Chapter 19 Choosing You, Keeping Me #2
"I'm glad." He brings my wrist closer and kisses the back of my hand. "You smell like home. You always have. Even when I was too stupid to tell you."
Something warm spreads through my chest. I reach out and brush a leaf fragment from his shoulder, my fingers lingering on the fabric of his shirt.
"What do you want to do with the rest of the afternoon?" He keeps hold of my hand, leaving it loose enough that I can move without asking him to let go.
"Stay here." I shift closer to him, letting my shoulder press against his. "Just be here with you."
"I can do that." He releases my hand and wraps his arm around my shoulders instead, pulling me against his side. "I'm good at being here."
I laugh, surprised by the ease of it. "Since when?"
"Recently." He presses a kiss to my temple, smiling against my skin. "I'm hoping to make a habit of it."
I turn in his arms, bringing my face close to his. His eyes are very dark this close, warm and focused entirely on me. I slide closer until my knee presses against his thigh.
"Rafael." I let my hand rest on his chest, feeling his heartbeat under my palm, steady and a little too fast. "I want you to kiss me."
He doesn't hesitate. His mouth meets mine, warm and familiar and somehow new while I melt into him.
My body remembers what my mind spent months trying to forget: the shape of his lips, the way he tips in closer when I make a sound, the relief of being wanted without having to ask twice.
His hands settle at my waist, steadying me. I lean in and let myself want this without reservation.
The first kiss is soft, careful. As if he's still half-afraid I'll change my mind.
The second isn't.
I part my lips and he takes the invitation with a low sound that vibrates through both of us. His tongue strokes mine.
My fingers curl in his shirt. He slides a hand into my hair, careful of the little white blossom still tucked behind my ear, and deepens the kiss until the clearing narrows to heat and breath and the soft give of the blanket under my knee.
When we break apart, we're both breathing harder.
His forehead rests against mine. My lips feel swollen already.
"I have you," he says, honest, rough at the edges. "You're here. With me."
"I am." I pull him back down before the space can grow. "I'm not going anywhere. Don't disappear on me again."
"I won't." A vow against my mouth. "Not again."
We kiss until I'm fully in his lap, thigh over his, soft shirt dragged half-up by restless hands.
He palms my ribs, then the underside of my breast through the fabric, and pleasure sparks so sharp I gasp into his mouth. He smiles against my lips, pleased, and does it again, slower, thumb circling my nipple until I'm rocking against the hard line of him without meaning to.
"Tell me if I go too fast," he murmurs.
"You're not." I catch his lower lip between my teeth, tug, soothe it with my tongue. "Don't treat me like I'm breakable. Just stay with me."
"Always." A vow wrapped in heat. "Come here."
He stands and draws me up with him, walking me backward through dappled light to the crumbling stone wall.
My back meets sun-warmed rock. Moss soft under one shoulder. He cages me there and kisses me filthy and thorough, open-mouthed, while his hands work my trousers loose at the hips.
I shove his shirt up and finally get skin: warm, familiar, trembling slightly under my palms. He lifts me just enough that I can hook a thigh around his hip.
Clothes half-on, open air on my bare legs. He grinds the thick press of his cock against my cunt through his trousers and my underwear until I'm whining into his neck, friction mean and perfect.
"Listen to you." Praise, low and filthy, mouth at my throat, then my jaw, then back to my mouth. "Already making those sounds for me… you want to drive me mad, huh? So fucking beautiful when you choose me."
He shoves my soft shirt higher and palms my bare breast, pinching lightly, rolling the nipple until my hips jerk. "These. Fuck, Sera. Love having my hands on you again. Love the way you push into me when I touch you like this."
"Then put them on me properly." I catch his wrist and guide his hand lower, into my underwear. His fingers find me soaked. We both swear, breath shared.
"Cazzo." His forehead drops to mine. "Dripping for me in the middle of the afternoon… Soft and ready."
He strokes my clit in slow, devastating circles, then sinks two thick fingers into me while he kisses me breathless.
"There you go, baby…" The stretch makes my knee buckle against his hip as he holds me up. "Ride my hand. That's it. Good. Take what you need. Fuck yourself on my fingers while I watch."
I do as I press my forehead on his shoulder. Grinding on his hand against warm stone while birds call somewhere above us like the world hasn't stopped.
Heat builds fast and mean. My thighs shake. I'm close enough to taste it when he eases his fingers free. I make a helpless, needy sound I don't bother to swallow.
Rafael lifts his shining fingers between us and holds my gaze while he tastes them, slow.
"Sweet," he says, wrecked. "My wife. Mine again. Say it."
"Yours." It comes out shaking and true. "Rafael… please…"
"Blanket." Command wrapped in tenderness. "I want you open for me where the light can find you."
We stumble back to the spread blanket, laughing once under our breath when my foot catches on soft grass.
He peels my trousers and underwear the rest of the way down, lingering to kiss the inside of my knee, my thigh, the damp crease where my leg meets my body, until I'm fist-deep in his hair and begging without pride. He sheds his own clothes with less patience.
When he sits back on the wool, cock hard and flushed against his stomach, I climb into his lap facing him, knees bracketing his hips. The blossom somehow still clings in my hair. Leaf-light moves over his shoulders, green and gold.
"Both of you, I will take care of you," he murmurs against my skin. "I've got you."
Then he notches the thick head of his cock against me and waits. Eyes dark, hands on my waist. Letting me choose the slide.
I sink down onto him slow. Inch by inch. The stretch fills me deep enough that a broken sound leaves my throat and my nails dig into his shoulders. He shakes with the effort of holding still.
"That's it. Fuck... Perfect." He kisses my sternum through my rumpled shirt, then shoves the fabric up and takes my nipple into his mouth, sucking hard while I adjust around him. "So tight, so wet. Made for my cock… Move when you're ready, Sera. Use me, show me you're staying."
I start to ride him. Soft rolls at first, feeling every ridge and drag, then greedier, dropping harder until the wet sound of us is unmistakable in the quiet grove.
He meets every descent with an upward thrust, praising me between curses and open-mouthed kisses: beautiful, brilliant, my girl, taking me so fucking well.
His hands bruise my hips. I don't care. I brace on his shoulders and fuck myself on his cock until sweat prickles at my hairline and I'm whining his name into the canopy.
"Rafael! Ah… don't stop, right there…"
"Not stopping." He snaps his hips up harder, finding an angle that makes my vision spark. One hand slips between us to rub my clit in tight, filthy circles timed to every thrust. "Come on my cock. I want to feel you break. Now."
"I… fuck! I'm…"
"Now, Sera."
I shatter around him, clenching hard, forehead to his, a raw cry muffled against his mouth as he kisses me through every pulse. He holds me while I shake, still buried deep, murmuring praise into my hair: good, that's it, I've got you, so perfect.
Then he eases us down onto our sides on the blanket without pulling out, careful of my body, careful of everything we almost lost.
"One more round," he whispers, hooking my thigh high over his hip, face close, noses almost touching. His cock shifts inside me and we both groan. "Want to hold you while I finish. Want your eyes. Want to feel you come again while I'm as deep as I can get."
Rafael thrusts into me slow and deep from that angle, then harder when I nod against his mouth. One hand stays between us, rubbing my oversensitive clit until tears prick my eyes from the intensity. The other cradles the back of my head, filthy and devoted at once.
Every snap of his hips says stay, every broken sound I give him says I am.
"Feel that?" he rasps against my lips. "How you take me? This cunt was made for my cock. Whining for more even after you've come." His rhythm turns punishing for a stretch of seconds. "Come with me. Please, Sera… fuck, come…"
"I'm close… I'm so close…"
"Give it to me, baby. Together. Now."
The second climax rolls through me softer and deeper, a wave that pulls him with me.
He follows with a broken groan of my name, spilling into me in long hot pulses, arm locked around my waist, mouth open against my cheek.
We stay joined while our breathing settles.
Leaf-shadows move over his shoulder. Somewhere a bird takes off through the branches.
He presses a kiss to the blossom still caught in my hair, then to my temple, then to my mouth, sweet after all that heat, like he's sealing something we both finally mean.
He pulls the spare folds of the blanket up around us both, creating a small private world among the old trees and crumbling stone.
My shirt is still half-on, shoved above my breasts. I don't fix it. His hand rests warm on my hip, thumb stroking idle circles, not asking for more than I've already given.
My body feels used in the best way: marked by his mouth, full of him, chosen.
I feel different already. Settled. Not because the past vanished between one thrust and the next.
When we finally go still, the blanket is tangled around both of us and the light has gone deep gold. His arm is heavy across my waist, his breath warm against my shoulder.
The light has shifted to deep gold, the sun moving toward the horizon. His arm is heavy across my waist, his breath warm against my shoulder.