Chapter 18. Ford
His hand finds my thigh. Just resting there.
He's looking at me with those wrecked honey eyes, still glassy at the edges from subspace, and there's a question in them that he doesn't need to voice because I already know the answer.
I already know because my body has been answering it since I laid the first strike across his skin.
"Jude," I say, and it comes out low, almost a warning.
"Don't you dare ask me if I'm sure," he murmurs, and his fingers curl.
"I was going to ask where you keep your condoms."
Something lights up across his face: surprise, then delight, a flash of bratty defiance, and then something hungrier.
He leans over to his nightstand and winces when the movement pulls at his raw skin.
I love seeing him like that. He yanks open the drawer, pulls out a strip of condoms and a bottle of lube, and drops them on the bed, giving me that beautiful, mischievous smile.
"Preparedness," he says, with a grin that's trying very hard to be cocky but keeps trembling at the edges. "Boy Scout motto."
"You were never a Boy Scout."
"How do you know that, Mr. Dom? Not all Boy Scouts become Doms, you know, even though they'd love to make us all like that."
"Because no troop leader in America could have survived you."
He laughs. Lively, so free. I reach for him, cup the side of his face with my hand, the same hand that just spent ten minutes painting his skin red, and he leans into it immediately, his eyes fluttering half-shut.
His cheek is warm. His stubble is soft, barely there, more like blond peach fuzz. I run my thumb along his lower lip.
"Lie back," I tell him.
He does. He shifts onto the bed properly, hissing again, and I know he's playing it up.
"Oh, poor, poor thing," I say with fake sympathy, and he seems to love it even more.
He settles on his back with his white t-shirt still rucked up around his ribs.
White is beautiful on him, making his bleached hair even lighter, but then I think about how he looks in every other color and decide he looks good in anything.
I can see his stomach, the fine trail of blond hair below his navel, the way his cock is already hard and flushed and curving toward his hip.
He's not shy about it. He lets me look, lets me take my time the way I did before the spanking, and I watch the flush creep down his chest under my gaze.
I stand and pull my shirt over my head. I'm not twenty-eight anymore. I'm diligent about the gym, every day, but my body carries history. The way he's looking at me, though… like I'm something sacred… makes me feel like none of that matters.
"Jesus Christ, fucking hell, you're going to fucking murder me," he breathes.
"Language," I say, and he grins up at the ceiling. He loves when I correct him, and it's the cutest fucking thing in the world.
I undo my belt, and I watch him react to it: a full-body shiver.
Brats and belts always go together. I file that reaction away for later.
I push my jeans and boxers down together, stepping out of them, and when I straighten up, he's propped himself on his elbows to stare, his lips parted, his chest rising and falling in quick, shallow breaths.
"You're staring," I tell him.
"Hell yeah, I am. It's not my fault a literal sex god is standing in front of me," he says. I feel my cheeks go hot with the praise. That little thing, always getting to me. Fortunately, he doesn't seem to notice. "Get over here. Please. Daddy, please."
There it is. That word in that voice, layered with need and trust and something close to devotion. The thing that first got to me. Even more than those gorgeous eyes. It hits me hard.
I climb onto the bed, settling between his legs, and the first press of skin against skin, my chest against his, my hips between his thighs, draws a sound out of both of us.
His arms come up around my neck immediately, pulling me down, and when our mouths finally meet, it's not the first kiss I might have expected.
It's deep and filthy and desperate, his tongue sliding against mine, his teeth catching my lower lip.
He kisses like he does everything else: with his entire chaotic, reckless, beautiful self, holding nothing back.
I brace my weight on one forearm and slide my other hand down his side, over the jut of his hip, around to the heated skin of his ass.
He whimpers into my mouth when I squeeze.
The skin is still burning, still tender, and the pain-pleasure of it makes him arch up against me, grinding his cock against my stomach.
"Easy there, little boy," I murmur against his lips, smiling.
"I don't want easy," he whispers back. "I want you."
I pull back just enough to look at him. He looks ruined already. He looks like the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I reach for the lube.
He watches me slick my fingers, his thighs falling open wider, his body already offering itself before I've even asked. I press one finger against him, just pressure, and he exhales shakily, his head tipping back.
"Look at me," I say, and his eyes snap back to mine. "Don't you dare look away."
"Yes, Daddy," he says, and I'm still getting used to how that word on his lips makes me shiver.
I press inside, slow, and he moans. Fuck. It's low, unhurried, and it undoes something in me. He pushes back against my finger, wanting more.
"Greedy," I say, moving inside him, still slow. I don't want to hurt him.
"Come on, Daddy, please," he pleads. The desperation is genuine.
"Stroke yourself," I say. "Slowly. Don't stop. I want to bring you to the edge."
"D-Daddy!" he protests, but he does as I say, wrapping his fingers around his shaft. He starts moving, slow, up and down, and he moans more now, his eyes squeezing shut, his mouth open. I keep matching his rhythm.
When I can feel he's ready, I add another finger. This time, he nearly screams. A guttural groan tears out of him. "Daddy, that's not fair, I'm about to cum already."
"No, you aren't. You will control yourself, understood?"
"Let me stop stroking, then," he pleads, and his voice is so wrecked with need that I think I'm the one who's close. "Please."
"No," I say, because I know it's what he wants to hear. "Keep going. Be good for Daddy."
"Fuck," he groans again, his eyes closed, his head thrown back, but still stroking, obediently.
I pull my fingers out abruptly, and he whimpers. The sound is so wounded it might as well be a personal offense.
"Language," I say again, and he looks confused, almost as if he hadn't realized he'd cursed.
He opens his mouth to protest, but I push back in, three fingers this time, still slow but relentless, going all the way.
Whatever he was going to say dissolves into groaning, whimpering, and a face of pure ecstasy.
I curl my fingers and find the spot that makes his whole body jolt, and the noise that tears out of him is loud enough that Noa definitely hears it through the thin walls.
God, he's going to drive me insane.
"You like it when I'm rough, don't you?" I ask, but he can't even answer. His eyes are closed, his mouth open, all his focus split between his hand and my fingers. I chuckle.
I can feel he's ready. I position myself, adding more lube to both of us.
Then I press into him, slow. The sound he makes is something I'll hear in my sleep for weeks. It’s a low, trembling moan that starts in his throat and doesn't end.
His body opens for me. He's warm and tight and giving, and I work him slowly, reading every micro-expression, watching for tension, for discomfort, for the difference between good pain and bad.
There is no bad here. Every sound he makes is pleasure.
Every shift of his hips is toward, never away.
The sound we make together is unholy. His mouth falls open in a silent cry, his eyes going wide before squeezing shut, his fingers digging into my back hard enough to leave marks I'll feel tomorrow.
I press forward slowly, inch by inch, giving him time to adjust, and the heat and pressure of him around me is so intense that I have to stop halfway and breathe, just breathe, because I'm fifty-three years old and I will not embarrass myself in front of this twenty-eight-year-old brat.
He gasps, his nails biting into my shoulders, his back arching off the mattress.
He's not even stroking himself anymore, too far gone.
His head is thrown back, the long line of his throat exposed, and I lean down and press my mouth to his pulse point, feeling it hammer against my lips. I lick a stripe up to his jaw.
"You feel…" he starts, and his voice breaks. He tries again. "You feel so good. Oh my God. Oh my God."
I bottom out, and we both go still. I'm buried inside him completely, his body wrapped around mine in every way. His arms around my neck, his legs around my waist, his heat surrounding me. Our breath mingles, hot and ragged and synchronized.
"Okay?" I manage.
"If you don't move right now, I will actually die," he says, and even now, there's that thread of bratty impatience woven through the desperation. It makes me want to laugh. It makes me want to wreck him. It makes me want things I haven't let myself want in years.
I move.
The first thrust draws a cry out of him that I swallow with my mouth, kissing him deep as I set a rhythm: slow at first, deep, pulling almost all the way out before pressing back in.
Each stroke drags against his walls, and I angle my hips until I find the spot that made him lose his mind on my fingers.
I know the moment I hit it because his entire body seizes, his legs locking tighter around me, a sound ripping out of him that's closer to a sob than a moan.
"Jesus fucking Christ," he says, and I'll have to correct that foul mouth later.