16. Jenna #2
“Jenna.” There’s a note in it like he’s almost pained, and I think he might be even more wrecked than I am right now.
“Don’t stop,” I gasp, and he doesn’t—not even to answer. He just lets his mouth trail down my body, teeth grazing over skin until he finds my breast again, sucking hard enough that I feel every nerve ending light up at once.
It’s not smooth. It’s not even dignified.
Nothing in me knows what to do with how much I want him.
I come so hard I bite my own lip and ride it out tangled in his arms, the sunlight making weird soft halos in my vision, him murmuring things I can’t understand but know must be filthy.
I’m still trembling when he pulls me onto his lap, my back to his chest, strong hands gripping my thighs and spreading me open like he wants to see all of it, every aftershock, the parts of me that never get to exist except for the moment before thinking starts again.
He does nothing slow this time, nothing tentative.
The way he keeps me open on his lap, the hand at my core—he’s not even pretending we’re equals at this; he’s holding me there like he expects to be responsible for whatever happens next.
“You have no idea the shit you do to me,” he growls, and I barely recognize the voice because Dominic never sounds out of control, not even when he’s making me come so hard I see through time.
I try to protest—some stuttering denial about how I’m not doing anything, it’s just him, it’s always him—but all that comes out is a wordless sound, embarrassingly high and sharp. He laughs, a low, thrilled sound against my hair, and bites my neck so hard I shudder with it.
“You’re fucking spectacular,” he whispers, and moves his free hand up under the shirt, palming my breast from behind, kneading the flesh as if he can’t decide if he wants to bruise it or worship it.
He works me with both hands, talking now, filthy and reverent, telling me in detail how wet I am, how perfect, how he wants to keep me just like this all day, and when he slides his cock against me—through, not in, an exquisite, teasing torment—I almost lose my composure entirely.
Never mind the math. Never mind inventory.
I want and I want and I want, and there’s no protocol for what happens to me if he keeps doing this.
There’s just the sharp, insistent ache and the pleasure that expands in layers, overlapping and multiplying until my limbs are useless and all there is, is the way he wants me, holds me, keeps me.
He shifts me forward a notch on his lap and lines himself up, the head of his cock pressed right where I want him most. He keeps me steady with one arm across my stomach, the other hand petting over my thigh as though trying to focus me back in.
“Jen,” he says, breath ragged against my ear. “You good?”
“Yes. Fuck, yes.” My nails dig half-moons into his tattooed forearm and I don’t even try to apologize for it. “Get inside me. Now. Please.”
He groans—long and pained—then he pushes in, one solid, gliding stroke that fills every empty inch of me.
For a second I think I might come again just from the stretch, from the way this man fits me so perfectly it feels like a trick. The world shrinks to the size of him inside me and the bed under us, and nothing else matters or will ever matter again.
He fucks me in a rhythm so deep and controlled it’s almost punishment.
Every slow push forward is a reward, every drag back a warning that if I stop holding onto him I’ll lose this extraordinary convergence of want and everything I’d been trying not to feel.
He holds me tight to him, pace increasing with every slick, uncontrollable grind, until nothing in the universe exists except his voice in my ear and his cock inside me, the pleasure of it so high and sharp I can’t remember why I ever cared about anything else.
I come again, harder, breaking apart in his arms, and he follows right after, holding me so close it’s a miracle the building doesn’t crash down around us.
For a long time we just sit there, glued together in sweat and sunlight, my body draped over his, both of us shaking.
His arms wrap around me, tight, his breath hot in my ear, keeping me held long after it’s strictly necessary.
I’m the first to move. I roll off his lap and flop onto the pillow, which smells like him, and I yank the covers up over my face, mortified and grinning and so wrung out I couldn’t stand if I tried. I feel his gaze before I hear his laugh—low, self-satisfied, but somehow not unkind.
He tugs the sheet down and kisses the tip of my nose, which—because he’s a bastard—is too gentle, too much like being liked. I want to bite him. Instead, I feign outrage.
“I still hate you,” I mumble.
He just props himself up on one elbow, grinning wickedly. “I know.”
He’s too pleased with himself. There’s no other way to describe it. I can feel it rolling off him, smug and lazy and satisfied, and for once I’m not sure whether I want to bask in it or start a second round of hostilities for the sheer principle.
We lie there for a while—him absently tracing circles on my thigh, me pretending not to enjoy it—but eventually the silence can’t hold and he nudges me lightly. “Hey, you want breakfast? Or do you want to stay right here and see how many times I can make you come in the next two hours?”
“I have never wanted to stay in bed so much in my life,” I admit.
“We’ll call it a controlled experiment,” he says, rolling me back beneath him. “Repeatability. Audit trail. Conclusions. Very professional stuff. You’ll hate me. I’ll love you. And we’ll write a thesis on how fucking good that line between the two feels when I’m balls deep inside you.”
I giggle, and it sounds so foreign coming out of me, but I don’t care. I let him kiss me, and I let the morning stretch out lazy and loose and impossible.
Late morning, I’m wrapped in one of his white shirts with the cuffs turned up, poking through his kitchen for espresso pods while he makes eggs. He moves around the kitchen like a man who’s cooked for himself his whole life—which doesn’t fit anything I thought I knew about him.
His phone goes off on the counter. The screen says DUSTY, with a picture of a laughing man in a Mets cap.
Dominic answers on the first ring and the voice that comes out of him is one I have never heard in ten years of boardrooms and bars and one hotel suite in Tokyo.
“Hey, you. No—I know. I know. I’m not in Chicago, that’s why.
. . Because I’m in New York, smart guy. .
. . Yes. Yes. I watched it. The ending was garbage and the dinosaur documentary was better, and tell your friend he still owes me five dollars.
” A pause, and then Dominic laughs in a way that surprises me.
It’s so real and helpless, and bubbles up from somewhere I’ve never been given access to.
“You’re a menace. . . . OK. . . . I love you too.
I don’t think so. How about next Sunday?
I—” He stops. His eyes come up and find mine across the island. “Hang on, Dusty.”
He lowers the phone. Looks at me for a long, bare moment, spatula still in one hand, and I watch a man stand in a doorway inside himself and decide whether to hold it open.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
“How do you feel about driving to Connecticut with me?” he asks.
“Today?”
“Yeah. It’s like, fifty minutes.”
“What’s in Connecticut?”
He grins. “My family. Sunday dinner. We can fly home afterward.”
I balk. “Your family? I . . . I don’t know . . . I—” I clamp my mouth shut, immediately breaking out in a cold sweat.
Dominic just smiles like he understands and turns his attention back to his caller. “Next week, buddy. I know what I said. But something important—”
“I’ll go,” I say quickly—so quickly my heart is in my throat and I still haven’t consciously made the decision, but he’s watching me and I want to be in this with him, so I just repeat, “I’ll go.” And this time I mean it.
For a second he looks kind of wrecked, like maybe he expected me to take it back and run. But then he presses the phone back to his ear. “She’s in, Dusty.”
I hear a whoop from the other end, a voice with the same raucous energy as Dominic, less polished and twice as gleeful.
Dominic holds the phone out so I can hear Dusty say, “Is she hot?” and Dominic, without missing a beat, says in a deadpan, “Dusty, you have a girlfriend who can read lips—don’t even try it.” Dusty lets out a cackle and disconnects.
Dominic clicks the phone off and sets it aside, then leans both hands on the island to regard me. “You sure? No one will judge if you want to bail.”
“I’m not afraid of your family, Dominic.”
He grins. “Imagine being in a room with about thirty different versions of me.”
I think about it. “Well, OK. Now I’m terrified.”