Chapter 60
STING
This is different.
I’ve been with Vi enough times to know what our sex usually feels like.
The club with its masks, the corridor with its desperation, my room with the three of us taking her apart.
There’s always been a structure. A dynamic.
Me in control, or trying to be, and her pushing against it, or giving in to it.
The tension between dominance and surrender driving everything.
Not tonight.
Tonight, I’m on top of her in her bed with Mara’s blanket shoved to the floor. She’s looking up at me with red eyes and swollen lips from the angry kiss that started this. Her hands are on my chest, not pulling, not pushing, just resting there.
I slow down.
That’s the thing that’s different. I slow down. I’m not chasing anything. I’m not trying to fuck my way out of a feeling I can’t name. I’m just here, with this woman, skin against skin, looking at her.
She notices, and her eyes change. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring at me.”
“So?”
“Why?” she asks.
Jesus, she’s annoying.
How about because I almost lost you? Not in the east wing.
Not in contested territory. In the Skylight Room, where you stood in front of me and told me who you are and I sat there like a coward and let you walk out.
That’s how I almost lost you. By being too much of an asshole to man up and take care of my shit.
I don’t say any of that, though. Instead, I kiss her. Slow. Not the angry kiss from before. Something else. My mouth on hers, careful. Her bottom lip between mine. Her breath catching.
She softens. The tension in her body, the coiled-spring readiness she’s been carrying since the confrontation, releases. Not all at once, but in stages. Her shoulders drop and her grip loosens. Her legs, which were locked around me like she was bracing for something, relax.
I kiss her neck, her collarbone, and the dip between her breasts. I take my time, not because I’m teasing, or building her up the way I usually do, but because I want to be here in this moment, with this woman without rushing toward the next thing.
“This is new,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“I like it.”
I undo her jeans. She lifts her hips and I pull them down. She’s bare underneath. I run my hand up the inside of her thigh, slow, watching her face. Her eyes flutter closed and her lips part. When my fingers reach her pussy, she’s wet and warm. Her hips tilt toward my hand.
I touch her like I’ve got all night, because I do. Two fingers inside her, my thumb working her clit in slow circles. She makes a sound that’s closer to a sigh than a moan, deep, relieved, like something in her was wound as tight as something in me and it’s finally letting go.
“Sting,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“Stop making me wait.”
She watches me pull my hand away, undo my belt, and push my pants off. Her eyes move down my body without any of the usual charge. There’s no hunger, no challenge, just looking. Seeing me. The way I’m trying to see her.
I settle between her legs, line my cock up, and push inside feeling every inch. Her breath hitches and her hands come to my arms, gripping, not hard, just holding on.
I stay still for a second, all the way in with her warmth around me and her breath on my throat.
I start to move, long strokes that pull almost all the way out and push back in until she gasps. There’s no rhythm to chase, no peak to race toward, just this. The friction. The heat. Her body responding to mine in real time, her hips meeting each thrust.
Her hands slide down my arms to my hips and she holds me there. Guides the depth. I let her. That’s new too. Letting her set something instead of controlling everything. Her hands on my hips telling me here, like this, this deep. I follow her lead.
“There,” she whispers. “Just like that. Don’t stop.”
I don’t stop. I keep the pace she set. Steady. Deep. Her legs wrap around me, not locked, just draped.
I press my face into her neck. Breathe her in, my hips moving in the rhythm she asked for.
Her fingers digging into my back, harder now, the sounds she’s making getting louder.
They’re not the sharp cries from the club or the desperate moans from my room but something lower.
The sound of a woman who’s just feeling it.
“I’m close,” she says against my ear.
“Me too.”
That’s honest. I’ve never told her that before. I’ve always held it, controlled it, decided when. Tonight, I’m telling her the truth. I’m close. She got me there. She did it.
She comes with a full-body clench, her back arching off the mattress, her arms tightening around me, a sound that’s half breath, half cry, pressed into my shoulder. I feel her pulse everywhere, around my cock, in her throat where my mouth is.
Following her, I just let go. I come inside her with my face in her neck and my arms around her. It’s pure release, raw and graceless, my body against hers.
Her hand moves up my spine. Slowly, tracing the bones. I’m still inside her, still heavy on top of her. She doesn’t ask me to move and I don’t want to.
“That was different,” she says after a while.
“Yeah.”
“More of that.”
“Okay.”
She laughs, her breath against my skin. I almost say something else. Almost say three words that have been haunting me for longer than I want to admit but don’t, and not because I’m afraid. Because the timing isn’t right. Not tonight.
But soon.
I roll off her and she curls into my side.
Her breathing slows. She’s drifting. I’m not.
Somewhere in this building, Rogue is planting false information with Mara. Somewhere, Tommy is going about his routine, not knowing we’re closing in. Somewhere, the truth about Mayor Renner’s six-week gap is sitting in the evidence, waiting to be found.
I told Vi my truth about her father tonight. I haven’t told her the rest.
Tomorrow. The rest comes tomorrow.