5. The Architecture of Truth #2
Roman’s hands settled on my hips, his thumbs stroking the bare skin above my waistband. His breathing went ragged as he stared at my reflection, taking in every inch of me like a starving man.
“Christ, Maeve,” he groaned, his voice thick with raw appreciation.
He reached around to unhook my bra, letting it fall away.
My breasts were heavy and tender with the pregnancy, the nipples flushed and tight.
Elliott had flinched at the changes in my body, making his little excuses, avoiding my touch.
Roman treated my body like a feast. He took the entire weight of my breasts in his palms, dragging his thumbs across my aching nipples.
A sharp gasp escaped me as the intense sensation sparked across my skin.
“You’re so responsive,” he whispered, pressing a wet kiss to the curve of my neck. “So beautiful.”
His hands slid down my torso, his fingers tracing the silver stretch marks low on my belly.
I tensed, bracing for the inevitable hesitation, but Roman didn’t pull away.
He knelt in front of me, pressing his open mouth to the marks, kissing them one by one.
The scrape of his stubble against my sensitive skin sent a shiver straight down my spine.
“These,” he said, his breath hot against my stomach. “He made you hate these. They are proof of what you are capable of. Creating a life. I have never seen anything more beautiful than what your body is doing.”
He hooked his fingers into the waistband of my underwear and pulled it down, tossing the fabric aside. I was completely bare in the reflection, entirely exposed to him.
Roman stayed on his knees. He gripped the backs of my thighs and gently urged my legs wider. I braced my hands flat against the mirrored doors behind me to steady myself as he pulled my hips forward, right to the edge of his mouth.
I was already soaking wet. Roman looked at my flushed, swollen folds, his eyes darkening with blatant hunger. He leaned in and dragged his tongue in a long, deliberate stroke up my slit, tasting my juices.
My knees nearly buckled. “Roman—”
“Hold onto the glass,” he commanded, his voice muffled against my wetness.
He didn’t give me time to recover from the initial shock of it.
He settled his mouth firmly over my pussy, his tongue finding my clit and flicking over the tightened peak with ruthless, expert precision.
The sensation was so sharp and overwhelming I arched my spine, my head falling back against the mirror.
Elliott had treated oral sex like an obligatory chore, hurried and clumsy.
Roman treated it like the entire point of the evening.
He sucked hard on my clit, his fingers slipping inside me, stretching me open to lap deeper at my dripping folds.
He drank my juices like he couldn’t get enough, swirling his tongue around the sensitive hood, reading every helpless twitch of my hips.
“So fucking sweet,” he growled, the vibration of his voice humming directly against my clit.
I couldn’t catch my breath. The pleasure built instantly, a tight, hot coil winding low in my stomach.
His fingers curled inside me, stroking my slick walls in a steady, pumping rhythm that matched the relentless flick of his tongue.
The sheer rush of pleasure finally broke what was left of my restraint.
I sobbed his name, my fingers splayed wide against the cold glass as the orgasm slammed into me.
I came violently, my thighs shaking, my inner muscles clenching tight around his fingers while he swallowed my cries.
When my legs finally gave out, Roman stood and caught my weight easily. He lifted me into his arms, carrying me to the massive bed in the center of the room.
He laid me down with incredible care, arranging the pillows to support my back and bump. Then he pulled the sweater over his head and shoved his trousers down. The sight of his thick, jutting cock, heavy and rigid with arousal, sent a fresh spike of heat pooling between my legs.
Mindful of the baby, he climbed onto the mattress and settled me onto my side. He curled his large frame around me from behind, his chest flush against my back, pulling my top leg up to rest over his hip. It opened me perfectly for him while taking all the pressure off my stomach.
“Like this,” he said against my shoulder, his large hand resting warm and possessive over the swell of my belly. “I’ve got you. Tell me if anything’s too much.”
“I want you inside me,” I begged, reaching back to grip his hip. “Now.”
He guided the blunt head of his cock to my soaked entrance. He pushed into me slow and deep, filling me completely. We both let out a ragged groan as he seated himself to the hilt. I felt impossibly full, stretched wide and slick, the friction exquisite.
He held still for a moment, letting me adjust to his size. His hand stroked over my belly, then slid up to squeeze my breast, catching the nipple between two fingers and rolling it. He anchored me through the initial fullness, even as his own breathing hitched against my neck.
“God, Maeve,” he breathed. “You’re so tight. So perfectly wet.”
Then he began to move. It was slow, deep, and deliberate, each long thrust angled perfectly to rub against the swollen bundle of nerves inside me.
He pulled almost all the way out before driving his hips forward, burying his cock deep in my slick pussy with a wet, slapping sound that echoed in the quiet room.
I gripped his forearm where it wrapped across my chest, pushing back into his thrusts. The rhythm was hypnotic, dirty, and consuming. He didn’t try to hush me. When I gasped loudly, he thrust harder, chasing the sound.
“Feel that?” he murmured, his hips snapping against my ass, his hard cock sliding in and out of my slick folds. “That’s your body telling you the truth. You’re not too much. You’re not undesirable. You’re incredible.”
His free hand moved down between my thighs, his thumb finding my slick, swollen clit. He rubbed it in time with his thrusts, catching me in a relentless friction that emptied my mind completely.
“Roman,” I cried out, my nails biting into his arm. “I’m close—I’m so close—”
“Come for me,” he ordered, losing his careful control as his thrusts turned rapid and desperate. “Come on my fingers.”
The climax rushed through me, a blinding, full-body wave that left me gasping.
I clenched hard around his cock, my pussy spasming wildly around his thick length.
Roman let out a harsh, guttural shout, his hips stuttering as he drove into me one final, deep time.
He crushed me against his chest, holding me tight as he emptied himself inside me, his climax pulsing hot and heavy against my walls.
We stayed tangled together like that for a long time. His chest heaved against my back as our breathing slowly leveled out. He didn’t pull away. He kept his arm wrapped securely around me, his hand resting flat and warm over the bump where the baby had started her nightly turning.
I lay there in the quiet lamplight, bracing for the familiar urge to cover up, to apologize for the mess, to list everything wrong with my body. I was certain that any second he’d see what Elliott saw and turn his back.
It didn’t come. There was only the heavy, comforting weight of his arm and the slow stroke of his thumb across my skin.
“What are you thinking?” he asked, his voice a low rumble against my shoulder.
“That I forgot,” I admitted softly, watching the city lights blur outside the window. “I forgot it could be like that. I’d decided that part of my life was just over. That I’d had my run of being wanted, and now I was a mother, and that was a different, smaller thing.”
His arm tightened around my waist. “It’s not over. It’s not smaller.” He pressed a lingering kiss to the curve of my neck. “You’ve just been starving in a house with a man who refused to feed you, and calling it a ‘diet’.”
The truth of it made my eyes sting.
“Stay tonight,” he said into my hair. It wasn’t quite a question.
I thought about the dark house across the city. The man in it who’d laughed when his mistress called me an ‘incubator’. The script he was probably still trying to rewrite—sitting up to see what time I came home, so he could pretend not to have waited.
Let him wait.
“I’ll stay,” I said, and my voice didn’t waver at all.
And I lay there in the light, in a near-stranger’s bed, breathing easier than I had in eight years of a suffocating marriage.