35. Evie
EVIE
Briggs grasps the collar of my coat, punishingly slow about the process of undressing me. One button at a time, his knuckles grazing the knit of my sweater and stalling there for an eternity.
He’s breathing like he’s attempting to disarm an explosive device in a dark room.
“Maxwell.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re being weirdly tentative.”
“I’m trying to be careful with you.”
“I noticed.” I fist my hands in the front of his shirt and haul him down until our foreheads knock together. “I didn’t log two thousand miles to be handled like I’m breakable.”
He lets out a rough huff of a laugh against my lips. “I’m trying to do this the right way.”
“You’re trying to do this slowly, and I am roughly thirty seconds away from losing my mind.”
“Evie, baby—”
“I have spent a deeply embarrassing amount of time having my hands on myself while thinking about you,” I tell him, my voice dropping. “So if you could please stop behaving like I’m going to change my mind, that would be appreciated.”
His expression shifts from careful to predatory in a heartbeat, and then his mouth is crashing into mine. He shoves me back until I hit the wall beside the door, hard enough to rattle whatever frames are hanging there. But nothing’s hanging. The walls in this condo are as blank as ever.
Briggs nips my bottom lip, and the thought evaporates into static. The coat and sweater are discarded somewhere in the shuffle. There’s a clatter across the polished concrete, but neither of us spares it a glance.
“Bedroom,” he rasps against my throat.
“Too far.” I slide my hands under his shirt and drag my nails up his back, seeking the heat. The sound he makes at the contact goes straight through me. “Right here is fine.”
He gets me out of my jeans with a frantic speed that has a seam groaning. I manage to pull exactly one leg free before his hand is between my thighs, and whatever coherent sentence I had ready turns into a noise I’ve never made before.
“Christ,” he breathes. “Evie.”
“Don’t sound so pleased with yourself.”
“I’m not.” His fingers move as my head hits the wall. “I’m not pleased. I’m barely holding it together.”
“That desperate?”
“Yes,” he says without a shred of shame, mouth against my jaw. “Absolutely, yeah.”
He works two fingers into me, thumb circling my clit, and my knees stop participating. Then he catches me under the thigh and hitches my leg up around his hip, my back dragging against the wall.
“I need you inside me,” I tell him, “immediately, right now.”
“Give me a second.”
“I’ve given you several.”
“Evie.” He drops his forehead to my shoulder. “I’m serious. Give me a second.”
He gets his belt undone one-handed, fumbling while he works his way there. Once he’s lined himself up properly, he pushes just the tip of himself inside me. And then he stops right there.
His whole body goes rigid against mine, one hand flat on the wall by my head, the other clamped on my thigh hard enough that I know I’ll find marks tomorrow.
“Don’t move,” he says, wrecked. “Don’t—okay, just don’t move.”
“Briggs, are you—”
“I’m about to embarrass myself.” His face is pressed into my neck, jaw tight as he drags air in through his nose. “Just—give me a second. God. Please.”
I have never in my life been more turned on than I am watching this enormous man come apart from one inch of contact. “Look at me.”
He lifts his head. His eyes are dark, and his mouth is open, his face pinched like he’s in actual pain.
“God, you’re so pretty when you’re suffering.”
“I’m going to remember that.” He breathes out shakily, working to get some control back. “I’m going to remember you said that.”
“Are you finished?”
“Give me—” He shuts his eyes. “Okay. Yeah. Okay.”
When he pushes the rest of the way in, I forget every single thing I’ve ever known.
He gets an arm under my thigh to hold me open, driving into me against the wall while I claw at his shoulders. He keeps talking the whole time in that low, ruined voice—there she is, that’s it, let me hear you—and when I come, I do it hard enough that my vision goes white at the edges.
His own release arrives barely four seconds later, a wrecked sound escaping him as he buries his face in my hair, murmuring my name over and over.
Neither of us moves for a long while. When the world finally surfaces, I realize my leg is still anchored over his hip, but I have no plans to relocate it.
“So,” I murmur.
“Don’t you dare.”
“I haven’t said a word yet.”
“But you’re going to.” He’s still panting, chest heaving against mine. “I can practically hear you rehearsing the punchline.”
“Fine, I was merely going to observe that you were remarkably quick.”
“There it is.”
“It wasn’t a complaint. Consider it a compliment.”
“That is definitely not a compliment, pretty girl.”
He chuckles against my neck, a low vibration that makes me shiver, and then he’s hoisting me clean off the floor. I’m still sporting one of my boots when he carries me through to the bedroom, my arms locked tight around his neck.
We collapse into his bed, lamplight cutting through the dark because he refuses to let me kill the lights.
I kick the boot free while he handles the rest of our layers. Then he settles back against the pillows and hauls me on top of him, fisting his hands in my hair. For a long, quiet minute, we don’t do anything but memorize each other’s faces.
“You clinched,” I say.
“We did.”
“That’s very sexy. I want you to know I found that extremely sexy.”
“Yeah?”
“The defensive play more than the pass, actually.” I trace a line down the center of his chest. “You looked like you were going to die, and you did it anyway.”
He pushes my hair back from my face. “I was really hoping you’d come tonight. I think I wanted you there more than I wanted to win.”
My stomach flutters. “You did?”
“Don’t think I could handle another week of silence.” His thumb moves against my cheekbone. “I’ve been missing you so fucking badly.”
I could deflect. There’s a joke somewhere well within reach.
“I drafted you eleven different replies.”
He licks his lips. “Eleven.”
“That’s an approximate number, and I’d like it treated as such.”
“Hmm.” He’s smiling now, slow and pleased. “What did they say?”
“Mostly that the dog picture was a low blow.”
He smirks. “Please. It was just a dog.”
“You knew what you were doing.”
“I sort of knew.” He runs both hands down my sides and settles them on my hips. “Are we talking, or are you going to sit on me?”
“See, this is your problem. No patience.”
“I have been extremely patient. I’ve been such a good boy, haven’t I?”
“You lasted nine seconds earlier.”
“I lasted longer than nine—”
I take his dick in my hand, and he stops talking entirely.
Going slow is a decision I make on purpose. My knees shift wider on either side of his hips, and I hold him steady and sink down an inch at a time. He grips my hips but doesn’t push or rush me. Instead, he watches with his teeth in his lower lip, chest heaving.
“Oh, fuck—”
“Still with me?”
“Barely.”
I get all the way down and stay there, his hands flexing on my hips. “Look at me.”
“Oh, I’m looking.”
“Keep looking.” I start to move, watching his face do things I want to memorize. “Don’t go anywhere.”
He gets it about a second later, his throat working. “I’m right here. I’m staying here, baby. I promise.”
I take my time with it, setting a pace slow enough to be cruel.
He’s got one hand splayed across my lower back and the other on my breast, thumb working over me. “Fuck, look at you.” His hand slides up my ribs and back down. “Taking me so well. You’ve got no idea what you look like right now.”
“Tell me.”
“You want me to narrate?”
“I want you to keep talking.” I roll my hips, and his eyes start to flutter. I catch his jaw in my hand. “No. Eyes on me.”
“Sorry.” He drags them back open. “God, you’re soaked. I can feel it on my thighs.”
Heat climbs into my face, and I don’t bother trying to hide it.
“Come on, pretty girl. Take what you want.” His thumb drags over my nipple, and my whole body clenches around him. “There you go. That’s it. That’s my girl.”
“You sure about that?”
“You’re squeezing me so tight there’s no doubt left that you’re completely mine.”
“Don’t be so cocky.”
“Can you blame me?”
When his hips start to buck up into me on their own, I press a palm flat on his sternum. “Hold still.”
“Baby—”
“You can wait.”
I roll down onto him harder, and he groans out something that isn’t a word.
His head falls back, lip pinned between his teeth before he gives up on holding it in.
“This is too much.”
“You’re a professional athlete.”
“That has nothing to do with anything,” he grits out. When he gets a hand between us, he puts his thumb exactly where I need it, and my whole plan collapses.
“That’s it.” His thumb keeps working, his other hand coming up to hold the back of my neck, pulling me down until we’re breathing the same air. “You’re going to come on my cock, and you’re going to let me watch you do it.”
“I told you to hold still.”
“You did.” He bucks up into me hard, once, and I lose the argument entirely. “I’m not great at following directions.”
While he fucks into me from below, I give up on being in charge of anything. My hands slide off his chest, and I let him take it, hips snapping up into me hard enough that the headboard starts knocking the wall.
Everything’s gone slick between us. I can feel myself starting to clench around him, tight and fluttering, my eyes pinching closed.
His thumb tips my chin up. “You wanted to run this. Look at me while you fall apart.”
That does it. I come with both hands braced back on his chest, his name coming out of me in pieces. He goes over about a half second behind, hips driving up, arms locking around my back and pulling me flat down against him. He holds me there while it works through him.
Neither of us moves for at least five minutes.
“Okay,” he says eventually, into my hair. “Okay. Yeah.”
“Very articulate.”
“Give me a minute, I’ll get there.”
I disentangle myself from him, and he mimics the motion, shifting onto his side. Finally, he reaches out to kill the lamp, then hauls me back against his chest, his arm anchoring me in place across my middle.
I lie in the hush of the room, his breath a slow stream against my neck, and begin tracing an idle line on his forearm with my fingernail. Nothing recognizable at first. Then the ghost of an outline, over and over, the same path until the shape finally settles.
“What are you doing?” he mumbles, his voice wrecked with sleep. “Practicing some undead ritual?”
“It’s nothing.”
“It’s something.”
“Go to sleep.”
He obliges about ninety seconds later. I stay awake, continuing to etch that same curve into his skin while staring at the vast, empty real estate of his walls. I’ve got a few ideas, I think, of exactly how I’m going to fill them.