Chapter Three #4
Zane’s cock was big and hard in my hand, heavy enough that my fingers barely closed around him. A bead of moisture slicked the head. When I stroked him once, his hand caught the edge of the dock.
“Daphne.”
I loved the way he said my name when I touched him. Like a warning. Like a plea. Like he was trying to stay in control and I was making that beautifully difficult.
I stroked him again.
His eyes half-closed. “Careful.”
I smiled, slow and wicked enough to surprise myself. “With the tomato?”
A laugh ripped out of him, low and helpless.
Then I bent and took him into my mouth.
Zane swore.
His hand went to the back of my head, not pushing, just holding. I took what I could, using my hand for the rest, learning the weight and heat of him while he stood in the shallows with his boots planted in lake water and his control fraying under my tongue.
“Fuck,” he said. “You’re good at that.”
The praise rolled through me. I took him deeper, and his fingers tightened in my hair.
“Daphne, stop.”
I pulled back immediately. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” His laugh was strained. “You’re going to make me come.”
“That was the general direction I was exploring.”
His eyes darkened. “Not yet.”
My pussy clenched around nothing.
He stepped closer, kicked off his boots with more force than coordination, and shoved his wet jeans lower before climbing onto the dock with me. Then Zane was over me, big and bare and breathing hard, his skin hot against mine.
He kissed me.
I tasted him on my tongue. He tasted me too, and something about that made both of us rougher. His hand slid between my thighs again, and I was already so sensitive that one stroke over my clit made me cry out.
“Again,” he said.
I shook my head, laughing and gasping at the same time. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
“Zane.”
“You said you wanted my hands.” His fingers circled slowly. “You’ve got them.”
My back arched.
He kissed my throat, my chest, the curve under my breast. His fingers slid into me again, and the stretch of them after his mouth, after my orgasm, after the sight of his cock in my hand, was too much and not enough.
“I want you inside me,” I said.
He went still over me.
The lake moved under the dock with soft, hollow sounds.
Zane lifted his head. “Say that again.”
“I want you inside me.” I wrapped my legs around his hips. “Please.”
His control broke in his eyes first.
He shoved his jeans down farther, kicked them off with his briefs, and came back over me naked. The sight of him like that, all muscle and ink and hunger, stole the breath from my lungs.
He lined himself up and held there. The head of his cock pressed against my pussy, blunt and huge.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did.
“If anything hurts wrong, you tell me. If you want me to stop, I stop.”
“I know.”
His hand cupped my face. “I need you to know.”
“I do.” I turned my mouth into his palm. “I trust you.”
Something moved through his expression, fast and fierce.
Then he pushed inside.
My breath broke.
He was big enough that I had to take him inch by inch, my nails digging into his shoulders as the stretch burned into pleasure. Zane moved slowly, jaw clenched, sweat standing at his temple.
“Breathe,” he said.
“I’m trying.”
“You’re doing so good.”
The praise made me softer, wetter, needier.
He sank deeper.
I moaned.
“There you go,” he said. “That’s my girl.”
The words should’ve scared me.
They didn’t.
They hit somewhere tender and greedy inside me, a place that had been starving to be wanted without being made smaller for wanting back.
Zane seated himself fully, and for one suspended second neither of us moved.
I felt all of him.
I felt the hard press of his body, the thick stretch of his cock, the sun on my skin, the weathered dock under my back, the lake air cooling the sweat at my throat, and Zane’s breath against my mouth.
Then I moved my hips.
His control snapped.
Zane pulled out and drove back in, and I cried out so loudly the sound scattered across the water.
“Yes,” I said. “Like that.”
He fucked me with deep, controlled strokes at first, watching my face, one forearm braced beside my head, the other hand gripping my hip. The dock creaked under us. Water slapped the posts. My legs tightened around him.
It was urgent and messy and so good I couldn’t make myself care about anything except the next thrust.
Zane’s mouth found mine. “You feel so fucking good.”
I dragged my nails down his back. “Don’t stop.”
“I’m not stopping.”
He shifted his angle, and the next thrust hit a place inside me that turned me liquid.
I gasped. “There.”
Zane did it again.
My head tipped back.
“Right there?” he asked.
“Yes. Zane, yes.”
He reached between us and rubbed my clit.
The second orgasm rose hard and fast, built on the first, on the stretch of him, on the pressure of his fingers and the dirty praise in his voice.
“Come on my cock,” he said. “Let me feel it.”
I broke.
I clamped around him, pleasure rushing through me so fiercely I couldn’t breathe around it. I cried his name, hips jerking under his, and Zane groaned like the sound dragged him apart.
He thrust twice more, harder now.
“Daphne,” he said, and came with a hard shudder, his face buried against my neck, his body heavy and shaking over mine.
For a long moment, neither of us moved.
The world came back in pieces: lake water against wood, pine wind, and my heartbeat.
Zane’s weight braced carefully above me even now, like some part of him still refused to crush me.
I slid my hand up his back.
He lifted his head. His eyes searched my face, serious now, almost too serious after what we’d just done in broad daylight on his dock.
“You okay?” he asked.
I nodded, then realized he needed words. “I’m okay.”
“Nothing hurts?”
“Not in a bad way.”
His mouth twitched, but his eyes stayed focused. “Daphne.”
“I’m good,” I said softly. “Really.”
Zane kissed me then, slow and deep, with none of the earlier rush. That kiss left me shaking in a quieter way. His mouth moved slowly over mine, and his hand stayed warm against my jaw.
He eased out of me carefully, and I bit my lip at the loss. Zane noticed that too. He pressed one more kiss to my forehead, then reached for his shirt and used it to clean me with a tenderness that made my throat close.
“Your shirt,” I said.
“It’s already wet.”
“That’s because you walked into a lake wearing boots.”
“I was distracted.”
I laughed softly.
He looked at me then, and the smile faded into something warmer. “I don’t regret that.”
My chest tightened. “Me either.”
He helped me sit up. My legs felt unreliable. My hair was a lost cause. My skin smelled like lake air, sun, and him. I found my underwear and shorts, then paused with the fabric bunched in my hands and my pulse still unsteady.
Zane pulled on his briefs and jeans, then sat beside me on the dock without reaching for his shirt. His shoulder brushed mine.
Neither of us moved away.
The water glittered in front of us. Across the lake, pines climbed the slope, dark and thick against the sky. The public side was nowhere in sight. The P-Patch was back up the trail, tidy and communal and full of signoff sheets, witnesses, and rules.
Here, the quiet settled around my damp hair, my bare knees, and the warm place where his shoulder touched mine.
Zane rested his forearms on his knees. “Tomorrow, you come for your hours like usual.”
I looked at him.
His jaw tightened. “I mean it. Nothing about your signoff changes. Nothing about the work changes. I won’t treat you like you owe me anything.”
“I know.”
“I need to say it anyway.”
He’d walked into the lake in his boots and still remembered to protect the line I’d helped him cross.
“I’m glad you said it,” I said.
His gaze came to mine.
I wanted to joke. I wanted to say something about intermediate string privileges or dangerous bark dust or the civic hazard of his forearms. The words were usually there when I needed them.
For once, no joke came.
Zane reached over and laced his fingers through mine.
My heart gave one hard, stupid kick.
He didn’t call it casual. He didn’t pretend it was simple. He didn’t make a promise the afternoon couldn’t hold.
He just held my hand on the dock while the lake moved below us.
Eventually, the sun shifted enough that the boards cooled under my thighs.
I put my bra and tank top back on, then my socks and ruined sneakers.
Zane pulled on his shirt, damp and wrinkled now, and shoved his feet into his wet boots with the resigned expression of a man facing the consequences of his own dramatic footwear choices.
I looked at the boots. “They’re making a sound.”
“They’ll live.”
“I’m not sure they’ll forgive you.”
“They knew the risk.”
I smiled, but it came out softer than usual.
We walked back up the path through the pines side by side. Once we reached the fence, Zane kept his hands at his sides. The P-Patch waited through the trees: the blue sign, the raised beds, the shed, and eight hours still on my sheet.
At my car, I stopped with my tote over one shoulder and my hair drying in loose waves around my face. Zane stood a few feet away, hands at his sides again, but his eyes were on me like he knew exactly where his mouth had been.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
My fingers curled around the tote strap.
“Tomorrow,” I said.
I got into my car before I could touch him again in full view of the P-Patch sign. Nadine Purcell’s paperwork had never warned me about this part.
When I drove away, Zane stayed near the gate.
I didn’t look back until the road curved.
He was still there.
The lake had cooled on my skin, but the places his hands had held me stayed hot all the way home.