Chapter 25 #3
Something softened in him. He cupped my cheek, planting little kisses on my lips, my temple, my forehead as he eased forward again in careful, measured pulses. Each one asked a question. Each one waited for my body to answer.
My fingers curled against his back as the sharpness melted into warmth—from too much to everything.
“Fuck,” he breathed, low and reverent, as he sank the final inch. Our hips were flush and perfect against each other. “You feel so good.”
We stayed like that for a moment, breathing each other in. Allowing my body the time to fully accept him, mold to him.
Then he began to move.
A long draw back.
A deeper return.
Each glide smooth and controlled, pulling desperate sounds from my throat before I could stop them.
His hands traveled my body like he was learning me—ribs, waist, neck—every pass sending sparks running beneath my skin. And god, it felt right. The weight of him, the warmth of his breath, the way we found a rhythm that felt instinctive, inevitable.
“Emma…” he whispered, like my name meant something holy.
A sigh escaped me, gentle and broken. “Damien…”
His forehead touched mine, his body syncing with my breath as the pleasure gathered again—tight, rising in dizzying waves. Every stroke drew deeper sensation, another gasp, another unraveling thread.
The climb came slowly this time—layer by layer, curling through my belly, bright and impossible to swallow down.
My fingers tightened on his shoulders as the intensity sharpened, building to a point that felt blinding.
“I—” My voice broke.
He caught my face in his hands, eyes locked with mine. “Come for me.”
And I did.
Pleasure ripped through me in a fierce, breathtaking rush. I arched into him, a cry tearing loose as he held me through every pulse, every tremor, until the wave crested and broke, and I collapsed beneath him, shaking, undone.
He didn’t stop kissing me.
Didn’t stop holding me.
Didn’t let me drift far.
Then his rhythm faltered—just one stutter in his motion—and his whole body shuddered above me, muscles locking hard under my hands.
“Emma—” My name cracked out of him like he was coming apart on it. “I’m going to—”
“Inside me.” The words tumbled out, desperate and certain. “I want to feel you. Please”
His groan shattered against my throat.
His control snapped in the next heartbeat.
His hips drove forward in one final, desperate surge, nothing restrained or careful about it—just raw need, pure and overwhelming, as he buried himself deep and held there, shaking.
A rough, strangled groan tore from his chest as his forehead fell to mine.
I felt him—the pulse of release, uncontained—spilling into me in waves that matched the ragged pulls of air he dragged from somewhere far too deep.
He gripped my hips like a lifeline, pressed himself close, and let the pleasure wreck him. I felt every tremor, every shudder, until the tension finally unraveled and he folded into me, breathing my name like a prayer.
Something tender spread through me.
Inside me.
Around me.
A feeling so intimate it almost hurt.
He didn’t move.
Didn’t let go.
Just stayed there, his breath ragged against my shoulder, his voice hoarse on my skin. “Jesus, Emma…”
And I held him, feeling every slow, shivering aftershock echo through us both, knowing without a doubt, he hadn’t just come undone.
We both had.
For a long moment, we just breathed.
His weight settled over me, chest rising and falling against mine in a rhythm that hadn’t quite steadied. Above us, the fairy lights blurred at the edges of my vision, the night breeze lifting loose curls from my face. Everything else—Margaret, Falkirk, the week from hell—felt impossibly distant.
He stirred, just enough to brush his lips against my temple. “You okay?”
I nodded, the motion a small drag against the pillow. “Yeah,” I whispered. “Are you?”
A gentle huff of laughter rumbled through his chest. “Ask me again in ten minutes when I remember how to use my legs.”
The projector screen flickered at the edge of my vision, credits rolling in a lazy scroll as he pulled me onto his chest, reaching blindly for the throw blanket and tugging it over both of us. His heart still pounded beneath my cheek.
I snorted. “Who knew Damien Holt was a ‘Netflix and chill’ kind of guy.”
Then his head tipped toward me, scandalized. “Excuse you.” Affronted in that precisely-him way. “If anything, it was Netflix and make love.”
I turned so I could see his face, chin resting on his chest. “Oh?” I let the words linger, light and poking. “So we ‘made love,’ did we? Is that what we’re calling it?”
He swallowed. For a second, something unguarded flickered across his features—open and unguarded—before he dropped his attention to the blankets, adjusting the edge of it around my back as his fingers traced idle patterns along my shoulder.
“I’m saying,” he corrected quietly, “it wasn’t casual. That’s all.”
My heart did something traitorous in my chest. “I know.”
He looked back at me then, like he was checking for landmines—waiting to see if I’d run, if I’d laugh, if I’d put walls back up between us. I didn’t. I couldn’t. Not with the warmth of him wrapped around me and the steady beat of his heart under my ear.
He tightened his arm around me, pulling me in until I was tucked fully against his chest, his chin resting on top of my head. The night air was cooler out here, but under the blankets—with his body seeping into mine, the city a dull glow beyond the glass—it felt like its own little world.
“I like this,” I murmured, surprising myself.
“What?” he asked, voice already thickening with exhaustion.
“Being out here.” I paused, then gave him the more dangerous truth. “Being with you. Like this.”
His hand stilled on my arm. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “Me, too.”
The projector timed out, the screen going dark and leaving only the string of fairy lights above us, casting everything in gold. His breathing evened out, settling into an even, unhurried rhythm that pulled at my own like a tide.
I stared up at the sky I couldn’t quite see, at the glow reflecting off glass and steel, and tried to catalogue all the things that had shifted tonight.
My body felt pleasantly wrecked, my muscles loose and heavy, nerves still humming with aftershocks. But beneath that—beneath the satiation and the exhaustion—something new had settled in.
Trust.
Or the beginning of it.
Maybe I wasn’t ready to name whatever was curling warm and insistent in my chest. Not tonight. Maybe not for a long time.
But as Damien’s arm tightened unconsciously around me, and I let my eyes drift closed, one thought slipped in anyway, gentle and uninvited:
Maybe one day, when the dust settled and I wasn’t held together with panic and old scars…
I could actually love him.
For now, though, under the fairy lights and the weight of his arm anchoring me in place, it was enough just to stay.
I let myself drift, breathing in the clean, familiar scent of him, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I fell asleep in someone else’s arms without bracing for the fall.