32. The Last Stone
The Last Stone
~BECKETT~
Alow groan tears out of my chest the second Amber’s mouth sinks back down around me.
She’s already taken me twice tonight.
Once against the wall the moment we hit the bedroom, my hands under her thighs and her back arched off the plaster while the house creaked around us.
Once slower, deeper, after I’d laid her out on the bed and learned every new freckle five years had put on her skin.
Both times I’d emptied myself into her until my vision blurred.
I should be spent or better yet, half-asleep with her tucked under my arm, the way we used to end nights before the world went sideways.
Instead my cock is still hard, thick and aching, and her clever mouth is working me with the kind of focused, filthy precision that makes a man forget his own name.
One of her hands is wrapped around the base, fingers stroking and squeezing the swollen knot that refuses to go down all the way. The other braces on my thigh, nails digging in just enough to keep me from bucking up into her throat.
Five years of holding every damn thing in check, and the second she’s within reach my body decides it wants to make up for lost time all in one night.
The realization hits me like a slap.
I’d convinced myself the drought had dulled the edge; that a man could go that long without and come out the other side quieter, steadier.
Turns out all those years of clenched fists and cold showers just banked the fire higher. Now the opportunity is here, warm, willing, smelling like sun-warm apricot and garden roses and the salt of her own earlier pleasure, and every restrained inch of me is paying the price.
I watch the way her lips stretch around the thickest part of me, the way her cheeks hollow on the upstroke.
She’s always been good with that mouth of hers.
Directing vendors, ending arguments, talking three stubborn Alphas into softer versions of themselves.
And this. Especially this. She takes me deep enough that the tip brushes the back of her throat, then eases off with a wet, deliberate pull that leaves a shiny trail of spit and the last of my earlier release down her chin.
Her mouth comes free with a soft plop. A thin string of saliva stretches between her lower lip and the flushed head of my cock before it breaks. She doesn’t wipe it away.
Instead, she leans in again and drags the flat of her tongue in one slow, thorough line from the base of the knot all the way up to the slit, collecting every drop.
“Fuck, Apricot,” I rasp. My voice sounds wrecked even to my own ears. “You’re going to kill me.”
She looks up through her lashes, hazel eyes gone dark and pleased. Her lipstick is long gone. Her curls are a wild halo from my hands. There’s a faint red mark on the side of her neck where I’d sucked too hard earlier, and the sight of it makes something possessive and proud kick hard in my chest.
I can’t think about the shape of a future that doesn’t have her in it as our Omega. The idea alone is a cold knife under the ribs.
Somewhere across town Cade is finishing his shift, or maybe already done and still choosing the bar over this bed.
That’s his problem to solve.
I’m a team player by nature—always have been—but opportunities like this one don’t come twice.
I’m not losing it. Not again.
“Come up here,” I tell her. The words come out low, rough, an order more than a request. “Sit on my lap. I want to taste myself on your mouth.”
She doesn’t hesitate.
She never does when I use that voice. The obedience of it—the way she simply rises onto her knees and climbs over me like it’s the most natural thing in the world—sends a fresh surge of blood south.
My cock twitches hard against my stomach as she settles astride my thighs, naked and warm and still a little shaky from the last two rounds.
My eyes take the long way down her body.
Five years and she hasn’t let a single soft edge go to waste. The outline of her abs shows when she breathes, the kind of quiet strength that comes from hauling chairs and climbing ladders and never sitting still long enough for anyone to notice.
But the curve of her hips is still there, generous and familiar, the same place my hands used to settle when we danced in the kitchen of the old apartment.
I don’t know when she finds the hours to keep herself like this between eleven weddings, a celebrity clientele, and the whole impossible schedule she’s been running.
I only know I’m grateful for every inch of it.
“Look at you,” I murmur, palms sliding up the outside of her thighs until they rest at her waist. “Still the sexiest damn thing I’ve ever seen. Want to watch you bounce on my cock, Sweet Apricot. Want to feel you take every inch again.”
She giggles—low, throaty, pure seduction—and leans forward so her breasts brush my chest.
“Is that what you want, Mr. Shaw?”
“Fuck yeah.” My hands tighten on her hips. “Can’t get enough of our Sweetness.”
She reaches between us, wraps her fingers around me, and guides the head to her entrance.
She’s still slick from earlier, still open and soft, and the first slow inch of her sliding down draws a sound out of both of us that the walls of this rented house have never heard before.
She takes her time, sinking lower in tiny increments, milking the throbbing shaft with the tight, rhythmic flutter of her walls until I’m buried to the root and my forehead is pressed to her collarbone.
“Fuck,” I groan against her skin. “Never fucking up again. You hear me? Never.”
She leans in, lips brushing the shell of my ear, and whispers,
“Do you mean it?”
“Fuck yeah.” The words are half a growl, half a vow. “Every damn syllable.”
That’s all the permission she needs.
She starts to move—slow rolls of her hips at first, then longer rises and drops that let me watch every inch of my cock disappear inside her.
The wet sound of it fills the quiet room. Her scent blooms thicker with every bounce: apricot going sun-ripe and sweet, roses opening under heat, the soft vanilla undertone that always meant she was close.
Mine answers it—cedar and woodsmoke and black tea steeped strong—until the whole bedroom smells like the two of us tangled together again after too many years of empty air.
She works me higher, faster, her palms braced on my shoulders for leverage.
I last longer than I have any right to, given the night we’ve already had, but the sight of her above me—head tipped back, mouth open, that faint sheen of sweat catching the lamplight on the slope of her breasts—starts to unravel the last of my control.
When I feel the knot begin to swell again, I grip her ass with both hands, lift her just enough that I can meet every downward stroke with an upward thrust of my own.
“That’s it,” I grit out. “Take it. Use me.”
She does. She rides harder, meeting me thrust for thrust, the slap of skin on skin turning sharp and rhythmic.
I’m close—closer than I want to be—and the knowledge that I’m about to lose it again after two full rounds already should embarrass me. It doesn’t.
It only makes me hungrier.
“Shit—Amber—” I curse, the warning rough in my throat.
I haul her up and off me just in time.
The first thick pulse of my release stripes across her stomach, then another, then a third that lands high enough to paint the underside of one breast.
My knot flares full and heavy the second the last of it leaves me, the pressure so intense it borders on pain.
She doesn’t miss a beat.
One hand drops between us and wraps around the swollen base, massaging in slow, firm circles that draw another broken sound out of me.
I lean in, forehead to her sternum, and press my mouth to the warm skin just above her heart.
“We’re going to make it to the altar,” I whisper against her flesh. “So I can knot you properly. The way I’ve been dreaming about for five years.”
She stills. I feel the surprise in the way her breath catches, in the way her fingers pause on my knot.
When I lift my head, she’s looking down at me, eyes wide and searching.
“We don’t have to wait, you know,” she says softly. There’s a question under the words, careful and hopeful and a little afraid.
I know she’s referring to me knotting in her.
Sealing the deal.
Making up for the lost time of us waiting for that faithful day…only for us to be the cowards who run away, leaving her alone.
I shake my head.
One hand comes up to cradle her chin, thumb stroking the soft line of her jaw until her eyes meet mine and stay there.
“No. We do.” My voice is quiet but absolute. “I’m not securing that knot inside you until our ring is on your finger. Not the temporary one. Not a borrowed one. The real deal. The one that says you’re ours, we’re yours, and nobody gets to walk away from it again.
She nods slowly.
I can see the war behind her eyes—the part of her that wants to believe and the part that spent five years learning not to. She’s trying not to get emotional, trying not to let the hope show too clearly on her face. I don’t blame her.
Hope is a dangerous currency after the kind of bill we handed her.
I mean every word.
She’ll understand that in time.
Until then I can only keep saying it, keep proving it, keep laying one solid stone after another until the wall between us is strong enough to stand forever.
I press a kiss to her forehead, soft and lingering.
“You want to shower?”
She thinks about it for half a second, then the grin that spreads across her face is pure mischief and pure Amber.
“Fuck yeah. But are we just showering?”
I chuckle, the sound low and warm in the quiet room.
“Fuck no.”
As if I can ignore being balls deep when she’s naked and having beads of water dripping down her beautifully carved body.
I’m off the bed in one smooth motion, scooping her up against my chest the same way I’d carried her in earlier.
She lets out a startled laugh and loops her arms around my neck, her stomach still shiny with the evidence of what we’d just done. The bathroom is only a few steps down the hall.
The water will be hot, the tiles cool under my feet, and her body wet and slick against mine for the rest of the night if I have any say in it.
I kick the bedroom door shut behind us with one heel and carry our Sweet Apricot toward the only kind of cleansing either of us needs.