32. Brie
“Holy shit,” Ezra breathed. “There’s a fucking smuggler’s tunnel from the winery to here ?”
I grinned, pleased I’d managed to surprise him. The tunnels—and the fact that my family had been smugglers—was a well-kept Delatou secret. I wasn’t even sure if any of my sisters had told their significant others.
Well, okay, that was a lie. I knew Ella hadn’t told Alfie, mostly because Dad threatened to disown her if she did.
“Smugglers had to get creative back in those days, you know?” I said, starting the story the same way my dad had when he’d passed it along to me and my sisters. I moved to one of the walls and turned the heat up, grateful my parents hadn’t yet gotten around to winterizing the house. “To anyone paying close attention, particularly law enforcement watching for these types of things, it would’ve been strange for Great-Grandpa Andreas and his buddies to be seen entering and leaving the winery grounds at all hours.
“But having guests come over for a party and covertly sneaking cases of wine out that were then driven off when the guest left with no one the wiser?” I grinned. “Genius. So that’s how the tunnels came to be, and when Prohibition ended, though they weren’t necessary anymore, my ancestors decided to keep them open and operational.”
Ezra crossed the room and scooped me into his arms.
“Worked pretty damn well for us tonight,” he said against my lips.
“That it did. Now what do you say, Chef? Wanna take me upstairs to my old room and ravish me?”
“Fuck yeah.” He didn’t even set me on my feet before spinning toward the staircase and taking the steps two at a time to the second-floor landing.
“Which one?” he asked, groaning when I bent and nipped at his earlobe.
“Second on the left.”
My sisters and I had spent every summer growing up in this house. Once school was out for the year, Mom and Dad would pack us up and haul us up here, getting away from the city life and letting us run rampant through the vineyards for three months while they tackled tourist season. When they’d built the new house on the point, selling the one in Traverse City and leaving this one behind for good, we turned it into an Airbnb for guests. It was within walking distance to the winery and the grounds, and we offered a shuttle that drove people into town and the city for meals and shopping.
But the room Ezra walked us into, with its white walls, grey-toned hardwood floors, and massive bed topped with a fluffy, white down comforter, would always be mine. No matter how different it looked or how many strangers called it their home away from home for a few days.
“You ever kiss a boy in this room?” Ezra asked as he dumped me on the bed.
“Never,” I promised him, and he knelt on the mattress, shuffling until he was between my thighs. “How about you change that?”
Ezra folded himself over me, capturing my mouth in a blistering kiss that I felt in every single cell of my body. My nerve endings hummed when I was near him, like my particles were all charged with energy. I wanted him to keep touching me forever, to permanently keep me in that place of bliss.
He broke the kiss only long enough to reach behind his neck and tug his sweater and the tee over his head, revealing his smooth, pale skin and the lean muscles beneath. My hands reached for him, roaming his flesh, and I grinned when goosebumps rose in my wake.
“Your touch,” Ezra whispered. “Fuck, I’ve missed it, honey.”
“I’ve missed you ,” I responded, punctuating my words by curling my palm around his nape and tugging his lips back to mine. We lost ourselves in that kiss for untold moments, in our tongues sliding together, in teeth against lips and errant hums of pleasure.
“Too many clothes,” he said absently when he skated his palms down my sides, over my own sweater.
Even in the dimness, the room only illuminated from the massive full moon and the lights filtering in from the foyer, I could clearly see every plane and hollow of his face. His beautiful chocolate eyes had gone as dark as the night sky flecked with stars. Sparkling and glowing just for me.
I sat up so he could free me of the wool, and since I hadn’t worn a bra, a moment later, I was entirely topless, my nipples pebbling in the chilly room. Then he bent and captured one of those tight peaks with his lips, laving one with his tongue before moving onto the other. He chased his mouth with his thumb, brushing it over my flesh until I was writhing, my pulse thrumming incessantly in my clit.
“Need you now,” I murmured as he moved north, trailing kisses up the column of my throat until he was once again a breath away.
“You have me.”
His hand reached to my hair, toying with the end of my braid. With a gentleness that made my heart ache, he unwound the tie from the end, slipping it onto his wrist, then slowly unweaving the strands. When it was fully unraveled, he dove his fingers in and massaged my scalp. I moaned at how good his strong fingers felt against my roots.
He was always taking care of me, always making me feel cherished and wanted and desired in a way I’d never experienced before.
And god, I half loved him for it.
“Need you inside,” I whined, trying to distract myself from that dangerous thought by reaching for his belt and deftly undoing it and his pants, tugging them down his hips. He backed away from the bed to kick out of them while I stripped out of my skirt, tights, and panties.
Once again, Ezra stilled, watching me. Despite the low temperature in the room, my skin heated with his perusal, his eyes branding my skin, warming me from the inside.
“You are so fucking beautiful, it almost hurts to look at you.”
“I love the way you look at me,” I said, reclining on my elbows and dropping my legs wide, more brazen than I’d ever been before. Well, more so than I’d ever been with anyone but Ezra. This man—he made me unhinged. Bold. Out of my mind with need.
“How do I look at you?”
“Like you’re a man starved and I’m your favorite meal.”
Ezra grinned, his teeth flashing in the dark room. “I’ve dreamed about this,” he said as he climbed back onto the bed. But he didn’t move over me. Instead, he stopped a few feet shy and flopped onto his stomach.
Putting him eye level with my pussy.
“About what, exactly?” I asked, reclining once again, a surprised exhale leaving me when he reached out and trailed a finger through my slit.
“About having you again. About tasting this honey sweet cunt. About your perfect pussy wrapped around my cock.” His hand came up to cup one of my breasts, and I grabbed the other, both of us rolling my nipples between our fingers. The pressure and touch was woefully inadequate and too far away from where I needed it. I squirmed, trying to bring myself closer to him, to get his mouth on me, and he chuckled darkly.
“So fucking needy,” he said.
“Touch me, Ez.”
“What’s the magic word?”
“Please.”
“Please, what ?”
Realization dawned, and my toes curled against the sheets as I said, “Please, Chef.”
Ezra rewarded me with a long, slow lick from back to front, his flattened tongue hitting all the sweet spots along the way. God, it was too good. Too perfect. Too much of everything I’d been missing, of everything we’d denied ourselves.
I gripped a handful of his hair, holding him to me.
“You taste so fucking good, honey. Like your namesake. I want to fucking drown in you.”
“More, Ez.”
“You want my fingers? My cock?”
“All of it.”
“All in good time, baby.” He shifted so he could smooth his hands up my thighs, pressing them back, opening me wider. I was more vulnerable than I’d ever been in my life, but I’d never felt safer. With this man, it was okay for me to fall apart. I was encouraged, even, to be my truest, most confident self—not the youngest of five sisters who often got babied or lost in the shuffle, but a desirable adult woman who knew what she wanted and asked for it.
He only stared at me, studying me. Revered me like I was a deity and he was simply worshiping at my altar.
Then, at last, he dove into his feast.
I expected him to take his time after all his teasing and pretty words, but Ezra surprised me by eating me with gusto, by lapping at my pussy like it was ice cream melting on a hot day. By unceremoniously shoving two fingers in me, his chuckle vibrating against my swollen, sensitive flesh in the most delicious way when I let out a yelp of surprise.
He drove me higher and higher, his fingers pumping in and out, curling against that innermost spot as his tongue flicked relentlessly against my clit .
And when he sealed his lips around that bundle of nerves and sucked, then added a third finger—I blew apart with a scream, my entire body quaking endlessly as we rode it out together.
At last, I stitched myself back together and opened my eyes, finding Ezra hovering over me, a self-satisfied smirk on his face.
“You are so fucking sexy when you come.”
“You should make me do it again.”
Ezra barked out a laugh and sat back on his heels, his hands on my inner thighs, absently smoothing his palms against my skin, deliciously abraded by his stubble. I sat up to watch him, my eyes straying right to his cock, thick, impossibly hard, the tip leaking precum. It seemed to pulse under my gaze, and I reached for him. He hissed sharply through his teeth as I closed my fist around him, pumping him slowly, mesmerized by his silken feel over the impossibly hard flesh beneath.
“You gonna take a taste?” he asked.
“I actually have a confession to make,” I said as I stroked him.
“What’s that?”
“I’ve never actually given head.”
“Brie,” he groaned. “You’re killing me.”
I shrugged and giggled. “I just want all our cards on the table here.” I paused, and my voice had dropped to barely above a whisper when I spoke again. “What if I’m bad at it?”
The idea thrilled me, of having his cock in my mouth, of letting him pump into my throat and spill down it. But it worried me too. What if I hurt him? What if I sucked at sucking?
Gripping my waist, he lifted me and settled me so I straddled his lap. Cupping my face in his hands, he forced me to look at him as he said, “There is nothing you could do to me that I won’t like. I could get off watching you run around your kitchen, baking all your delectable treats. Tell me you understand that.”
“Really?” I asked as I continued to explore his flesh.
“ Really ,” he assured me, then gritted out, “You keep doing that, and I’m going to come before I ever get inside you.”
I didn’t let go but brushed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “And we can’t have that.”
Ezra shifted me slightly so his broad head slipped through lips, my orgasm coating him, and he reached between us to spread it down his length.
“I haven’t been with…” I croaked out, my words dying in my mouth, unsure what prompted the outburst. I cleared my throat noisily before I tried again. “I haven’t been with anyone since you.”
I expected him to, at the very least, show some level of shock or surprise. Instead, his arms banded tighter around me, and with one of his lopsided grins, he said, “You been saving yourself for me, honey?”
“So what if I was?” I shot back, the words braver than I felt with heat rising to my face.
“Lucky for you,” Ezra said, swiping his thumb along my cheekbone, “I haven’t been with anyone since you either.”
“There’s just one problem.”
Ezra stilled, eyes wide with panic. “Yeah?”
“I’m not currently on birth control, so we’re going to have to use a condom.”
“Why?” he blurted then slapped a hand over his mouth, clearly not having meant to ask. If there was one thing I knew about Ezra, it was that he believed women’s bodies were theirs to do with as they wished. It was my decision not to be on birth control, and I knew he wasn’t questioning that.
“I never went back on it after the miscarriage, knowing I wouldn’t be having sex with anyone again for a good, long while. I was terrified of intimacy, of giving anyone that kind of access to me again.
“Except you,” I continued, pressing my lips lightly to his. “You make me feel safe in a way I never thought I’d find. There’s no one but you who gets me like this.”
“Ever?”
“ For ever,” I corrected.
Ezra simply stared at me, wide-eyed. “I am in awe of you, Brie Delatou. You’re the strongest woman I know, and I promise I’m going to work my ass off every day to prove I’m worthy of the trust you’ve given me.”
He captured my mouth again, and against his lips I said, “I know you will.”
With kisses to my eyelids, the tip of my nose, my cheeks, jaw, everywhere he could reach, he asked, “Are there condoms here?”
I giggled as I crawled off his lap and over to the bedside table. As I pulled the drawer open, Ezra’s palm landed on one of my cheeks in a playful smack, and I arched my back, a surprised moan leaving me. I hadn’t expected to…enjoy that so much.
“You like that?” he asked, sounding as surprised as I felt.
I glanced over my shoulder at him as I felt around in the dark for the box of condoms I knew the housekeeping staff stocked every guest room with. “Do it again and find out.”
Ezra reached for me, settling both palms on my ass and massaging the cheeks before lifting one and bringing it down, harder than the first time. I moaned again. The contact stung, a handprint surely blooming on my skin, and my pussy clenched, needing to be filled by him.
“Fuck, Brie. That’s so hot. Who knew my girl liked to be spanked?”
At last, I found what I was looking for and crawled back to him, once again straddling his thighs, his cock jutting between us.
“I like trying new things with you,” I told him before ripping the condom wrapper open. I withdrew the rubber and pinched the tip then slowly rolled it down Ezra’s length.
When I finished, his breath left him in a whoosh , and I giggled.
“Lift up,” he said, scooping his palms around the backs of my thighs and lifting me slightly. “Put it in.”
I grabbed his cock, unable to resist toying with him as I slid the tip through my lips, coating the condom in my desire. Then I fit it against my entrance and sank down.
“Too big.” I dropped my head to Ezra’s shoulder as I met resistance on the way down, bracing my knees alongside his thighs. He was massive, and it had been so long.
“It’ll fit, honey. Just go slow.”
“Fuck,” I breathed as I took him a few more inches.
“Goddamn, woman. I love when you swear.”
I inhaled sharply through my nose and took him a bit deeper, then further until I impaled myself fully, giving myself a moment to adjust to the way he stretched me, waiting for the moment that pain relaxed to pleasure.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Took you too fast,” I mumbled. “Been too long. But god, it feels good to be full of you again.”
“Not as good as your pussy feels. I was made for this pussy, Brie.” His hands rubbed soothing circles up my back. “Probably better for me you didn’t start moving right away anyway. Your pussy feels like heaven, and I was about to erupt. Fuck, baby,” he whispered, wrapping the length of my hair around his fist and tugging my head back. “How did we go so long?”
With a kiss to my mouth, he let go, and my hair became a curtain around us, cocooning us in this space where only we existed. And with the snow piling up and blanketing the world outside, with miles of vineyard and forest between us and the rest of civilization, it truly felt like we were the only two people in the world. Like we were trapped in a snow globe where everything was good and real and right .