Chapter 21 #3
"And now I want to make you come so hard you forget your operational vocabulary.
" I push the waistband of his sweatpants down.
He lifts his hips and I pull them off, dropping them on the floor.
His cock is thick, hard, and the head slick.
My pussy clenches at the sight of it. "Let me have this. You held all the control. Now let me."
He studies my face for a long moment. Then he leans back against the pillows and puts his hands behind his head.
"Show me," he says.
I swing my leg over him, straddling his hips, and the contact of my pussy against his cock makes us both exhale. I'm still soaked, still swollen from the vibrator, and the slide of him against my folds sends aftershocks sparking through my pelvis.
I brace my hands on his tattooed chest. His heartbeat is strong and fast beneath the ink.
"You're shaking," he says.
"I know." As I lift my hips, I reach between us and position him at my entrance. "I'm doing it anyway."
I sink down onto him. Inch by inch. My eyes close because the stretch after the vibrator is intense since my walls are still sensitive.
Every nerve sings. He fills me completely, thick, deep.
When I'm fully seated on him with his cock buried inside me, I flatten my palms harder against his chest and breathe.
"Fuck," I whisper.
His hands leave the pillows. They find my hips, gripping lightly, steadying me, but he doesn't guide. He holds. He waits.
I start to move. Slow rolls of my hips, grinding against him, feeling the angle shift with every movement. Then his cock hits the spot the vibrator found, and my thighs clench around his waist. His jaw locks. His fingers tighten on my hips.
"Ruby." His voice is rough. Rougher than I've heard it. The control is fraying at the edges.
I roll my hips again, harder, and his head tips back against the pillow. His throat exposed. The tendons taut. I lean down to press my mouth to his pulse point the way he presses his mouth to mine, and his cock pulses inside me.
I find a rhythm. Deep, grinding circles that drag him against every wall inside me, that press my clit against the base of his cock on every downstroke.
My thighs burn. My body is still trembling from the vibrator, but it becomes part of the rhythm.
I clench and release around him in waves that make his breathing fracture.
"You feel incredible," he says. The words come out through his teeth. His fingers are digging into my hips hard enough to leave bruises, and I want every single one.
I ride him harder. Faster. I drag my nails down his tattoos as my hair falls around both our faces. He's trying to hold his composure, and I'm trying to shatter it.
"Come for me, Nash." I throw his own words back at him, grinning down at him. "Now."
His eyes flash. Something shifts in his jaw. The hands on my hips stop guiding and start gripping.
"No."
Before I can respond, he sits up. One arm locks around my waist, the other hand fists my hair, and he flips us. My back hits the mattress, and he's over me, still inside me. His weight presses me down, and his hand pulls my head back by the hair to expose my throat.
"You don't give the orders," he says against my neck. His hips drive into me in a hard, single thrust that makes me cry out. "You had your turn."
"Nash—"
"My turn."
Another thrust. Deep. Grinding. His hand is tight in my hair while his mouth is on my throat, and his cock hits the spot that makes my vision blur. He sets a pace that's punishing, controlled, his hips snapping into mine. The sounds coming out of me are not words.
He fucks me like a man who let someone else drive and decided he's taking the wheel back.
Each thrust is deliberate, angled, driving into the place that makes my body lock and my nails dig into his shoulders.
His hand stays fisted in my hair, holding my head back, his mouth moving from my throat to my jaw to my ear.
"You wanted to break me," he says against my ear, his voice wrecked and steady at the same time. "You don't get to break me, Ruby. You get to push. And test. Then I remind you who holds the structure."
My pussy clenches around him so hard his rhythm stutters. He groans against my neck, adjusts, then drives deeper. His free hand slides between us and finds my clit, pressing circles that match the brutal rhythm of his hips.
"Come with me," he says. The command is delivered in the voice that reaches into my chest and grips.
"Nash, I don't know if I can again. I was doing this for you. I wanted to make you—"
"You can." His mouth finds mine, swallowing the rest of my words. His thumb presses harder against my clit, his hips driving deep. "You can, Ruby. Let go."
I shatter. My back arches, my legs lock around his waist, and my pussy clenches in waves that pull him over with me.
He buries himself deep and comes hard, his cock throbbing inside me, and his face pressing into my neck.
Nash groans my name against my neck. His hand loosens in my hair and cradles the back of my head instead, holding me while we both shake apart.
We breathe. My arms are around his neck. His weight is on me, heavy, warm, and I don't want him to move. His cock pulses inside me with the last aftershocks. My forehead is pressed against his jaw. His heart hammers against mine.
"I almost broke you," I say into his neck.
"Almost." His voice is raw. Wrecked. "Almost is as close as you get."
"Challenge accepted."
His chest shakes with a quiet laugh, and his arms tighten around me.
We lie there. His cock slips out of me and I press against his side, my head on his chest, his arms around me. His hands rest on my back. Neither of us moves.
"I also want to do it at Vesper."
"We can talk about Vesper."
"I want a formal tour. I want you to walk me through every room and give me the full orientation. I want to see where the Sergeant-at-Arms goes when he puts on his Vesper hat."
"I don't have a Vesper hat."
"You should get one. A very serious black hat. With a buckle."
"Ruby."
"Fine. No hat. But I want the tour."
"You'll get the tour."
I trace the tattoo on his chest, following the lines with my finger, the ink dark against his skin. His hand rests on my lower back, warm, steady, his thumb tracing lazy patterns.
"Nash."
"Yeah."
"Whatever you need to tell me about my dad." I keep my eyes on the tattoo. Keep my voice steady. "I've been putting pieces together. The way he reacted to Naya's name at the cookout. The way you watched him that day. How you looked last night when you came home."
His hand stills on my back.
"I'm not asking you to tell me right now. You said when you're ready, and I meant it when I said I'd be here." I look up at him. "But I want you to know that I see the shape of it. Whatever he did, whatever he's connected to, I'm not going to break."
"I know you won't."
"Good. Because I'm a lot of things, Nash, but fragile isn't one of them." I press my lips to his chest. "When you're ready. Together."
He pulls me tighter against him. His lips press against the top of my head.
We lie there. The morning light shifts across the ceiling. My body is still humming, warm, loose. His heart beats steady under my ear.
The knock comes at eleven-fifteen.
Two knocks. Then a pause. Then one more. Not the signal Nash taught me. Not East's pattern. Or Kyle's.
Nash is off the bed before the third knock fades, his body shifting from the man holding me to the Sergeant-at-Arms in less than a second. He pulls on his jeans and grabs his shirt off the floor.
"Stay here," he says.
"Nash—"
"Stay here."
I grab his T-shirt I was wearing before and pull it on. I hear Nash cross the living room, then hear the pause at the door where he checks the camera feed on his phone.
His body goes still. I can see his shoulders from the bedroom doorway, and the tension that locks through them is different from operational tension. This is personal.
He opens the door.
My mother's voice fills the apartment. "Nash, honey, is Ruby here? We didn't call because—"
"Raine." Nash's voice is careful. "Lawrence."
My father's voice. Low. Strained in a way I've never heard from him. "We need to talk. All of us."
I'm already moving. Jeans from the floor, yanked on.
Nash's shirt swapped for my own from the closet.
I pull my hair into a knot, catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror on the way past. Flushed.
Swollen lips. A mark on my neck that Nash's mouth left twenty minutes ago.
I grab a hoodie, zip it to my chin, and step into the hallway.
My parents are at the door. My mother's face is worried, her hands clasped in front of her. Standing behind her is my father, and his expression is one I've never seen on him before. His jaw is set. His eyes are red.
He looks past Nash. Finds me.
"Ruby." His voice cracks on my name. "I need to tell you something. Something I should have told you a long time ago."
Nash's hand finds mine behind the doorframe where my parents can't see. His fingers lace through mine and squeeze once.
My father steps inside.