Chapter 22
Matt
Her hand was small and cold in mine, and warming it felt like the first assignment of the rest of my life, and that’s the last coherent thought I had for a while.
My bedroom sits at the back of the house, where the maple outside the window throws shadows on the far wall when the street light catches it, and moonlight had started silvering the bottom of the glass, and none of it had ever mattered before.
It was a room I slept in. Bed squared away, nothing on the walls, a lamp I never used.
And then Elizabeth Starling walked into it holding my hand, October in her hair—cold air and cider and whatever her shampoo was that I’d been smelling all season—and the room mattered so much I forgot how doors worked.
I kicked it shut. She laughed against my mouth, this low breathless sound I felt everywhere, and pulled me down into the kiss with her hands in my collar, and I had her face in my hands and the whole rest of my life narrowing down to the warm point where we touched—
—and I smelled the sauce. The burner. Low, under the pot, left on warm for seconds because I am a man who plans for seconds, and there was a woman with her hands under the hem of my shirt and a lit burner unattended two rooms away, and there is a version of me that could have let it go. I have never met him.
“Hold that thought,” I said, against her mouth.
She blinked. “What—?”
“Ten seconds.” I set her back on her feet with both hands, steady, like handing off something breakable, and went down the hall at a dead calm walk that fooled neither of us, and clicked the burner off, and moved the pot to a cold coil, and hit the kitchen light, checked the lock on the front door out of habit, and came back to find her sitting on the edge of my bed with her hand over her mouth and her shoulders shaking.
“You turned off the stove.”
“The sauce was on warm.”
“We were—” She gestured at the general catastrophe of the two of us, my collar wrecked, her hair half out of its pins, and lost the sentence to laughing. “You stopped that to go turn off a burner. I love it. You are amazing. You are perfect. I can’t even—”
“House fires,” I said, with all the dignity I had left, which was none, “are unromantic, Elizabeth.”
“You checked the lock too. I heard the deadbolt.”
“I—” My ears went hot. There was no version of this I came out of looking smooth, so I stopped trying. “Yes. I did do that.”
“You were gone eleven seconds, and you secured the perimeter.”
“Habit.” I rubbed the back of my neck, and then gave her the truth. “And it’s the first night this house has ever had something in it worth stealing. I wasn’t taking chances.”
Her laugh went soft right in the middle of it. “Come here,” she said, holding out both hands to me in the lamplight, “come here right now, you absolute safety manual of a man—”
I crossed the room and came down over her and caught the last of it with my mouth, and the laugh changed key, and neither of us said anything you could put in a report for a long time after that.
I have spent my whole life being strong.
That night was the first time anybody ever asked me to be strong for nothing at all—to just be there, under her hands, while she took her time.
It felt foreign and perfect all at once, like stepping out of heavy armor I’d worn so long I’d forgotten its weight.
No crisis to manage, no one to protect or fix—just her slow, reverent exploration of my body, her fingertips tracing every ridge and scar like they were something precious instead of reminders of old battles.
Vulnerability hit me square in the chest, a warm ache that made my throat tight and my pulse thunder.
For once I didn’t have to be the steady one, the unbreakable one. I could simply feel—shudder under her palms, let the raw want show on my face—and the trust in that surrender flooded me with a tenderness so fierce it stole what little breath I had left.
She undressed me like she was opening something she’d been saving.
Slow. Thorough. Entirely in charge, sitting back on her heels in the lamplight to look at what she’d done, and I lay there and let myself be looked at, and what I felt under her eyes, plain as heat off a stove, was wanted.
Not needed. Wanted. Nobody in my life had ever made that distinction, and Elizabeth made it with one look—and it went through me like warmth into cold hands and came back out as pure hunger, because it turns out that being wanted by her is the single most dangerous thing that has ever happened to my self-control.
She said, soft, wondering, half to herself, “There you are,” and after that I stopped lying still.
And then it was my turn, and I am a thorough man.
The green sweater ended up on the floor, along with every intention I’d had of taking this slow.
I found freckles on her shoulders, and I mapped them like it was my job—tracing each one with the tip of my tongue, tasting the faint salt of her skin, breathing in the sweet-spiced scent that clung to her collarbone.
I learned that Elizabeth Starling—who talks through everything, who narrates, who jokes—goes silent when you kiss the inside of her wrist, completely silent, like a radio between stations, her pulse fluttering against my lips as I lingered there, sucking gently until a soft, broken sound finally escaped her.
I have never wanted anything in my life the way I wanted to keep discovering what made her moan.
Her hands were cold, and then they weren’t—sliding over my shoulders, down my back, nails grazing just enough to pull a low groan from my throat.
Moonlight climbed the window, painting silver across her skin. The maple threw its shadow on the wall, and the lamp burned low and warm, and I took her apart with the same patience I’d been rationing all season, every slow mile of it.
I kissed down the valley between her breasts, teasing one nipple with my tongue until it tightened under my mouth, then the other, drawing it deep while my hand skimmed lower, over the soft curve of her belly, until my fingers found the heat between her thighs.
She was already slick, swollen, and the way she arched into my touch—hips lifting, thighs parting wider—made my cock ache so fiercely I had to press it against her leg just to keep from losing my mind.
I circled her clit with slow, deliberate strokes, then slid one finger inside her, then two, curling them just right until her breath hitched and her inner walls clenched around me in rhythmic pulses.
I reached for the nightstand drawer, pulled out a condom, and tore the packet with my teeth. Elizabeth watched me with dark, hungry eyes, her fingers tracing my jaw as I rolled it on. “Yes,” she whispered, voice husky, pulling me back down to her. “I want this. I want you—now.”
We fit. I’d wondered—you always wonder—and then there was no wondering.
I settled between her thighs, the blunt head of my cock nudging her entrance, slick and ready even through the latex, and pushed in slowly—inch by thick inch—feeling her stretch around me, hot and velvet-tight, her gasp mingling with my groan as I sank home.
Her breath went ragged against my ear, and her heels dug into the small of my back, then the two of us found a rhythm like we’d been rehearsing it in every look across every crowded festival lawn since September, slow and then deep and then desperate.
I rocked into her with long, rolling thrusts that dragged against that perfect spot inside her, the headboard I built with my own hands knocking the wall like an accusation, her fingers laced through mine and pinned to the pillow above her head.
Her breasts pressed against my chest with every movement, nipples hard and sensitive, her body arching to meet me as I filled her completely.
I watched her come apart underneath me in the lamplight with her hair spread out over my pillow and my name breaking in half in her mouth—her walls fluttering, then clamping down hard around my cock as her orgasm hit, pulsing and pulling me deeper while she trembled and cried out.
I followed her over with my face buried in her neck, hips thrusting hard as pleasure ripped through me, spilling hot and deep inside her with a groan that felt torn from my soul.
After, she lay across my chest, tracing something idle over my ribs, both of us slick and stunned. I pulled her closer, kissing her slow and deep, tasting the lingering smile on her lips as our heartbeats gradually synced.
We stayed like that for a long while—soft kisses turning hungry again, my hand cupping the back of her neck while she sighed into my mouth, tongues sliding warm and lazy.
I rolled us so she was half-draped over me, her thigh slung across mine, and kissed her until we were breathless again, until every little catch of her breath made me want to start all over again.
My fingers traced patterns down her spine, over the curve of her hip, while she pressed soft, open-mouthed kisses along my jaw and throat, nipping gently at the spot that made me groan.
She lifted her head. Looked at me a long moment in the lamplight, her chin on my sternum, her eyes soft and dark and entirely awake.
Then she held up ten fingers. I laughed until the bed shook, helpless, my hand over my eyes, this ridiculous perfect woman grinning down at me in the lamplight, and when I finally got my breath back she said, prim as a judge, “Littering the floor with that condom wrapper cost you the eleventh.”
I rolled her beneath me in one smooth move, capturing her mouth again. She tasted like laughter and salt and the faint sweetness of wine that still lingered on her tongue—warm, addictive, mine.
The kiss went deep and filthy in seconds, tongues stroking, teasing, her little moan vibrating straight into my chest as I sucked on her lower lip and then delved back in, devouring the soft, slick heat of her.
“Still keeping score?” I murmured against her lips, voice rough.
“Always,” she breathed, nipping my bottom lip before kissing me harder, her fingers threading into my hair and tugging.
Our bodies pressed flush again, skin sliding hot against skin, hearts pounding in tandem. Only when the kisses finally softened into lazy, lingering presses did I reach over and switch off the lamp, and outside the moonlight finished its slow work on the window, sealing the two of us in silver.
Much later, when she’d gone heavy and warm against my side, and her breathing had evened out into sleep, I lay awake in the dark grinning at the ceiling like a fool.
Stove off. Door locked. Elizabeth Starling asleep in my arms.