Drift

Chapter 24

Temperatures climbing at dusk

Sawyer’s grip on my backside loosens, and I unwind myself from around his hips, sliding down until my toes touch fluffy carpet.

There’s no time to catch my breath or miss his hands on me.

He wraps me in his arms and kisses me as though he never intends to stop, each kiss rushing desperately into the next.

Finally.

“Let’s get you undressed.” The husky words are a breathless pant in my hair.

“What about you?”

“Oh, uh… yeah.” His hand goes behind his back, and his T-shirt is up, over his head, and on the floor in a second. “We should get that out of the way.”

I stand there, slack-jawed, staring at him as he strips off his clothes in record time. This isn’t quite what I had in mind, but…

“You’re very efficient,” I whisper, trailing my fingers over the tattoos on his chest and through the crinkles of bronze hair in the middle.

He strips his belt through the loops of his jeans. “That’s the sexiest compliment a woman has ever given me in the bedroom.” He grins and shoves his jeans down his hips.

I follow the denim to the floor, sinking to my knees in front of him.

Sawyer’s hand cups my cheek. “What are you doin’ down there, Elsie Hoskins?” Playfulness dances in his eyes, but there’s a rough edge to his voice that sends a flutter through my chest.

“Slowing you down,” I say, my fingers curling over the waistband of his white boxers, easing the cotton down his strong thighs.

He’s naked now, except for his black socks, and he stands in front of me with a healthy erection straining upward from a neat patch of blond. I’ve felt him turned on like this before, but to see it…

I sigh. “Oh, yes… You will do very nicely…”

A low, strangled sound catches in the back of his throat when I wrap my hand around his cock, and another follows when I lean closer, my tongue teasing along the length, drawing him slowly into my mouth.

“I don’t think that’s goin’ to slow me down.” His fingers spread lightly over the side of my head to urge me closer. “You’re good at this.”

I glance up at him as my tongue flicks over the tip. “Thank you.”

Sawyer doesn’t seem able to focus. His eyes squeeze shut, and he gasps his next breath. “I’m a lucky man.”

I return my full attention to him, taking my time, savoring his taste, the feel of velvety skin over rock-hard man, and teasing my fingers along the sensitive skin of his inner thigh.

Any doubts of us being right for each other flutter away with his uneven breaths.

He loves this, and relief is an aphrodisiac for me.

I can relax and enjoy him. Even if every other step in our relationship starts shaky, we’ll always have long days on the beach and endlessly satisfying oral sex to fall back on.

Sawyer’s hand briefly fists my hair before he forces it to relax in a more tender stroke. “Elsie.” His voice is urgent. “Baby. Stop.”

I do. Instantly. He almost folds over the top of me, hugging his arms around my shoulders. He gasps in between a string of curses, and then he laughs.

“That was close,” he says.

“We don’t have to stop. I want you to come.”

“Me too. Fuck.” For a moment, he looks genuinely tempted to abandon whatever scrap of restraint he’s clinging to. “Just not yet.” His hands slide beneath my arms, and he hauls me upright so he can kiss me again. “You’re still wearin’ all these clothes.”

I rest my hand on his shoulder, nibbling on my lip as my fingers soak up the feeling of his muscles tensing and then relaxing under my touch.

The contrast between us makes me smile. My body is still carefully hidden under layers and layers of clothes, but there’s not a stitch blocking my view of him.

“We got distracted,” I say.

“You did.”

“Can you blame me? Look at you…” My words trail off as my hand glides over the tattoos on his shoulder to his chest, appreciating the firm muscle, to drift lower…and lower… I swear his heart is beating twice as fast as it should.

“Baby.” A low groan escapes him, and his forehead drops to mine. “You’ve got to give me a chance.”

“A chance for what?”

“Thinkin’.”

“Don’t I overthink everything enough for both of us?”

His laugh is a throaty rumble. “You know what I mean.”

I catch his face between my hands and rise onto my toes, silencing the disagreement with another kiss.

Sawyer sighs when he reluctantly pulls away again. “How many layers have you got on, anyway?” Feverish fingers push my cardigan off my shoulders. “Jesus.” The wool pools at my feet, and then he’s busy with the buttons of my blouse. “I’m never gettin’ you out of all this.”

“Let me help—”

“No.” He bats my hand away to peel my blouse off. “There are few pleasures in this world as perfect as finally seein’ you.”

“You’ve seen me before.”

“Your sexy little swimsuit isn’t the same as your underwear. It covers you up…and I was tryin’ real hard not to peek.”

“So, you didn’t look?”

“Of course I did. Just…” His voice trails off into a sly smile. “Not too long.”

“And you didn’t look when we were in the office?”

He groans into my shoulder as he unclips my bra.

“Your sweet little pussy. I’m goin’ to enjoy headin’ down there again.

” His beard rasps softly against my neck, and he eases the straps off my shoulders.

My bra puddles on the floor with my other clothes.

“Yeah.” His thumb glides over the bump of my nipple and lingers there a second before he cups my breast in a gentle squeeze. “I want to remember this, too.”

The heat in his eyes follows every inch of my skin that he touches. He’s certainly keeping the promise he made all those weeks ago to take his time. My skirt is still on when he kneels down to reach under the scratchy pleats of tweed to inch my knickers down my legs.

“I’m leavin’ these on you.” His fingertip ghosts up my sock from my ankle to my knee. “You were wearin’ a pair like these the first time I saw you.”

“You’ve mentioned that before.”

“Yeah. And now I want to know if they feel as good wrapped around me when you come as I imagined they would.”

“Sawyer!”

He is completely without shame when he grins up at me. “I’ve had a lot of dirty thoughts about you in these socks.” He kisses my knee.

My skirt is the last thing he takes off. The metal zipper drags down, and the pleats drop to the floor around my socked feet.

For a few painstaking breaths, Sawyer simply looks at me.

The hunger in his gaze as he studies my naked body steals the breath from my lungs more than any compliment could.

He screws his eyes shut and lets out a long groan as his hand slides up past my thigh to the curve of my waist. It’s too much for him.

The effort it takes to constrain himself to those gentle touches shows in the torment of his face.

He pecks a brief kiss on the top of my bare pubic bone. “I was right,” he murmurs against my skin. “Just like I said that night. I knew you’d be fuckin’ heaven under all those clothes.”

He rises and brushes a trail of kisses along my shoulder and collarbone, his hands finding my waist to guide me backward onto the bed.

The mattress squeaks beneath us. The sound is so absurd and unsexy, but I barely have time to laugh before he’s smiling against my mouth, drawing me into another kiss. When I relax against him, bare skin melting into bare skin, he gathers me even closer.

“I wish I was smarter,” he whispers into my neck. “I want to know the right words to tell you how beautiful you are to me.”

“Your words are the right words.”

He lifts his head, doubt flickering across his features. Is he always going to feel like this? My reassurance doesn’t seem to cut through his insecurity.

I stroke my fingers along his jaw. “Show me then.”

Sawyer’s eyes brighten, and a suggestive smile softens the corner of his lips.

He likes this idea. The splintered dusk through the bedroom curtains highlights the faint glisten of sweat on his skin as he slides down my body, his mouth distracted by every bump he finds, his tongue a luscious glide over my breasts, around my belly button, all the way down…

“Oh.” I sigh when his tongue strokes a confident greeting over my clit. “Are we doing this again?”

“Mmhmm.”

I wriggle back on the pillows. “I suppose if we must.”

A throaty chuckle is muffled between my legs. Sawyer’s attention quickly focuses on pleasuring my sensitive bud in restless, teasing swirls. I don’t have to be quiet in my bedroom like I was in the office. A long moan escapes from me, unrestrained, and his groan is deep in reply.

Oh, this is so much better.

I angle my hips to keep his mouth right where I need it, my breath shaking from ragged sighs into the air, my hands fisting the cotton sheets. His tongue is a maddeningly soothing caress against my clit.

It’s not enough.

“More,” I pant.

A thick intrusion gently nudges at my entrance, and an intense shudder of pleasure washes over me.

My brain can’t focus on forming words when his mouth makes me feel this good.

I can’t tell him that’s not what I meant.

I wanted him to be rougher with his tongue, but now, with one—no, two—of his fingers demanding to slide inside me, he’s giving me more than enough.

No, it’s too much. I can’t… My skin prickles with sweat and my muscles ache from the effort of holding back against the relentless torment of his mouth…that delicious fullness... I can’t… A hoarse cry tears from my throat as I come in a flurry of pulses around his fingers.

He kisses the inside of my thigh. “Maybe we should have slowed you down…”

I lay limp and breathless on top of the sheets. “Huh?”

He laughs as his arm curves around my waist, drawing me snug against him until there’s no space between us, and my breaths even out in the crook of his neck.

“You’re being gentle with me,” I whisper.

“Yeah.”

“You don’t have to be.”

“It’s for me.” He presses a kiss to my temple. “There will be plenty of times I pound you into this mattress, but this first time…I wanted to love on you a bit.”

“Is there more tonight?”

Smiling, he nods. “If you want.”

“I do.”

His hand settles on my knee to coax my thighs wider, and his hips slot snugly in the space between. One arm braces beside my head, his muscles taut from the effort of keeping his weight off me as he feathers kisses down my neck.

“I love you, Elsie.”

I love him too, but I want his weight. I want all of him. His cock is hard against my stomach, and that’s not where I want it. He should be inside me, giving me the “pounding me into the mattress” version. I want him to lose control over me.

I hook a leg around his hip and nudge him closer.

“Sawyer,” I say, brushing my lips along his jaw. “I want you.”

My coaxing doesn’t speed him up. If anything, his touch is even more careful, his hand skimming every curve of my skin as he kisses me in between uneven breaths.

“When did you first notice me?” he asks.

I laugh softly. “Not at the first sighting of knee-high socks.”

“When, Elsie? I want to know how much time I wasted.”

“I noticed you—properly noticed you—the night you first took me to the community center. When you helped me out of the car.”

His head lifts. “I remember. I convinced myself I imagined that moment…when our hands touched…” A sad smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “I could’ve had you then?”

“A different version of me.”

“Not the kick-ass chick who holds her own?”

I touch his cheek tenderly. “She only exists now because of you.”

He sighs against my cheek, pushing up inside me, his cock sliding deeper and deeper.

I tip my head back to gasp in a deep breath when the last inch of him is inside me.

My moan is much louder than his as he tortures me with painstakingly slow thrusts, but his fingers claw the sheets.

He’s struggling to hold back. Why does he keep fighting this?

“Don’t be gentle with me,” I urge him. “You can be everywhere else outside this room. I love it out there. But not here. I want whatever you can give me.”

“Don’t you fuckin’ temp me.” He groans.

“I want it.”

He rises over the top of me, his mouth firming into a hard line. “Do you?” The next thrust of his hips is hard and deep. “You want it?”

God, yes.

I do.

Like that.

I arch back, my breasts pressed hard against his chest, his chest hair a perfect scratch against the sensitive skin. I dig my fingernails deep into his backside. He tests my resolve with another punishing tilt of his hips.

I moan against his shoulder. “God, yes. Fuck me. Like that.”

“Listen to the mouth on you when my cock’s in you.” He sighs almost in awe.

It’s finally enough for him to give up on the pretense of being gentle and give me what I want. The punishing rhythm and depth are a careful balance that comes more naturally to him. This intensity is what he wants, too.

Almost.

His hand squeezes my thigh. “Get this leg around me.”

I obey. I suppose this is his fantasy come true. Knee-high socks wrapped around his hips as he does dirty, dirty things to me.

“Fuck yeah,” he moans.

He captures both of my hands, pinning them beside my head in a tight grip. I’m trapped under him. It’s wonderful. There’s nothing left for me to worry about except enjoying the intense contradiction of him riding me so hard but brushing the most tender kisses over my lips as he takes and takes.

We are a contradiction, though. Hard and soft. Patient and anxious. Confident and shy. But we’re the same where it matters most—what we want in life and in this bedroom…

Tears pool in my eyes, and I turn my head into the pillow.

“Elsie.” His voice is rough with concern. “I’m hurting you—”

“No. It’s perfect. So perfect.”

I’m overwhelmed by the emotions of worrying he’d never come and the intensity of the thick, punishing weight he’s thrusting inside me to prove that he has.

My orgasm hurtles closer even though he’s slowed down enough for me to catch my breath, and I’m wrung out completely, helpless, blissfully at his mercy.

“I love you. I do. So much.”

I’m not sure whether it was him who whispered that in the end or if it was me.

The words blur with the last frantic seconds of our ragged breaths and the frenzied rhythm of our bodies on the cotton sheets. Sawyer’s drawn-out moan is raw against my ear when his release surges inside me.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter who said the words. This is the most important thing about us that’s not a contradiction.

We feel the same.