Chapter 22 WREN #2
He doesn’t step back. He stays right where he is, close, his hands hovering an inch from me like he’s not sure where he’s allowed to put them.
“Wren.”
“You don’t get to show up here like this and act like three days didn’t happen.” My voice breaks on the last word. I look down at his chest. “I’m not doing this with you again.”
I turn my face toward the window. Away from him. I will not cry. I am not going to cry in front of him in my own kitchen at ten at night.
“Wren. Look at me.”
I don’t.
“Wren.”
It’s quiet. Closer than before. I can feel him a few inches from me but he isn’t touching me, and I think that’s the thing that’s about to break me—he’s standing here not touching me and waiting for me to decide.
“Look at me, please.”
That word.
I turn my head.
He’s right there. His eyes are on mine, and there is nothing controlled about them anymore. He’s wrecked.
“I don’t have a script for this,” he says.
Quiet. “I have been trying to do the right thing since the day Dawson called me about Tyler, and I think I’ve gotten most of it wrong.
I told myself I could watch over you and not feel this.
I couldn’t. I told myself I could feel it and not act on it.
I couldn’t. I told myself if I stayed away for three days I could get a handle on it.
” He shakes his head, small. “I couldn’t do that either. ”
His hand comes up. Slow. He waits to see if I’ll let him. When I don’t move, his thumb brushes the corner of my mouth.
“I’m not going to be good at this, Wren. I don’t know how to be careful with you and want you at the same time. But I’m not staying away from you anymore. That’s the only thing I know for sure.”
I don’t say anything.
My eyes burn. I blink hard once.
“I’ll go if you want me to,” he says. “But I’m not staying gone. I’ll be at your door tomorrow. And the day after. However long it takes.”
I look at him.
I look at him for a long time.
He leans in slowly, like he’s still waiting for me to change my mind, and his mouth brushes mine once.
Soft.
Careful.
My breathing goes uneven before I can stop it.
For a second I just stand there trying to hold onto the anger, trying to remember why I told him to leave in the first place.
His mouth brushes mine again.
I close my eyes.
Then my hands slide up around his neck and I kiss him back.
He exhales against my mouth and pulls me in.
The kiss stays slow—his lips moving over mine, the brush of his tongue, his hands settling at my waist like he’s giving me time to stop him again. I don’t stop him. I press closer. His arms tighten around me. I pull him down harder and moan into his mouth.
That’s when it changes.
He kisses me harder. Bites my lower lip. Drags it. Lets it go. His tongue is in my mouth and his hands are on me—back, hips, the curve of my ass—pulling me hard against him, and I can feel every inch of him through his jeans.
I drag my hands over him because I can’t help it. Over his shoulders—solid, hard, more man than I have hands for. Down the muscle of his arms, the swell of his biceps under my palms. Up the front of his chest through the white cotton, the heat of him under it.
I am throbbing between my legs.
I pull back enough to speak against his mouth.
“Take me to bed, Jace.”
“Yeah.”
“Now.”
He lifts me. My legs go around his waist and his mouth is back on mine before my arms are even settled around his neck. He carries me out of the kitchen and down the short hall. My bedroom door is cracked. He kicks it open without looking.
He lowers me to the bed and goes down with me. My back hits the mattress. His weight follows—forearm braced beside my head, hips between my thighs—and I feel the full press of him through two layers of denim and cotton.
His mouth doesn’t stop. Mine doesn’t either. I pull at the hem of his t-shirt. He sits up enough to drag it over his head one- handed, and I get my hands on him—chest, shoulders, the ridges of his stomach.
He comes back down. Finds the hem of my t-shirt and peels it off in one motion, gone.
His eyes go down me once. His jaw tightens.
“Five weeks.”
He says it like he’s still counting.
His mouth comes down on me before I can answer.
Not my mouth. My breast. He takes my nipple between his lips and his tongue drags across it once, slow, and my back comes off the bed.
He makes a sound against my skin and does it again, harder.
The flat of his tongue. The edge of his teeth.
His hand on the other one, large and rough and exactly the right amount of pressure, his thumb working in time with his mouth.
I am whimpering. My hand goes to the back of his head, and I hold him to me.
His hand slides off my breast and goes flat on my stomach, sliding down, fingers slipping under the waistband of my shorts.
He doesn’t ask. He hooks the waistband and drags the shorts down my hips and off, and his hand is between my legs before I can breathe.
I make a sound I have never made.
His fingers slide through me, slow, parting me.
A groan. Low in his chest.
“You’re so wet for me, Wren.”
His eyes come up to mine.
“I have been thinking about putting my mouth on you for weeks. Open your legs for me.”
I am naked on my bed and Jace Carrington is between my legs, and his eyes are on every inch of me.
He pushes me back down with a hand flat between my breasts.
Settles between my thighs. Hooks his arms under them and drags me closer to him, my hips half off the mattress, and he looks at me there for a second—just looks, his breath going hard. His mouth comes down on me.
The first stroke of his tongue is slow. The flat of it. From bottom to top. My hips lift off the bed before I can stop them. He does it again. I moan, low and helpless, and his hands tighten under my thighs as he settles in.
He learns me.
The angle that makes my hips lift. The spot that makes me gasp.
He finds it and stays there, circling, the tip of his tongue working a rhythm that has me coming apart by the third pass.
His hands keep me where he wants me. His shoulders are wide between my thighs.
I can feel the scrape of his stubble against the inside of my leg, the heat of his breath, the work of his mouth, and I am out of my mind.
He slides one finger inside me and watches my face when he does it.
“Oh, fuck —”
“Yeah.”
He curls, finds the spot, and stays there. His mouth goes back to me, his tongue against my clit, and his finger is moving inside me and the heel of his hand is pressing down on my pelvis and I am —
“Jace, I’m—”
“I know.”
“I’m going to—”
“Come on my mouth.”
“Look at me,” I say.
His green eyes come up to mine, locked on, mouth still working.
I come. Hard.
It tears through me. My back off the bed.
My thighs shaking around his head. His hands hold me where he wants me and his mouth does not stop and his eyes do not leave mine, and he watches every second of it, and somewhere in the middle of it he adds a second finger and curls and I come again , one rolling into the next, and I hear myself say his name in a voice I have never heard come out of me.
He works me through it. Gentles down. Soft kisses now. The inside of my thigh. My hip. My stomach.
He is up the bed and over me before I have come down.
His mouth on mine. I taste myself on him and I do not care. His weight on his forearms, his hips between my thighs, the press of him right where I’ve just come twice and somehow still need him.
I get my hands on his belt.
He lets me.
I get the buckle, the button, the zipper. I shove his jeans down and his boxers with them and he kicks them off the bed, and then he’s bare and warm and heavy over me again.
I get my hand around him and guide him to me. “Get inside me, Jace.”
The corner of his mouth lifts.
He knows.
He lines up and pushes in hard—one full stroke, deep, all of him, and my body opens around him and I cry out.
His forehead drops to mine. His breath shudders out against my mouth.
“Fuck, Wren. You feel fucking incredible.”
He closes his eyes. Doesn’t move.
I run my hand up his chest. He is shaking, faintly, everywhere I touch him.
“Jace.”
“Give me a second.”
“Okay.”
I trace his jaw. The shave of his head. The line of his shoulder. He is over me, eyes closed, holding himself the way he held himself for five weeks and I know what it costs him.
“Look at me.”
His eyes open.
“Move.”
He moves.
He pulls almost all the way out and pushes back in, deep and full, and I feel every inch of him going and every inch of him coming back, and my nails go into his shoulders and he does it again. The pace is controlled. He is not rushing. He is not letting himself rush.
The muscle of his arms holds him over me, the vein in the one braced beside my head standing out, and his eyes have not left mine.
I am whimpering. I am saying his name. I am wrapping my legs around him higher, pulling him deeper, and his hand slides down and hooks under my knee and lifts it, and the angle changes, and I cry out into his mouth.
“There it is.”
“Jace—”
“That’s it. Right there. Give it to me.”
He stays exactly there.
I cannot answer. I cannot do anything. I am climbing again and he can feel it, his pace shifting, his rhythm getting harder, his hand gone from my jaw to my throat—not pressing, just there, his thumb at the corner of my jaw tipping my face up to his—and his mouth at my ear.
“I have wanted you under me since the first time I walked into your shop.”
“Oh god—”
“Five weeks, Wren.”
His hips. Deeper. Harder.
“Five fucking weeks.”
I come.
It is harder than the others. It rolls up from somewhere I did not know I had and goes through me in waves, and I am clenching around him and he groans into my throat and his rhythm finally breaks.
His control is gone. He drops his face to my shoulder and his hips go fast and shallow and rough, and I am still coming around him, and he says my name once, hoarse, into my skin—
He goes.
His whole body shudders against mine. His hand fists in the sheet beside my head. He is shaking through it, and I am holding him, my legs around his waist, my hand at the back of his neck, and he is mine for the length of it. Every controlled second of him. Gone.
He comes down on his forearms over me and breathes against my throat.
For a long time neither of us moves.
The radiator clanks. My fan is on somewhere. I can hear his breath going slow against my collarbone, his weight heavy and warm over me, his hand still tangled in the sheet.
He buries his face against my neck.
“Wren.”
“Mhm.”
“I’m not letting you go.”
I run my hand up the back of his neck, into his hair. I feel the rise and fall of his chest against mine.
“Okay.”
He shifts. Pulls back enough to look at me. His eyes have gone soft.
He kisses me.
Slow this time. Long. His thumb tracing my jaw. He kisses me like we have all the time in the world now, like there is no camera, no three days, no one waiting. He kisses me like I am his.
“Stay,” I say.
“I’m not going anywhere, Wren. Not tonight. Not in the morning. Not until you tell me to.”
I close my eyes.
I don’t remember falling asleep. I remember the last thing I notice before I do, which is that for the first time in five weeks, I am not listening for a sound at my door.
I don’t need to.
He’s already inside it.