Chapter 14 #4
He licks me again. Long. Slow. The flat of his tongue moves up and across me, ending with the point of it where I am wet and aching.
He stays there, working me with his tongue, grinding in and further in yet, while his hands hold my hips off the bed, one of his thumbs is doing something to me that I’m going to think about every time I see his hands for the rest of my life.
I come for him a second time, only this time it catches me off-guard.
It comes up from somewhere I didn’t know was in me, urgent and violent.
I cry into the pillow and my legs shake, and he holds my hips up because they cannot hold themselves up, his mouth on me through every shudder.
He does not stop until I am limp against the quilt and breathing in ragged gasps, and saying his name into the pillow in a voice I don’t recognize as my own.
He brings me down, soft and reverent.
He kisses the small of my back. He kisses each of the small dimples above the curve of my ass.
He kisses up my spine, one vertebra at a time.
He kisses my shoulder blade, the side of my neck where my hair is stuck to my sweat-damp skin.
He rolls me carefully onto my side and gathers me against his front, fully dressed against my bare skin, and he holds me there while I shake.
“There you are,” he says softly.
I can’t speak for a minute. If I tried, it would all be gobbledygook.
He waits, his hand stroking my hair, which in itself undoes me further.
When I can speak, my voice is wrecked.
“Let me touch you,” I croak.
“Foxglove…”
“Please.”
“Iris.”
“Still please. Just…let me. I don’t care if it’s only my hand. I want to. I need to touch you.”
A long beat.
“All right.”
He shifts. He’s still dressed, the shirt unbuttoned at the throat, the sleeves rolled, and his trousers are still on him. I reach for the front of his fly and my hand is shaking. He helps me. He undoes the button, and guides my hand inside the fabric, and I discover he’s going commando.
I gasp when my palm meets his cock. He’s hard, so much so that it must be painful, the skin velvet soft and hot to touch. I give it a tight, eager squeeze and a sound falls from his mouth, more animal than man.
I stroke him once. Slow, the way he has been showing me he likes things slow.
He shudders, his breath a gasp.
My lord, he is even more beautiful like this. How badly I want to fucking undo him until he’s completely unraveled. Just to see what that’s like.
I stroke him again, slower, and his forehead drops against my shoulder.
His hand goes to my hip and grips hard, and I am starting a third stroke when he makes the sound again and his hips jerk against my hand and he is coming, hot and quick and wet against my palm, wrist, and the blanket underneath.
He breathes against my throat for a long beat.
“Christ, Iris.”
I am too pleased with myself to speak, even if my hand is a little sticky now with his cum.
“I’m sorry,” he goes on, breath ragged. “I…fuck.”
“Don’t be sorry,” I tell him, grinning. I can’t help myself.
“I wanted to last longer than that for you.”
“I have just been done twice in twenty minutes. Do you think I care?”
He laughs. The laugh is low and rough and a little embarrassed and it makes me smile even more.
Eventually, he gets up on slightly unsteady feet and goes to a small basin on the dresser and he wets a cloth. He comes back. He cleans me, then himself, then the bed, taking his time. I watch him as he does this, the way he kind of can’t believe what had just happened.
Then he undresses, removing his shirt, pulling down the rest of his trousers. His dick hangs heavy and wet between his legs, though it twitches slightly under my gawking.
“You could have gotten undressed earlier, you know.” I say, tearing my eyes away, as if I didn’t just give him a hand job.
He just gets into the bed beside me before I can stare any further.
He pulls the heavy quilt up over both of us and tucks me against his side with my head on his chest and his arm under my shoulders, and I am warm and wrung out and safe.
Or, at least, the safest I’ve felt in a long time, which is all sorts of ironic that I don’t want to unpack right now.
“Alasdair?” I ask. I shouldn’t, but I do.
“Aye.”
“Did you mean it? About the things I don’t know about you.”
“I meant it.”
I swallow hard. “Are they bad things?”
A long beat.
“They are what they are, foxglove. I would rather you sleep, tonight, and ask me tomorrow.”
I should sit up. I should ask him now and threaten to leave if he doesn’t.
The part of me that is sensible should win, but that part hasn’t won in a long-ass time.
And like every time before when I feel the questions rising, a fog seems to sweep in over my brain, clouding it into a haze, though I suppose that could also be the aftermath of the orgasms.
I close my eyes against his chest. The fire is low and orange, the candles are burning down. The castle is quiet around us.
You could be sleeping with a murderer, I think to myself. Stay vigilant.
But I drift off to sleep instead, and just hope I’ll be alive in the morning.