine, one hand resting flat over my heart.
I could feel her breathing slow. Feel the weight of her sinking into me as the tension left her body, all of it, every last thread of the fear and the running and the holding on too tight for too long.
She let it go, right there on my chest, and I felt the exact moment she fell asleep.
I lay in the dark with her body warm against mine and her heartbeat tapping against my ribs and I thought about Ryan.
Not with guilt. Not with shame. With something quieter and sadder and more complicated than either.
I've got her. She's safe. And I can’t be sorry anymore.
I pulled her closer. Pressed my mouth to the top of her head. Closed my eyes.
For the first time in six years, the weight on my chest wasn't grief.