3. Quin #2
I leaned down and kissed her slow. Then slower.
My hand slid up her ribs, over the silk of her bra, and I felt her nipple tighten under my palm.
I peeled the bra down instead of taking it off, because I wanted her like this, half-undone, still wearing the day, my mouth closing over her breast while she arched off the couch and fisted her hands in my hair.
I took my time.
I licked. I dragged my teeth just enough to make her breath hitch, then soothed it with my tongue, then did it again on the other side until she was restless beneath me, hips seeking, thighs tightening around my waist.
“Quin.” A little more frayed now.
“I’m here.” I kissed down the center of her stomach, feeling the way it jumped under my mouth. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Her skirt bunched at her hips. I hooked my fingers in her underwear and looked up, waiting. She lifted for me. I drew them down her legs like I was unwrapping something I’d been denied too long, and then I put my mouth on her.
Clara’s whole body went taut.
I groaned against her. She was already wet, already warm, and she tasted like coming home.
I held her thighs open and licked her in long, unhurried strokes, learning her again, remembering the way she liked it when I circled her clit, the way she gasped when I sealed my mouth over her and sucked.
Her hand found my hair and stayed there.
“Look at me,” I said against her.
She did. Mouth open. Eyes locked on mine while I ate her like I’d been starving, because I had. I slid two fingers into her, slow, curling, and watched her face change. Watched her lose the last of that office-building armor. Watched her become mine again in real time.
“That’s it,” I murmured. “Let me have you.”
She came with a broken sound, thighs shaking around my head, and I stayed with her through it, licking her through the aftershocks until she tugged at my hair because it was too much. I kissed the inside of her thigh, then her hip, then worked my way back up her body, shedding my shirt as I went.
Her hands were on my belt before I got there. Clumsy. I let her undo it. Let her shove my pants down. Let her wrap her fingers around my cock and stroke me twice, while I dropped my forehead to hers and tried to remember how to breathe.
“I missed you,” she said, her voice low. “I tried not to. I missed you so much.”
“Never again.” I kissed the words into her mouth. “Never again, Clara. I’m never letting you go.”
I lined myself up and pushed into her slowly.
We both went still from the overwhelming rightness of it.
Like two pieces of a puzzle that had been separated too long finally clicking back together.
She was tight around me, hot, perfect, and I held there, buried to the hilt, shaking with the effort of not moving yet, because I needed her to feel this.
Needed her to know I wasn’t going to take her in a rush and be done.
I had spent eight months without her. I was going to feel every second of getting her back.
“Quin.” Her nails bit into my shoulders. Her eyes were wet, but she wasn’t crying. She was here.
“I know.” I kissed her, deep and unhurried, and then I started to move.
Long strokes. I watched her the whole time, the way I always had, because her pleasure had always been the only thing I ever needed to understand.
The way her lips parted on every thrust. The way her legs tightened around my hips, pulling me closer, deeper.
The way she said my name like it belonged in her mouth.
“You feel like mine,” I said against her cheek. “You always did. You always will.”
“Then stop talking and show me.”
I laughed, rough, and gave her what she asked for.
I hooked one of her legs higher and drove into her at a new angle, and she cried out, helpless, so I did it again.
And again. The expensive couch creaked. I kissed her through it, swallowed her sounds, felt her start to tighten around me and backed off just enough to keep her there, trembling on the edge, until she dug her heels into my back.
“Quin. Don’t you dare…”
“I wouldn’t.” I thrust deep and stayed there, grinding against her, and put my thumb on her clit. “Come for me. I want to feel you.”
She shattered around me with my name in her mouth, clenching hard, and I followed her over, burying myself as deep as I could go, coming inside her with a groan I couldn’t swallow. I held her through it. Forehead to forehead. Both of us shaking. Both of us breathing like we’d run for miles.
I didn’t pull out. I didn’t want to. I stayed inside her, still pulsing, and kissed her slow while our heartbeats found each other again.
“I love you,” she said, quieter now.
“I love you too.”
We lay together on my very expensive couch, her head on my chest, my fingers tracing patterns on her bare back. The ring was on the coffee table where she’d set it. It caught the city light every time a car passed below.
“I’m still not taking your money,” she said.
“Fine. Take my name instead.”
She laughed, and this time it didn’t crack. “Did you practice that line?”
“Maybe.”
“It was good.”
“I’m the best at it.”
She propped herself up on her elbow and looked at me with those green eyes. “I’m serious, Quin. I don’t want to feel like I owe you. I don’t want to feel like I traded myself for financial security.”