30. Chapter Thirty #2
No falling in love before the draft. The one rule he built the whole house around, the one he swore by, the one he held over all of them.
He huffs a laugh into my skin. “Bit late for that, Linwood.”
It takes a second to land. When it does, my heart trips over itself. “What?”
His mouth moves lower, and the rest of whatever I meant to ask dissolves when he kisses me. “Little late to be bringing up rule one with me,” he murmurs. “Don’t you think?”
I don’t think.
“Fuck,” he breathes, taking the sight of me in. “You’re perfect, Aspen.”
He kisses down my throat and my chest. I let my head drop back and let myself feel every press of his mouth, and the want builds in me until it finds a voice.
“I want you to touch me.”
His hand skims down over my hip, my thigh, the denim still on me, and finds the heat of me through it. I arch up into the pressure before I can think to be shy about it.
“Keep telling me what you want.” His voice has gone dark and rough against my breastbone. “It’s hot.”
“Really?”
“It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
I swallow. I’m rusty in this department. It’s been years since I’ve been touched. I don’t want anything crazy, I just want him. “Okay.” I breathe. “Kiss me lower.”
He does, and every kiss lands like a strike of heat down my stomach.
I whisper, “Unbutton my jeans.”
He does that too, watching my face the whole time.
“Take them off.”
He tugs them down and away. I’m down to almost nothing, and I have never in my life felt like this.
“Take off your pants,” I tell him.
He stands and drops them. I glance at his body. His legs are long and strong, so are his shoulders and his chest. I glance down at the tent he’s pitching.
I mutter, “Your boxers too.”
He hesitates, and there he is again, the nervous boy from the restaurant, the one who hides behind the jokes because being looked at scares him more than anything in the world.
“Are you sure?”
I nod. No hesitation. “Very.”
He hesitates one more second, then he’s bare in the city light, and for a heartbeat, his hand moves like he wants to cover himself, like he’s the one exposed here, and something about that, Stanley Ermington gone shy, makes me ache.
“Eyes,” he says.
I look up as heat pools to my center.
“I don’t want to be some guy you hook up with.” He says it plainly, no joke anywhere under it, his eyes steady on mine in the dark. “I need you to know that, going in.”
The smile pulls at my mouth before I can stop it. “Then what do you want to be?”
His eyes stay on mine, searching, not grabbing for the easy thing. “More,” he says. “I want to be more.”
“That’s a big commitment.”
“I think this is too.” He nods at the small dark space between us, at all of it. “Sex. With you. I think it’s a big commitment, too, Aspen.”
Something in my chest cracks clean open. “You do?”
“I do.”
“Okay,” I say.
“Okay?”
I nod. “Yeah.” I reach down and slip off the last of what I’m wearing and let it drop, because I am done hiding any part of myself from this man. “Don’t put your clothes back on.”
I rise up onto my knees in front of him, meaning to be bold, meaning to ask him the bold thing. I watch his breath falter, and I forget what I was going to say. He just stares at me like I’ve rearranged his entire understanding of the world.
“You okay?” I ask, smiling.
“Linwood, I’m about to fall apart just looking at you.”
I laugh, delighted, and sit back. “Really?”
“It’s a real problem I’m having right now.” He glances down at himself, earnest and mortified, and it’s the most endearing thing I’ve ever seen on a man his size. “This may go very fast.”
“So you’re going to last two seconds?”
“Probably.” He grins, shameless.
“We can work up to two minutes.”
“You’re putting me through conditioning?” he asks.
“Lots of practice,” I tell him solemnly. “It’s the only way.”
He laughs. It’s full, helpless, the realest sound in the world. Then he crosses to the bed, finds the condom from his wallet, and holds it out, eyebrows up. “Wanna do the honors?”
I take it from him and tear it open. When I pull it out, I look up at him.
My heart is racing, knowing that he’s watching me.
I hold the condom against him and roll it on.
His breath catches and stutters with every inch, his hand fisting then releasing.
When I hear his exhale, I shudder. The power I feel of being the one in control of his undoing settles something in me that’s been clenched tight for years.
I lie back on my elbows. He crawls over me, and his shoulders have gone tense again, the nerves crowding back now that we’re here, so I reach up and take his face in both hands and run my fingers back through his hair and kiss him until I feel it leave.
Now his whole body goes loose and warm against mine.
We kiss like that for a long time, skin against skin, no rush, and even before anything else happens, I realize I could do this for a long time and still be satisfied.
I’ve never felt this close to someone before.
His hand splays over the small of my back and draws me into him.
He hums against my mouth like he can’t help it.
“I want you,” I tell him, opening my legs to let him all the way against me. I inhale sharply when his hard cock presses against me.
He lines us up and eases into me, slow and careful. I gasp and grip his shoulders, and he goes still, watching my face in the dark, kissing me softly.
“Are you okay?”
I can’t keep my eyes focused. “More than okay.”
He moves, and I lift to meet him. He groans low into my neck in a way that lights up something brand new all the way through me.
And then I stop thinking. For the first time in years, there’s no analysis, no reading, no part of me hovering above the bed watching for the catch — there’s only him, his face over mine, the unbelievable fact that it’s his face doing this to me, and I am more present inside my own skin than I have ever been in my life.
He thrusts into me. I grip the sheets, bracing myself.
I meet my hips up to meet his over and over again.
He kisses me as I moan. He feels so good against me.
His muscles flex under my palm. There’s no universe where I thought this would ever happen.
That Stanley the cup Ermington would be this close to me, this close to making me lose myself completely, and making me feel this alive.
He kisses me sweetly, caressing my face and looking directly in my eyes.
“I’m ––” He pulls out all at once, breath wrecked, keeping his word even though a piece of me wish he wouldn’t. “That’s it, that’s me, I’m so sorry, oh my god—” His face goes red and stricken and apologetic, and it’s so sweet I want to kiss him.
And then he’s moving down my body.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
He settles low and looks up at me through the dark, and there’s nothing shy left in him now.
“Making sure you get there too.” He looks into my eyes. “Did you come?”
I hesitate but shake my head.
“Then we’re not done.” His eyes go dark, traveling over me. “Do you trust me, Aspen?”
I don’t even have to think. I nod.
His mouth finds me, and my back arches up off the bed, and the very last thread of the fear I’ve been holding for so long finally, finally lets go.
I didn’t know that the feel of his wet, warm mouth would undo me completely.
It takes less than two minutes. All the blood leaves my head, leaving my vision to crumble.
He pumps his finger inside of me, and that’s all it takes.
I’m seeing white floating above me as I moan and cry out to him, gripping his hair.
He moans against me, and his hot breath makes my body shudder.
I’m literally shaking like jelly underneath him.
When the high starts falling, I sit up on my elbows and ask, “Did you come?”
He leans up and shows me the overflowing condom. He pulls it off and looks at me. “That was so hot.”
I flush, watching him look around for a trash can. He walks back to the bed and wraps me in his arms. I hold onto him and wait for the drop.
I know the drop. The cooling. The distance arriving like the sun does through the clouds. It’s going to come eventually. He kisses the top of my head and pulls me closer. My heart races, waiting. I wait two minutes, then five, then ten. It doesn’t come.
He just stays, one hand drifting slowly up and down my spine like he isn’t even thinking about it, his heartbeat under my ear, mumbling something about how he’s definitely going back down tomorrow to apologize to Channing and order the branzino like a grown man — and it’s nonsense, sleepy, ridiculous, golden nonsense, and it’s the least lonely sound I’ve ever heard.
I did the thing I swore I would never do again. Eyes open. On purpose. With my own two hands.
And the sky hasn’t fallen.