Chapter 19 #3
He kissed me then—not on the mouth, but in the hollow of my throat.
Each one deliberate, lingering, as if he committed every inch of my skin to memory.
When his mouth found my breast, everything slowed further.
His tongue traced warm and wet along the underside, following the curve upward until he reached the nipple and drew it between his lips with a tenderness that made my ribs ache.
No suction at first.
Just heat and the lightest graze of teeth. Enough pressure to lift my back off the cushion in a silent, involuntary plea.
A sound slipped out of me—half sigh, half something broken.
He answered with a low murmur.
Only then did he suck—gently, slowly—drawing the peak deeper into the wet heat of his mouth while his tongue worked in unhurried circles.
The sensation built in layers, warm and liquid and relentless, until my fingers threaded through his hair, cradling his head against me as if I couldn’t bear for him to stop.
He shifted to the other breast and gave it the same slow, aching attention while his free hand drifted lower, palm flat against my stomach, fingers spread wide, learning every inch.
When he reached the crease of my thigh, he paused—thumb brushing the sensitive line where leg met hip—then moved inward.
Not inside. Not yet.
Just stroking the outer lips with barely any pressure, parting them enough to discover how wet I’d already become. His fingers glided through the slickness, slow and deliberate, spreading it upward until he found my clit and circled once. Twice. Feather-light. Then pulled away.
Building without rushing.
Giving without taking.
My hips lifted on their own, chasing his hand.
I caught his smile against my breast—small, private—and then he kissed his way down. The trembling skin of my stomach. Each kiss left a damp impression that the cool morning air found seconds later. When he settled between my thighs, he didn’t rush that, either.
He looked up at me first. Eyes dark, pupils wide, and something on his face I’d never seen directed at me before. Not from anyone. It looked terrifyingly close to reverence as he pressed a slow, open-mouthed kiss to the top of my mound.
Drifting lower, the flat of his tongue dragged up the full length of me—warm, savoring, deliberate—ending with the softest flick over my clit that made my thighs shake.
Again.
Slower.
Deeper.
Until I trembled, hips rolling in small, helpless waves, fingers twisted in the blanket beneath me.
He slid two fingers inside and curled them upward in a languid, beckoning motion while his tongue kept its rhythm: long, luxurious strokes; soft circles; gentle suction that built and layered until the pleasure became warm and profound, spreading through every part of me.
When I came, it was quiet, devastatingly quiet.
A long, shuddering exhale. Thighs clamping around his shoulders as wave after slow wave moved through me—gentle, endless.
He stayed with me through all of it. Tongue softening. Fingers going still but never leaving, holding me there until I lay boneless and shaking and completely taken apart.
Only then did he move back up my body, kissing every flushed stretch of skin until his mouth found mine.
The kiss tasted like salt and me and him.
He settled between my thighs, hard and heavy against my entrance, but he didn’t push in.
He rocked instead. Slow, slick glides along my folds, coating himself, letting the head of his cock nudge my clit with every pass until I whimpered into his mouth and gripped his shoulders hard enough to leave crescents in his skin.
“Sloane.” My name against my lips. Barely a sound. “Let me have all of you.”
I wrapped my legs around his hips, heels pressing into the small of his back.
“Yes.”
He entered me in one long, slow motion—inch by inch—until he sat so deep inside me I registered it somewhere dangerously close to my heart.
We both went still, breathing the same air, foreheads pressed together.
The intimacy of it—unhurried, unguarded, eyes open—terrified me more than anything waiting outside those walls.
Then he moved.
Deep, unhurried rolls of his hips that dragged every inch of him against every inch of me. His pubic bone ground gently against my clit with each circle, rebuilding all that warmth, all that aching pressure, from nothing.
His hands cradled my face.
Our eyes remained open, locked together, neither of us hiding.
He existed everywhere. Inside me. Around me. In the hitch of his breath every time I tightened around him. In the way his thumbs caught the tears still sliding from the corners of my eyes. In the way he said my name—quiet, broken, reverent—like it carried the only meaning left in this ruined world.
When it crested this time, it pulled us both under.
My body arched. My walls fluttered around him in long, liquid contractions I couldn’t control and didn’t want to.
He buried his face in my neck, hips pressing deep and holding there as he came inside me—hot and endless—groaning my name against my throat like it tore free from somewhere he’d tried to keep locked.
We stayed tangled together long after. Hearts hammering against each other. Skin damp. His weight on me solid and real and warm—an anchor I hadn’t known I needed until I had it.
He kissed the corner of my eye.
The pulse in my throat.
Then, so quiet I almost missed it:
“I could stay in this moment forever.”
I turned my face into his. My lips brushed the corner of his mouth.
“Me too,” I breathed.
He answered with his whole body. Arms tightening. Hips shifting once more in the gentlest aftershock. His mouth finding mine in a kiss so slow and deep that time stopped mattering entirely.
For a few minutes, the world outside didn’t exist.
No dead, no empty radio frequencies, or things in the dark pressing against doors and windows. Just his heartbeat against mine and our breathing settling into the same rhythm—synchronized, unhurried, like two people who’d earned the right to be still.
Then, somewhere deep in the building, a metal door slammed.
The sound echoed through the hallway and bounced off every hard surface, sharp and unmistakable.
We both went rigid.
Callan lifted his head slowly. Every muscle in his body turned to iron against mine. His eyes locked on the office door, listening.
Silence.
Then—faintly—a scraping sound. Something dragging across the floor.
“Tell me,” he said quietly, his voice completely different now, every trace of softness stripped clean, “that the building settled.”
My heart hammered for an entirely new reason.
“I really wish I could.”