Chapter 12 #2
My whole body is trembling from his hand, and he looks undone. “Bedroom,” I say.
He yanks his sweatpants up and then he stands up with me. “Come on,” he says.
My legs lock around his hips by reflex and my arms around his neck, and his hand stays between my thighs — fingers pressed flat against me through the lace, not inside, just there, keeping the pressure on — as he walks us across his apartment like I weigh nothing.
I bury my face in his neck and bite him gently, feeling the rumble of his groan through my ribs, and for three seconds of hallway I think: I am being carried to bed by a Halden hockey player at midnight and I do not recognize my life.
The bedroom is dim, and he lays me down on the bed — of course he makes his bed — and his hand goes to the duvet corner, starts to fold it back neatly, and then he catches himself and just shoves it aside. Then he kneels between my knees and looks at me with reverence.
“You’re staring,” I say.
“I am.”
“You’re allowed to do significantly more than look at me.”
“I know.” He doesn’t move. “I’m savoring.”
I press the heel of my hand to my eyes and laugh because if I don’t I’ll cry, and for one awful second the old instinct kicks in — compose yourself, you’re being too much — but then he reaches up and grabs my hand and pulls it away, so I’m looking at him.
And the utter fucking consideration in his eyes undoes me.
“Rowan,” I say. “I want you.”
His eyes stay on me as he pulls my panties down, and then he smiles and goes to work. His mouth moves to my hip, then the inside of my left thigh — and he stops at the little birthmark high on the inside, kisses it once, soft, like he’s claiming it — and then he keeps going.
The first touch of his tongue against my clit produces a sound I did not authorize, and my back comes off the mattress. As my hand finds his hair, he hums against me, and the vibration goes straight through me.
He’s good at this…
Of course he’s good at this.
He is good at this in a way that is entirely consistent with the rest of who he is, which is infuriating. I would tell him that if I could speak, but I cannot. So I lie back and let the sheer, amazing competence win.
He’s patient. His tongue moves slow and flat, then circles my clit, then slow again, and every time my hips jump he goes back to exactly that pressure like he’s cataloging me, filing away every sound I make.
Then two fingers slide inside me, curling forward while his mouth stays on my clit, and when they find the spot at the same time his tongue finds the rhythm, my thighs clamp around his head.
“Rowan—”
He hums again.
“I’m—”
He doesn’t stop.
I come against his mouth with his name in my throat and my thighs around his head and my hand fisted in his hair. And I am loud, properly loud, and I do not care. And when I start to come back down, he kisses his way up my body, very pleased with himself.
“Smug,” I say.
“Earned it.”
My body is still humming, aftershocks running through my thighs, and I am nowhere near done with him. So I reach for his waistband, and he helps, sweatpants and boxers coming off together, and then he’s naked above me.
I wrap my hand around his cock. “Hi,” I say.
His forehead drops onto mine. “Sloane.”
“Mm.”
I stroke slow, tightening at the head, where he responds most. He is hot and heavy in my hand and the way his whole body tenses when I twist my wrist is something I could get addicted to. He breathes through his teeth, clearly fighting the urge to finish right now.
“If you keep doing that—”
“Right.” I let go. “Nightstand?”
He reaches across me, fumbles the drawer — pulls it too hard, catches, yanks it again — and the small embarrassed noise he makes is cute. He comes back with a foil square and starts to open it, but he’s too worked up and his hands are fumbling.
I take the foil square from him. “I thought hockey players were good with their hands…”
As he laughs, I tear it open with my teeth, because I have always wanted to do that and never had an occasion, and I roll it onto him myself, stroking down his full length, while he watches my face and his breath goes ragged.
“Lie down,” I say.
He lies down.
“I want you inside me.” It comes out raw, nothing careful about it.
His hands find my hips. “Say that again.”
“I want you inside me.”
I climb on top of him, my knees on either side of his hips, and I take him in my hand and line us up and look down at him. The whole time, he’s looking up at me like I’m the only thing in the room.
I sink down.
The stretch is — God.
It’s been a long time, or he’s a lot, or both, and I take him slow, inch by inch. As I breathe through it, his hands slide up my thighs and grip hard, his eyes not leaving my face, and when I’m all the way down, the fullness is so much I have to stop for a second.
“You okay?” he says, his fingers tight on my thighs.
“You could have warned me.”
“About what?”
“About what,” I say, and his whole face breaks open with a laugh.
His hands slide to my hips and I roll, turning the laugh into a gasp on both ends. His fingers tighten, and I plant my palms on his chest and start to move. Slow at first, finding a rhythm, rising until I nearly lose him, sinking back down until he’s buried to the hilt.
He lets me set the pace and watches me with this expression I have no name for — wrecked, wide open, nothing managed. His jaw is tight, his chest flushed, his stomach muscles clenching every time I sink down.
Then I shift the angle and gasp — there, right there — and he locks on it immediately.
He rises to meet me from underneath, his hips snapping up to match mine, and the new depth reaches a place that makes me dig my nails into his chest. Every time he hits that spot I feel it in my spine, in my teeth, everywhere at once.
“There—” I gasp, unable to finish.
“Yeah.”
“Don’t—”
“I won’t.”
He lifts a hand from my waist and brings his thumb to my mouth, and I bite the side of it. Then that hand slides down between us and his thumb finds my clit, circling while I ride him, and I can feel everything coming up faster than I can manage it.
His other hand grips the curve of my ass, pulling me down harder onto him every time I sink. When I lean forward, he catches my breast with his mouth instead, his thumb never leaving my clit, and the pressure above and below knots into one.
And the possessiveness of it…
“Rowan—”
“I’ve got you,” he says against my mouth, “you feel so fucking good.”
The sound I make is half laugh, half sob because it’s too sweet and too filthy in the same breath, and then the moan takes over when he thrusts up harder. Nothing eases — not his mouth, not his thumb, not the hand hauling me down onto him — and I ride the edge.
“Look at me,” he says.
I do.
I flatten my palms on his chest, take the rhythm back, and ride it exactly how I need — and I come with my eyes on his, clenching so hard around his cock that his rhythm breaks, and I feel the moment he loses it.
The stutter in his hips.
The catch in his throat.
The rhythm on my clit faltering.
He finishes deep inside me with his forehead against my collarbone and both of us shaking. And then we stay like that. I don’t move. He doesn’t move. His breath is loud against my neck and mine against his ear and his heart is hammering under my palm.
“Hey,” he says, eventually, against my skin.
“Don’t move.”
“Wasn’t planning to.”
I press my face into his neck, a little bit laughing and a little bit crying, too, though I don’t know where one ends and the other begins. Then his arms come up and he holds me. And in that moment, something I’ve been clenching for over a year just… lets go.
“You’re thinking,” he murmurs.
“A little.”
“Good thinking, or—”
“Good.” I press my mouth to his shoulder. “Good thinking.”
“Okay.”