Chapter 22 #2
I couldn't say it. My throat had locked around the words and the key was buried somewhere in a decade of damage I hadn't finished excavating. But my mouth worked. My hands worked. My body had a vocabulary my voice didn't, and right now it was the only language I had.
I kissed him deeper. Slower. Pulled his bottom lip between my teeth and felt him groan. His hands tightened on my waist, fingers pressing into the soft fabric of my sweats, and I walked him backward until his legs hit the couch and he sat down hard with me straddling his lap.
I could feel him immediately. Hard against me through the layers of denim and cotton, thick and insistent, and I rolled my hips against the ridge of him and swallowed the sound he made.
"Carrie—"
"Don't talk."
"But—"
"Please." I pressed my forehead against his. "Let me show you."
He understood. I watched it happen behind his eyes, the recognition of what I was doing, what this was. Not heat. Not desperation. An answer delivered the only way I knew how.
His hands slid up under my shirt, warm on bare skin, and I pulled the shirt over my head.
No bra underneath. His eyes dropped to my breasts and his breath left him in a rush that I felt against my skin.
He cupped them, thumbs sweeping over my nipples, and they hardened under his touch, tight and aching.
He leaned forward and took one in his mouth, tongue circling, sucking gently, and the pull of it sent a hot line straight down to where I was already soaked and pressing against him.
I pulled his hoodie off. Put my hands on his chest, feeling the warmth, the heartbeat going hard and fast under my palms. Leaned down and kissed his neck, his collarbone, the hollow of his throat where his pulse jumped.
"Carrie," he breathed against my breast. Not a question. A prayer.
I lifted up. He helped me with my sweats, hooking his thumbs in the waistband, peeling them down along with my underwear.
The air hit my bare skin and I shivered, but his hands were on my thighs immediately, warm and steadying.
His eyes traveled down my body with a hunger that had worship mixed into it, stopping where I was bare and glistening.
"Jesus," he muttered, his thumb tracing the crease of my thigh, close but not touching where I needed him. "You're so wet."
"For you. Only for you."
His jeans were next. I worked the button, the zipper, and he lifted his hips so I could drag everything down.
His cock sprang free, hard and flushed, and the sight of him, thick and ready, made my stomach clench with anticipation.
I wrapped my hand around him, felt him pulse against my palm, and stroked slowly from base to tip.
He groaned, his head falling back against the couch, his hands gripping my thighs hard enough to bruise.
When I sank down onto him, slowly, the stretch of him filling me made us both gasp.
I took him inch by inch, my body opening around him, slick and tight, the fullness building until I'd taken all of him and we were flush.
I could feel every inch of him inside me, thick and pulsing, and the sensation was so consuming that my thoughts went white.
I kept my eyes on his. Watched his jaw tighten. Watched his lips part around a breath that shook. Watched him watch me, and the intimacy of that unbroken gaze, both of us completely bare with him buried inside me, was more naked than any of the undressing had been.
I moved. Slow. Deliberate. Not chasing anything. Not racing toward a finish. Each roll of my hips was a sentence I couldn't speak, each press of my body against his was a word I was writing directly onto his skin.
I love you. I love you. I love you.
Over and over, with my body, while my voice stayed silent.
He gripped my hips. Not controlling. Holding on. His eyes never left mine and I could see him reading it, reading every word I was writing, and his expression cracked open in a way I'd never seen, raw and grateful and wrecked.
"I know," he whispered. "I can feel it."
A sound escaped me. Not a moan. Something closer to a sob, surprised out of me by the relief of being understood without having to perform the understanding.
He pulled me closer. Chest to chest. Heartbeat to heartbeat.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and moved against him, changing the angle so that every roll of my hips dragged my clit against the hard plane of his stomach, and the friction sent sparks up my spine.
His cock hit deep at this angle, deeper than before, pressing against a spot inside me that made my walls grip him tighter with every stroke.
The pleasure built slow and heavy, gathering low in my belly in warm, rolling waves. Not the urgent, frantic kind from the first time. This was something else. Something that lived deeper, that came from a place I didn't usually let anyone touch.
His hands moved to my face. Tilted it up. Made me look at him.
"Stay with me," he said. "Right here. Eyes on me."
I stayed. Eyes on his. Moving together in a rhythm that had nothing to do with performance and everything to do with what I was too afraid to say out loud.
His thumb traced my cheekbone. My fingers curled into his hair.
I could feel the orgasm building, my inner walls starting to flutter around him, my clit swollen and throbbing against the friction of his body.
"I'm close," I breathed.
"I know. I can feel you tightening."
He thrust up into me, slow and deep, matching my rhythm, and the added depth hit me somewhere electric.
I cried out. My walls clamped around him and the orgasm crested, not crashing but unfurling, rolling through me in long, liquid waves that pulsed and released and pulsed again while I held his gaze and let him see everything.
Every feeling. Every word I couldn't say.
Every terrified, grateful, desperate piece of what I felt for him, written across my face while my body shook around his cock.
"God," he groaned. "The way you feel. Carrie."
He followed. I felt him swell inside me, felt the hot pulse of him letting go, his hips driving up once, twice, his fingers digging into my hips as he buried himself deep and came with my name on his lips.
The warmth of him filling me, the intimacy of feeling him come apart inside my body while looking me in the eye, was the closest I'd ever been to another human being.
We stayed tangled together on the couch. His cock still inside me, softening slowly. His arms around me. My face against his neck. Both of us breathing like we'd just survived something.
"I should go," he said eventually. Quieter now. Reluctant. "Frank's sponsor will drop him back by midnight."
"I know."
He kissed my hair. My temple. The corner of my mouth.
"You don't have to say it," he said against my lips. "Not until you're ready."
My eyes burned. I nodded. Pressed my face harder into his neck and breathed him in and held on for a few more seconds than either of us had.
Then he got dressed. Gathered his things. Moved to the door slowly, nothing like the autopilot walk from before. He turned in the doorway.
"Goodnight, Carrie."
"Goodnight."
His smile was still tired. But it wasn't sad anymore.
The door closed. His footsteps faded. The elevator dinged.
I sat on the couch where he'd been, still warm from his body, and pulled my knees to my chest. The tears came, because of course they did. But they were different this time. Not the tears of a woman who couldn't say it. The tears of a woman who'd said it in every way she could and been heard.
He loved me. After everything. Despite everything.
And I loved him back. My body had just told him so in the only language I had, and he'd listened with his whole self, and when I couldn't give him the words he'd said "you don't have to" like it was simple.
Like loving someone who couldn't say it back was something he was willing to do for as long as it took.
The three words still sat in my chest. But they felt different now. Less like a letter going nowhere and more like something working its way toward the surface, gathering courage, learning the route.
I'd get there.
I'd get there because he was worth the terrifying act of arriving.