Chapter 17 #2
We find a rhythm without speaking. Raphael deep and slow inside her, his forehead against her shoulder, her mouth on my cock, and every time he thrusts she takes me deeper without meaning to.
This is what I wanted to see. Not positions, not mechanics. This. The way she trusts us both at the same time. The way her hand grips Raphael's wrist while her mouth is on me, connecting all three of us.
I've spent years studying beautiful things. This is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"I'm close," she gasps, pulling back from me. "I need—"
"Tell us," Raphael says against her skin. "What do you need?"
"Harder. Please. I need—"
Raphael drives into her harder and she cries out, her hand fisting in the sheets.
I lean down and kiss her, swallowing the sounds, my hand finding her breast, rolling her nipple between my fingers.
She's shaking between us, strung tight between my mouth and Raphael's cock, and I feel the exact moment she stops trying to hold back.
"Let go," Raphael murmurs. "I've got you."
She comes with her whole body, her pussy clenching around Raphael, her nails in my hair, her thighs shaking against the sheets. She says both our names, tangled together like she can't tell where one ends and the other begins.
Raphael buries himself deep and goes still, his whole body shuddering against her. She holds him through it, her fingers in his hair. Then she turns her head and finds me watching.
"Your turn," she says.
Raphael pulls out slowly, pressing a kiss to her forehead, and lies back against the pillows. She pushes me down beside him and before I can process what's happening she's climbing over me. Straddling my hips. Looking down at me with an expression that's half wrecked and half determined.
"I want to do this," she says. "Like this. Where I can see you."
She sinks down onto my cock and we both groan.
She's impossibly wet from Raphael, swollen and sensitive, and the heat of her grips me so tight I have to press my head back against the pillow and breathe.
She rolls her hips once, slowly, feeling the angle, and the friction makes my hands tighten on her hips.
She does it again, deliberately, watching my face.
She's soaked. Every time she lifts and drops I can hear it, feel it, the slick heat of her taking me to the base and clenching on the way back up. Her breasts move with each roll, her head tipping back, her lips parted around small broken sounds she's not trying to contain anymore.
She reaches down between us, her fingers finding her own clit, touching herself while I'm inside her, and the sight of it is so filthy I thrust up hard and she cries out and keeps going.
Raphael lies beside us, propped on one elbow, watching her face. His hand reaches up and tucks her hair behind her ear so he can see her better. It's such a small gesture, so tender in the middle of all this, and she turns her head and presses a kiss to his palm without breaking rhythm.
The observer being observed. I've spent weeks watching her. Now she's above me, taking me apart, and I have no idea what expression I'm wearing. That alone is enough to undo me.
She looks down at me. Something crosses her face—unguarded, young, completely undone.
She rides me harder, bracing her hands on my chest, and I bring my palm down on her ass once, sharp. She clenches around my cock so hard her rhythm breaks.
"Again," she breathes.
I do it again.
She cries out and moves faster, and I thrust up to meet her, and Raphael's hand slides down her spine steadying her, and the three of us move together, her hips finding the exact rhythm that makes her moan on every downstroke.
"I can't last," I manage. "Not like this."
"Then don't." She leans down, her mouth against my ear. "I want to feel you come inside me."
I grip her hips and drive into her from below, hard, fast, and she cries out, clenching around my cock, and I don't know if she comes again or if it's still the aftershocks rolling through her, but I feel her everywhere, every nerve, and I bury myself deep and let go.
She collapses against my chest. We stay like that, the three of us breathing hard, her weight across my chest, Raphael's hand on her back, the wrecked sheets and the gray light coming under the curtains.
Then Madeline laughs. Soft, disbelieving.
"What?" Raphael asks, his voice hoarse.
"I just—I thought I was going to have trouble sleeping tonight."
I snort. "Problem solved."
She's lying between us, her head on Raphael's chest, her fingers tracing patterns on my forearm. The chateau creaks and sighs around us.
"étienne. He's going to know, isn't he? " she says quietly.
The name fills the room like a fourth body.
"That's his choice to make," I say. "Whether to walk through the door or stay on the other side of it."
"And if he can't? If this is the thing that breaks everything?"
I think about étienne. The resort. Twenty years of something neither of us could name, and both of us managed to destroy anyway. And now we're lying here, and the one person who might have held us all together is the one who isn't here.
"Then it breaks," I say. "And we figure out what's left."
It's not comforting. I don't offer comfort. That's Raphael's department.
Raphael's hand tightens in her hair. "We should get back to our rooms before the children wake up."
"Probably," I agree.
"Five more minutes," Madeline mumbles. "Then you can be responsible adults."
I watch the dawn creep across the ceiling, painting the room in gray and rose. Her breathing has evened out. Raphael catches my eye over her head.
He holds the look for a long moment. Then he turns back to her, presses his mouth to her temple, and closes his eyes.
I stay awake. Watching. It's what I do.
The sun rises on whatever comes next.