Chapter 16
ELLA
We don’t make it through the suite door gracefully.
Alec’s mouth is on mine and my fingers are twisted in the front of his henley as we scrum our way into the room.
He reaches behind me and the door swings shut with a bang so loud it would be embarrassing if I had any capacity left for embarrassment, which I don’t.
I don’t care about anything except the pressure of his palm at the base of my spine and the rough sound he makes against my mouth when I pull him closer by his belt loop.
We collide with a side table. The lamp on it rocks violently and Alec’s hand shoots out, catches the base, steadies it, then returns to my hip in one fluid motion without his mouth ever leaving mine.
I have to admire his skill. Preventing property damage while kissing me senseless at the same time.
Meanwhile, I’m having trouble just trying to think straight.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, the responsible version of Ella, the one who balances four breakfast specials on one arm and never forgets to double-check the tip line, wants to have a conversation about the fact that I am about to have sex with a man I met on an airplane less than a week ago.
Honestly, she makes a fair point. I tell her to take the night off.
I pull at Alec’s henley, trying to get it over his head, except his arms are still around me so the fabric bunches at his shoulders and gets stuck.
He breaks the kiss just long enough to yank it the rest of the way off, and in the half-second his face disappears inside the shirt I register the absurdity of this and start laughing.
He surfaces, hair wrecked, and the look he gives me is half irritation, half desperate hunger.
“You think this is funny?” His voice is low. Rough.
“A little.” I laugh into his mouth as he kisses me again.
His fingers find the strap of my sundress and tug, but the fabric catches on my earring and we both freeze while I detach myself from my own clothing like a woman disarming a very small, very annoying trap.
He watches me fumble with it, the corner of his mouth twitching.
The fact that we’re both wrecked and clumsy and half-laughing doesn’t cool anything down.
If anything, it only makes the heat between us sharper.
More real. Two actual humans who want each other badly enough to be ridiculous about it.
My dress finally comes free. He pushes it off my shoulders and it slides down my body to the floor, and the way his gaze follows it, then travels back up, slow and thorough, makes my skin tingle everywhere his eyes land. The look on his face could set the curtains on fire.
His breath is rapid and hot as his hands land on my waist. He starts kissing my neck and I moan, dropping my head back and trying to keep my knees from buckling beneath me.
Damn, he’s a good kisser. Probably a good everything, if this prelude is any indication.
His mouth drags back up to mine and his tongue sweeps past my parted lips.
I spear my fingers into his hair and as I struggle to keep my senses, a troubling thought grips me. I break our kiss, panting, my heart racing. “Alec, wait. Should we, I mean, is this okay?”
He frowns. “Is what okay?”
“This.” I gesture vaguely at our partially undressed bodies. “I mean with your… delicate condition?”
For one beat I think I’ve killed the moment, but I want to be sure. No matter how much I want him naked and inside me, I’d never forgive myself if I killed him.
His eyes darken. “Does this feel delicate to you?”
His hips press forward as his hands come down on my ass and pull me against him. He’s still wearing his pants, but I can feel the full rigid length of him grinding against my stomach, and every thought I was having about responsible cardiovascular health management evaporates.
Before I can say anything more, his hands are under my thighs.
He lifts me. Just picks me up like I’m not a full-grown woman with a healthy appetite and a long-expired gym membership.
My legs wrap around his waist as he carries me through the suite to the bedroom.
His hands grip the backs of my thighs and the muscles in his shoulders flex under my palms with each step.
It takes all I have not to rock my hips against him because if I start that while he’s still walking we are not going to make it to the bed.
The mattress hits the backs of my legs. He lays me down and his weight follows, warm and solid, and the length of his body settling over mine sinks into me like a held breath finally releasing.
The urgency downshifts and I feel it in his mouth first. The slow, open press of his lips against my neck, warm and deliberate, his breath hot on my skin.
Then lower. The drag of his tongue along my collarbone that makes my hips roll up against him without permission.
The brush of his thumb tracing down the center of my ribs.
Each touch is so unhurried that my pulse is beating in every place his mouth has been, and the focused attention of it catches me off guard in a way the urgency didn’t.
He unclasps my bra and slides it off, and the way he looks at me, like what he’s uncovering is worth the time, sends a flush of heat up through my chest and into my throat.
Then his mouth is on my breast and the warmth of it, the slow pull and the wet press of his tongue circling my nipple, sends electricity cascading down through my stomach, pooling low and hot between my hips.
My spine arches off the bed. His thumb finds my other nipple and a cry spills out of me that’s half gasp and half something needier, and the pressure tightens like that sound is exactly what he was working toward.
Oh, I am in so much trouble with this man.
He pulls my underwear down my legs and I lift my hips to help because the last functional corner of my brain has resigned its post and handed operations over to the part of me that has been wanting this since day two and is done negotiating.
Then his mouth is between my thighs, and the world narrows to a single bright point of contact.
I was braced for the pattern I know. With Jake, this was a formality.
A box to check before the main event, like the bread basket before the entree.
I learned to make encouraging sounds at the right intervals.
Learned to guide him with my hand in his hair.
Learned to speed things along and then perform the finale so convincingly that neither of us had to acknowledge I hadn’t actually arrived.
I got so efficient at the whole production that it barely required my participation, which is a skill that belongs on the world’s saddest resume.
But Alec is not checking a box.
His tongue moves against me with a slow, deliberate pressure that makes my hips jolt.
The sound I make is involuntary and loud and not part of any performance.
His hands grip my thighs, holding me open, holding me still, and there is nothing tentative about this.
I reach to touch his hair, half to steady myself and half because I need to be holding onto something, and his hand comes up and pins my wrist to the mattress. Gentle. Firm. Not yet.
The ghost of a habit I didn’t know I was still carrying dissolves somewhere in the back of my brain. I’d been ready to perform. There is nothing to perform with Alec. He is already there, already reading every signal my body gives him, and I have nothing to do but feel this.
And God, do I feel it.
His tongue, teasing and tormenting my sensitive flesh.
The pressure of his hand on my hip, anchoring me when I start to move.
The scratch of his rough jaw against the inside of my thigh.
Sensation swamps me, sending warm electric currents radiating outward in slow pulses that keep getting faster and stronger with every stroke of his tongue.
Alec’s grip tightens on my thighs and he presses closer, harder. There is nothing to fake here with him. He is already ahead of me, taking me where I need to be. He’s been leading me here since the moment his mouth touched my skin.
My climax builds fast, spiraling toward a steep crest. When it breaks, a sound tears out of me that I have never heard myself make before.
I’m still holding on to Alec’s hair as my hips buck against his face.
Pleasure rolls through me in waves that he rides with his mouth and his hands, holding me there while the tremors rock me.
When I finally come down, he’s still there, raining soft kisses to my inner thighs and my pussy, his strong hands stroking my hips.
I stare at the ceiling, breathing hard and feeling like I just had the first real orgasm of my life.
My pulse is hammering in my ears and my hands are trembling as I let go of his hair and sag back against the bed.
My whole body feels like it was taken apart and put back together in a slightly different order.
“Holy shit,” I whisper, panting the words.
I was braced for fine. What Alec just did to me was not fine. It was a revelation.
When I peer at him down the length of my naked body I find him looking back at me, an expression of pure male arrogance on his face. He gives me that rare grin of his, which is devastating enough without seeing his mouth glistening wet from devouring me.
“Holy shit is good, right?”
I moan. “So good.”
He presses a slow kiss to the inside of my thigh.
My hip. The dip of my waist. Then he works his way back up my body like he’s got all the time in the world.
When his face is level with mine the look in his eyes, smoldering and smug and carrying just enough quiet satisfaction, makes me want to simultaneously hug him and fuck him senseless.
I shake my head, laughing to myself. “All the nights you spent on that couch. What a waste.”
He grunts, smirking down at me. “I was trying to be a gentleman.”