LARK #3
His hand slides down, undoing the button on my jeans, dragging the zipper down slowly—like he’s savoring the sound. He kisses his way down my stomach, lips grazing over skin that tightens under his mouth. I lift my hips and he strips me bare.
When he goes to take his shirt off, we both catch sight of the apron still tied around his waist.
He glances down, then meets my eyes, grinning. “Christ. I forgot I was still dressed like someone’s mother.”
A laugh slips out of me, breathy and unsteady. “Well, you wear it well.”
He yanks the thing off and tosses it to the side, then drags his shirt over his head. My breath catches. Broad chest, thick arms, the kind of muscle that doesn’t come from a gym—built from years of hard work, sun, sweat, and grit.
Then his jeans hit the floor, briefs shoved down in the same motion. His cock springs free, long and hard.
My mouth goes dry. My thighs shift. He’s moving fast now, like we’ve already wasted too much time.
His eyes lock on mine as he comes back between my legs, dark and full of hunger. He grips my hips, dragging me down the bed like he owns me—like I’m his to move, to position, to ruin.
One of my legs is lifted and draped over his shoulder, the other bent so far back it’s nearly flush with my own shoulder. The stretch pulls a moan straight from my chest, and I’m breathless just from how open I am—how deep I know he’s going to be like this.
His eyes flick down to where I’m soaked and waiting for him.
“Shit, look at this.” His voice is low, rough. “You’re fucking dripping. This perfect little cunt knew what was coming.”
His hand wraps around the base of his cock, and he slides the head through me once, then twice. Teasing. Torturing.
“You ready for it?” he murmurs, gaze locked on mine. His hand tightens on my thigh. “’Cause once I’m in, I’m not letting you up until I’ve made a mess of you.”
I nod, and then he pushes in.
He’s thick and unrelenting, stretching me wide in one slow, claiming thrust. The angle—God—it’s brutal. My leg is bent so far back I can feel the strain in my hip, my ribs pressing into my own thigh. I’m twisted open for him, pinned down and powerless in the best fucking way.
He sinks in deeper than I knew was possible—past the point of stretch, past pressure.
It’s overwhelming, this fullness. Like my body’s barely holding on, molded around every inch of him.
My walls grip tight, fluttering and desperate to adjust. He rocks into me, steady and controlled, letting me feel it all.
Every thick drag of him punches a gasp out of me. He’s not fucking me fast this time, he’s fucking me deep. Measured. Possessive. Like he’s trying to reach the parts of me no one else has. Like he wants to stay buried there.
My nails sink into the thick muscle of his shoulders—hard and tense beneath my hands.
He moves like he’s built for this, every controlled thrust pulling his skin tight across his back.
He leans in, folding me even tighter beneath him, and I swear I feel him press right up against my cervix—like he’s made to fit inside me and nowhere else.
“You feel that?” he grits out, voice ragged now. “No one else gets this. Just me.”
I can’t even speak. All I can do is whimper, eyes rolling back, every nerve in my body lit up.
His hand slides up my thigh, slow and firm, until it’s resting low on my stomach, holding me down while he drives into me with a more punishing rhythm than before.
His breath is warm and shallow against my cheek.
“Touch yourself.”
It’s not a suggestion, it’s a command. And I obey.
My hand slips between us, fingers finding the slick mess he’s made of me. The second I start rubbing slow, tight circles around my clit, it all hits at once. The stretch. The pressure. The feeling of him inside me, deep, like he’s trying to fuck the breath from my lungs.
It’s too much. It’s perfect.
The pleasure builds fast and sharp, my body tightening, curling around the edge of something I can’t hold back. I press harder, chasing it, needing it. My eyes squeeze shut, vision going white behind my lids .
Stars. Sparks. Static. I can’t tell what’s real anymore.
But then his hand comes up, wrapping around my jaw, tilting my face toward his.
“Eyes up here,” he says, his voice rough and desperate.
I force my eyes open, and he’s there—hovering above me, gaze locked on mine. His eyes are softer now, tender in a way that undoes me more than the way he’s moving inside me.
There’s heat, sure. Possession. But underneath it, something quieter. Something that feels like awe. Like watching me fall apart under him is breaking him open, too.
My whole body seizes, pleasure tightening low in my belly before it rips through me in waves—hot and unrelenting. I cry out, my breath caught between a gasp and a moan, my hand still working between us as the world tilts and narrows and disappears.
It’s blinding. My thighs shake. My back arches. I swear I stop breathing altogether.
It’s too much, and I don’t want it to stop.
Boone swears under his breath, the sound rough and strained as he thrusts into me one last time, deep and jerky.
“Fuck, Lark—”
I feel it then. The heat. The sharp pulse of him inside me, filling me.
He drops my thigh from his shoulder and my body clenches around him like I can hold him there, keep him buried as deep as he can go.
He drops his weight over me, one hand braced beside my head, the other cradling my cheek like I’m something precious. He buries his face in the curve of my neck, his breath hot and uneven, lips dragging along my skin.
“I love you,” he says, his mouth pressed against my throat. “So damn much.”
I slide my fingers through the back of his damp hair, still catching my breath, my heart threatening to crack wide open.
“I love you too,” I whisper, soft and sure, like it’s the easiest thing in the world to tell him.
And it is .
He lifts his head at that, eyes searching mine like he’s still soaking it in. Then he gives me that smile—the real one. The one that tugs at the corners of his mouth and pulls his dimples deep, like I’m the only one who gets to see it.
He leans in and presses one more kiss to my lips. Slow. Full.
Then, gently, he pulls out of me, and I whimper at the loss—at how empty I suddenly feel without him.
Before I can even fully register the fact that my lungs are working again, Boone rolls onto his back, and I somehow end up going with him, sprawled across his chest like I’m boneless.
My legs tangle with his, and my cheek lands against his skin—which is still warm and damp—his breath coming in these quick, shallow bursts.
His arms curve around me without a second thought—a familiar weight, a silent understanding. There’s a rightness to it, a feeling that in this messy aftermath, I somehow fit perfectly against him. Like maybe this is exactly where I was always meant to land.
I press a lazy kiss to his collarbone and grin against his skin. “If this is the reward for firing someone, I might start doing it recreationally.”
Boone lets out a bark of laughter—loud, real, the kind that comes from deep in his chest. It rumbles beneath me and I swear I can feel it in places I shouldn’t.
“Jesus,” he mutters, still breathless. “You’re a menace.”
“ Your menace,” I mumble, eyes slipping shut, a ridiculous smile still plastered across my face.
A beat passes. Then his voice comes low, right near my temple. “Next time, I’m leaving the apron on.”
I snort. “Please do. Nothing gets me going like kitchenwear that says ‘Whisk Taker.’”
Boone laughs again and his hand tightens on my hip, just slightly.
I bury my face in the warm spot between Boone’s neck and shoulder and let the laugh slip out of me—unsteady, caught halfway like my chest still doesn’t know what to do with this much joy.
His skin is bare against mine, his laugh still soft in the space between us.
And there it is—that fragile, shimmering feeling, the kind that whispers of forever when you least expect it.
Not the grand, sweeping kind you brace yourself for, but the sneaky sort, the one that slides in under the radar and dismantles you piece by piece, leaving you gloriously, irrevocably undone.
His arm tightens around me, hand spreading across my back like he’s holding something he doesn’t want to lose. Without thinking, my lips find the hollow of his throat, a reflex as natural as breathing, settling right over the frantic thrum I still feel there, a ghost of a race run just for me.
And then I just breathe him in.
Warm skin. Clean soap. A hint of mint.
Boone. Just Boone.
This is it. All I’ve ever wanted.
This, this messy, imperfect tangle in the worn cotton sheets, the echo of a shared, ridiculous joke about a stained apron still dancing in the air—this is the quiet revolution I hadn’t even known I was fighting for.
A love that doesn’t announce itself, but instead settles deep.
A slow burn that has somehow infiltrated my very bones, rewriting my DNA.
If the universe decided this was the full stop, if I could never have more than this exact moment—his uneven breath against my hair, the comfortable weight of his limbs—then I will have lived a life that’s impossibly rich. A treasured, ordinary kind of heaven.
Boone presses a kiss to the top of my head, and somehow, it feels like he knows.
So I close my eyes and let the moment hold me.
Just a little longer.