Chapter 18
Pippa
AJ's hands grip my waist, and the world tilts. My shoulder meets the mattress, cheek pressing into the rumpled cotton, and I'm face-down before I can draw a full breath. The shift in position sends aftershocks rippling through my core. My body still humming, still clenching around nothing.
"Easy," he murmurs, his palm flat between my shoulder blades. The weight of it grounds me, keeps me from floating away on the residual tremors.
I try to push up, but his hand presses firmer. Not forcing. Suggesting. The distinction matters, even now. Especially now.
"Stay."
One word. Quiet. Absolute.
My spine surrenders against my will, melting into the sheets. The cotton is cool against my overheated skin, a contrast that makes me shiver.
His hands find my shoulders first. Thumbs digging into the knots I've carried for weeks, for months. The pressure borders on pain before it dissolves into something closer to relief. I didn't realise how tight I'd been holding myself until his fingers work into the muscle and I feel it release.
"You carry everything here," he says, thumb circling a particularly vicious knot at the base of my neck. "All that authority. All that control."
I want to argue, but his hands slide down my spine, pressing into the dip of my lower back, and the words dissolve into a low sound that's embarrassingly close to a whimper.
His palms map the landscape of me. The ridges of muscle along my sides. The curve of my waist. The solid strength of me pressed into the mattress beneath him.
When his fingers reach my hips, they linger, squeezing with an appreciation that feels almost reverent.
Almost.
“Look at you,” he breathes. “So strong everywhere.”
His thumbs trace the crease where thigh meets hip.
“And still shaking for me.”
I am. The tremors haven't stopped while his hands continue their slow exploration. He works down my thighs, kneading the dense muscle I've built through years of physical work. Each press of his fingers sends heat pooling low in my belly, rebuilding something I thought was spent.
"Spread your legs."
His hand slides between my thighs from behind, cupping my pussy with possessive ease. Two fingers slip through my folds, gathering wetness, and I hear him exhale sharp, hungry.
He pushes two fingers inside me without warning, and my back arches off the bed.
"Fuck—" The word tears out of me, rough and desperate.
The mattress dips as he moves, positioning himself behind me. His cock slides through my slick folds. The head catches at my entrance and my hips push back instinctively, seeking more, but his hand holds me still.
"Ah-ah." The admonishment is gentle, almost fond. "What did I say?"
I clench my jaw. "Don’t tease. Enough with the teasing."
"Tell me what you want, Pippa." Another slow roll of his hips, his cock sliding through my wetness, bumping my clit before pulling away. "Use your words."
"I want—" My voice catches. "I want you inside me again."
He groans and finally, finally, notches himself at my entrance. He pushes in slowly again, and I feel every bit of him. The stretch. The fullness. The way my body opens to accommodate him, still sensitive from before.
"You are…" he murmurs against my neck. " Pip, you feel so amazing.”
I'm panting by the time he's fully seated, my fingers gripping the sheets, my body stretched taut. He holds still, letting me adjust, letting me feel the depth of him.
Then he starts to move.
Slow at first… agonisingly slow. Each thrust deliberate, measured, hitting that spot inside me that makes my vision blur. His hands grip my hips, controlling the angle, the pace, everything.
"More," I gasp. "Harder."
"No." The word is calm, absolute. "You'll take what I give you."
He keeps that maddening rhythm. Steady, relentless, while his mouth works across my shoulders, my neck, the sensitive spot behind my ear. His breath is ragged now, his control starting to crack at the edges.
“Please.” The word slips out before I can stop it.
AJ stills above me, his breath uneven against my shoulder.
I turn my face into the mattress, my fingers twisting in the sheets.
“Please, AJ.” My voice comes out rough and unsteady. “You have no idea what you do to me.”
His restraint snaps.
He slams into me, and the sound that rips from my throat is raw, animal. His hips piston faster, harder, driving me into the mattress with each thrust. The wet slap of our bodies fills the room.
"You are amazing, Pip," he growls against my ear.
“Pippa.” His voice breaks against my skin. “With me.”
His hand closes over mine.
“I want to come with you,” he whispers.
The orgasm crashes through me in deep, helpless waves, my body tightening around him as I press my face into the mattress and hold on to his hand. He follows seconds later with a rough sound against my shoulder, his hips losing their rhythm as he buries himself deep and comes with me.
We collapse together, his weight pressing me into the mattress, our breathing harsh and ragged in the quiet room. His lips find my shoulder, pressing a kiss there. Tender, almost reverent.
I'm still trembling. Still clenching around him. Still trying to remember how to form coherent thoughts.
His thumb moves over the back of my neck, slow and unsteady, and then he presses another kiss there.
“You’re incredible,” he whispers.
What can I say to that?
I let him stay there for a while.
Not because I am too exhausted to move.
Although that is also true.
Mostly because his weight over me feels strange in a way I do not immediately want to fix. Heavy, yes. Warm. Solid. His breathing is uneven against my shoulder, his body still tucked close to mine, and for once the silence in my flat is not something I have chosen to protect myself.
It is just silence.
Shared.
Which is much more dangerous.
Eventually, AJ shifts with a careful sound.
“Sorry,” he murmurs, easing his weight off me. “I may have temporarily lost access to several major muscle groups.”
I turn my face into the pillow. “Tragic.”
“Deeply.”
The mattress moves as he rolls onto his back beside me.
For a moment, neither of us says anything.
The room smells of sex and warm skin and the faint clean cotton scent of my sheets.
Morning light presses softly at the edge of the curtains, too bright for the fact that we have been awake all night and apparently decided breakfast was not enough poor judgement for one day.
I should say something.
Something casual. Something dry. Something that proves I am still myself and not a woman lying naked in bed beside the journalist who arrived two weeks ago with an apology, a notebook and deeply unfortunate green eyes.
Nothing arrives.
AJ turns his head on the pillow.
I feel him looking at me before I see it.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re very quiet.”
“I’m recovering.”
“From me?”
“Don’t look pleased.”
“I am trying to look humble.”
His hand moves, not to grab or pull, just to touch. Fingers tracing the inside of my wrist where my arm lies between us. A small thing. Too small for the size of the reaction it causes.
His thumb strokes once over my skin.
My eyes close.
“You all right?” he asks.
I open my eyes and look at him.
He is rumpled beyond repair. Hair wrecked, mouth swollen, jaw faintly shadowed already because apparently even his face is determined to make things complicated.
There is a red mark on his shoulder where I bit him.
A scratch down his chest where I clearly lost some restraint and did not file the correct paperwork first.
I should probably apologise.
I do not want to.
“Yes,” I say. “Are you?”
His mouth curves. “I may never be normal again.”
The smile fades from his face slowly, not because something is wrong, but because the warmth underneath it becomes more obvious without the joke sitting on top.
“I’m all right,” he says. “Very all right.”
The words are not grand.
Not a declaration.
Still, they settle somewhere I have not given them permission to sit.
“Great,” I say.
That is apparently the best I can do.
He accepts it as if it is enough.
That might be the first mistake.
Or the second.
Or possibly we are well past counting.
My body is warm and loose in ways I am not used to. My mind is floating somewhere behind it, trying half-heartedly to organise what just happened into categories that make sense.
Sex.
Bad decision.
Good sex.
Very good sex.
Work complication.
Personal complication.
Man leaving after one more night shift.
None of those categories help.
AJ’s hand slides from my wrist to my palm. His fingers thread through mine, and for a moment I consider pretending I do not notice how intimate that is.
Ridiculous, really, given what we have just done.
Still.
Some things feel more naked than naked.
“You need sleep,” he says.
“So do you.”
“I know.”
“Are you telling me what to do in my own bed?”
His eyes open fully. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“You definitely would.”
I laugh, and it costs me the last useful piece of my resistance.
AJ smiles, then lifts our joined hands and presses his mouth to my knuckles.
Not theatrical.
Not smug.
Just one tired, soft kiss that has no business feeling this gentle after the way he had me begging not so long ago.
I stare at him.
He does not look away.
I should say something.
But my body has gone heavy, the night shift finally claiming what adrenaline and lust borrowed from it. My eyelids drop once. Then again.
AJ moves closer, pulling the duvet over us both with an awkward manoeuvre that almost works. I make a small sound of protest when cold air hits my back, and he immediately tucks the fabric around my shoulder.
“Bossy even asleep,” he murmurs.
“I’m not asleep.”
“Convincing.”
The last thing I feel before I go under is his arm settling carefully around my waist.
I let it stay.
For reasons of warmth.
Obviously.
When I wake, someone is kissing my shoulder.
Not dramatically. Not urgently. Soft, slow kisses along the line where my shoulder meets my neck, each one followed by a breath that warms my skin before the next arrives.
For a second, I do not know where I am.
That is rare enough to make me still.