Chapter 7 #2
His fingers slip beneath the waistband of my underwear, finding me slick, swollen, and aching. The sound that tears from him is the most devastating thing I’ve ever heard. Ruined. Like he’s been handed something holy and doesn’t know what he did to deserve it.
“Christ, Jenna.” His words vibrate against my throat. “You’re so wet. You’re so—”
He doesn't finish. His fingers slide through the slickness, exploring me, and when he circles the spot that makes my vision go white, my entire body jerks in his arms.
“There. Right—” I can’t finish either. My nails dig into his shoulders hard enough to leave marks, and I don’t care. “Ethan. Please.”
His fingertips move in slow circles, creating friction that has me keening against his shoulder. His other arm holds me pinned to the wall, and he watches my face with total, consuming focus.
“Look at me.” His voice is low and commanding, a tone I’ve never heard from him before.
I force my eyes open and find his—dark, intent, observing every flutter of my expression.
“I want to see you. I’ve imagined this, but I want to see the real thing.”
Tension coils at the base of my spine, in my thighs, in the place where his fingers are moving, reading me, adjusting with every gasp and shift of my hips. I’m climbing toward something that feels like it might shatter me, and he’s watching, and I’ve never felt more exposed or more seen in my life.
“That's it.” His voice is gravel against my ear, his breath hot on my skin. “Let go, Jen. I’ve got you. I’ve got you.”
I break.
My orgasm rolls through me in waves. My back arches off the door, and my thighs clamp around his hips, his name tearing from my throat in a sound I didn’t know I could make.
His fingers keep moving, wringing every last pulse from my body.
He holds me through it, his arm a steel band around my waist, his eyes wide open and locked on my face.
“Ethan—” I’m shaking. I can’t stop shaking. “Ethan—”
“I know.” He presses his forehead to mine, breathing hard. “I know. I’ve got you.”
The aftershocks are still rolling through me as I reach for his belt.
“You don’t have to—”
I silence him with my mouth and my hand.
The brass buckle gives, warm from his body, and I shove his jeans down just enough. My fingers wrap around him, and a groan tears from somewhere deep in his chest.
He’s thick. Hot. Already slick at the tip. When my thumb drags through the moisture there, he shudders.
His hips buck helplessly into my grip. “Jen, I’m gonna—”
“Good.” I tighten my grip, stroking him again, watching his face contort with pleasure that borders on pain. “I want to see you lose it. I want to see what you look like when you stop holding back.”
Something feral flashes in his eyes. His hand finds my hip, gripping hard enough to bruise, and he thrusts into my fist once, twice, in a rhythm that’s driven by pure need.
His breath comes in harsh pants against my throat, and the desperate sounds he makes hit me in the sternum, making my spent body clench with renewed desire.
“Six months.” His voice breaks on the words. “Six months of your voice in my ear and your laugh in my chest, and I—fuck, Jen, I wanted you so badly I couldn’t breathe—”
“I’m here.” I stroke him faster, feeling him swell in my grip. “I’m here, Ethan.”
He buries his face in my neck. His body locks up, every muscle going rigid, and then he’s coming undone with my name on his lips as he spills hot over my fingers, shaking apart in my arms with a sound that’s half groan and half sob.
I hold him through it. His chest heaves against mine, his breath warm on my throat. His heart pounds wildly against mine, a rhythm that matches my own.
Quiet follows. His breath against my neck. Mine against his shoulder. I’m still wrapped around him, my legs aching from holding this position, but I don’t care. I don’t want to move and break the spell.
But Ethan lifts me, carrying me toward the bed and placing me gently on the mattress. He crosses to the washbasin, wets a cloth, and returns to clean my hands of his seed—so gentle, so tender. The softness of his touch after the intimacy we shared brings a lump to my throat.
Ethan’s hand shifts, sliding up my arm and pushing my sleeve higher, not with urgency, but with the absent movement of a man memorizing every part of me. His thumb traces the ridge of inflamed skin on my wrist.
I brace myself, pulling my shoulders in. Every foster parent, every person who’s seen my body, has reacted with pity or discomfort.
The golden haze drains away, and shame floods in, hot and familiar, so old I can feel it in my teeth. I wait for the quick look away that makes me want to crawl out of my own skin.
But Ethan doesn’t flinch. He lifts my wrist and presses his mouth to the worst of it.
A sound escapes me, not a moan, but something broken. His lips are warm against the angry red skin, his stubble dragging across the welts. It should hurt—any other touch there hurts—but it doesn’t. It doesn’t.
“Ethan—” His name catches in my throat.
He doesn’t answer. He turns my arm gently, so gently, and finds the patch on my inner forearm. The worst one. The one I cover first.
He presses his mouth there too. His thumb moves back and forth across the patch as if he’s learning the texture and committing it to memory.
“I see you.” Three words. His voice is stripped to the core, the bare bones of a man who has spent his life being seen for what he can provide, never for who he truly is. “All of you. All of you, Jenna.”
My hand is in his hair, holding him against my wrist. “Ethan.”
He lifts his head. His eyes are bright and wet. This man, who holds everything together and hasn’t let himself want anything for years, has tears in his eyes.
I pull him back to me. The kiss tastes like salt because I’m crying, and I don’t know when I started. His arms wrap around me, solid and certain.
His heartbeat echoes against my chest, where I’ve been storing him this whole time.
My phone buzzes in my back pocket, startling us both.
I pull it out with clumsy fingers, my other hand still fisted in his shirt. Unknown number. No name, no location, just a string of digits on a bright screen.
It buzzes again. Same number.
Ethan goes still against me. Not the stillness of a man waiting, but of a man assessing. His arms don’t loosen, but I feel the shift—the caretaker recalculating.
The phone goes dark. I stare at it in my palm, my back still pressed against the door, his body still warm against mine. The screen is a cold rectangle between us, an interruption shaped like a warning, glowing in my palm like a searchlight.
It buzzes a third time.
The outside world does not care that I'm pinned against a bedroom door with kiss-swollen lips and a man’s heartbeat under my hand. It does not care that someone chose all of me. It does not care that for a few moments I forgot to be afraid.
Ethan’s hand covers mine, steadying the phone and steadying me. His jaw is tight, but his voice is calm. “Don’t answer.”
I wasn’t going to, but hearing him say it makes it real. Someone has my number. Someone is calling at a time that isn’t casual, from a number that isn’t friendly.
LandCorp knows I’m gone.
The outside world is looking. For me. And for what I took.