Chapter 44 #2
“God—right there—don’t stop—” My hand fists in his hair, and he groans against me, and the vibration is almost enough to push me over by itself.
He adds a finger, then two, curling them in a way that proves he has been paying close attention to every sound I’ve made in every encounter we’ve had.
And the thought of him cataloging my responses like a goddamn research project is so stupidly, perfectly Peter Darcy that I giggle and moan at the same time.
“Are you laughing?” he asks against me, and the amusement in his voice mixed with the roughness is devastating.
“Your focus. You’re so—oh fuck—you’re so methodical about this, it’s—”
“Would you like me to be less methodical?”
“Don’t you dare.”
His laugh vibrates through me again. Then he does something with his tongue and his fingers simultaneously that whites out my vision.
My orgasm builds fast and hits hard. Harder than expected, a full-body crest that starts at his mouth and radiates outward until my toes are curling and my thighs are shaking.
And I’m gripping the sheets with one hand, and his hair with the other, and the sound coming out of me is somewhere between a sob and a prayer.
He works me through it, slower now, gentler, easing me down like you’d ease a boat into still water. When he finally lifts his head, his chin is wet and his eyes are dark, and he looks completely, thoroughly wrecked.
“Come here,” I breathe, pulling at his shoulders. He crawls up my body, and I taste myself on his mouth. It’s filthy and intimate, and I want more.
He braces himself over me, and I reach between us, wrapping my hand around him through his boxer briefs. The groan that tears out of him is the most satisfying thing I’ve ever heard. He’s hard, straining against the fabric, and when I stroke him once, slowly, his arms tremble.
“Beth. Darling.” A warning. A plea. Both.
I push his boxers down, and he kicks them off. And then there’s nothing between us. Just skin and heat and the terrifying, exhilarating reality that this is happening without a single barrier—physical or otherwise.
He reaches for the nightstand, and I stop him. “I’m on birth control. I haven’t been with anyone since you. The first time. I mean, I—”
“Me neither.” His voice is barely controlled. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
The look on his face—the raw, unguarded want mixed with tenderness—almost breaks me.
He lines himself up, and our eyes meet. This is the part that’s different.
Not the act itself, but the eye contact.
The decision to not look away. To let him see exactly what this means to me while he pushes inside me, slow and steady, filling me until our hips are flush and we’re breathing the same air.
“Fuck,” he whispers, and his forehead drops to mine. We stay like that for a moment. Connected. Still. Adjusting to the feeling of each other without anything in the way.
“Move,” I whisper. “Please.”
He does. At first, with drawn-out, deep strokes I feel through my entire body, making my back arch and my nails drag down his shoulders. His hand slides under the small of my back, tilting my hips. The angle changes, and I gasp.
“There?” he asks.
“There. Don’t—oh holy fuck—baby, please don’t stop.”
He doesn’t stop. He builds a rhythm that’s devastating in its precision and deep enough to make me cry out, slow enough to drive me insane. His mouth is on my neck, my jaw, the corner of my mouth, kissing me between breaths like he can’t bear not to be touching me in as many places as possible.
“Look at me,” he says. When I open my eyes, the intensity in his makes my breath catch.
He’s not just fucking me. He’s telling me something.
With every thrust, every brush of his lips, every time his hand tightens on my hip, he’s telling me something neither of us has said out loud yet.
But the words are right there, right at the edge, pressing against my teeth.
I wrap my legs around him, pulling him deeper, and his moan is broken and beautiful. His rhythm falters and becomes urgent, desperate, the controlled precision dissolving into something primal and raw. The headboard taps the wall, and his breathing is ragged, and I am so close, so unbearably close—
“I need—” I gasp, and before I can finish, his hand is between us.
His thumb finds exactly the right spot with exactly the right pressure, because of course he knows, because he always knows, because this man has made understanding my body his personal mission.
And he takes it as seriously as he takes everything else.
“Let go,” he says against my mouth. “I’ve got you.”
So I do.
I shatter.
My whole body tightens around him—legs, arms, the deepest part of me.
The orgasm crashes through me in waves, each one pulling moans out of me that I couldn’t suppress if I tried.
He follows moments later, buried deep, his face burrowed into my neck.
His low, shuddering groan against my pulse is the most beautiful, most intimate thing I’ve ever heard.
We don’t move for a long time. He’s still inside me. Our hearts are hammering against each other, and his hand is in my hair, and I am crying.
Not dramatically. Not sobs. Silent tears, leaking from the corners of my eyes and sliding into my hair. I can’t stop them because my body has decided this is the appropriate response to being loved this thoroughly by someone who sees every single part of me and wants them all.
He lifts his head, and the concern on his face is immediate. “Hey—oh, Beth—are you—”
“I’m fine.” I laugh, wiping my eyes with the heel of my hand. “I’m so fine. It’s just—a lot. You’re a lot. This is a lot.”
His expression softens from concern to understanding, and he pushes a tear away from my temple with his thumb and kisses the spot where it was. “Too much?”
“The perfect amount.” I pull his face down and kiss him. It’s salty and slow and full of every word I’m not ready to say, but that he can probably taste anyway. “The perfect amount of a lot.”
He rolls onto his side, pulling me with him, and we lie tangled in his sheets. His sheets, in his bed, in his house. His hand traces lazy patterns on my back. My head rests on his chest, his heartbeat returning to normal, and I know this is what Dana meant.
Let him take care of you. That second part is just as important.
“I want to stay like this,” he murmurs into my hair, and I know he’s not talking about tonight.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I whisper back, and I’m not talking about only tonight, either.
I wake up at 3 a.m. to his breathing and the unfamiliar geography of a bed that isn’t mine. His arm is heavy across my waist, and his nose is pressed against the back of my neck. He’s so deeply asleep that his exhales come out in soft, warm waves against my skin.
I don’t move. I don’t want to. I want to memorize this in a way I didn’t think I needed to the first night we spent together.
The weight of his arm, the texture of his sheets, the moonlight through the window turning everything silver and strange.
I want to remember what it feels like to choose to be here.
Not because I had to, not because it was expected, but because I wanted to.
Because staying now feels more like me than leaving ever has.
My phone lights up with a notification I don’t read on the nightstand. It doesn’t matter. Nothing outside this bed matters.
I press against him, and his arm tightens around me in his sleep. An unconscious pull. A reflex. Even asleep, he reaches for me.
I close my eyes. And for the first time in as long as I can remember, I fall back asleep without a single thought fighting for attention. Just warmth, and weight, and the steady rhythm of someone breathing beside me.
Staying.