Chapter Seventeen #3
I pull back, breathing hard. “Bedroom.”
She nods.
I lift her off the table, and she wraps her legs around me for two steps before I set her down because if I carry her the whole way, I may forget everything except getting inside her. She takes my hand instead.
Leads me.
That matters.
She opens my bedroom door, then stops.
The bed is mine again. Dark sheets. No dinosaur blankets. No child’s toy on the pillow. But August is close enough that the house still holds motherhood in its walls. She glances toward the small room down the hall.
I wait.
The hardest thing I have ever done may be waiting while a woman decides whether she can belong to herself in my doorway.
“He’s asleep,” she whispers.
“I know.”
“If he wakes…”
“We stop.”
“If I need to check…”
“You check.”
“If I panic…”
“I stop.”
She looks at me. “If I cry?”
My chest tightens.
“Then I hold you if you want. Or I leave if you want. Or I sit on the damn floor and hate every man who taught you to apologize for crying.”
Her face twists.
Then she steps into the room.
I follow and close the door halfway, not all the way. She notices.
“Cracked?” I ask.
She nods.
So it stays cracked.
She turns to me in the dim light, and suddenly the heat turns heavy.
Sacred is too clean a word for it. This ain’t clean.
It’s dark and complicated and full of ghosts.
But it’s hers. I can feel that. Whatever fear rides under her skin, whatever pain sits behind her eyes, she is choosing the next step.
She reaches for the hem of her shirt.
I catch her wrist.
Her eyes jump to mine.
“Let me?”
She breathes out. “Yes.”
I take the shirt off her slowly.
Not because I’m patient.
Because I need her to know nothing here is snatched.
The shirt drops to the floor.
She is bare beneath it.
For one second, I can’t speak.
She starts to cross her arms.
I stop her with a hand at each wrist, gentle but firm enough to make her look at me.
“Don’t hide from me.”
Her eyes shine. “I don’t know how not to.”
“Then practice.”
She laughs, but it breaks in the middle.
I lower my mouth to her collarbone. Not her breasts. Not yet. I kiss the place where fear keeps trying to live, then the hollow of her throat, then the curve of her shoulder. Her breath catches. Her hands settle on my arms.
“Still yes?”
“Yes.”
I touch her then.
Slow at first.
Her eyes close, and the sound she makes is so soft I almost miss it. I don’t want to miss anything. Not tonight. I want every sound she has ever swallowed because a man made pleasure feel unsafe. I want all of it given back to her.
“Let me hear you,” I murmur.
Her fingers tighten. “I’m trying.”
“You ain’t getting graded.”
Another broken laugh.
Then I take her nipple into my mouth, and the laugh turns into a moan that makes my whole body go brutal with need.
I keep myself leashed.
Barely.
Her hands pull at my shirt. “Off.”
I step back and strip it over my head.
Her eyes move over me.
Scars. Ink. Muscle. Bruises. All the things I have collected because living as me requires souvenirs.
Her gaze catches on an old scar along my ribs.
Ray’s coffee table.
I see the question.
Not now.
Not tonight.
She doesn’t ask.
She touches it instead.
That touch is worse.
Better.
Everything.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispers.
I laugh because the words are absurd.
She looks up. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it small because you don’t know how to take it.”
I go still.
She sees too damn much.
I bend and kiss her before she sees more.
The kiss goes hot fast.
Her hands move over my chest, my shoulders, my back, learning me with a hunger that feels almost angry. Like she is mad anybody ever made her afraid to want this. I understand that anger. I feed it. I kiss her harder, press her back toward the bed, and when her knees hit the mattress, I stop again.
She looks at me, frustrated. “Derby.”
“Jeans.”
She blinks.
“You want them off?”
“Yes.”
“Say it.”
Her breath shudders. “Take them off.”
I drop to my knees.
Her eyes widen.
Good.
Let her see me there.
Let her understand exactly where I’m willing to put my pride.
I unbutton her jeans, watching her face, not my hands.
Her lips part. Her breath turns shallow.
I pull the denim down slowly, over her hips, her thighs, her knees, taking the last pieces of armor with it.
Her panties are plain cotton, pale blue, soft, nothing like the infamous road-kill drawers that started this whole mess.
Still, my mouth curves.
She narrows her eyes. “Don’t say it.”
“I said nothing.”
“You thought something.”
“I often do.”
“Derby.”
I kiss the inside of her knee. “These did not attack me, so I’m being respectful.”
She laughs, then gasps when my mouth moves higher.
That is the last funny moment for a while.
I take my time because she deserves time. Because I’m trying to burn the difference into both of us. Sex ain’t a duty here. Not a debt. Not a performance. Not a thing she gives so a man stays calm. This is hers as much as mine. More, maybe.
I kiss her thighs.
Her stomach.
The place above the waistband where her breath keeps catching.
She trembles.
“Still yes?” I ask.
She looks down at me, face flushed, eyes dark.
“Yes.”
So I give her my mouth through the thin cotton first, and she nearly folds in half.
The sound she makes ain’t quiet enough for her, but plenty quiet for the house. I grip her hips when they jerk, keeping her steady, not still. Never still unless she asks. Her fingers scratch my neck hard enough to hurt, and I love it. Every part of me loves it.
“Derby,” she gasps.
I look up.
She is undone already. Beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with pretty. This is alive. This is power she forgot she had coming back through her skin.
I hook my fingers in the waistband and pause.
She nods before I ask.
“Words,” I say.
“Yes. Please.”
Please nearly kills me.
I take the cotton down and put my mouth on her pussy.
She breaks.
Not all the way. Not yet. But the sound that leaves her is raw and shocked, like pleasure ambushed her.
I hold her hips and take every tremor, every stifled cry, every whispered curse.
She tastes like hot sugar and need. It’s the end of my self-control.
Though, I make myself stay there until her knees shake and her hand slaps over her mouth.
I stop immediately.
“Don’t hide it because of me,” I say.
Her eyes are wet. “August.”
Right.
Good.
Jesus.
I kiss her thigh once, gentle now. “Then bite my shoulder when it gets too loud.”
Her eyes flare.
That idea does something to her.
To me too.
I stand, and she reaches for me, pulling at my belt with clumsy hands. My swollen knuckles make me slower than I want, so she helps. Button. Zipper. Belt. Her eyes drop when she feels what she has done to me, and the look on her face is going to ruin me.
Not scared.
A little stunned.
A lot hungry.
I step out of my jeans and reach for protection in the nightstand because I ain’t that far gone. She watches me like every move matters.
It does.
When I come back to her, she is sitting on the edge of the bed, bare, hair loose, lips swollen, legs parted just enough to make me forget my own name.
I put a hand under her chin. “You can still stop.”
“I know.”
“You can still slow down.”
“I know.”
“You can still tell me to sleep on the floor and pray for death.”
Her mouth trembles into a smile. “I know.”
I lean down until my forehead rests against hers.
“Then tell me what you want, Panty Lady.”
She takes a breath.
Then she says it.
“You.”
One word.
Not fake.
A beginning.
That is what I hear.
I kiss her and ease her back onto the bed.
I cover her with my body carefully, because I’m bigger and I know it, because weight can feel like a cage if a woman has been held down by the wrong man.
Her legs open for me, and I settle between them, shaking like some green kid instead of a man who has known plenty of beds and forgotten most of them.
I won’t forget this one.
I line myself up and stop.
Her eyes open.
“Amelia.”
“Yes.”
I push in slow.
The world narrows to heat and breath and the way her hands clamp around my shoulders. She gasps, and I stop immediately.
Her nails dig in. “Don’t stop.”
“Need a second or you do?”
She laughs breathlessly, and it turns into a moan. “Both.”
Good.
Fine.
I can die here.
When she shifts her hips, taking me deeper, my control goes dark at the edges.
“Christ,” I grit out.
She wraps her legs around my waist.
I look down at her, and there is no fear on her face now. Not gone from the world, not healed forever, but not here. Here there is only effort, want, trust, and a kind of fierce concentration like she is learning a new language and refusing to mispronounce herself.
I move.
Slow first.
Then deeper when she asks with her body.
Then harder when she says my name like an answer.
I keep one hand beside her head, the other at her hip, watching, listening, checking every change in her breath. She meets me. God, she meets me. Not passive. Not performing. Her hands on my back, my neck, my arms. Her teeth in my shoulder when she gets too loud, exactly like I told her.
Pain flashes.
Pleasure follows so hard I nearly lose the rhythm.
“Bite me like that again and I’m going to embarrass myself,” I warn.
She laughs against my skin.
Then bites softer.
Wicked woman.
My woman.
No.
Yes.
Hell.
I kiss her hard enough to swallow both thoughts.
She comes apart under me with her mouth open against mine, body tightening, shaking, taking me with her so close I have to stop moving and breathe through clenched teeth.
“Derby,” she whispers.
There is wonder in it.
That ruins me more than the pleasure.
I move again, rougher now because she pulls me there, because she wants it, because her yes is in every arch and grip and sound. The bed knocks once against the wall. We both freeze.
From the other room, nothing.
Then she giggles.
Actually giggles.
It’s so unexpected and sweet and dirty in the dark that I drop my face to her neck and laugh too, quietly.
“Shh,” she whispers.
“You shh. You started this.”
“I did not.”
“You bit me.”
“You told me to.”
“You listened for once.”
She pinches my side.
I thrust on instinct, and her laugh turns into a gasp.
There.
That sound.
That is the one I chase.
Not for me. For her. For both of us. For the room and the night and every ugly thing waiting outside the door. For the woman who chose me with clear eyes and trembling hands. When I finally let go, it’s with my face buried against her throat and her name broken in my mouth.
Mine only in the moment she gives me.
After, I roll carefully to the side and pull her with me because not touching her suddenly feels like a crime. She comes without hesitation, curling against my chest, one hand over my heart. My body is still humming. My brain is burned clean. For a while, neither of us speaks.
The house is quiet.
The rain starts again.
Soft on the roof.
August sleeps down the hall.
The world ain’t ended.
That should not feel like a miracle.
It does.
“You okay?” I ask finally.
She nods against me.
“Words.”
Her fingers move lightly over my chest. “I’m okay.”
“Good okay or lying okay?”
A pause.
Then, “Good and sad.”
I frown, but I’m too exhausted to lift my head. “Sad?”
“Not because of you.”
That should help.
It doesn’t.
I shift enough to see her face. She looks soft and worn-out, too beautiful for the kind of night we have had. There are tears at the corners of her eyes.
My stomach tightens. “Amelia.”
She smiles, but it breaks. “I’m fine.”
“No.”
“I am.” She kisses my chest. “I promise.”
I don’t like the promise.
It feels slippery.
But my body is heavy, my rage drained, my knuckles throbbing under bandages, and her warmth is against me like something I have no practice resisting.
I pull her closer. “Sleep.”
She goes still for half a second.
Then relaxes.
“Okay,” she whispers.
I sleep like a man who thinks he has been given a future.
That’s my mistake.