Chapter 11 #2
It’s not unusual that I stop paying my best attention when there’s a bare, soapy breasts in front of me, but usually I’ve got enough context clues to gather what’s going on. She seems agitated, her head down, shoulders raised up by her ears.
She’s crying and talking to me, and her tits are covered in soap suds, and I didn’t think it was possible that this would feel like a nightmare. There’s some emotional whiplash happening. Is she . . . anticipating some kind of fallout from me?
“Hey, hey. Slow down. You did good,” I interrupt, and press a kiss to the back of her head, inhaling the scent of her hair. She stammers, pivoting defensively.
“But your rules—”
“Are not more important than you.”
She wraps her arms around herself, clearly unconvinced.
I grimace, thinking of the leads she followed with Steel before, wondering if he made her fight for every opportunity to work with him.
It makes me regret refusing her before, even if I had my reasons at the time.
I don’t want her to think I’m just another obstacle she needs to hurdle, that she needs to prove herself to me.
“It went badly because of me.” She sniffles. “Clayton is right, I should just leave this stuff to him. I’m just walking right into danger. And I put you in danger! This is why everyone thinks I’m just this perpetual damsel—”
“Hey, don’t talk like that,” I say, partly a knee-jerk reaction to hearing her say Steel could be right about anything, but I’ve also never seen how deep her self-doubt goes.
I hold her a little closer, stroking her shoulder for comfort.
“We got out of there with barely a scratch, thanks to you. Don’t beat yourself up over this. Forget Clayton.”
I have to cut myself off before I start calling him names. I’m sure she doesn’t want to hear whatever vitriol I have reserved for him. It’s hard to put my anger toward him aside when she’s tangled up within it.
She shakes her head a little, droplets clinging to her downcast eyelashes. “How can I?”
Her gaze returns to the window, and her thoughts are clearly miles away as her voice grows thick with emotion. Lacey’s expression makes it clear she’s still processing the realization she had back there, even as she tries to conceal it.
“I can’t believe it’s been that long.” She sniffles again, pulling the curtain up on our silence. “I feel like an idiot.”
“You’re not an idiot. Anyone would fall for a guy with a hero complex and a penthouse apartment.”
She gives a small laugh in response, more of a hiccup. Her wan smile doesn’t fully reach her eyes. It tears something in me.
With the hot shower raining down on us, I nearly miss the tear that slips out across her cheek, merging with other droplets. My breath stills in my chest as I listen hard for hers.
I always want to kiss her. This moment is no different, hazardous grime notwithstanding. I don’t know how to while her ex’s presence is wedged between us.
I waffle on telling her she should repay him the favor by having the world’s most public breakup, but I don’t want to make her feel like I’m just trying to steer her into what I want.
I know I have a terrible habit of back-seat driving whenever Maestro goes out somewhere.
But it’s not about Steel or me. It’s about her.
“Hey, Lacey.”
“Hmm?”
“Look at me.”
Her head rolls back on my shoulder as she meets my eye over hers. The makeup around her eyes is smudged, smearing bluish black over her cheeks.
“You did so good today. You did everything right.”
Her expression softens in surprise, before her eyes dart to the side. “You mean it?”
“I do. Every time we meet, you impress me in a new, different way.”
Lacey smiles half-heartedly. She twists in my grasp and reaches up the sides of my face, raking my wet hair back from my eyes. She presses a kiss to my mouth, and my grip on her tenses.
My mind goes blissfully blank for a moment as she leans back against me and my cock presses against her ass. I’m achingly hard before I can try to pretend that I could play it cool around her and not be completely, obviously horny.
Really, here in the shower, it was futile. I didn’t stand a chance. My tip wedges just under the crux of her thighs, and I bite hard at the inside of my cheek to hold onto some shred of sanity.
Lacey takes the bar of soap back from me, continuing to lather it between her hands, giving me an endless supply of suds to rake over her body. Taking handfuls of her hips, her stomach, every bit of her spills back out of my grasp at the slightest squeeze.
“I don’t know if you realize what you did to me back there.”
“What?” Her soft laugh turns into a sound of pleasure as my hands sweep up her stomach to cup her tits, unimaginably soft and heavy; my thumb circles around the point of her nipple, sending her body arching further into my touch.
“Every piece of clothing you took off, God. My heart was gonna tear in half.”
The too-soft flesh of her nipple becomes a hardened bud under my palm. Her brows draw together as I roll that tight peak idly between my fingers. I want her to know I’ll be here for her, for whatever she needs.
Pressing a kiss to her jawline, I murmur, “Let me make you feel good.”
She gives a throaty little sound, a hitch in her breath. She bites her lip and nods.
I grab her hips, pulling her closer against me for the slightest relief to the neediness radiating through my body. I rock my hips slowly, feeling the slick friction of my cock between her thighs. The temptation to just bend her over now makes my cock twitch with need.
“Don’t laugh at me if I come just from touching you,” I hum against her shoulder, not entirely joking. I’m doing my best here, truly.
She leans back against me to steady herself, but I can see the trust in her expression. “Wh-at?”
“It’s a problem. Every time I touch myself, I’m thinking about what I could do with you if I could have just another minute . . .” I trail off, wondering which of those things I might be able to accomplish right now. “It’s becoming deranged and pav—fuck, Pavlovian.”
My tip grazes between her folds, finding the heat of her center. It feels so good, my teeth gnash together mid-sentence. I don’t know how I’m going to make it out of this alive.
There’s a built-in ledge made of the same tile the shower wall is, and as I skim down the back of her leg, it seems all too easy to hook two fingers under her knee and bring her foot up onto it. She lets me do it, watching with a timid curiosity. “Give me a moment just to look at you.”
I take in her reflection against the large one-way window looking out across the city as I spread her legs, her glistening, pink, wet pussy fully on display for me.
I rinse the suds from my hand, and drag a finger through her folds, parting them. I tease up and down, tracing over her clit, watching her reflection for every little reaction. Her mouth forms a pretty little o in the window as I ease a finger inside her, finding her hot and wet and tight.
“Oh, God, yes, just like that,” she gasps. I draw it out again, dragging the length of my finger purposefully against her clit.
She doesn’t need to tell me twice. I mean, she could, because I’m not against hearing her voice so utterly decadent with pleasure. With a few more strokes, my hand is slick enough to push a second finger in.
“Ellis,” she warns, her voice somewhere between a whimper and a moan, clutching her free hand at whatever she can for support. She grips a handful of my thigh, her nails digging in. It doesn’t feel like pain; it feels like a fucking triumph.
“Lacey,” I breathe back, kissing her neck. “Keep making those fucking sounds.”
I want to see her unraveling against me, gasping and moaning just like that. The little noise she makes each time my fingers curl in deeper is addictive. I could forget everything else and just keep pushing into her, sliding in and out, listening to the way the smallest of moans ride on her breath.
Her leg up on the ledge starts twitching, and her grip on my arm tightens.
Her head rolls back sharp against my shoulder, biting down on her lip against the sensation.
The muscles in my arm are just starting to burn from the repetitive motion, but she’s so clearly enjoying it I push through, ignoring it.
My cock, pressed hard against her ass, throbs with so much need it borders on pain.
I’m lost to everything else, the world narrowing down to just this, just her.
Her legs are quivering, her back arched, her gasps hitching higher and higher. She cries out as her muscles twitch and contract around my fingers. Her knees start to buckle, and I have to withdraw my fingers to support her.
“A-actually, maybe I can’t do that standing up,” she pants, releasing her grip on me, clutching at the wall as she slides down the tile to sit on the ledge. She makes a little noise and squeezes her eyes shut when I lick her wetness off one of my fingers, just to remember what she tastes like.
I grin at her, as she blinks up at me, looking a little dazed and flushed.
“That was”—her eyes fall just below my navel—“something else,” she finishes slowly, without taking her eyes off my dick.
The surprise on her face is a little gratifying when she stills and takes what I think is an appreciative look at my cock, still hard and ready. I glance up just in time to catch her cheeks redden, somehow, even more than before. She stares, attention utterly fixed on it.
There’s an intimacy in this moment I wouldn’t dare break, but I’m glad of the heated eyeing. There’s a little show off in me that is pleased she finds me attractive. I resist the urge to flex or preen, at least most of it.
Her dark brown eyes take a moment to meet mine.