Chapter 9
Chapter nine
The knock comes at midnight.
Not loud. Not urgent. The knock of someone who has been standing outside a door long enough to have changed their mind twice and come back.
I know what pulled him here.
I'd been awake for an hour, the third arc running hot and insistent the way it does when the building is quiet and there's nothing else to occupy it.
I'd tried reading. I'd tried lying still.
Eventually I'd given up on both and let my hand slide under the waistband of my underwear because the bond was making concentration impossible and at least this way I could take the edge off myself.
Except the bond doesn't work like that. I know this now. Whatever I feel runs through the connection between us, amplified and broadcast, and what I was doing alone in my room at midnight was apparently loud enough to reach a man two floors away.
The lock disengages.
I pull my hand back. Sit up. The door opens.
He's in the corridor in a dark jacket, hands at his sides, looking like a man who has lost an argument with himself and hasn't decided yet how he feels about losing it.
"Dalton," I say.
"I know it's late," he says.
"I was awake."
We look at each other. The bond is very loud. Neither of us is pretending otherwise.
"Come in," I say.
He comes in. The door closes. His eyes skim over me on the bed — my shirt, my state of having recently been interrupted — and something moves through his expression that is not the professional mask at all.
"The bond," he says. Flat. An explanation and an accusation at the same time.
"Yes," I say.
"You were—"
"Yes."
He exhales through his nose. Looks at the ceiling for one second. Then back at me. His eyes are dark and the control he usually keeps so carefully assembled is not assembled right now.
"Move to the center of the bed," he says.
Not a question. Not a request.
I move.
He takes his jacket off slowly. Sets it on the chair. Rolls his sleeves. All of it deliberate, unhurried, his eyes on me the entire time — and I understand that the deliberateness is the point. He's telling me something about how this is going to go.
He sits on the edge of the bed and his hand finds my jaw, tilts my face up.
"You were going to handle it yourself," he says.
"Yes."
"And you thought that would work."
"I hoped it might."
His thumb traces along my jaw. "It wasn't going to work," he says.
The bond doesn't work like that — whatever I feel runs through the connection between us, amplified and broadcast, and what I was doing alone in my room at midnight was apparently loud enough to reach a man who was very firmly not coming to my door.
Until he was.
"No," I say. "It didn’t."
Something shifts in his face — not softening, the opposite.
His mouth finds mine and it's nothing like the almost-scene by the bookshelf.
That was both of us choosing not to close the distance.
This is the distance already closed, the choosing already done, and Dalton kissing me like he has a specific idea of what the next hour looks like and I'm going to find out what it is.
He pulls back.
"Shirt off," he says.
I pull it over my head.
He takes his time looking. I feel it in my skin, that look — thorough and unhurried, like he's taking inventory of something that belongs to him now and he intends to know it completely.
"Good girl," he says. The words land somewhere low in my stomach.
His hands find my sides and he traces up slowly, both palms flat against my ribs, and I shiver and he stops exactly where he is and does it again. Slower. Watching my face while he does it.
"You respond to this," he says.
"Yes."
"Hmm," he says, and his mouth finds my throat.
He works his way down with the systematic attention of a man who intends to learn every part of me before he's done — collarbone, breast, stomach. His hands hold my hips still when I try to move and he doesn't acknowledge my noise of frustration except to press his thumbs slightly harder.
"Stay still," he says against my skin.
I stay still. It costs me something. He knows it costs me and that's precisely why he asked.
He pulls my underwear off and his jaw tightens once — the tell, the thing he can't fully control — and then his mouth is between my thighs and my hands fist the sheets.
He takes his time. His tongue finds what works within the first two minutes, then stays there, relentless, while his hands keep my hips exactly where he wants them. I'm already close — I was close before he knocked — and the bond amplifying everything makes the climb fast and steep.
"Please," I say. "Dalton—"
He lifts his head. Keeps his hands exactly where they are.
"Please what," he says.
"Don't stop—"
"I wasn't going to stop," he says. "That wasn't the question."
I understand. "Please," I say again, properly this time. "Please make me come."
He goes back to work.
He brings me over the edge and keeps going, patient and unhurried, until I'm shaking and my hands are in his hair and he finally moves up my body.
I get his shirt open. Get my hands on his chest, smooth warm skin — and he catches my wrists. Holds them.
"Not yet," he says.
He pins my wrists above my head with one hand. His other hand traces down my stomach and I arch up and he presses his palm flat to hold me down.
"Stay," he says.
I stay. My whole body is shaking with the effort of it.
His hand slides between my thighs and he works me back up with his fingers while I hold still under him because he asked me to and because I want to give him that and because the wanting to give him that is its own specific thing I didn't know I was capable of until right now.
"Christ," he says quietly, feeling how wet I am.
"Language," I manage.
He laughs — actually laughs, low and startled, the least managed sound I've ever heard from him — and releases my wrists.
He sits back and looks at me — spread out under him, two orgasms in, shaking. His jaw is tight. His eyes are dark. The control he's been wielding all night is still there but he’s losing it.
His hands go to his belt.
I watch him. I don't move. He didn't tell me I could move and I find I don't want to until he does — I want to watch him undo his belt and his pants with those precise hands. I’m drowning in the anticipation of being with a man who has been taking me apart and he’s finally decided he's done waiting.
He's hard. Very. I see it — his want running alongside mine through the connection, amplified, and the combination of both of us wanting simultaneously is something I'm going to need a minute to recover from afterward.
He doesn't give me a minute.
"Come here," he says.
I sit up. He pulls me into his lap, both hands on my hips, positioning me exactly where he wants me — and I feel him against me, thick and insistent, and I make a sound and his hands tighten.
"Look at me," he says.
I look at him. His eyes hold mine.
"Stay there," he says. "Don't move until I say."
The anticipation is its own particular cruelty. I stay.
His hands move slowly up my sides. Down. His thumbs trace my hip bones. He's watching my face the entire time, reading whatever he finds there, and I am entirely at his mercy and entirely unwilling to be anywhere else.
"Please," I say.
His hands find my hips again and he lifts me and I'm sinking down onto him and the stretch is immediate and good and deep and I exhale hard against his shoulder.
He holds me still. Both hands on my hips. Not moving.
"Dalton—"
"I've got you," he says. Low. Steady. "Give me a second."
I understand. The bond is running loud enough that the second is as much for him as for me. I feel what he's feeling through it — the heat of being inside me, the effort of holding still, the need of a man who has been managing himself all night and is at the very edge of that management.
I press my lips to his jaw.
He exhales.
Then he lifts me and brings me back down and we both stop being careful about anything.
He doesn't stop. He finds the rhythm and drives it, his mouth at my throat, my nails in his back, the bond running so hot between us I can barely separate my own sensation from his. His thumb finds my clit and I gasp his name.
He works me with his hand and his hips simultaneously and I come again, this time harder than the before, his name in my mouth, clenching around him. He follows me over with his face pressed into my neck and both hands gripping my hips hard enough to leave marks.
He stays close after. His weight half on me. Both of us breathing hard.
The bond settles into something deeper than it was an hour ago.