15. Juliette #2
“No.” His hand comes up, hovers near my face without touching, close enough that I feel the warmth of his palm.
“We definitely shouldn’t. You’re still deciding whether you even want me in your life and I’m one second from dropping to my knees and burying my face between your thighs until you forgive me. ”
“This is a terrible idea.” My voice shakes. Every almost-touch winds me tighter.
“The worst.” His fingertips finally brush my cheek. The lightest possible touch, barely there at all, and my whole body goes electric. I lean into it before I can stop myself.
“I’m still angry at you.”
“You should be.” His thumb strokes once along my cheekbone, reverent and starving. “Be angry. Be cruel. Just… don’t send me away yet. Please.”
“I’m not ready to forgive you.”
“I’m not asking you to.” His eyes search mine, wide open, letting me see every ounce of the yearning that’s been eating him alive. “I’m just asking you not to stop looking at me like that. Like maybe you still want me even half as badly as I want you.”
“Juliette.” His voice is wrecked. “Please.”
“Please what?” I turn my face just enough to brush my lips against the pad of his thumb. His breath goes ragged.
“Please tell me what to do. Because I’m dying here. I’ve been hard since you walked into the kitchen and if you keep looking at me like you want to ruin me I am going to forget every noble fucking intention I walked in with.”
I kiss him.
I don’t decide to do it. My body just moves, closing the last inch, and then my mouth is on his and his hands are in my hair and we’re pressed together in the doorway of my mother’s pantry like two people who never learned how to exist without colliding.
He tastes like coffee and desperation and six years of swallowed apologies.
He kisses me back with six years of thirst. His tongue slides against mine, deep and filthy, and the sound he makes into my mouth undoes whatever resolve I had left.
His hands slide down my back, pulling me flush so I feel every hard inch of him against my stomach.
He wants this. He wants me. And for once in this entire disaster of a marriage, I’m the one in control. The power of it makes me dizzy.
“Juliette-” He pulls back just enough to speak, lips wet and swollen. His forehead rests against mine. “Are you sure-”
“Don’t ask me if I’m sure.” I fist my hands in his shirt and yank him closer again. “Don’t ask me anything. Just shut up and take what I’m giving you.”
I pull him back down.
This time when he kisses me it’s slower, deeper, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my mouth for the lonely nights ahead.
His hands find the hem of my nightgown and slide underneath.
The first brush of his calloused fingers on my bare ass makes me gasp against his lips.
He squeezes, pulls me harder against the thick ridge of his cock, and I rock into him without meaning to.
“Here?” His voice is pure gravel. “In the pantry? With your mother’s jam as fucking witnesses?”
“Against the shelves.” I nip his bottom lip hard enough to sting. “Unless you’re too noble for that now.”
“God, Juliette-”
I push him back until his shoulders hit the shelf where my mother’s preserves sit in their rows.
Jars rattle. My hands slide up under his shirt to the bare skin of his chest, nails dragging lightly just to feel him shudder.
He’s breathing hard, eyes on me, letting me set the pace even though every muscle in his body is coiled tight with the need to take over.
“Hands on the shelf,” I tell him, voice low. I hold his gaze and refuse to blink. “Eyes on me, Zachary. I want you to see exactly what you’re not allowed to touch yet.”
“Juliette-” My name comes out half plea, half curse.
“You said take whatever I want. I want your hands on the shelf and your eyes on mine. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
He puts his hands on the shelf.
He grips it like the building is in a storm, knuckles white on either side of a row of jam my mother canned before she died.
The jars chime softly against each other.
He lets me set the pace and the terms and the temperature, and every time his control slips - a sound, a surge, his hands lifting even an inch - I stop dead, pull my mouth away, and wait.
He puts them back every single time, eyes never leaving mine, the obedience costing him everything.
“You’re going to kill me,” he manages, throat working as I drag my tongue up the side of his neck.
“You’ll live. You’re a Dean. You people survive everything except honesty.” I bite down gently on the tendon there and feel his whole body jerk.
“That’s-” I do a thing with my teeth at his jaw and his head knocks back against the shelf with a dull thud. Jars ring like small bells. “Fair. That’s fair. God. That’s completely fair. Fuck, do that again.”
“You’re shaking,” I say, pulling back just far enough to watch his face. I keep my eyes locked on his while my hands pop the button on his trousers.
“I’m trying not to do something you don’t want.” His knuckles are bloodless on the wood. “I’m trying so goddamn hard to be good for you.”
“You’re gripping that shelf like it insulted your entire bloodline.” I ease his zipper down at a pace designed to punish, and palm the hard, hot length of him through his boxers. He throbs in my hand. A wet spot is already darkening the fabric.
“The shelf is holding my collateral.” His voice is coming apart around the edges.
His hips twitch forward into my grip despite himself.
“If I let go of the shelf, I’m going to touch you, and if I touch you, I’m going to forget every rule of this arrangement and fuck you until neither of us can walk.
And I need - I badly need - to still be a man who keeps your rules even when it’s killing me. ”
“What makes you think I don’t want this?” I squeeze him once, firm, and watch his eyes go half-lidded with pleasure and pain.
“Because you haven’t wanted anything from me in weeks.
” His gaze never leaves mine. The eye contact feels more intimate than any touch.
“And I need you to be sure. I need this to be your choice, not something that happens because we’re both wrecked and lonely and the light in here is pretty.
Eyes on me while you decide, Juliette. I want you to see how completely you own me right now. ”
I silence him with my mouth.
My hands shove his trousers and boxers down just far enough to free his cock.
He springs hot and thick into my palm, already slick at the tip.
I stroke him slowly from root to head, the way that used to make him curse, and the sound he makes against my lips lands everywhere at once.
I undo the rest of his belt with my other hand so it hangs open, framing everything I’m doing to him.
“Juliette.” His voice is barely a whisper. His eyes stay locked on mine even as his hips start to rock into my fist. “Please.”
“Please what?” I drag my thumb over the slick head and feel him pulse.
“Please don’t start something you’re going to stop. Or do. Fuck - do whatever you want. Just don’t look away while you ruin me.”
“What if I want to start something and stop it?” I press open-mouthed kisses along his jaw, his ear, the wild pulse point in his neck, all while my hand works him in long, teasing strokes.
“What if I want to take exactly as much as I want and leave you aching and dripping and desperate for more? Would you let me?”
“Then do it.” His head falls back against the shelf for half a second before he forces it forward again so our eyes stay locked. “Take whatever you want. Edge me. Use me. Leave me fucking sobbing for it. I’ll take whatever you give me and thank you for it.”
I take.
I take my time about it, too. I learn what six years of marriage never taught me because I never made it a study: the exact broken sound he makes when my nails scrape lightly down his stomach, the way he loses the g off “fuck” when I drop to a crouch and drag my tongue from base to tip in one filthy stripe, the precise pressure of my fist that turns the controlled CEO into a shaking, pleading mess.
His hands stay welded to the shelf. The wood creaks.
The jam jars chime together every time his grip shifts harder, my mother’s preserves keeping score of every near-loss of control.
“Eyes on me,” he rasps when I take just the head into my mouth and suck gently. His voice is barely voice at all. “Please, Jules - want you to see what you do to me. Want you to watch me fall apart for you and only you.”
I look up at him through my lashes and hold the eye contact while I sink deeper, taking him until he hits the back of my throat.
His groan is wrecked. Spit drips down his shaft.
I bob slowly, teasingly, pulling off whenever his hips start to thrust, denying him any real rhythm.
Every time he gets close I stop completely, stand, and kiss him so he tastes himself on my tongue while my hand strokes him just shy of too light.
“You’re shaking apart,” I murmur against his mouth. “All that control and you’re ready to beg.”