Chapter Seven Thoran
Her house is quiet in a way I've never heard a house be quiet when we explode through the front door. The floors are old and creaky. A clock somewhere is doing its work. Drew’s at his dad’s house until tomorrow.
My pulse goes hard and fast and it's trying like hell to outrun my common sense. It’s working.
Vivien looks up at me. Her eyes catch what's left of the streetlight coming through the window, and there's heat in them. More than that there’s a promise under the heat, and that is something that makes my chest hurt.
The air between us gets thick and charged. I lift her by her thighs and she wraps her legs around my waist. My manhood springs to life rock hard and desperate for more friction as my mouth plants kisses down her neck and into the swell of her breasts.
We don't make it out of the doorway with much on. Her hands are quicker than mine and a lot less careful. My shirt goes somewhere by the couch. I get the buttons on hers open two at a time and she laughs against my mouth. We leave a trail down the narrow hallway to her room.
Her bedroom's cooler. The window's cracked and there's night air coming in off the lagoon and moving across her bare shoulders. She shivers. I put my hands on her arms and rub the warmth back into them and she leans her forehead against my chest and just breathes there for a second.
That sentence pounds in my mind all over again. Oh. There you are. It comes with the same intensity as the firehouse. It makes the same clean turn in my chest, like a bolt dropping into a hole it was machined for.
There's a lamp on the dresser with a scarf over it, throwing everything soft and amber.
Her quilt smells like line-dry and something faintly sweet.
My shadow goes long across her wall when I move, and I take my time about it, because I know exactly what this is and I'm not going to rush a single second of it.
When I kiss her again it's different than the alley. It’s deeper, a promise. Her mouth opens under mine and her hands come up around the back of my neck. She makes a sound into my mouth that undoes about thirty years of self-discipline and threatens to undo me.
I bury my fingers in her long hair. She tips her head back and lets me. Her throat is bare and breath shaking. I put my mouth on the hollow at the base of her neck and feel her pulse hammering right there under my lips.
"Thoran I want to do this, it’s been a long time and I’m—"
"I've got you. Trust me."
I lay her back on the quilt. Get my knee up on the bed and follow her down, and when my weight settles over her, her hands go flat on my chest like she needs to feel that my heart's doing the same thing hers is.
It is. It's about to come through my ribs.
I take her in for a second, up on one arm and my heart thuds in my chest. Her hair is spread out. The lamp turns her skin to gold. There's dog hair on the sleeve of the shirt I pulled off her and she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Everything about her is soft where I'm not. My hands are a mess of calluses and I'm careful with them. I hold her like a man who's been starving for something real and just got handed it. I press my length against her opening and hold us there for a beat until she’s squirming for more.
When I finally move into her, she takes all the air out of my lungs with her.
She's tight and warm. Her whole body goes taut as her walls stretch around me. Then I rock into her and she makes a sound against my shoulder that I'm going to hear in my head for the rest of my life.
"Thoran."
"I know." My voice is unrecognizable. "I know, sweetheart. I've got you."
We find a slow rhythm, and I hold it there as long as I can stand it. Long enough to watch her come apart in increments. Her chin lifts, her eyes go unfocused, and her hands slide from my shoulders to my back and dig in.
My hand skims down her waist and settles at her hip.
She arches into me with a soft moan that seems to hang in the room.
I take my time and worship every curve because this woman had nine years of a man who never did.
I learn what makes her breath hitch, what makes her fingers curl into my shoulders and what makes her say my name like a prayer into the ceiling.
Then her hips start meeting mine and it stops being slow.
It builds into something with no restraint left in it at all. I’ve got a fistful of her hair. My arm's under her, holding her up into me. The bed is loud and neither of us cares and the room narrows down until there is nothing in this world but the two of us and the sound she's making.
I feel the tension in her wind tight. Everything in her drawing up and shaking. I drive into her, thrusting until the whole world disappears around us.
"Let go sweetheart," I say against her throat. "I've got you. Let go for me."
Then, she does.
Vivien breaks apart under me with my name on her mouth. Her whole body clenches and then goes molten, and she takes me with her over the edge. I let go with her hair over my face, holding her so tight I don’t think I’ll ever let go. She takes all of me, Vivien milks me to the last drop.
Afterward, we stay tangled up in each other into the early hours of the night.
When she nods off, I run my fingertips up her spine and watch goosebumps chase them the whole way.
I watch the way her breath comes in slow, soft pulls.
I kiss her shoulder. Through it one thought echoes a thousand times.
There you are.