Chapter 48
Nora
David starts to say something, but I slide off the couch before he can get a full word out and sink to the rug between his knees.
His whole body goes still.
“Nora.”
I look up at him. His hair is mussed from my hands, his shirt open at the throat, his face still carrying the strain of the day in every line except the mouth I just kissed soft.
“Let me,” I say.
Something flickers across his face—surprise, heat, the reflexive protest of a man who is always trying to take care of everyone else first. “You don’t have to—”
“I know.” I put my hands on his thighs, feel the strength there, the immediate tension. “I want to.”
That ends the argument.
He exhales once, hard, and leans back into the couch like surrender is costing him and relieving him in equal measure.
I unfasten his belt slowly, because after a day like this I want it undone with intention. No frantic grabbing, no rough collision into forgetting. I want to take care of him with my mouth. To kneel at his feet and make him feel exactly how loved he is.
His hands tighten on the couch cushion as I open his pants and ease him free.
“Fuck,” he says quietly.
I stroke him first, slow and deliberate, just to enjoy the hitch in his breath. There’s a power in starting from zero—in taking a man who spends every hour at maximum control and dialing him straight into helplessness.
I run my palm from base to tip and thumb over the head, and David’s knuckles go white where he grips his own knees. My mouth waters. I lean in, kiss the flushed crown, and open wider for him.
His body shudders at the first press of my tongue. He tastes salty, alive, and beneath the muted vanilla of his soap is something raw and intimate I’ll crave for the rest of my life.
I go slow, licking and circling, teasing him with the edge of my teeth before taking him deeper. I want him to know what it feels like to be wanted past reason, to be devoured by someone who knows exactly how to make him fall apart.
He moans, low and barely controlled, and the sound makes something inside me clench. I look up at him, hollowing my cheeks as I bob and swirl, and he’s looking down at me like I’m the only thing in the world.
His eyes are dark with wanting, jaw sharp with tension, and I can feel him holding back through pure discipline—because he would rather die than risk hurting me by accident, even now, even with my mouth full of him.
I go deeper. Let him fill my throat, let the heat and pressure make my core go molten. The rhythm is calming and frantic at once, and my body hums with the intention of ruining him tonight, putting a new memory over every old one that tried to take up space.
“Jesus,” he says, and the reverence in it makes me smile around him.
I pull back, tongue swirling, then push down again, taking him all the way until my nose brushes the crisp fabric of his shirt and his whole body goes rigid. I hum, just a little, and his hand snaps out, gripping my hair.
“Fuck, Nora. I’m—”
He tries to warn me, voice shredded and about to come undone, and that’s when I slow down—just long enough to make him look at me.
The moment we lock eyes, I swirl my tongue and he comes with a broken sound, my name on his tongue.
I swallow around him, drinking him down until the quakes of his orgasm subside.
“Nora.”
David pulls me up into his lap and kisses me hard, tasting himself, tasting the need that hasn’t gone away—only found a new channel. I straddle him, my hands in his hair, his hands on my back and my ass and wherever else he can reach.
He slides a hand up under my shirt, palm flat on my spine, and the warmth is so grounding I want to collapse into him—his care, his hunger, the honesty of how much he needs me.
This isn’t just sex right now, though it’s absolutely, wildly that.
It’s an anchor. A lifeline thrown to both of us at the end of a storm.
He nudges my chin up with his thumb and looks at me, pupils still blown wide, mouth curved in something new—not hunger, not control, but the barest suggestion of awe.
“I love you,” he says, quietly, like it’s the only thing left in him.
I open my mouth to say it back, to tell him I love him so badly my bones ache with it, but he’s kissing me again and the words go unspoken but entirely understood.
His hands are everywhere, greedy and gentle as he strips off my shirt, unfastens my bra, and runs his mouth down my neck to where my pulse is going riotous.
He lifts me in a single effortless motion—he’s always so much stronger than I expect, as if restraint is the only thing keeping the world from splintering under his hands—and lays me back on the couch, following me down until he’s hovering above, looking at me like I’m the answer to a question he’s spent a lifetime trying not to ask.
I pull him in and kiss his throat, his jaw, the little scar near his ear I keep meaning to ask about but never do.
He nips at my shoulder, gentle and sharp at once, and his hands are already sliding the waistband of my leggings down, baring more and more of me until I’m almost naked under him and trembling with the intensity of being seen like this—so raw and so hungry for him I think I might burst.
He kisses down my neck, my collarbone, then lower, tongue tracing the line of my breast before he sucks lightly at the tip.
My back arches off the cushions, and he laughs, low and feral, before switching to the other side and making every nerve ending I own stand at attention.
I tangle my hands in his hair, fisting the strands, and he bites down just enough to make me gasp.
“Nora,” he says, voice rough, his mouth not leaving my skin. “My Nora.”
“Yours,” I whisper, tugging him up to look at me. “Always.”
He kisses me so hard I taste blood, and it electrifies something between us.
His hands work down my body, over my ribs, catching on a ticklish spot at my waist, and for a second we’re laughing, bodies shaking together, the air punched through with this wild, aching joy.
Then he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of my underwear and slides them down, baring me completely.
He pulls back just enough to look at me—hair a mess, lips swollen, eyes wide—and his expression nearly brings tears to my eyes again.
It isn’t pure lust, though it’s that too—it’s a hunger that’s somehow both grateful and greedy, like he still can’t believe this is allowed to happen, that I’m real, that he gets to have this, to have me.
I squirm under his gaze, blushing, but don’t look away.
I want him to see me—every inch, every tremor, every wanting part.
He parts my thighs and settles between them, eyes locked on mine, hand warm and strong as he drags his fingers from my knee to my hip, then over, slow and possessive, to the center of me.
I gasp at the touch, the sensation bright and overwhelming after the emotional exhaustion of the day.
He strokes me, patient, gentle, as if learning the contours of my want all over again.
Each pass of his fingers sends a new shock through my body, nerves jangling, and I’m instantly, embarrassingly wet.
He likes that—his mouth curling up, teeth flashing as he leans down to kiss me, then drags his tongue over my neck, down to my breasts, sucking, biting, soothing with a languid rhythm that makes me arch and whimper.
“David, please—”
“Anything,” he growls, and slides two fingers into me at once, the pressure perfect and unhurried.
He pulls back, draws my legs up and apart.
Settles his broad hands under my knees, holding me open.
The light from the kitchen falls dreamy over his shoulders, and for a moment all I see is the silhouette of a man who has survived more than I’ll ever know and still loves with an honesty that terrifies me.
He bends down and licks a stripe up my center, tongue flat and insistent.
I whimper, a greedy sound, full of need with all the armor knocked off.
He’s learned my tells: the pitch of my breath, the way my hands twist in fabric when something is too good to survive, the way I try not to beg and then break anyway.
He lingers, making out with me like there’s nothing more important in the world, slow and filthy and so thorough it’s almost embarrassing.
Almost.
I barely recognize my own voice when it comes out. “More,” I gasp. “Please—God, don’t stop—”
He groans and flicks his tongue over my clit faster, feeding off the way I come apart for him. He slides two, then three fingers inside me, curling them until white bursts behind my eyes, and when I clench around him he moans into me, like it’s his own orgasm riding shotgun on mine.
“David—”
“Come for me, Nora. Let me have it.”
The words, the tone, the pure absolute want in his voice—it pushes me straight to the edge. I come hard, with a violence that leaves my hips jackknifed off the couch and my throat nearly raw from gasping.
For a second there’s only white static, my body nothing but nerve endings and electricity, and when I come back to myself David is holding me, kissing my ribs, my stomach, my thighs, anchoring me back to earth with the steady weight of his hands and the low, broken sounds that escape him every time I shudder or twitch in the aftermath.
He crawls up my body, peppering slow kisses, until he’s face-to-face with me, his mouth slick, his eyes dark and reverent and so unguarded I think, absurdly, that I might come again just from the way he’s looking at me. He tucks sweaty hair behind my ear and brushes his thumb over my cheekbone.
“You’re incredible,” David whispers, voice gone all gravel and wonder.
“So are you,” I say, though my voice sounds faraway, like it’s coming up through six feet of water.
His laugh is quiet, but it rumbles through both of us. “If I don’t physically relocate you, we’re going to end up busted by either canine or child,” he mutters.
“Then we’d better avoid a constitutional crisis,” I whisper against his mouth.
Without warning, he levers me off the couch and into his arms. I swallow my yelp and cling to his neck, legs around his waist.
He smiles—that wrecked, dark, barely there smile that means I’m in danger of getting whatever I want—and turns down the hallway with me locked against him.
My bare legs brush the side of his jeans with every step.
One hand is braced under my thighs, the other spread broad and warm across my back, and the strength of him does something profoundly unfair to my insides.
I kiss his jaw as he carries me to the bedroom, nudging the door wider with his foot before he brings me inside.
The room feels different tonight—familiar, yes, but charged.
Not because it’s new. Because it isn’t. Because after today, after everything that broke and clarified and held, this room feels less like a place I stay and more like a place I belong.
David lowers me onto the bed with impossible care for a man who had his mouth between my thighs thirty seconds ago. The mattress dips under my back. He comes down over me, braced on one forearm, the other hand still cupping my face like he can’t stop touching me long enough to breathe.
I slide my fingers into his hair and pull him close until his forehead rests against mine.
“I love you so much,” I whisper.
His eyes close for a beat. “I love you too. For the rest of my days, Nora.”