2. Char #2
The bed dipped. I felt it before I heard him.
The quiet shift of his weight as he settled in beside me.
He didn’t say a word. He didn’t try to pull the comforter off my head or tell me it was going to be all right.
He just laid down beside me, close enough that I felt the warmth radiating off his body.
And then his arm came around me.
He didn’t tug. He didn’t pull me against him. He just settled that massive arm over the top of me, like a weighted blanket with a heartbeat, and I laid there underneath it trying to remember how to breathe.
“You don’t have to be okay,” he said.
That was all. Just those six words into the darkness of the comforter, and something inside of me cracked right open.
“I know,” I whispered.
“Good.”
I didn’t know how long we laid there. Long enough for my crying to slow.
Long enough for the ache in my chest to dull itself from a roar to something quieter.
Long enough for me to notice things. The steadiness of his breathing.
The weight of him beside me. The way his thumb moved in a slow circle against the outside of my arm, so subtle I almost thought I imagined it.
I turned over.
His eyes found mine in the dark, and the look in them gutted me all over again. Not with sadness. With something else. Something I didn’t have the word for and didn’t need to.
“Gauge,” I said softly.
He reached up and tucked a strand of hair away from my face. His finger traced the line of my jaw. The touch was careful. Deliberate. Like he was taking inventory of every part of me just to make sure it was still there.
“I’m right here,” he said.
Something shifted. It wasn’t a decision so much as a giving in. I pressed myself against him, and he pulled me closer. His hand slid up the length of my back and when I tilted my face toward his, he held my stare for a long moment.
“You sure?” he asked.
“I need to stop thinking,” I whispered. “Can you do that for me?”
He studied my face. “Yeah, angel. I can do that.”
And when his mouth found mine it wasn’t soft.
It was dark from the start, his lips moving against mine with a quiet certainty that made my fingers curl into the front of his shirt.
He rolled me beneath him without any wasted effort and I felt the solid weight of him settle over me and my breath left my body all at once.
He pulled back long enough to drag my shirt over my head and unhook my bra.
His hands spread wide over my tits, kneading them, his thumbs dragging across my hardening nipples until I arched up into his palms. He dropped his head and sucked one into his mouth, his tongue circling the peak as I gasped and grabbed a fistful of his hair.
“Gauge.”
He didn’t answer. He kissed his way down my stomach, his hands working my jeans open and dragging them off my hips along with my panties. He tossed them off the bed and I laid there bare for him, my chest heaving, and he just looked at me. His dark eyes moving over every inch of me without hurry.
“Look at you,” he murmured. “So wound up for me already.”
“Please,” I whispered. “Gauge, please.”
He lifted his gaze to mine. “Please what, angel?”
“Make me forget everything. Just for a little while.”
He settled between my thighs and spread me open with his palms and dropped his mouth to my pussy without another word.
I cried out and grabbed the headboard.
He licked a slow, flat stripe up my entire slit and then circled the tip of his tongue around my clit until my hips rolled up off the mattress chasing the contact.
He pressed them back down with one firm hand and did it again.
And again. Slow and relentless and completely in control while I came apart above him, pulling at his hair and saying his name until it stopped sounding like a word.
Every time I got close he backed off just enough. Let me feel the edge and then pulled me back from it. His tongue dipped down and pushed inside me and I yelped and dug my heel into his back and he chuckled against my skin, the vibration of it making me squirm.
“Gauge,” I choked out. “God, please. Please.”
He sealed his lips around my clit and sucked.
The orgasm ripped through me so hard my back came clean off the mattress.
His name tore out of my throat as my thighs locked around his head and my whole body shook.
He worked me through every last second of it, his tongue refusing to let up until I was twitching and oversensitive and practically sobbing.
He kissed the inside of my thigh and then rose over me, his forearms braced on either side of my head.
He was still fully dressed. I reached for his shirt and he let me pull it over his head, let me run my hands over the broad planes of his chest and down his stomach to his belt.
He watched me work it open with those steady hazel eyes.
“Still with me?” he asked.
“Barely,” I managed.
The corner of his mouth moved. “Good. Because I’m not done with you yet.”
He shoved his jeans down his hips and freed his cock and I felt my mouth go dry at the sight of him. He was thick and hard and already slick at the tip and he lined himself up at my entrance and sank in slow.
My eyes rolled back.
I heard him exhale through his teeth, a low controlled sound like he was holding himself together by a thread, and I wrapped my legs around him and felt what little control he had left disintegrate entirely.
He pulled back and drove into me and the sound I made would have embarrassed me if I had any brain cells left to spare.
“Gauge,” I breathed.
“Yeah,” he said, rough against my ear. “I know.”
He fucked me deep and steady, his cock filling me completely with every stroke, his pelvis grinding against my still-sensitive clit until my nails found his back and dug in.
He hooked his arm under my knee and pushed it up and drove deeper and I cried out into his shoulder and felt him groan against my skin.
My second orgasm built fast and mean. I felt it coiling low in my belly, felt my walls starting to flutter around him as he thrust into me over and over. He reached between our bodies and pressed his thumb directly against my clit and I nearly came off the bed.
“Let go, angel,” he murmured. “I’ve got you.”
I shattered. My pussy clamped down around his cock as the orgasm crashed through me and he drove into me twice more before I felt him follow, his hips grinding into mine as he spilled inside me with a low rough sound against the side of my neck that I felt all the way to my toes.
We laid there after, both of us breathing hard. His weight settled over me and then shifted just enough so I could breathe. His hand found mine in the dark.
For the first time all night, I didn’t need to think at all.