Chapter Twenty-Five #2
Wind shivers across my face. Adrian’s hair caresses his forehead, and all I can think about is him.
How strong and extraordinary he is. The warm press of his fingers to my chin and the way he tips my face toward his.
The heat that’s spinning out from my chest. The coarse sand that’s clinging to our muscles.
When I drop my eyes, all I can see is that Adrian is hard.
Slowly, almost experimentally, I slide my fingers up the hem of his Lycra.
He releases himself toward me, and our mouths fuse together.
Adrian’s tongue moves against mine and his hands slide against my damp unisuit.
I can feel every one of his movements through the glossy material: across my back, along my hips.
And I can feel him, too, the cords of his biceps, the ridges of his abs, only partially covered.
But I know too well what’s under that thin material—and even still it’s too much.
I yank at his shoulder straps and he shrugs out of his kit, peeling it off the length of his torso. He kisses my neck as his hand curves around my spine and his fingers pull down each of the straps on my shoulders in two smooth motions. My skin shivers as it’s exposed to cool air.
I’m not someone who usually engages in public displays of affection, let alone whatever this is about to become.
I probably should care that we’re on a beach, but given the rocks, we’re not visible except from the water, and I don’t see any other boats nearby.
Besides, I’m too feverish, too drunk on my own strength and the intoxicating power of Adrian’s touch.
Too safe in the warmth of his arms to feel anything but comfort.
So, when Adrian works the fabric off my chest, I reach into the spandex still covering his thighs, and pull him free of the fabric.
He groans out my name as I pump my hand.
His breaths are sharp by my throat and I’m heady with this feeling, too—the electrifying power of making him unravel.
Adrian’s hands climb into my hair as his forehead drops to my collarbone.
His lips tremble, and, god, he’s even more beautiful like this.
Like seeing him this vulnerable and malleable just reminds me how fucking strong he is.
“You’re brilliant,” I say as his head tilts back.
He murmurs my name as I move my hand faster, overcome by the ways this man has showed me how to trust my own power. On an erg, when he gently touches my shoulder to correct my catch. On a dock, when he squats next to my boat and tips my chin toward his. On the water, when he screams out my name.
And right now, his breath coming in groans as his legs twitch. His tight fist pressing to his forehead when he tells me he’s close. I move faster still, and Adrian bucks into my hand as he mumbles some swear words intermixed with my name.
And he comes undone.
After, Adrian lies back in the sand, bringing me with him. With one hand, he cups his head and with the other, he traces the calluses along my palm.
“You still haven’t said it,” he reminds me.
I tip my chin toward his face. “And I don’t think I’m going to.”
Adrian’s fingers, which are still working circles over my palm, inch up my forearm to the crook of my elbow. He tugs gently and I tip until we’re facing each other. His hand coaxes lower to the dip and rise of my waist, made more prominent by this angle.
“There’s a chance,” he says as his fingers move along the bunched material of my half-removed unisuit, “that it makes you even more attractive.”
“What does?”
He tugs me closer and I follow the glide path easily, zippering into the pocket of his chest. His breath is warm and sweet on my cheek and his scent is so intoxicatingly familiar that I ache with it.
“That you don’t know how special you are.”
I tip my head so I can look at him from slightly hooded eyes. “Because of some cliché about womanhood and innocence?”
A laugh snaps out of him. “No. Because it means I get to be the one to convince you.”
My next breath hitches as Adrian flips me onto my back.
For a long moment, he hovers above me: eyes boring twin holes into mine, one hand pressed to the sand by my braid, the other cupping my cheek.
His thumb traces across the hard plane of my cheekbone and I can feel the fluttering in my chest as my heart takes off with breathless anticipation.
“You do like a challenge,” I say.
Adrian laughs again and then he’s kissing me and I’m all out of quips because he’s already hard again. Two weeks ago, this would have taken me by surprise. Now? I know better.
I tug at Adrian’s shoulders as he traces my jawline with his tongue. His hands work down the rest of the smooth material of my unisuit. For some reason, it reminds me of the way my shirt hitched in the wake of his exploring touch when we danced—the first time our bodies pressed together.
“You know what else I like?” he asks into my hair.
Before I can make a joke about a well-organized weight room, Adrian eases his hand into my spandex, and because I never wear underwear on the water, his fingers are already on me.
My next breath comes out in a low gasp, unbidden.
Making noises like this was never something I used to do, at least not unintentionally.
But now, under Adrian’s light touches and soft circling fingers, it feels like I’m sighing and gasping on a daily basis.
He runs his teeth over his lower lip, watching my face as I flutter my eyes closed again. “I like the way your cheeks go pink when you’re doing squats. Or when I’m doing this.”
His fingers circle again and my hips buck into his hand. Warmth courses down my skin as my thoughts turn feverish and fierce.
“Adrian,” I say, and the word is almost as inadvertent as a groan. Like he’s drawing it out of me and I don’t even know what it is.
Somehow, Adrian does, though, because his fingers release me for just long enough that he can push my unisuit down my thighs until it catches on my knees. When I try to kick the material loose, Adrian stills me, leaving my legs pressed nearly closed together.
He takes me in. His eyes trace a long, slow line from my face down my chest to the place where he’s positioned just above my thighs.
I can feel my heart thrumming with anticipation, and there’s heat radiating over every part of my skin.
I shift, bound legs fighting to close the distance between us, but Adrian holds himself above me without ceding any more inches.
“I like you like this, too,” he says. “You’re most beautiful when you want something.”
“Adrian,” I protest.
If he weren’t so maddening I’d be able to appreciate how beautiful he is right now—lips full, cheekbones shadowed, eyes flaring bright in the sun. Instead, though, all I can think about is how good it feels to have him inside me. And the fact that he’s currently not.
Adrian lowers his mouth to mine and draws a kiss across my lips.
It’s wonderful and pleasurable and also pure torture because it’s not nearly satisfying enough.
I arch into him, begging without words. Perhaps he listens to my silent pleas or maybe he just wants this as much as I do because, with one hand pressed to the ground, he repositions himself. Then, slowly, he pushes inside me.
My hips arch into him as my fingernails find his shoulder blades.
He lowers himself to his elbows, and with the motion, he draws himself the rest of the way.
And, oh god, everything feels so full and tight it’s like I’m the personification of a twanging string.
He moves up and down, dragging through me in slow, agonizing strokes.
I strain upward toward him. His mouth drops to mine, then travels to my jaw, my throat. He kisses the mounds of my shoulders, runs his nose down the crest of one of my biceps, traces his fingers over the ridges of my ribs.
“So fucking beautiful,” he whispers into my neck as he pushes into me again.
When he slides back, eyes locked on mine, I think maybe I can see it, too.
Or at the very least, I can see the yearning in his expression, because I know it’s exactly how I look at him.
He runs his hand down my thigh muscle and pushes the unisuit the rest of the way off my legs, freeing them.
I lift up a knee, curling around his back and Adrian thrusts into me again, deeper this time. I let out an unrestrained moan.
He groans in answer.
“And so strong,” he says. “You…”
He trails off, barely finishing the word because our breaths are coming in heavier now, like we’re both sprinting to an unseen finish line.
I kiss him back, fiercely, and our tongues move together as he glides in and out of me.
Unrestrained, I move with him, letting the rhythm of our strokes sail through our bodies like we’re back in that bar in Italy dancing to the deep thrum of bass.
Like we’re on twin ergs racing each other to a sweat-soaked finish.
It’s all blurring together—the heat and sweat and flecks of sand and Adrian’s hands on me, Adrian’s hands everywhere as he sinks deeper, moving like a rolling wave.
It’s the same breathless, paradoxical moment of disassociation and focus I just had rolling across the waves in the bay.
This time, though, there’s nothing but Adrian’s tongue tracing across my neck, the drip of sweat that’s descending his collarbone and tucking between his pecs, and, most of all, the fullness of the pleasure coursing through me.
I’m lost in this moment and I think Adrian is lost with me, because he keeps opening his eyes, finding mine, before closing them again. His mouth strains against words he can’t form, either because his tongue won’t move the way he wants it to or because his brain has stopped working, also.
“You,” he manages finally as he gathers one of my hands into his and presses it to his chest, his strokes deepening until I’m pulling taut and there are unrestrained words bubbling out of me now, too. They’re rising up alongside the friction of pleasure rising up against my skin.
It’s another thought—this one carrying the heavy fullness of truth.
Something I know not just with logic, but intuition.
Not just with words, but feeling. Something that maybe I can answer aloud, because right now, safe in Adrian’s arms, I feel emboldened enough to admit it. To him. To myself. His hips stutter.
The change in tempo is just jarring enough to rip me apart, rip the word out of me that’s been pressed against my lips and hovering on my tongue.
“Extraordinary.”