18. Chapter 18 Both Times Were Arrival #2
And standing there watching Elise loosen her earrings one at a time in my kitchen, something about the night shifted.
She was standing at the window when I crossed the room to her, and I stopped six inches away and said, "Can I—" before my hands moved.
She looked at me and waited.
I said it again — "Can I—" — and touched her jaw, and she tilted her face up and said, "Stop asking and start."
So I did.
She was still standing at the window when I reached her, one hand at her back, finding the zipper, drawing it down in a single unhurried pull. The fabric parted.
Her bare back appeared in the amber light and I stood there for a moment with my hands at her shoulders, not moving, because I had decided I was going to do this without rushing any part of it.
The dress released and pooled at her feet.
I went to my knees before I stood. Not efficiency. Intention.
I pressed my mouth to the inside of her knee first, felt her go completely still above me, holding her breath, then moved higher. The soft skin of her inner thigh. Her breath returning in short, shallow increments with every inch I gained.
She unclasped her bra herself and let it fall because she was done waiting, I understood, and pulled her underwear down and settled my mouth directly against her.
She was already wet. Already swollen. The taste of her on my tongue made something in my chest go dark and certain, and I took my time with it, my hands spread flat against her hips, holding her against the glass, keeping her exactly where I needed her while I worked her with my mouth and felt her come apart by degrees.
Her fingers curled against the window frame. Her other hand pressed hard against the glass above her.
She made a sound she had not planned to make.
Then another.
"Let go," I said against her.
She did, her whole body shuddering, her thighs clamping around me, her voice breaking on my name in a way that had no performance in it at all. I stayed with her until the trembling stopped and she was breathing in long, uneven pulls, her knuckles white against the windowpane.
When I stood she was flushed and undone and her eyes were dark in a way that went straight through me.
She reached for my belt without ceremony.
I let her undo it. Let her push my trousers down. When her hand wrapped around my cock, warm, certain, no hesitation ,the sound that left me was low and unguarded, pulled out before I could contain it.
She felt how hard I was, felt the slick heat at the tip, and her grip tightened and I exhaled through my teeth and gave her exactly ten seconds before I walked her backward to the bed.
I laid her against the headboard and pinned her wrists above her with one hand, not hard, just certain, just mine, and looked at her in the dim amber light from the floor-to-ceiling window. Her hair loose. Her chest rising fast. Her eyes giving me nothing for free.
She was not uncertain.
That was the thing I kept noticing ,the way she met me now, open and steady, without the half-second of adjustment that had been there at the beginning. Her body had learned this. Had learned me.
I could feel it in the way she lay beneath me, no bracing, no calculation, just complete and deliberate willingness.
I moved over her with the knowledge of that, and felt the difference between learning someone and knowing them, and understood that both were worth having but only one was what I wanted to keep.
"You're mine," I said, against her ear.
She looked at me directly. "Say it like a question."
I pulled back to see her face.
"Are you mine?"
"Yes," she said. And meant it in every direction it could mean.
I released her wrists.
I took my time getting back to her ,my mouth at her jaw, her throat, the soft curve below her ear, and when I finally positioned myself between her thighs and pushed inside her, I did it slowly. Deliberately.
Watching her face as every inch of me filled her, feeling the wet heat of her close around my cock with a tightness that made my jaw lock and my breath stop.
She arched hard off the mattress.
The sound she made had no performance in it,raw and involuntary, pulled from somewhere she hadn't been guarding. I stilled completely, buried to the hilt, and felt her pulse around me ,her body adjusting, her wetness spreading, the slick heat of her soaking me where we were joined.
One full second. Just to feel it.
Then I moved.
Not slow this time, long strokes that let her feel every ridge of me pulling back and pressing in again, her body so wet now that the sound of it filled the room and neither of us pretended otherwise.
She said my name once, sharp, and I found the angle that made her grip the headboard with both hands and I stayed there, driving into exactly that place, feeling her clench tighter around me with every stroke until she was shaking and swollen and completely mine.
My forehead pressed to her temple.
She came apart around my cock in long, rhythmic contractions, her whole body going rigid and then releasing, flooding around me, my name leaving her throat soft and surrendered, like something she'd stopped trying to hold back.
I drove through it, feeling every pulse of her orgasm grip and release me, until I followed seconds later ,deep inside her, her name on my lips, my weight settling deliberately beside her rather than withdrawing.
Neither time was an appeal. Both times were arrival.
Afterward I lay with my hand flat on her back ,just holding her against my chest, the warmth of a person who had chosen to be here.
She said into the quiet: "I'm not going anywhere."
"I know," I said.
I said it like a man still learning to believe the thing he was saying.
Maverick called. I did not answer.
His text came through a moment later:
Dante told me about the board thing. Your woman is terrifying. Also, your kid survived several hours alone with me, so I'd like formal recognition for that too.
I tilted the phone so Elise could read it. She read it with her cheek still against my shoulder.
A soft laugh escaped her.
"He's starting to grow on me," she admitted. "Least grumpy Turner, apparently."
"That says alarming things about the rest of us."
"I already assumed that."
"Don't tell him you said any of this."
She laughed, quietly, into my collarbone and I held still because the sound of it in this room was something I had not known I was waiting to hear.
Cole was still completely asleep down the hall by the time the penthouse finally went quiet.
I sat on the edge of the bed after Elise's breathing slowed and looked at the shelves ,six of her books, their spines uneven and entirely hers.
I got back into bed without turning on the light.
I lay in the dark and thought about April. Cole at the spring concert, finding my face after every verse. Elise beside me in a folding chair designed for someone smaller.
The shelves no longer empty. Her hand open on my ribs, and the fact that I had not moved in eleven minutes because I was not ready to lose the feel of her hand there.
For weeks, the feeling had been there every time I looked at her and stayed after she left the room.
I had been refusing to name it. In the dark, with her hand on my ribs and her books on my shelf, I found I could not refuse it anymore.
I turned my head. Looked at the ceiling.
Thought the thing, clear and complete.
Did not say it aloud. Not yet. Some words change everything, and I needed one more night before that happened.
But it was there.
It had been there for some time.