Chapter Twenty-Two #2
“It doesn’t matter how long we have,” he says, his voice achingly low. “It always would have seemed short. No matter how long we were together.”
My arms reach around his neck. I try to pull him down to me, but he doesn’t move. I watch as a primal kind of hunger fills his eyes.
“Tell me that you’re mine.” His hips bear down on me at his words, and I automatically rub against him in return.
“I’m yours,” I whisper, trying and failing again to bring him closer. “And you’re mine.”
He smirks at the possessiveness in my voice. “Yours,” he tells me, finally letting me feel the weight of him. “Ours. This could only be ours.”
When we kiss this time, it’s not tender or slow.
This kiss is a clash of fire and fear, and we stoke the flames as high as they can go.
His tongue delves into my mouth in a consuming sweep, and I’m there to meet it with mine.
I knot my fingers into his hair and my hips never stop moving, jolting upward to grind against him.
He feels impossibly hard, and we’re not even undressed yet.
He pulls back to bring his lips to my neck. Mouthing it and grazing it with his teeth. In my fevered state, I almost want him to bite down. I wrap my legs around his waist and pin my body to his, rolling my hips as I draw my fingers down his back through the thin layer of his shirt.
“Greedy,” he chuckles into my ear. “Whatever you want, it’s yours.”
I wish I could return his smile, but I can’t. All I can think about is how this might be our last time. The last time I can be with him like this. When I speak, my voice is cracked, and my hands are shaking as I pull him closer. “I just want you. Please.”
Simon looks down at me in a breathless kind of awe. I watch as the playfulness dissipates from his gaze, and he seems like he wants to say something but can’t. It’s all right. He doesn’t have to.
He ducks down and kisses me, and this is what it’s supposed to be like.
This feeling of utter rightness. My fingers reach down to grab the bottom of his shirt, and he leans back so I can pull it over his head.
When he moves close again, the hard ridges of his chest brush against me.
I want to tell him more, show him more, but words don’t seem good enough.
Instead, I tuck my hands and push at him, urging him to roll over and lay flat on the mattress.
He lets me lead with the smallest question in his eyes, which gives way to a hazy hunger as I climb on top of him, straddling his waist. My nightgown bunches up beside me, and on my part, there’s nothing between us when I roll against his pants-covered cock.
He hisses out an undistinguishable curse as I draw my center back and forth, and he tilts his head back into the pillow.
Moving in near slow motion, I reach down and draw my nightgown up, dropping it onto the mattress beside us and baring myself to him completely.
He seems in a trance as he drinks me in, his hands drifting to my hips so he can anchor me to him.
I start to tremble—not from the night air roving over me but from his penetrating gaze.
I lean down to kiss him, and he wraps his arms around me like I’m something so precious, he would protect me from anything.
I lean up a little and my nipples rub against his torso as I hold myself just above him.
He brings a hand between us to rub a hardened peak, and a whimper slips from my lips.
The sound sends a noticeable tremor through Simon’s body, and he reaches lower to pull at the fastenings of his pants.
I sit back to help him, tugging at the strings and adjusting my stance to pull the fabric down his legs.
He’s as bare as I am now, but I hardly get to take in the tantalizing sight before he draws me against him as I was before, settling me in his lap and pulling me down by the back of my neck to kiss me hard and wild.
Simon’s hands move to grip the fullness of my ass as he urges me forward and back, moving his hips against me.
I can feel the wet warmth of cock sliding against my stomach, and I reach down to spread the moisture along his throbbing length.
A moan rumbles out from his throat, and I pump my hand around him to coax even more sounds out of him.
Lifting myself up, I position him just outside my dripping entrance. One sway of my hips is all it would take. “Do you want me to stop?” I ask coyly.
He shakes his head and squeezes my ass harder. “No,” he answers. “I want to die like this.”
I can’t hold out anymore. I lower myself onto him, groaning loud when he’s in so deep that my muscles lock in a pleasure-filled spasm.
I look down at Simon, his eyes closed and his jaw slack.
He looks lost in an ocean of sensation. I could almost get off on the fact that I sent him there, but I need to make this last. I can’t ever let it stop.
I roll my hips with deliberate slowness, my hands bracing on his chest. I lift myself up to the point that he almost slips out before I drop down so he can fill me again.
Over and over. Up and down. Sweat is beading down my chest, glistening in the firelight, when I feel my pussy starting to shiver.
I’m getting close, but I strain against it, holding it at bay even though it hurts.
Simon must feel the precarious pleasure coursing through me because he suddenly sits up, keeping himself locked inside me as he slides in even farther. My head falls back in silent bliss.
I eventually look back down as he keeps rocking against me. His hands shift to my hips to lift and drop me onto his cock at an unrelenting pace. Heat is pounding through every inch of my body and I’m close to seeing stars.
He dips his head to suck my nipple into his mouth, and I grab onto his hair so tight that it has to hurt. He shifts to swipe his tongue over and around the other peak, doing it again and again until I let out a helpless cry at how unimaginably good it feels.
Simon sits back, still thrusting with and into me as he holds my barely focusing gaze. “Stop fighting,” he tells me, leaning in to kiss me with parted lips. “Let go for me, Lily.”
Something coils inside me at his command, and my folds squeeze down around him as I shudder and scream.
I muffle the sound against his shoulder, but he yanks my head back and crashes his mouth to mine.
I swallow his roar as I feel him explode inside me, and I want to stay in this lust-drunk moment until the world stops.
Time feels nonlinear as we pant together in the aftermath.
Simon falls backward, keeping me tucked into his chest as we rest against each other.
Eventually, I shift over so that he slips out of me, and I smile against the subtle soreness between my legs.
We lie there for a while, trading gentle touches between us as we come back to reality.
“Tell me more about what you are like in the future,” Simon urges a minute later, his fingers running up and down my back. I settle more comfortably against him, oddly realizing that I now have to strain a bit to remember what I looked like before.
“I have red hair,” I say against his chest. “And freckles. I got seventeen stitches just under my chin when I was little, so I have a big scar. You can’t see it unless I lift my chin all the way up, but I think it gives me character.”
He runs his finger under the unmarred skin of Catherine’s chin, seeming like he’s looking for it. “And you are not married where you’re from?”
I smile at his question. “I’m definitely not married. I’m only twenty-four.”
“I’m twenty-four,” he says, “and my father says I am halfway through life.”
I lean up to look at him, bracing my weight on my elbows. “That’s not what it’s like in the future. In my time, people live well into their nineties if they’re healthy and lucky. And most people don’t get even get engaged to be married until they’re in their late twenties.”
“What activities fill your days?” he asks.
“I study and I work. I’m going for my PhD in psychology, which is the scientific study of how people think, feel, and act. I love my job so much.”
“What do you love about it?”
I fold my arms across his chest and lower my chin to rest on them.
“I love developing meaningful relationships with people who don’t necessarily have the support or a support system in place that they can trust. I love giving my patients the tools they need to work through whatever it is that they’re struggling with.
When I took an intro to psychology class in college my junior year, I knew it was all I wanted to do. ”
Simon runs his fingers through my hair, tucking it behind my ear on one side. “Was I the first person you met when you came here?”
His chest rises beneath me as he breathes, and I have the inexplicable need to get closer.
I sneak one arm under him and pull with the other, rolling a bit to pull him on top of me.
He’s the weighted blanket I never knew I needed.
Simon smirks at our new position. “Yes, you were the very first person I met.”
“What did you think of me then?” he questions, pushing up on his arms but letting his bottom half rest against me.
“At first, I thought all of this was some kind of a show, and everyone was pretending. When I saw you, I thought you were handsome, and a good actor, and tall.”
“I am rather tall,” he agrees. My knees bend up at his waist of their own accord. The closer he is, the more comfortable I am. He slowly starts lowering himself down, sliding his hands under the pillow behind me and bringing us chest to chest. “And what do you think of me now?”
I look inward and ask the same question to myself, and I give him the unedited, honest answer that comes to mind. “I think that I’ve never felt this close to anyone before.”
“Not even in your time?”
I shake my head and wrap my arms around him. “No. Not even then.”
A pleased kind of tenderness overtakes his features, and he steals down to kiss me. I kiss him back and close my eyes, foolishly hoping that if we get lost enough in each other, then maybe no one will find us.
I wake up to a gentle shaking feeling, and as my eyes flutter open, I find Lady Rochford standing at the foot of the bed.
“Catherine, he has to leave now. It’s almost morning.”
I turn my neck and see Simon is already awake beside me, his gaze much more serious than it was a few hours ago. We silently sit up, looking at Lady Rochford and then at each other.
“He has to leave,” she says again. “I will watch the door.” She crosses the room and exits, and Simon and I remain in painful limbo.
I swallow past the lump forming in my throat. “This is it, then.”
“No,” Simon replies determinedly, twisting to face me and taking my hand. “This isn’t it. Your plan is going to work.”
In only a minute or two, he’ll be gone, and I smile against the pain that builds deep inside chest. “You’re right,” I tell him. “Our plan is going to work.”
Except for the fact that it might not. But I’m not going to tell him that. Instead, I slip out of bed, and he does the same.
“You know things. You’ve done things differently.” He picks his clothes up from the floor and starts hastily pulling them on. “Events are not destined to end the same. What happened between us couldn’t have happened if Catherine was here. I know this wouldn’t have happened.”
“History says otherwise,” I tell him. “It wouldn’t have been you, but it would have been someone.”
“History can be wrong.” He strides around the bed until he’s standing in front of me, clasping my hips. “You’re going to prove it wrong.” I don’t answer right away, and Simon goes on. “Lily, whatever force it was that brought you here, it wouldn’t have done it without a reason.”
“I hope so,” I tell him. “But I need you to listen to me. You have to promise that if you’re questioned, you’ll swear you don’t care about me, and nothing ever happened between us. Don’t admit to anything. Do whatever you have to do to meet me on the other side of this. Promise me.”
Simon’s fingers dig into my waist, but it doesn’t hurt. I put my hands over his. He brings his face down to mine, his breath warm against my cheeks. “I promise,” he says. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”
I pull his head down and kiss him. It’s tender and a little shattered, like it’s possible that it might be the last time. When I lean back, his eyes are still closed. “Go,” I whisper.
His eyes flash open, and he takes the smallest step back. “You are going to win,” he says.
I know he won’t go unless I agree. “I’m going to win,” I assure him.
He stays where he is, and I commit his image to memory before he turns and leaves. I’m left alone, blinking my eyes against the encroaching fear. Fear doesn’t control me. I control me.
I can do this. Not just for me, but for Catherine, too. Maybe no one fought for her in her time, but I’m going to do it now. I’m going to fight for her, for me, and all of us, and I am going to fight dirty.