Chapter 31
Autumn
No one has ever made me feel like this.
No one has ever taken this kind of time with me, made sure I came first. No one has ever asked the questions he asks or listened with the attention he gives me or entered me so slowly that it feels like I’m completely melting, losing all definition, so that it’s sheer golden pleasure from my belly button to my knees, nothing but shimmering friction.
Also, no one has ever taken any request as seriously as Tucker takes fuck me like you mean it.
He’s very accommodating that way.
He groans, lowers himself to his forearms, and thrusts up hard into me, filling me completely, jiggling my whole body so I can feel the force of it as pinpricks of pleasure in my nipples.
I gasp because he’s found a sweet spot inside of me I didn’t know about, one that instantly ratchets my arousal up to if you keep doing that I’m going to come levels.
And then he just keeps—hitting it. Thrust—yes, thrust—yes, thrust—fuck yes, thrust—“Tucker!”
He hesitates for a second. “Yes? No?”
“Yes, yes, yes!”
That makes him laugh, but only for a second, because then he’s picking up the rhythm again, and I have to brace my hands on the headboard behind me, which makes the impact of his body against mine feel even better.
He lowers his head and draws one of my nipples into his mouth, and he works it over with his tongue between thrusts.
Every time he reaches the end of the thrust, it drags him tight up against my pubic bone, rubbing my clit into wild, swollen arousal.
The lines of connection between my nipples and core are electric, the heat gathering in my low body with a terrifying speed and force.
“Tucker!” I hear myself say, and I’m not sure if I’m begging or warning.
Then I’m coming so hard I practically black out.
Above me, he holds a deep thrust, stretching me and prolonging the pleasure to absurd heights. He’s rigid and shaking, and I can feel him swelling and throbbing as he comes inside me, his head falling so our cheeks are pressed together. He whispers my name over and over against my ear.
He does a superhuman job of not crushing me with his weight as we come down from the mountaintop together, still propped on forearms. As soon as we manage to separate ourselves, he disposes of the condom and collapses back in a heap beside me.
I roll over and press my cheek to his sweaty chest and throw one arm over him, and we lie there, cuddling, for a long time.
After a while, he says, “That was…” but doesn’t finish the sentence.
“You can’t leave me hanging like that,” I say. “That was…the worst sex you’ve ever had? An obvious call from the universe to enter a monastery and give your life to God?”
Tucker lifts his head and rolls his eyes at me. “You cannot be serious.”
“I’m not,” I admit.
He sighs. “If I say it was the best sex I’ve ever had, what happens next?”
“Then I say it was the best sex I’ve ever had, too.”
“Just to be nice?” he teases.
“You cannot be serious,” I echo him. “You saw me come. Hell, you felt me come.”
“It was pretty epic,” he says. “I was already pretty impressed by the first three orgasms I witnessed.”
“No, that one was—another level entirely.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It was.”
I can tell he’s not talking about my orgasm.
I want to rewind a little bit. To where he asked me what happens next. I don’t know the answer, not exactly, but I can’t imagine walking away from this, going back to my life the way it was before I came to Rush Creek and met Tucker.
“You asked what happens next,” I say cautiously. “Did you—did you mean that?”
He gets quiet.
“I know it’s only been a few days,” I say. “I know we don’t really know each other very well. But it feels like…”
“Yeah,” he says. “It does.”
“So what do we…do?”
He takes a deep breath. “I’m not in the greatest place,” he says.
“I haven’t been for a long time, and this”—he gestures at the two of us in the room, in the bed, at our nakedness and bliss—“doesn’t change that.
I don’t think I’m the greatest bet for getting involved with.
Everything I told you about myself, that’s all true.
That I blame myself for what happened, that it’s hard for me to imagine good things for myself. That’s not going to change instantly.”
“Maybe I’m not in the greatest place, either,” I say, and it feels hard but good to say it out loud.
“I’m realizing what’s worked for me all this time might not be working for me now.
That I might have to face some things I’ve been ignoring.
Maybe—maybe if we know that about ourselves, that we’re works in progress, it’ll be okay? ”
He hesitates longer than I want him to. “What would—what would it look like? Would we do something long distance?”
“We could try that for a while,” I say. “And then we could…talk about what comes next. I can work from anywhere.”
He looks off into the middle distance. My stomach plummets.
“I’m not working right now,” he says. “That’s another thing. I’m not working. I have money—my partners bought me out of the private-security firm that we started, so money’s not an issue. But I don’t really know what’s next for me.”
I don’t want to talk him into something he doesn’t want, but I also don’t want to let go of what just happened. I don’t think you walk away from a connection like the one we have. Not if you have any sense of self-preservation.
So I take what I can get. I put the rest of it on hold, fingers mentally crossed, for another time, later. I’ll ask again, because I can’t let go of him.
“For now,” I say, “we need to really, really enjoy the next few days. Tomorrow’s spa day, you know. And I heard a rumor that Hott Springs Eternal is doing a soft open of their private hot tubs.”
That makes him smile. “It’s not just a rumor. It’s the truth.”
“Will you do me the honor,” I ask, “of being my real date for tomorrow and the rest of this wedding?”
His hand finds mine on his chest, covers it. Squeezes it tight.
“I will,” he says.