Chapter Five #2
I held his gaze and stripped down to my bra and underwear. His eyes went dark in a way that had nothing to do with logistics. He shed his shirt and jeans and we stood on the ledge, mostly undressed, the sun on our skin and the valley below, and neither of us was looking at the view.
He jumped first. I heard the splash and his sharp inhale. I followed, and the cold hit me everywhere at once, sharp and stunning, and I came up gasping.
"That is not bracing," I sputtered. "That is assault."
He laughed. Water ran off his shoulders. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his eyes lighter in the sun, gray rather than steel, and it made my stomach dip.
"You're beautiful," he said, and the laughter faded. He was treading water two feet away. "You know that?"
"I'm hypothermic."
"Beautiful and hypothermic." He reached for me under the water, his hands finding my waist, and pulled me to him.
The heat of him in the cold was its own shock.
My legs wrapped around his hips, his hands spreading across my back.
I could feel every inch of him: the hard muscle of his stomach, his thighs, the growing press of him between my legs. My breath caught.
He kissed me. Slow. Not the urgent kiss from the counter or the first night; this was deliberate. His mouth moved over mine with patience, his tongue tracing my lower lip before sliding into me. I sank into it because I had nowhere else to be and no plan that mattered more than his lips on mine.
We drifted to the shallow end where the rocks were warm and the water was waist-deep. He sat on a submerged ledge. I straddled his lap. We kissed until kissing wasn't enough, until I was rocking into him and his hands were pulling me closer and the friction through wet cotton was making me dizzy.
"I want you," I said into his mouth. "Here."
"Here." His voice was rough. His thumb traced my jaw. "You sure?"
"I don't care about the ground. I care about you."
He lifted me out of the water and laid me on the warm flat rock beside the pool, and I pulled him down over me. The sun was on my skin and the stone solid beneath my back and his weight settled between my thighs and I reached up and traced the line of his jaw, his cheekbone.
"Hi," I whispered.
"Hi." He smiled, and the openness in it was so complete I felt my chest crack.
He unhooked my bra. Slid it off and ducked his head and kissed my collarbone, the hollow of my throat, the space between my breasts.
He moved lower, lips tracing the curve of each breast, his tongue circling one nipple until I arched into him, then the other, slow and attentive, as if he had all afternoon and intended to use it.
"You're taking your time," I managed.
"I'm savoring." He kissed the underside of my breast. "Different thing."
"You always have a distinction ready."
"I'm a slow reader. Need extra time with the material."
I laughed, and he kissed me again while I was still laughing, and the kiss deepened, and his hand slid down my stomach, over my hip, to the waistband of my underwear.
He peeled the wet cotton down my legs and tossed it aside.
I was bare on sun-warmed stone in open air, his gaze on my body, the waterfall loud enough to cover the sound I made when his hand slid between my thighs.
He touched me with the same deliberate patience.
His fingers parted me, stroked up through the slick heat, found my clit and circled it with a pressure that made my hips lift.
He watched my face while he touched me, gray eyes intent, learning what I needed the way he'd learned every other thing about me: by paying attention.
"There," I breathed when his thumb found the rhythm. "Right there."
"I know." His voice was low. He kissed my stomach.
Lower. His lips traced along my hip bone, breath hot against my inner thigh.
Then his tongue replaced his fingers. The world narrowed to that single point of contact: the flat of his tongue on my clit, slow and steady, the waterfall a distant roar behind the sun blazing red against my eyelids.
He licked me with an attention that bordered on worship.
Long strokes, then tight circles, then the lightest flutter that made my thighs clench around his head.
He hummed, low in his throat, and the vibration sent a spike of pleasure so sharp my hips bucked.
He slid two fingers inside me, curving up, finding the spot that made my spine arch, and his mouth and his hand worked together in a rhythm I couldn't resist and didn't want to.
"Cliff — God — don't stop —"
He didn't stop. He increased the pressure of his tongue, his fingers stroking deep and steady.
The orgasm built from my clit outward, a slow wave gathering force.
When it broke I cried out with my hands fisted in his hair, grinding against him.
The sound echoed off the rocks around us in a way I'd be mortified about later but could not bring myself to care about now.
He kissed his way back up while I lay there breathing hard, the aftershocks still rolling through me. I pulled him to me and tasted myself on him and felt the urgency build again, insistent, because one wasn't enough; I wanted more and I wanted him.
I pushed on his chest. He let me roll him, and I straddled him on the stone, his back flat on the rock, and looked down at him. His cock was hard, pressing up through his wet boxers, and I rocked over him and watched his jaw clench.
"My turn," I said.
I pulled his boxers down. Wrapped my fingers around him and stroked, watching his face, how his eyes went heavy and his breath came short. I shifted lower, my mouth following my hand, and took him in.
He made a sound — low, broken, his hand coming up to cup the back of my head. Not guiding. Just holding. I took him deeper, my tongue working the underside, and his hips flexed involuntarily and the noise that escaped him echoed off the rock wall behind us.
"Nell." His voice was wrecked. "You feel — Christ —"
I worked him with my mouth and my hand, unhurried, matching the pace he'd set on me. I could feel him getting close: the tension in his thighs, his fingers tightening in my hair. I pulled back. Kissed the head. Looked up at him.
"Not yet," I said, and the dark flash in his eyes told me he recognized his own words being handed back.
"Cruel," he said, and his voice was gravel.
"Savoring." I kissed his hip. "Different thing."
His laugh was breathless. I climbed back over him and positioned myself above, my knees on the rock on either side of his hips, his cock pressing at my entrance. I held his gaze.
"I want to feel you," I said. "All of you."
He gripped my hips. I sank down onto him, slow, taking him inch by inch, and the stretch and the fullness and the heat of him inside me made us both groan.
I sat there for a moment, fully seated, his hands tight on my waist, the sun warm on my back, the waterfall filling the silence between our breaths.
Then I moved.
I rode him slow. Rolling into him, finding the angle that hit deep and made sparks trail up my spine.
His hands slid up my sides, cupping my breasts, thumbs circling my nipples.
He rose to meet me in a rhythm we found together, unhurried, the pace of two people choosing each other in real time.
I braced my hands on his chest, felt his heart hammering hard beneath my palm, and let the feeling build without rushing it.
The light beat warm against my back. The stone was heated through beneath his.
Somewhere the waterfall fell. The birds called.
Neither of us heard any of it. The world had narrowed to the place where our bodies connected, to his hands on my skin, to the sounds he made when I rolled my hips in a way that took him deep.
"You're incredible," he said, looking up at me. His voice was thick with more than want. "The way you move. The way you look right now. I can't —" He stopped. Swallowed. "I can't believe you're here."
The honesty in it broke through me. I leaned down and kissed him, and the angle changed, deeper, and I moaned against his lips. His arms wrapped around me and he held me close, chest to chest, and thrust up into me deep and steady until I gasped into his neck.
"More," I whispered. "Please."
He rolled us. I was on my back on sun-heated stone, his weight braced on his forearms, and he drove into me deep and slow, his forehead pressed to mine, our breath mixing.
The sex was different from the first time, not urgent but intentional.
Every stroke felt chosen, purposeful, and I could feel the emotion underneath the physical, the thing neither of us was saying made visible in how he moved inside me, how I pulled him closer, how my legs tightened around his hips to keep him where I wanted him.
His thumb found my clit between us, circling in the rhythm of his thrusts, and the second orgasm built fast, already primed, my body wound tight.
"Let me hear you," he said, his mouth at my ear. "Nobody for miles. Let me hear it."
I came with a cry that I gave to the open sky, my whole body clenching around him, and he thrust through it, deep and steady, his teeth grazing my neck, his own breath ragged. Before the wave fully receded he shifted the angle, hooked my knee over his shoulder, and the new depth made me cry out.
"One more," he said. "Give me one more."
"I can't —"
"You can." He kissed me, slow, while his hips kept their rhythm, and his thumb circled my oversensitive clit with a gentleness that was its own kind of devastating. "You can, Nell."
The third orgasm was different: slower, deeper, rolling through me in waves while he held my gaze and I held his and something passed between us that was not physical, a recognition so raw and mutual my eyes stung.