Chapter Fourteen He Used Me, I Used Him Back #2
He kisses me slowly. Not tentatively. We’re past tentative.
We’ve been past tentative for months. His mouth opens against mine and his tongue slides over my lower lip and I taste the wine and I want more of everything.
I grab the front of his flannel shirt and pull him closer and kiss him back hard enough that he groans against my mouth.
I unbutton his shirt without breaking the kiss.
My fingers are fast and sure because I’ve undressed this man before and I know the buttons and the way the fabric sits on his shoulders.
I push it off and pull his t-shirt over his head and put my hands on his bare chest. His skin is hot.
I drag my nails down his stomach and feel the muscles contract under my fingers and hear the sharp intake of his breath.
He lifts my sweater over my head and unclasps my bra in one smooth motion. He takes me in. His eyes travel over my breasts and my stomach and the curve of my waist and I watch his jaw tighten and his breathing change.
"You’re beautiful," he says. His voice has dropped low and rough and it sends heat flooding through my body.
He puts his mouth on my throat and kisses down to my collarbone and then lower.
He cups one breast in his hand and takes the nipple into his mouth and sucks gently and I grab the back of his head and arch into him.
His tongue is wet and warm and when he grazes his teeth over the sensitive skin I moan loud enough that it fills the quiet cabin.
He doesn’t rush. He moves to the other breast and gives it the same slow, thorough attention.
His free hand slides down my stomach and unbuttons my jeans.
His fingers push past the waistband and slip inside my underwear and find me already wet.
He makes a sound against my breast that tells me he likes what he’s found.
"I want you," I tell him. "I want you right now."
He pulls my jeans and underwear off in one motion.
I reach for his belt and unbuckle it and push his pants down.
He’s hard and ready and when I wrap my hand around him he braces himself against the bedpost and swears quietly.
I stroke him and feel the heat and the weight of him in my palm and his hips press forward into my grip.
"Bed," he manages.
We fall onto the quilted blanket together.
The fabric is soft under my back and his weight settles over me and our bare skin meets from chest to thigh.
I hear the fire crackling in the other room and I smell pine and woodsmoke and the salt on his skin.
I taste wine on his lips and feel the scratch of his jaw moving down my neck and across my chest.
His mouth keeps traveling south. He kisses my ribs and my stomach and the inside of my hip. He settles between my thighs and looks up at me and I nod because I don’t have words right now. He puts his mouth on me and I grab the quilt with both fists.
He’s learned me by now. He knows what I like.
He knows the pace and the pressure and exactly where to focus.
His tongue works in slow circles and his hands grip my thighs and hold them apart and I feel the pleasure building from the base of my spine outward.
When I start to tremble he doesn’t change a thing.
He keeps the same steady rhythm until I shatter against his mouth with a sound I don’t recognize as my own.
He kisses the inside of my thigh and moves back up my body. I’m still shaking when he reaches for the nightstand where he left a condom earlier. I watch him put it on and then I pull him down to me.
He enters me slowly and I wrap my legs around his hips and take him all the way in.
We both go still for a moment. His forehead is pressed against mine and his eyes are open and I can see everything in them.
Not just desire. Not just intensity. Love.
Real love. The kind that doesn’t perform or pretend or disappear when things get hard.
He starts to move. Long, deep strokes that make my breath catch every time. I dig my fingers into the muscles of his back and pull him deeper and closer. The bed creaks beneath us and the sound mixes with our breathing and the distant pop of the fire and the loon calling across the water.
"Harder," I whisper.
He listens. He always listens. His hips snap forward with more force and I feel the impact all the way through my body.
I moan and he does it again and again and I match his rhythm, pushing back against him.
The quilted blanket bunches under my shoulders.
His hand slides under my lower back and tilts my hips and the new angle hits something deep inside me that makes my vision blur.
"Right there," I say. "God, Kyle, right there."
He keeps that angle. His pace builds. The sweat on his skin makes everything slick and warm and urgent. I feel the second orgasm approaching and it’s different from the first. Deeper. Slower to arrive but bigger when it gets there. I clench around him and feel his rhythm stutter.
"I love you," I say against his mouth.
"I love you," he says back. And the words push me over the edge. I come with his name caught in my throat and my whole body tightening around him. He follows moments later with a deep, broken groan and his hips pressed hard against mine and his face buried in my neck.
We lie there breathing together for a long time. His weight on top of me. My legs still wrapped around him. Neither of us wanting to separate.
He eventually rolls to the side and pulls me against him. My back against his chest. His arm across my waist. The fire dying slowly in the other room and the lake outside the window catching the last faint glow of the sky.
"Kyle?"
"Hmm?"
"Thank you for waiting for me."
"I’d wait again. Every day of it."
I close my eyes. His heartbeat is strong and even under my ear. The cabin is warm and quiet and far away from everything that hurt me.
I think about Travis. Not with anger. Not with satisfaction.
Just with a distant clarity. He thought he was using me to get closer to someone else.
He thought I was dependable and comfortable and oblivious enough to serve as his cover while he pursued the woman he actually wanted.
He thought he was the smart one. The strategic one. The one pulling the strings.
He was wrong about all of it.
I used his coaching to land a promotion I deserved.
I used his casual conversation to learn about a man I’d been overlooking for years.
I used his arrogance against him and his underestimation of me as my greatest advantage.
And when I was finished, I walked away with a career, a relationship, and a self-respect that he will never be able to claim credit for.
He used me. I used him back. And the only difference is that I came out of it with everything I needed and he came out of it with nothing.
I open my eyes and look at the man lying beside me. Kyle Frederickson. Patient. Honest. Kind. Mine.
I pull the quilt up over both of us and I settle into the warmth of his body and the quiet of the cabin and the deep, earned peace of knowing that I made the right choice. Every choice. From the moment I decided not to fall apart to the moment I decided to rebuild. Every single one.
I close my eyes.
I sleep deeply and I don’t dream about the past.