Chapter 20 #2
She does, bracing on her elbows first and then lowering to the mattress, and her ribs are already expanding faster, the controlled rhythm giving way to shorter draws.
My hands spread her thighs apart, unhurried, and the scent of her arousal hits me before I'm close enough to taste, warm and salt-sharp and dense with the chemistry of a woman who has been wet since I sat down at her bar.
She is swollen, flushed dark pink, slick enough that the low light catches the sheen on her inner thighs, and the sight of her spread open under my hands pulls through my groin with a heaviness I feel in my cock and my jaw and the backs of my teeth.
I press my mouth to her. The first stroke of my tongue is flat and deliberate, dragging from her entrance to her clit with pressure that jolts her hips off the mattress, and the taste of her floods my mouth, salt and copper-sweet and her, the specific flavor I've been craving since the last time I had her on my tongue.
"Fuck," she breathes. "Andy."
"That's my name. Keep using it."
I settle into her with intent. My lips close around her clit and I suck, firm and measured, then release and trace the swollen nerves with the flat of my tongue in circles that have her fingers digging into the sheets within seconds.
Her clit pulses under my mouth, tight and responsive, and when I press harder and quicken the rhythm she bucks into my face with a force that makes me pin her hips to the mattress with my forearms.
"You absolute bastard." The accusation arrives breathless and strained. "Let me move."
"No."
"Andy, I swear, if you don't let me..."
"You'll what?" I lift my mouth to look up at her, my chin wet, my lips swollen.
She is propped on her elbows, flushed from her chest to her hairline, her hair falling loose around her face.
Her jaw is set but her eyes are wide and her lower lip is swollen from her own teeth, and the war between the defiance in her chin and the surrender in her pupils is the most honest thing on her face. "Finish that sentence."
"I'll kill you."
"After." I lower my mouth again and slide two fingers inside her.
She is hot and tight and the slick grip of her around my fingers sends a jolt straight to my cock where it's pressed into the edge of the mattress.
I curl forward along the ridged spot on her front wall, stroking in rhythm with my tongue on her clit, and the sound she makes is guttural and wrecked and has no language in it, only need.
I hold her there, patient and steady and relentless. She fights me, not because she wants me to stop but because the fight is what gets her there, the struggle between submission and will that drives everything we do to each other.
Her thighs tremble on my shoulders. The wet sounds of my mouth working her fill the room alongside her ragged inhales, and the taste of her intensifies as she gets closer, the salt thickening on my tongue.
Her fingers knot in the sheets and her hips strain under my forearms and the curses give way to pleas and the pleas give way to sounds that aren't words anymore.
"Come for me," I tell her.
"Don't tell me what to do."
"Renata. Come."
She does. The orgasm takes her hard, her body clamping around my fingers in rhythmic contractions I can feel gripping and releasing at my knuckles, her hips bucking under the hold of my arms, a cry wrenched from her throat that she doesn't try to swallow.
I keep my mouth on her through the aftershocks, easing the pressure to slow licks that draw out the trembling, and the whimper she makes when the sensitivity peaks and she pushes at my head with shaking hands tells me she's exactly where she wants to be and can't take another second of it.
I rise from my knees and strip while she lies spent on the sheets.
My cock is aching, hard enough that the release from my pants is its own relief, and she watches me undress with the sharp-eyed attention that never shuts off, even post-orgasm, the assessment running behind the glaze because Renata's brain doesn't have a setting lower than armed.
Her gaze drops to my cock and stays there, and the look on her face is possessive in a way that has nothing to do with submission.
"Get up here," she says.
"You're giving orders again."
"Observations. You're very far away."
I settle over her. The press of my body on hers, skin to skin, draws a groan from my chest and a hitch from hers, and the slick heat of her along the underside of my cock where it rests between her thighs makes my hips flex involuntarily.
She rolls into me, a grind that drags the length of me through her wetness, coating me in her, and the friction on her swollen clit makes her jaw clench and her teeth sink into her lower lip.
"Inside me," she says. The command is wrapped in want, delivered with the directness that replaced the deflection somewhere between the first night in this room and now. "Stop being a gentleman."
"I'm never a gentleman." I line up and push into her in a single stroke, feeling her body open around me inch by inch, the tight heat of her swallowing the head and then the shaft until I'm seated fully and the pressure of her clenching around the base of my cock drags a groan out of me that I don't bother controlling.
"Prove it," she says, all brat, all Renata, the woman who will push until the pushing becomes the point.
I draw back until only the head remains inside her and thrust forward, deep and firm, and the wet sound of our bodies meeting fills the quiet room.
Her legs wrap around my waist, her heels pressing into the small of my back, pulling me deeper with each stroke, and the grip of her body around me tightens each time I bottom out, the inner muscles fluttering and clenching in a rhythm she can't control.
The banter doesn't stop. It drops a register, the words getting shorter and rougher as her body tightens around mine.
"Harder."
"No."
"I hate you."
"You really don't."
"Harder, Andy."
I give her harder. I plant my hands on either side of her head and drive into her with the full length of my body behind each thrust, and the change in force pushes her up the mattress until I grip her hip to anchor her in place.
The wet slap of skin on skin fills the room and her cry is high and broken and continuous, pulled from her with each impact, and her fingers bite into my shoulders with a force that will leave marks I'll find in the mirror tomorrow.
I angle my hips to grind her clit on every downstroke and the friction of my pelvis on the swollen nerves while I'm buried inside her makes her clench around me so hard my vision narrows.
Her second orgasm builds differently from the first, slower, deeper, the kind I can feel tightening around my cock in increments, her body gripping me harder with every stroke until the friction is so intense that maintaining the pace costs me everything I have.
Her lungs stutter. Her nails carve crescents into my skin.
Her eyes fix on mine with an intensity that strips the room down to the two of us and nothing else.
"Let go," I tell her. "I've got you."
She comes apart with my name on her lips and her body locking around me in contractions so deep I can feel them at the base of my cock, pulling at me in rhythmic waves that drag me to the edge and hold me there.
I bury myself to the hilt and let the orgasm take me, the release crashing through my abdomen and my thighs and the full length of me inside her in pulses I feel through her walls, my face pressed to the curve of her throat, her pulse hammering under my mouth while I empty into her with a groan that has her name in it and not much else.
The quiet after is ours. Her fingers trace lazy patterns on my back while we come down, and my weight on top of her is grounding rather than confining, a pressure she leans into rather than away from.
"You stayed," she says. The words are soft, and they might be about tonight and might be about everything.
"I stay."
"Every time."
"Every time."
She presses her mouth to my shoulder. The kiss is small and unperformed and sinks into a place I stopped guarding weeks ago.
I roll to my side and pull her with me, tucking her against my chest, and the aftercare settles into the rhythm we've built across weeks of this: scenes and nights and the stubborn construction of something that holds because neither of us pretends it shouldn't cost.
"Your steadiness terrifies me," she says into my collarbone. "You know that."
"Yes."
"It's the thing I need most, and it scares me because it means I'm depending on it. On you."
"That's how it works."
"I know how it works. Knowing doesn't make it less terrifying."
"It's not supposed to."
She goes quiet, her ribs settling against mine. Her fingers trace the line of my collarbone, back and forth, the kind of absent repetition that means she's working up to something.
"I love you," she says. The words come out rough and annoyed, as if the emotion is an inconvenience she's been trying to outlast. "I didn't plan on it. I want that on the record."
"Noted."
"Don't you dare 'noted' me right now, Broussard."
"I love you." I say it into her hair, and the words are simple and steady and have been true for longer than I've been saying them. "That's not new information."
"It is to me. You never said it."
"I've been saying it every night I showed up at your bar and every morning I made you coffee and every time I put you on your knees and brought you back. You just weren't listening with the right part of you."
She's quiet for a long time. Her fingers stop moving on my collarbone. Then she presses her face harder into my chest, and the exhale she gives me is shaky and raw and the least performative sound she's ever made.
"Say it again," she says.
"I love you."
"Once more. I want to make sure it's not a fluke."
"I love you, Renata."
"Okay." Her voice is thick. "Okay. Good scene, Detective."