Chapter 17 #2
In a bold move, she does the same thing, reaching down to feel half of him still exposed, her finger teasing the point where they meet and he disappears inside her.
Then he’s kissing her again, slipping his tongue into her mouth while his touch increases the pressure where she’s swollen.
A thick forefinger flutters deep against her, chasing the spot that makes her writhe under him until that’s all she’s doing, writhing and rocking her hips.
For the first time, she needs him to move.
Doesn’t care if it burns when all her nerves are already on fire, begging for a release that’s building in her lower belly.
He does not move. Not a fucking inch, and she squirms, sliding along the length of him she’s able to take, planting her feet for leverage to chase what she needs.
His fingers still stroke her carefully, though, caressing her toward oblivion, and that’s when she realizes he’s forcing himself to be still so she can find her orgasm in a way that feels safe.
He could so easily shove himself forward and pound into her, but he is gentle like her heart always knew he would be.
Then he dips his head and sucks a hardened nipple between his lips, and her back arches off the mattress, her inner walls clamping down on him, both sucking him in further while trying to push him out with the sheer force of her spasms.
When the thread holding her together finally snaps, she goes limp against the mattress, her body shivering with aftershocks, overstimulation twitching through her nerves as he begins to move again.
Her legs fall open wide, her eyes hooded as she mouths lazy kisses to the side of his neck, feeling him enter her fully for the first time.
It’s so much easier now, when her body is sated and relaxed after an orgasm, to let him in.
He meets no resistance as she opens for him like the petals loosening on a tightly shut rose.
It takes only one deep thrust to have his public bone meet hers, and the tip of his cock rubbing against her front wall.
They melt together as if she’d been waiting for him this whole time, and maybe she has been.
Maybe it was always meant to be him. She only had to wait until fate dropped him in her path.
His teeth scrape along her shoulder in the same spot he almost bit into the other day, when he was suffering a migraine.
Quick hips snap into hers once, twice, three times, and then she can feel the warm rush of him deep inside, filling her so completely that her whole body shudders and her hips tilt again on reflex, trying to accept everything he has to give.
The weight of him on her as he catches his breath is delicious. The smile on his lips that she can feel when he pushes them to hers has her heart twisting. Letting him go is the last thing she wants to do, and when he moves to lean back and sit up, a whine leaves her throat as he slips free.
He soothes a hand down her hip, looking every bit like the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen framed between her knees. His cock bobs in the cold air, still half hard, and her eyes go wide at realizing all of that was buried deep between her thighs a moment ago.
His attention is fixed in a similar place, a crease forming between his brows when a drop of his release leaks out of her. Two fingers slowly push it back in, and she shifts her legs, her body already begging for more.
“Soon. Gimme ten minutes and a protein bar, and we’re going again.” He grins.
She lets out a half-laugh. “You worked up an appetite already?”
“I’m hungry for a lotta things right now, sweetheart.” His thumb finds her center again, teasing in a flickering touch, as he licks his lips, the implication of his words clear.
Her eyes darken, and she forces herself still, even as she longs to chase his hand. “Don’t start something you won’t finish.”
“I never do.” And then her stomach growls, breaking the heat between them, and he snorts, grabbing her hands and hauling her upright. “Busted. You’re hungry too, come on. Lemme cook you some morning-after food. And when I say morning after, I mean the night of.”
“And when you say cook, you mean rip open the wrapper for me?”
“Exactly.”
“How could I possibly resist?”
* * *
They’ve gone in search of snacks, ending up at one of the desks, her legs swinging off the edge while he rotates a few inches side to side in a rolling chair.
“Can I ask you something personal?” she begins.
Theo shakes his head, his tone deadpan. “Of course not. How dare you?”
Nora levels him with a persistent stare, a hint of a smile forming. “I’m being serious. And you don’t have to answer if it makes you uncomfortable.”
“Oh, now I’m worried. Okay, go ahead.”
“What made you decide to leave the family business? What was your last straw?”
She already knows that his relationship with his father and brother have been strained at best, but walking away from everything to farm fruits and make goat cheese is a drastic shift.
Not that she has any reservations about his current lifestyle.
She is only curious what could urge someone to finally make that leap.
He finishes the last of his protein bar, considering her question, but there’s a hesitation there that she feels guilty for prompting, hoping she hasn’t ruined the best night of her life by opening her mouth with a question that’s brought up bad memories.
“I’ve never felt like I belonged. Even as a kid, we all used to joke that I was adopted or switched at birth.
There is a ruthlessness required to live that life, and I didn’t inherit that gene.
Tried to force it a few times because I had little choice, but it was always so heavy, so…
complicated in ways that make choosing the right thing, the kind thing, nearly impossible.
” He leans back against the chair, legs crossed at the ankles, and sunlight glinting off his bare chest, lighting a trail down to where the waistband of his boxers begins.
“My father would punish us…well, me, for unacceptable behavior by having me take responsibility for some random business task that always involved someone getting fired, or scolded, or whole departments being restructured.”
She wraps his shirt around her more fully as the heat in the room reaches its limit and briefly cuts off, allowing in the cold.
“You must grow a thicker spine, son,” he would say.
“And then shove me out to inform people that their Christmas bonus was being held back due to poor work ethics. It was one of those things I’d grown used to, as awful as it was, until a few weeks before he passed, when he was fucking senile and delusional, and yet the board wouldn’t remove him.
There’s a division that works on various treatments for children’s illnesses.
Not for their benefit, of course, that’s only a byproduct, but simply to participate in the race for whatever cures or medications could be profited off them. ”
She doesn’t like where this is going, but she keeps quiet, watching his face darken and his eyes take on a faraway look as he continues.
“One day, he tells me he’s shutting down half of that division, and I had to go there in person and let everyone know they were fired. Hundred and twelve people, all trying to make the world a better place, and I stood there like an asshole and let them all go.”
“Theo…it wasn’t your—“
“That wasn’t even the straw, though. Not by itself.
Maybe it should have been, but I’ve never known anything else.
It is who we are…who I was. And then he kicked the bucket soon after, and I read the will.
It was always his plan for me and Oliver to fight each other one last time for control of the company. ”
Her eyes widen. “In the wilderness again?”
He nods. “Yep. Set the whole thing up in writing, legal and binding. And I just remember wondering what the hell I would be fighting for? Why did I want a company rooted in so much pain and suffering? I wouldn’t even have a chance at turning anything around or making any real changes if I won.
The board approved of my father’s cruelty.
They didn’t protest the firing of all those people in the children’s division when they could have.
They would hold the tradition. It is the nature of the beast. I couldn’t do it anymore.
I couldn’t watch these things happen, or participate in them, so I forfeited the competition and donated the vast majority of whatever inheritance was left when it came through and bought a fucking goat farm.
I was never strong enough to bear the burden of the life I was born into. ”
“That isn’t true,” she leans forward, resting her hand on his knee. “You were strong enough to walk away and follow a different path. Very few people could have done that.”
“Sometimes I wonder if I should have stayed and fought. Kept trying to make things better. In some ways, it was selfish of me to leave.”
“You are one person, Theo. Swimming against the current in an ocean full of sharks. It wasn’t on you to fix a system your father built. Your happiness is important, too.”
“Happy might be overstating the effect that leaving actually had. Relief was more like it.” His reply is slightly flippant until he meets her eyes, and honey drips off his next words. “I don’t think I’ve felt happy until right now. Here with you.”
She looks away, a blush heating her cheeks as quickly as her smile lifts them. “Too bad it took a whole apocalypse for us to find each other.”
He gets up from his chair, standing between her legs to run gentle hands up her bare thighs.
“Maybe you would have stopped to buy peaches from me one day. You’d show up in a pretty yellow dress with little flowers on it, and I’d poorly flirt with you while bagging your produce at the farmers market. ”
She laughs, “Oh, you’ve thought about this.”
“Nah, not at all. Only a little bit…”
She scoots further to the edge of the desk, hooking her legs around his thighs and running a hand up his chest. “I’d come back every weekend until I had more fruit and goat cheese than one person could possibly consume, waiting for you to make a move.”
“You’d have a pantry full then, because I would be terrified to ask you out.”
She tilts her head, genuine curiosity flitting across her face as she looks up at him. “Why?”
“Because you’re the most perfect thing I’ve ever seen. You gave me butterflies the very first time I saw you.”
“I guess it’s a good thing fate shoved us together.
Otherwise, I’d probably have botulism by now from all the expired goods I’d be hoarding while waiting for you,” she jokes, if only to cover the emotion catching in her throat.
Her next words puff along his collarbone, holding only sincerity. “But I would have waited.”