23. Chapter 23 #2
Her orgasm rips through her, her whole body seizing as she cries out my name. I work her through it, easing up only when the aftershocks have faded and she's lying boneless beneath me. I press one last kiss to her oversensitive clit and she whimpers, tugging at my shoulders.
I crawl up her body, settling between her thighs. My cock nudges against her entrance, slick with her arousal, and we both groan at the contact. I reach down and position myself, then slowly, inch by inch, push inside.
She's still trembling from her orgasm, her walls fluttering around me as I fill her. I pause when I'm fully seated, letting us both adjust, my forehead pressed to hers. Her green eyes are hazy, soft in a way I've never seen before.
"Look at me," I say quietly. "I want to see you."
She meets my gaze, and I begin to move. Slow, deliberate thrusts that drag against every nerve ending. I keep my weight on my forearms, caging her head between my arms, and I watch her face as I take her. Every flicker of pleasure, every gasp, every time she bites her lip — I catalog all of it.
"You feel so good," I tell her, my voice low and rough. "So tight and wet for me. I've wanted you from the second I saw you in that stupid matchmaking office."
She moans, her nails digging into my shoulders. "More. Harder."
"Not yet." I keep the pace slow, torturous, grinding my hips against hers with each deep stroke. "I want you to feel every inch of me. I want you to remember this tomorrow, and the day after, and every time you look at me across a room."
"Matt —"
"I want you thinking about my cock inside you when you're sitting in foundation meetings. When you're at your soup kitchen. When you're lying in this bed alone." I lean in to whisper in her ear. "When you're out with Lina and some pretty frat boy asks you to dance."
"For fuck's sake, Matt, I told you —" I thrust deeper, hitting that spot that makes her eyes roll back.
"I want you ruined for anyone else."
She whimpers, her legs pulling me closer, her heels pressing into my lower back.
I lower my head and take her nipple in my mouth again, sucking in time with my thrusts.
Her breasts bounce with every movement, soft and full, and I lavish attention on them — kissing, licking, biting gently until she's keening beneath me.
"I'm close," she gasps. "I'm —"
"Come for me," I say against her breast. "Come on my cock, Isla. Let me feel you."
She does. Her second orgasm crashes through her, her pussy clenching around me like a vice, and I follow her over the edge. I bury myself deep and let go, my release pulsing into her as I groan her name against her neck.
We stay like that for a long moment, our breathing harsh in the quiet room, our bodies still joined. I can feel her heartbeat against my chest, rapid and strong, and I press a kiss to the damp skin of her shoulder before carefully withdrawing. I press another kiss to her lips. Another.
"Bath," I say. "You're going to be sore."
"Whose fault is that?" But she's smiling, and she lets me lead her to the bathroom.
The tub is oversized, luxurious, and probably cost more than my first car.
I turn on the taps and adjust the temperature while she sits on the counter watching me, her legs swinging like a kid's.
Steam fills the room, fogging the mirror, and I help her into the tub before climbing in behind her.
She settles between my legs, her back against my chest, and the hot water laps at our skin.
"This is nice," she says. "You being bossy in a non-life-threatening context."
"I'm always bossy."
"Yeah, but usually it's 'stay away from the windows' not 'let me draw you a bath.'" She tips her head back against my shoulder. "I like this version."
I press a kiss to her wet shoulder, tasting soap and salt. My hands find her breasts beneath the water, cupping them, thumbs tracing lazy circles around her nipples. She sighs and arches into my touch, and I feel the first stirrings of arousal again, slower this time, a simmer rather than a boil.
"Again?" she asks, feeling me harden against her lower back.
"Always again."
I take my time, still playing with her tits, relishing in the way she squirms. Her hand drifts beneath the water, finding me.
She strokes me slowly — lazily — her thumb circling the head, her fingers squeezing just right.
I let one of my hands slide down her ribs, her belly, until it settles between her legs, finding her still swollen and sensitive. She shivers when I touch her clit.
"Too much?"
"No." She spreads her legs wider. "More."
I circle her clit with one finger while I slip two others inside her, and she arches against me, her hand stuttering on my cock.
We find a rhythm — her stroking me, me fingering her, the water sloshing gently around us.
She comes first, a smaller orgasm this time, her body clenching around my fingers, and I follow soon after, spilling into her hand beneath the water.
We wash each other after that — slowly, thoroughly, without urgency.
I shampoo her hair and she leans into my hands like a cat.
She runs a washcloth over my chest, my arms, the scar on my shoulder that I never talk about.
She presses a kiss to it, but doesn't ask.
In fact, neither of us speaks at all. We don't need to.
At two in the morning we are lying in her bed and the apartment is quiet and neither of us is asleep.
She says, into the dark: "I don't know how to do this without armor."
I look at the ceiling. I think about the seven years I spent doing exactly that — building the walls back up after Nora, maintaining them, calling it professionalism, calling it protecting Elias, calling it whatever name made it sound like a choice rather than a habit that had calcified into a personality.
I got very good at it. It cost me things I did not notice I was losing until I was standing in a conference room two months ago across from a woman who had done the same thing and done it better.
"I know," I say. "I have the same problem."
She is quiet for a moment. "That's not reassuring."
"I know," I say. "But we're going to figure it out anyway."
She exhales. I feel it against my shoulder. I put my hand on her hair, just resting there, not doing anything with it.
"How?" she says. It is a real question, not rhetorical. She is asking because she genuinely wants to know and because she is Isla Wrenwood and she approaches even this the way she approaches everything — as a problem that has a solution if you are willing to work for it.
"I don't know yet," I say. "I think we just keep doing it. And when we get it wrong we say so."
She considers this. "That's very simple."
"Most true things are."
She is quiet again. After a while her breathing slows. I lie in the dark and I think about what it means to be on this side of it now — in her bed, in her apartment, both of us figuring it out in the dark — and it is enough. It is, in fact, more than enough.
I close my eyes.