Chapter 15 ROSE #2
The way he looked at me—naked, hungry, reverent—banished every last ghost of shame.
He pressed his mouth to the curve of my breast, and then lower, lower, dragging the hem of the shift down my hips, revealing me inch by agonizing inch.
I was exposed and trembling, but there was nothing wolfish or crude in his kiss.
He honored me with every graze of his lips.
He undressed then, quickly, as if ashamed of how mortal he still was.
I let my eyes devour him—every scar, every sun-kissed limb, every line and plane of muscle—wanting to memorize the man as fiercely as I’d carved the bear into my dreams. His cock sprang proud and perfect, and something in me wanted to laugh and cry and taste it all at once.
The fire caught the gold of his skin and turned us both to creatures of myth.
He knelt between my legs, hands braced on either side of my hips.
I thought he would take me then—gods, I’d have let him, I was so ready—but instead he bent and pressed his mouth to the inside of my thigh.
I jerked in surprise, then melted as his tongue traced heat across skin.
He licked upward, circling, teasing, until I was writhing, shameless now, hands fisted in his hair.
“Derrick,” I gasped, “please—”
He grinned, wicked and delighted. “I want to taste you first.” And then his mouth was on me, his tongue drawing soft, endless spirals around the spot that ached most, his every breath a prayer to my body.
Each flick sent velvet-dark fireworks through my blood, each slow suck drew a new sob from my throat.
He worked me with patience, with devotion, like he had all winter to memorize every sound I made.
I’d never thought any of what I was feeling could have been possible.
Never before had I been so aware of every nerve, every inch of skin, every ache and thrum in my body.
I couldn’t catch my breath, couldn’t think straight with the way his tongue circled me, teased and worshipped me.
Where my shame and fear might have once knotted together, there was only a kind of burning, frantic delight—so much I almost couldn’t bear it.
He didn’t rush, didn’t let up for a second, only looked up through his lashes to watch my face as he played me, relentless, holy, a man made to know my every secret.
“You taste delicious, little Rose. The most exquisite nectar.”
The world blurred. I dug my heels into the blanket, my hips bucked, my hands twisted in his hair. The sounds that left my throat were wild, undignified, and I loved them, loved how he grinned when I gasped and cursed his name.
The pulse started deep, a trembling that built and built until I thought I might shatter with it.
My fingers left raw grooves in the blanket, my neck arched helplessly.
I barely recognized my own voice as it broke on a cry—Derrick’s name, a sobbed blasphemy—and the heat inside me ripped loose.
I shook apart, vision flooded with gold and dark, and for one suspended moment, I knew what it was to come utterly undone.
He slid up, kissing the tears from my lashes. “Beautiful,” he murmured. “Gods, Rose, you’re beautiful.”
I was still trembling, still riding the waves of my first orgasm, but I already knew I wanted more. Always more. “I want you,” I managed, desperate and unraveled. “I want you inside me.”
He hovered above me, and his hands trembled slightly where they braced on either side of my shoulders. Even now, after everything, he asked, “Are you sure?”
I felt the words settle between us, heavy as a vow. I touched his face, traced the line of his jaw, the old scar at his temple. It was impossible, how gentle he looked in the firelight. How fiercely I wanted him.
“More than ever,” I said, and I meant it with every bone, every nerve, in my body, so much so, I could have wept from the certainty.
He hesitated, just a flicker, his breath caught as though he feared he might shatter me, but then I reached for him, pulled him down, and kissed away every remnant of doubt.
My legs seemed to know on their own what they needed to do, as they slid around his waist, my ankles locked to hold him close, and the desperate, wild thing inside me found its answer in him.
I could feel the pounding of his heart, frantic and urgent, beneath the thin skin of his chest as we fit together, not beast and maiden but equals, shivering with the same hunger and hope.
I angled my hips so he could guide his cock inside me.
His groan was so ragged and reverent it nearly shattered me, as if he, too, could scarcely believe this was real.
He moved slowly, so slowly I nearly screamed with impatience.
There was nothing bashful or clumsy between us, only a careful, trembling anticipation that made the air vibrate.
I could see he wanted to rush, to take, to claim—but he held himself back for my sake.
He was goodness, he was golden restraint, and the knowledge of it just stoked the need further, until I ached for him even as he touched the smallest, most secret part of me.
He circled my entrance with his cock, painting me with his heat, and it was almost too much, not enough, both at once.
I could have begged, I nearly did, but then he pressed forward, careful, measured, and I gasped at the stretch.
There was pain—sharp, brief, gone almost before I could mourn it—and then there was only the fullness, the rightness, of him inside me.
But he saw the flicker of discomfort on my face and stopped at once, breathing my name like a prayer. “Too much?”
Stunned from the rush of sensations, I could only shake my head, “More,” I finally panted. “I want all of you. Don’t stop, Derrick.”
He obeyed then, moving slow, letting me get used to the shape and heat of him.
Every rock of his hips drove the ache deeper but also brought pleasure threading through it, until the pain was only another flavor of this wild, shattering love.
Our bodies found their rhythm—clumsy at first, then perfect, as if some old, old memory was guiding us.
He buried his face in my shoulder as he moved, his breath hot against my ear. “I never thought I’d have this,” he whispered. “Not with you. Not with anyone.”
“Don’t you dare let go,” I whispered back, and he laughed, broken and happy.
He moved faster, then, chasing his own hunger, and I clung to him as the pleasure built again, dizzy and burning and right. Somewhere in the dark behind my eyelids, I was flying, or falling, or both at once. He kissed my mouth, my cheek, the hollow of my throat, murmuring my name like a spell.
I hardly recognized the second build, the gathering of heat, the trembling everywhere—not a gasp or a spark this time, but an entire rising tide.
It crested in my belly, shivered down to my toes, back up my arms, through every inch of me that he’d touched and claimed for himself.
The pleasure came slow, like a storm cloud rolling in over summer heat, but when it hit, I clung to him, and my nails raked his shoulders as I cried out his name, “Derrick!”
I felt him tense at the sound of it. He shuddered, braced himself over me, and his rhythm faltered.
“You’re mine,” he groaned, the words were a low, wild growl against my throat.
The notion of belonging—of being claimed—should have frightened me, would have, once.
Instead, they set something loose inside me.
I ached for them, for him, for the strange, dizzying pleasure that kept building until it carried me right to the edge of breaking.
It floated me all the way through the brink of something. .. I sensed would be incredible.
He slammed into me, once, twice, a last savage thrust, and then stilled with a ragged cry of my name.
Heat poured into me, hot and shocking, making me gasp as though I could feel it everywhere at once.
I didn’t understand what he had done, only that his release seemed to pull mine with it, wrenching another wave of bliss from me until I was trembling, clutching at his shoulders, lost with him in the storm.
We hung there for what could have been years—sweat tangling our skin, the scent of our joining curling up with the smoke of the fire. My body trembled with aftershocks, and his trembled with a different kind of awe, a stillness so complete it felt sacred.
At last, he softened, dropping his forehead to my shoulder and just breathing me in. I stroked his hair, his back, every inch of him I could reach, desperate to keep us knotted together, even as his spent cock finally slipped free and left me hollow in a new, aching way.
He rolled to his side and cradled me against his chest. My head fit perfectly beneath his chin, and for a long, lazy moment, we didn’t speak. The fire cast shadows over us, slow and gentle. The world outside could have fallen to darkness or ice, and I would not have cared.
I thought I’d feel shy, or somehow changed. Instead, I felt an anchor in my chest, like the only thing keeping me on this earth was the press of his heartbeat under my ear.
When he spoke, it was a whisper. “Do you know what you’ve done to me?”
I shook my head, pressing a kiss to the hollow above his heart.
“You’ve saved me, Rose,” he said. “You’ve given me back something I thought lost forever.”
I wanted to laugh, or cry, or maybe both. “You’re a fool. I didn’t save you—I ruined you. You’re ruined for everyone else now.”
He snorted, and the sound shook through us both. “Is that a promise?”
I grinned, a little wicked. “It’s a threat. But I mean it in the kindest possible way.”
He dragged me on top of him then, flattening me against his chest, and I could feel the new hardness already stirring between us. “Let me ruin you, too,” he said, his voice half-challenge, half-prayer.
“Already done,” I whispered, and I kissed him again, tasting salt and smoke and something like forever.