Chapter 4 Abbie #2
He doesn't tease. He drags the flat of his tongue through me in one long stroke and my whole body arches off the marble.
The sound I make is undignified. He hums like it's a compliment.
Then he settles in properly, tongue circling, lips sealing, one big hand splayed across my lower belly to hold me still while the other hooks my thigh over his shoulder.
"Fuck," I gasp. "Gray, Gray—"
"Again." The words vibrate against me. "My name. Exactly like that."
I say it. I say it when he sucks gently on my clit.
I say it when he slides one thick finger into me and curls, searching, finding the spot that makes my vision white out at the edges.
I say it when he adds a second finger and fucks me with them slow and filthy while his mouth stays locked on that single obsessive focus between my thighs.
My nails dig into his scalp. He groans like it hurts in the best way.
The city keeps glittering. Somewhere a car horn complains.
I don't care. I rock against his face and he takes it, takes everything, tongue working me through a climb that feels almost cruel in how steady it is, no rushing, no performing, just Grayson Valentine on his knees on our kitchen tile like this is the only job left on earth that matters.
"I'm... I'm close—"
"Perfect." He lifts his head just enough to look at me, mouth shining, voice gone rough. "Come on my tongue, Abs. I want to feel your cunt clench when you break. Give me everything."
The permission does it. I come hard, thighs clamping around his head, his name torn out of me in a raw cry that echoes off the cabinets.
He works me through it until I'm shaking, until I have to shove at his shoulder because it's too much, and even then he presses one last open-mouthed kiss to the inside of my thigh like a signature.
He stands. He's hard, thick and flushed against his stomach, and for a second he looks almost sheepish about it, this enormous man with ink to his wrists and the evidence of what he wants standing between us.
"Window," I say, breathless. "I want... I want to see the city. While you—"
"While I fuck you." He says it like he's testing whether the word fits in his mouth. It does. Barely. "Slow first. Then... if you still want—"
"Deep," I finish for him. "Don't be careful with me after the first minute. I can take you."
Relief flashes through his eyes, then hunger, the particular awkward-giant gratitude of a man who's been told he's allowed to stop holding back.
He turns me gently, bends me forward over the counter so my forearms brace on marble and my bare breasts press cool against stone.
Behind us the window frames downtown in a scatter of gold.
He kicks my feet wider with one foot. The blunt head of him notches against me.
"Still allowed?" he asks, low.
"Still allowed. Gray, move."
He pushes in slow. Inch by thick inch. The stretch burns sweet and familiar and I drop my forehead to the marble with a moan I don't bother swallowing.
His hands find my waist. Hold. Steady. When he's finally seated, hips flush to my ass, buried deep enough that I feel him in my ribs, he goes still and breathes like he's counting.
"Christ." The word scrapes out of him. "You feel... Abbie, you feel like coming home and committing a felony at the same time."
I laugh, breathless. "That's the worst dirty talk I've ever heard."
"I'm bad at this part out loud." He pulls back slow, almost all the way, then sinks deep again. The rhythm he sets is measured. Deliberate. Each thrust a long drag that pulls a sound out of me. "I can do filthy in my head. Out loud I sound like a man who builds decks for a living and got lucky."
"You do build pitch decks." Another slow thrust. My fingers curl against stone. "And you did get lucky. Harder."
"Hold on."
"Gray—"
"Hold. On." He leans over my back, one forearm braced beside my head, mouth at my ear.
His voice drops, darker. Less awkward. "I want you to feel every inch when I stop being polite.
I want you dripping down your thighs when I finally give you deep.
Can you wait for that, Abs? Can you be good for thirty more seconds while I ruin myself on how tight you are? "
"Oh my God." My laugh breaks into a moan. "There he is. There... don't you dare go shy again—"
He doesn't. The next thrust is harder. Deeper.
The one after that punches a cry out of me that the open window almost swallows.
He sets a pace that is no longer careful, hips snapping, hands bruising my waist, the wet, obscene sound of him fucking me echoing off tile and glass.
My breasts drag against marble. My wet hair sticks to my cheek.
Every drive of his cock lights me up from the inside until I'm babbling his name like a prayer and a curse.
"Gray, Gray, fuck—"
"That's it." He's panting now, less eloquent, more animal. "Take it. Take all of me. You feel fucking perfect, you know that? Look at the city while I—" He cuts off on a groan as I push back to meet him. "Fuck. Do that again."
I do. I brace and shove back onto him and he swears, low and startled, like he forgot I could want him this badly. One of his hands slides around to find my clit, rubbing in rough circles timed to his thrusts, and the dual sensation coils tight in my belly almost immediately.
"I'm going to—" I start.
"Come," he orders, awkwardness burned clean off. "Come on my cock. Say my name when you do it."
I shatter. His name rips out of me as the orgasm takes me sideways, clenching around him, vision swimming with city lights, legs nearly buckling. He fucks me through it, relentless and deep, and then his rhythm stutters.
"Abs, can I, inside—"
"Yes. Yes, Gray, please—"
He buries himself to the hilt and comes with a broken sound against my shoulder, hips jerking, one hand splayed over my stomach like he needs the anchor.
Heat floods me. His forehead drops between my shoulder blades.
For a long minute the only sound is our breathing and the distant hush of traffic far below.
He pulls out carefully. Turns me. Lifts me off the counter like I'm something precious and ruined both, and carries me the rest of the way to the bedroom with my face tucked against his throat.
We fall into the sheets in a tangle of damp skin and leftover Thai on our breath. He tucks my head under his chin. His heartbeat hammers under my ear, gradually slowing.
"Was that—" He clears his throat. Still awkward. Still mine. "Was that okay? The window. The... talking."
I kiss the ink on his wrist. "That was the opposite of okay. That was you remembering how to be here."
"Gray," I whisper.
"Right here."
"Don't get on that plane tomorrow thinking this fixed everything." I say it gently. Not as a fight. As a bookmark. "It didn't. It just... reminded me what we can be when you're actually in the room."
He's quiet long enough that I wonder if I've ruined the afterglow. Then his fingers find my shoulder and start that slow trace he always does when he's thinking too hard.
"I'm in the room," he says. "Tonight I'm in the room. And I'm going to figure out how to stay in it when the flights start again. I don't know how yet. But I hear you now. I'm not going to pretend it's fine."
I don't tell him about the screenshots waiting on my phone. I don't tell him about Delaney. I press closer, let his heartbeat argue with the part of me that wants to check the lock screen, and I choose the warmth for one more night.
"Okay," I say into his chest. "Okay, Gray."
His arm tightens around me. Outside, Los Angeles keeps glittering like it didn't just watch us come apart against our own kitchen window.
Later, when the sweat has cooled and the city noise has thinned to almost nothing, he speaks into the dark.
"Two more weeks," he says quietly. "That's it, Abs. Two more weeks and Lisbon is done. The signing is right before your birthday, and then the last loose ends."
I press my ear harder against his chest, letting his heartbeat drown out the voice in my head. "You said that before."
"I know."
"Last Tuesday. You said it was almost over."
His fingers pause on my shoulder. "I know. Things got complicated."
"They always get complicated."
"Not this time." He pulls me closer, his chin resting on top of my head. "I mean it. The end is in sight. The awards ceremony, the signing, and then I'm done traveling. We can take that trip you wanted. The one to—"
"Don't."
"Abbie—"
"Don't make promises."
"It's not a promise. It's a flight. I can change a flight."
"You never plan for it. And then it happens anyway. And then I eat dinner alone and tell myself it's temporary and then it's temporary again the next week."
"What do you want me to do? Tell me specifically what you want me to do and I'll do it."
I push up onto my elbow, looking down at him in the dim light.
"I want you to want to be here. I want you to choose being here the way you choose being everywhere else."
"I do want to be here. I'm here right now."
"For six hours. You're here for six hours and then you're getting on another plane tomorrow morning."
"That's not fair."
"Neither is being the person who always comes last. Neither is sitting across from an empty chair at dinner night after night wondering if my husband remembers we're married."
"I remember we're married. I think about you constantly when I'm gone."
"Thinking about me isn't the same as being here. Thinking about me doesn't set a second plate."
"I'm sorry about all the dinners. I know this stretch has been hard."
"This stretch. You keep calling it a stretch. Like it's a temporary inconvenience instead of just how our life works now."
"It is temporary. The expansion is temporary. Once Lisbon is set up and running—"