Matt #2
I set her down, and she stopped me just past the threshold, both hands flat on my chest, and looked at me a long moment in the dark hallway, serious all of a sudden. “Say it again,” she said. “Not the whole speech. Just tell me you’re not going anywhere.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” I framed her face in both hands. “Not tonight. Not after tonight. I’ve got nowhere else on earth I’d rather be standing than exactly here, with you, and I don’t plan on finding out what anywhere else feels like ever again.”
“Good answer, Officer.” Her hands slid up into my hair. “Now kiss me like you mean every word of it.”
So I did. Slow at first, careful, the way a man handles something he has wanted long enough to be afraid of getting wrong, and she made a soft sound against my mouth and pulled me closer, impatient with my carefulness, and I felt her smile even as she kissed me harder, like she found all of it—my hands shaking slightly, the care, the hesitation—unbearably endearing.
Her lips parted under mine, warm and tasting faintly of the cider she’d sipped earlier, and I deepened the kiss, tongue sliding against hers in a slow, deliberate stroke that drew a low moan from her throat.
My hands slid down her sides, palms mapping the curve of her waist through her sweater, then lower to grip her hips and pull her flush against me.
She rocked forward instinctively, pressing the soft heat of her body into the growing hardness straining against my jeans, and the friction pulled a rough groan from my chest.
“You don’t have to be gentle with me,” she murmured between kisses, working my jacket off my shoulders. “I’m not going to break.”
“I know. I just wanted to take my time.” I caught her hands, stilled them, and pressed a slow kiss to her knuckles, making myself wait even though every part of me wanted to rush. “I’ve been waiting to have you here again. I’d like to remember it properly.”
“Matthew Hartford.” Her voice had gone soft, all the teasing wrung out of it. “That might be the most romantic sentence you’ve ever put together in your life.”
“I have my moments.”
“You have exactly one moment, and you’re having it right now.” She pulled me down again, laughing against my mouth, and this time I let her hurry us both.
We didn’t make it to the bedroom quickly.
She stopped me against the hallway wall to look at me, like she wanted to confirm I was really there, and I stopped her right back to do the same, and there was a lot of that—stopping, looking, low laughter, her fingers working open the buttons of my shirt one slow inch at a time like she had all the time in the world and intended to use every second of it.
“Five hours,” I reminded her, “and dropping,” and she made a sound that was half laugh and half something else entirely, and pulled me the rest of the way down the hall.
The door shut behind us. I got her out of the last of it slow, her fingers impatient in my hair the whole time, and when I finally had her under me in the dark she went still and put both hands right over my heart, like she was checking it was still going.
“Matt.”
“Right here.”
“I’m not used to this.” Her voice had lost every joke it usually hides behind. “Being promised things. Believing them.”
“Get used to it.” I kissed the center of her palm, then her wrist, watching her the whole time. “I’m not in a hurry to stop proving it.”
“Prove it faster,” she said, and pulled me back down, and for a long while after that neither of us said anything—just her name in my mouth and mine in hers, and the two of us finding out exactly how well we fit when neither of us was holding anything back.
I reached for the nightstand, tore open a condom, and rolled it on under her heated gaze while she watched with dark, hungry eyes.
But I wasn’t ready to rush this part either.
I kissed my way down her body instead—slow, reverent presses of my mouth over her collarbone, the soft swell of her breasts, the tight peaks of her nipples that I drew into my mouth one at a time, sucking and licking until she was arching off the bed with little broken sounds.
Lower still, I settled between her thighs, spreading them wider with my palms, tasting the warm, slick heat of her until her fingers tightened in my hair and her hips rolled against my tongue.
Only when she was trembling on the edge did I kiss my way back up, covering her completely.
Then I settled between her spread thighs, the heavy length of me sliding hot and slick against her softness before I pushed inside her—slow and deep, feeling every inch of her tight, welcoming heat stretch around me.
She gasped, nails digging into my shoulders as she clenched down, drawing me deeper.
This is everything.
The thought hit me like a wave as I held still inside her, buried to the hilt, letting myself feel the perfect, impossible fit of her body around mine.
This woman who had spent years waiting and working and guarding her heart had just handed it to me, and the trust in it—the way she was looking up at me like I was the safest place she’d ever known—made something in my chest crack wide open.
I was falling in love with her. The realization was quiet and absolute, settling into my bones right there in the dark.
I started to move with long, measured strokes, savoring the wet slide and the way her body arched to meet me, her breasts brushing my chest with every thrust. Sweat gathered between us, her skin flushed and burning under my hands as I gripped her hips, angling to hit that spot inside her that made her cry out.
Every thrust felt like a promise I was keeping with my whole body.
My thumb found her clit, circling firm and steady in time with my hips until her breaths turned ragged and she came hard around me—pulsing, fluttering around me as she shook and moaned my name.
I rode her through it, pace building, the slap of skin and her soft gasps filling the room.
When my release hit, I buried myself to the hilt, groaning against her throat as I spilled deep in thick pulses, holding her close while we both trembled.
In the quiet that followed, I stayed inside her, forehead pressed to hers, breathing the same air while the aftershocks moved through her in little ripples that pulled soft sounds from both of us.
Her eyes were glassy and open, full of something raw and wondering that made my chest ache in the best way.
I brushed damp strands of hair from her temple, kissed the corner of her eye where a single tear had slipped free, and whispered again that I wasn’t going anywhere—because in that moment I felt how deeply she needed to hear it, how the promise settled into her and made her hold me tighter.
She curled into me like she was trying to climb inside my skin, her heart hammering against mine, and I wrapped her up in my arms until the shaking eased and all that was left was warmth and the quiet certainty that this was real.
Somewhere past two she laughed against my shoulder, breathless, tracing a lazy line down my sternum. “You’re smug.”
“I’ve earned it.”
“You have not earned—” She stopped, gasped, and gave up the sentence entirely, and I decided some arguments are better lost than won.
Dawn found us tangled in my sheets with the window going gray, my chin in her hair, neither of us anywhere near asleep and both of us pretending otherwise.
“Four hours,” she mumbled into my shoulder, not moving an inch to do anything about it.
“Three, now. Maybe. I’ve lost track of time.”
“Shut up and hold still, Hartford. I’m not finished with you yet.”
I held still. Best order I’ve taken all year.