Chapter 24 #2
“I love you.” Denny kissed her, deep and languid, holding her face like a treasure. “I love you so much I’m afraid it’ll kill me.”
Eris’ hands travelled up Denny’s back, a reverent caress that lingered on her ribs. Her thumbs branched out, stroking the sides of Denny’s breasts. “Right there with you.”
Denny’s ministrations travelled south, following the column of Eris’ neck, the slope of the shoulder, then veered back to the chest and lower still.
“I’m going to take good care of you,” she promised.
Eris’ fingers raked through her hair. “Don’t you always?”
And always will.
A nip at the soft skin below her navel had Eris hiss and writhe under Denny. Their eyes met. Eris’ pools of ice were reduced to thin rings around her blown pupils. She pushed backwards to the top of the bed and rose on her elbows, parting her legs in invitation. A hot shiver ran up Denny’s spine.
She took in the thatch of brass hair and the glistening flesh beneath it. All she could think about was getting there to give Eris everything she wanted, but those gorgeous legs, spread open for her, were a bigger temptation than the prize she was being offered.
She could feel the wet heat in her own core as she mouthed her way up one thigh, stopping every few inches to suck at the sensitive skin.
A frustrated moan broke out of Eris as she writhed, followed by a swearword. Denny brushed her cheek over Eris’ inner thigh with a small smile, the edge of despair in the resulting urgency tugging at her heartstrings.
Too weak to resist those pleading eyes, she draped one leg over her shoulder, pushed the other back into the mattress, and ran her tongue flat over Eris’ dripping flesh.
“Fuck!”
The curse came with a stutter of hips that rubbed Eris’ clit right against Denny’s nose. Eris seemed to like it, so Denny did it again—with her nose, with her lips, with the tip of her tongue. Her mouth filled with Eris’ salty taste. Her soul filled with pride.
When she closed her lips around the clit, Eris’ hips canted to seek more contact, a better angle. Denny adjusted her position accordingly. The grip of Eris’ fingers in her hair got desperate.
“Are you going to fuck me or what?” she heaved through her frantic breathing.
Denny gasped out a chuckle against her. “Shut that foul mouth.”
Her fingers teased at Eris’ entrance, but Eris stopped her.
“Let me see you.”
Denny crawled up with a melting heart, allowing herself a moment to take Eris in.
She looked breath-taking, the long hair fanned around her like a dark halo, cheeks bright under the hungry gaze.
Eris locked a leg around Denny’s back, hips rolling upward.
Her soaked heat rubbed eagerly against Denny’s abs.
A strangled sound cut into Denny’s breath. “You,” she groaned while trailing a hand down Eris’ body, “are such a brat.”
“You signed yourself up for this.” Eris locked an arm around her neck as her free hand sank down to nudge Denny’s lingering fingers inside her. Denny’s sight blanked out for a second at the sensation of hot, velvety walls clamping down around her touch.
“Now we’re talking.” Eris’ hips bucked eagerly. “C’mon, Sunshine. We don’t have all night.”
Denny planted a shushing kiss to her lips, bumping their noses together as she grinned with sanguine sweetness. “We absolutely do.”
It would’ve been a lie to say that Denny had dreamed of a moment like this.
Sex had never meant much to her—a little more than a duty, the unskippable part of a natural process.
She had never craved this side of intimacy like she did now that she got to watch the girl she loved come undone for her one breathless moan at a time.
Eris collapsed into the mattress, fisting the sheets with a string of obscenities tumbling out of her mouth, ecstatic but not quite there yet.
Denny crooked her fingers upwards and moved them experimentally until Eris’ stifled moans turned into a sweet cry.
She focused on that spot, striving to follow the commands of Eris’ body.
She probed a third finger alongside the first two, but a hand came down to stop her.
“Too much,” Eris choked out, barely there as she looked up with glazed over eyes.
Denny obliged. She kissed her forehead, picking up the pace again, pressing her palm flat against the clit as her middle and ring fingers worked their way in and out in calculated curls. Her heart filled with overwhelming love in watching Eris slowly fall apart underneath her.
A hand clasped around her arm, luminous eyes, fogged by the sweetest agony, gazing into hers with primal need.
“Denny…”
“I’m here,” she soothed, pressing her lips to Eris’ temple. “I’m here, baby. Let go.”
She could pinpoint the moment the tension snapped.
It happened with a choked cry and a gush of heat that dripped down to Denny’s wrist as Eris’ thighs closed around her hand, back arching off the bed.
Denny accompanied her through it with gentle strokes that gradually eased along with the clench of Eris’ walls around her fingers.
Spent, Eris collapsed into the pillows, basking in afterglow bliss. For several minutes, a laboured breathing was all she had to give. Eyes shut, lips parted, a light bob in her throat from time to time. When her eyes finally fluttered open again, they were glossy and bright, even in the dim light.
Denny smiled, cradling her face into her hand.
It suddenly occurred to her that she had left a love letter of hickeys and bite marks spelled out all over Eris’ body.
She blushed at her own doing. Before she could apologise for getting so carried away, Eris took her hand and pressed it right upon the heavy thumping of her heart.
She had to swallow a few times before finding her power of speech again.
A shit-eating smirk curled her lips.
“Did you just call me baby?”
Denny’s blush spread down to her neck. “It slipped out.”
“I’m kinda into it.”
“Yeah?”
Eris’ voice held a hint of grit from the blissful exhaustion.
Just hearing it sent electric sparks to Denny’s nerve endings.
She wanted to spend the rest of the night committing to memory every detail, every dip and swell of Eris’ muscles, every visible trace she had left in the white canvas of her skin.
But there was work tomorrow—today—and she didn’t want to tire Eris out, so she pushed the thirst aside and just laid down beside her, pulling the covers on top of them both.
Eris didn’t hesitate to sneak under her arm and cuddle up.
She was searing hot, covered in a fine layer of sweat.
Denny may have just discovered the true meaning of addictive.
She didn’t care about sex per se. Never had. What she craved was what she was seeing now: Eris’ satisfaction, that languid, ecstatic glow on her face, the proof that her affection had carried into her gestures.
Eris glided a feather touch up her side. “So you’re a sex goddess…”
“Oh my god, stop!”
Denny’s face was on fire. She was tempted to turn off the light, but the darkness would deprive her of the lovely sight of Eris’ sleepy face scrutinising her so dreamily.
This was what it was all about for her. Sex wasn’t just sex: it was an expression of love. Without love, sex made as much sense to Denny as a chocolate teapot.
They lay in silence for a while, listening to the rain and each other’s breaths. From time to time, the lead-grey sky outside was slashed by white flashes of lightning. The rumble of the thunder was growing weak, a calming ripple in the distance.
Eris traced idle circles over Denny’s stomach, following the pattern of her abs, where she had left traces of her own arousal.
Her motion faltered on the way south. “You didn’t—”
“It’s fine,” said Denny quickly. Orgasms were overrated. She’d never been particularly impressed by one, not enough to see it as a necessity. “I’ve never really cared about it.”
“But—”
Denny turned on her side to face Eris. “It’s not about that for me.” She combed Eris’ hair back, smiling at her fluttering lashes. This was always a rough part to explain. “The pleasure I gave you is enough.”
“I won’t touch you if you don’t want me to.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“Words, please?”
It was a conversation Denny had had many, many times, rarely with a positive outcome.
Women looked at her and saw a delicate flower who must want someone to take charge of her.
Most of them were sorely disappointed when they found out Denny was anything but.
Noah always told her that if people wanted to make uneducated assumptions about you based on your appearance, it was their problem, not yours.
The issue was that pretty much everyone made assumptions based on her looks.
“I don’t… feel much when I’m at the other end.” She’d tried. It’d been awkward, definitely not pleasurable, and unforgettable for all the wrong reasons. She smiled reassuringly at Eris’ bewildered expression. “I don’t need anything more than what we just shared.”
“Don’t need or don’t want?”
Denny’s body didn’t work the way it was supposed to—she knew all too well because she’d extensively experimented on her own to try and figure out what was wrong with her, to no avail.
Some things worked, some didn’t. Either way, she didn’t feel any urge in that sense. She was more of a giver, anyway.
“Don’t need.”
“Can I ask how many instances this is based on?”
Denny hesitated. “Three.”
A long pause followed. Eris resumed her flourishes across Denny’s abs.
“Is it possible that you didn’t like it because all three times you didn’t really want it?”
Of course I wanted it, Denny thought. I willingly chose to go through with it, no one forced me.
“It’s just… I see you in the shop: you stretch yourself thin, smile and push through even when you’re crumbling inside…”
“Everyone does that: it’s basic social norms.”
“Like having sex with your partner?”