4. Bree #2
He pulled them down, kneeling as he went. His mouth pressed to my hip. My stomach. Lower. I gripped the edge of the island and tried to remember how to breathe.
“Is this okay?”
“Yes.”
“Tell me if it’s not.” He said it against my thigh.
“It’s okay. It’s-”
His tongue found my clit, and I stopped talking.
He was thorough here too, methodical, patient, a man solving a problem he meant to get exactly right. He learned what made me gasp and did it again, found what made me clench and stayed there, relentless, his hands hooked over my thighs to hold me open.
“You taste-” He groaned into me. “I could do this all night.”
“Then stop narrating and do it.”
He huffed a laugh against my slick skin, and the vibration of it nearly finished me on the spot.
The pressure coiled hotter, slow and merciless. My thighs shook around his ears. I was soaked and long past embarrassed about it, one hand fisted in his hair and the other white-knuckled on the marble, right at the edge and chasing it, when he pulled his mouth away.
“Not yet.”
“Rafael-”
“I’ll let you come on my mouth some other night. Tonight I want to be inside you when it happens.” He stood, hands closing hard on my hips. “Can I?”
“Do it. Please.”
He spun me to face the island. My palms hit the cool marble. I heard his belt, then his zipper, and then the blunt heat of his cock notched against me, thick and ready.
“Bree.” His voice was wrecked. “Look at me.”
I turned my head. He was right there, close enough to kiss, eyes gone dark in the candlelight.
“I think about you when I shouldn’t,” he said. “Every meeting. Every call. You live in the back of my head and I can’t get you out. I don’t want to.”
He pushed into me slow, working me open around him one inch at a time, and the stretch dragged every coherent thought clean out of my skull.
“Good girl,” he breathed against my spine. “Take all of it.”
I rocked back to take him deeper, greedy for it, and he swore and gave me exactly what I wanted. One hand splayed flat over my belly to hold me where he needed me. The other dragged up my ribs, found my breast, rolled the nipple until I was shoving into his palm.
“You feel unreal.” Faster now, deeper. “I don’t deserve this. I don’t deserve you.”
“Less talking, more fucking.”
He laughed, breathless and real, and gave it to me harder. Then his hand slid down off my belly, found my clit, and pressed.
I came so hard the kitchen went white at the edges. I heard myself cry out, felt everything in me clamp down around him, felt him groan into my shoulder and let go right behind me.
We stayed like that a long moment, both of us shaking, his forehead pressed between my shoulder blades, his hands still bracketing my hips.
“Okay?” he asked again.
“Better than okay.”
He laughed. Kissed my shoulder. Pulled out carefully and turned me around to face him.
“I mean it,” he said. “What I said before. I want this to be more than a business arrangement. I want to try. If you’ll let me.”
I looked at him in the candlelight. This man I’d married for money and duty. This stranger who’d just taken me apart in our kitchen and asked permission every step of the way.
“Let’s try,” I said.
He smiled. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
We made it to the bedroom eventually.
He tipped me back onto the mattress and took his sweet time about it, kissing me slow and deep, one hand cradling my skull while the other went wandering by candlelight. Down my throat. Over my collarbone. The swell of my breast, the curve of my waist. Learning me by heart.
“Tell me if you want me to stop,” he said against my sternum.
“If you stop now, I’ll end you.”
His mouth curved against my skin. “Noted.”
He kissed his way down, slower than before, no rush left in him at all.
He drew it out with his tongue, backing off every time I got close, mouthing the inside of my thigh until I stopped shaking, then starting over.
By the time he let me fall, I had a fistful of the sheets and his name in my teeth and not one scrap of pride left.
He climbed back up my body while I was still coming down.
“You’re perfect,” he said. “Right now, like this. Perfect.”
I should’ve had a sharp comeback ready. I didn’t. He meant it, and I was too wrung out to get my guard back up, so for once I let the words land.
He slid inside me slow, face to face this time, watching me the whole way in. He caught my hand on the pillow and threaded our fingers together. The pace he set was almost lazy, deep and unhurried, his forehead dropped to mine until we were breathing the same air.
This wasn’t the kitchen. The kitchen had been all heat and hunger, both of us grabbing before we could talk ourselves out of it. This was slower. This was him letting me see him, wide open, and letting me be seen right back.
I came again with his name against his mouth, and he followed a few strokes after, shuddering, gasping into my hair.
He told me I was perfect, and God help me, I believed him.
I fell asleep in his arms thinking: okay, I think I really like him.
I woke to cold light and an empty bed.
His side was made. The sheets were smooth and cool, no indent where his body had been. My clothes were folded on the chair, placed there by someone who’d been awake and moving while I was still dreaming.
I sat up. The clock read 9:15. Late, for me. I never slept past seven.
The penthouse was quiet. Too quiet. I pulled on a robe and padded to the kitchen, where the marble island looked innocent and ordinary in the morning light.
No coffee waiting. No note.
His study door was closed. I could hear his voice through the wood, clipped and professional, already on a call.
I stood in the hallway and listened to my husband talk about quarterly projections, and the warm glow of the night before started to cool.
He was busy, the way he was always busy. Last night had been a storm, a blackout, a moment out of time. Now the power was back and the world had resumed spinning and Rafael Grant was exactly where he always was: in his office, on his phone, focused on everything except me.
The doorbell rang at ten.
I answered it to find a delivery man holding a bouquet. Two dozen roses, red and perfect and obviously expensive.
“Mrs. Grant?”
“That’s me.”
He handed me the flowers. There was a card nestled in the stems. I pulled it out and read the words typed in neat black font.
Apologies for the disruption last night. - Rafael
I stared at the card.
The disruption.
The night I’d believed was a turning point, the hours of careful touching and whispered promises and the man I’d married finally, finally seeing me.
A disruption.
I set the flowers on the counter and walked to the bedroom, and I stood in front of the mirror looking at the woman who’d let herself hope.
The disruption.