Chapter Eighteen #2
I make another one of those small, embarrassing sounds, and his grip tightens on my hip. My body rocks forward instinctively, friction hitting me in a place that makes my vision go a little blurry.
“Sophia,” he groans against my mouth, and hearing my name like that nearly undoes me.
His hands slide under the thin fabric of my camisole, palms hot against my skin. The contact is electric but not overwhelming; he moves slowly, giving me time to adjust.
Nerves wake up everywhere he touches.
I realize I’m clinging to his shoulders, fingers digging into muscle, my chest pressed against his. His heart is pounding as hard as mine.
“I like you like this,” he murmurs. “On me.”
“I like me like this,” I murmur back, which is somehow both the most honest and the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever said.
He laughs deep in his chest, the sound vibrating against my sternum.
“Tell me what feels good,” he says. “Show me.”
The request makes my cheeks burn, but my body answers before my mouth does.
I roll my hips experimentally.
His grip tightens on my waist, a quiet sound escaping him.
“That,” he says hoarsely. “That feels very good.”
“Noted,” I say, a little breathless.
We find a rhythm—slow, exploratory, heat building in increments. His mouth trails along my jaw, down my neck. Each press of lips, each scrape of teeth is a new data point in a map I didn’t know I wanted to build.
My hands slide down his chest, over the scars and muscle, marveling at the solid reality of him. When my fingers brush his nipples, he shudders.
“Sensitive,” I observe.
“Yes,” he says, voice wrecked. “Careful, or I lose all my very good plans.”
I file that away for future experiments. Because there will be future experiments. That thought alone sends another pulse of heat through me.
His hands come up, fingers hooking in the straps of my camisole, pausing.
“Yes?” he asks.
The question goes straight to my nipples, already hard as pebbles.
“Yes,” I answer, voice barely there.
He eases the straps down over my shoulders, slow enough that I could stop him at any point. When they fall halfway down my arms, the neckline dips.
Cool air skims the upper curves of my breasts. My skin prickles.
His gaze drops, then darts back up immediately, as if he’s forcing himself not to stare.
“You can look,” I whisper. “I-I want you to.”
He exhales as if he’s been holding his breath for centuries, then lets his gaze travel down, reverent and hungry all at once.
“Beautiful,” he says simply. “You are… goddess, Sophia.”
Affection and want swell together inside me, almost painful.
I tug the hem of the camisole up. He helps, lifting it over my head, and then I’m bare from the waist up, sitting in his lap, heart pounding like a drum.
The air on my skin is shock-cool. His hands are fire.
He doesn’t grab. Doesn’t go straight for my breasts like some adolescent fantasy.
He starts with my shoulders.
His palms slide from the curve of my neck down over my collarbones, then across the tops of my arms, mapping me slowly. Every touch feels like a question: here? okay here?
Every nerve ending answers yes.
When he finally cups my breasts, I gasp.
His hands are big enough that he can hold them fully, thumbs brushing over my nipples with a care that makes my spine arch.
“Still okay?” he asks, sounding as if talking is costing him something.
“Yes,” I manage. “Please don’t stop.”
He doesn’t.
He explores with his hands first, trying different pressures, different angles, watching my face like a scientist waiting for data.
When he plucks both nipples at once, my breath catches and I dig my fingers into his shoulders. “My goddess likes that.” His voice is rough as he does it again.
“Sneaky man,” I mumble.
His mouth curves. “Just paying attention. You taught me that.”
He lowers his head, and his mouth closes over my left nipple, warm and wet and careful, and I make a deep, throaty sound.
My back bows. My hips roll involuntarily, chasing more, the friction and heat tangling together until my brain short-circuits.
He makes a low, approving noise and does it again, tongue flicking, lips sucking gently. His hand cups my other breast, thumb circling, keeping everything in balance.
“S–shit,” I gasp. “Flavius.”
He hums around me, the vibration shooting straight through my center.
The pleasure is intense but somehow not overwhelming; it’s anchored in him, in us, in the way he keeps checking my face even as he does devastating things to my body.
I thread my fingers through his rich, red hair, holding on, trying to breathe.
This isn’t about forgetting everything that’s wrong. If anything, it’s the opposite.
It’s my body remembering that I exist outside of academic theft and parental disappointment and institutional gaslighting. That I am not just a mind. I am flesh and nerve and wanting.
He lifts his head just enough to look up at me, lips still brushing my skin.
“Too much?” he asks.
“Not enough,” I say honestly with a sigh.
His answering smile against my breast is wicked and tender all at once.
He switches sides, giving my other nipple the same careful attention. The symmetry makes my brain purr in a way that’s almost comical.
My whole body is one live wire.
I rock against him again, the pressure building in that low, insistent way that tells me I’m not as far from the edge as I thought.
He feels it.
His hands slide to my hips, guiding the movement, helping me find a rhythm that makes sensation build and spiral and climb through me in waves.
He’s hard against me. His cock pulses through layers of fabric. The knowledge that I’m causing that reaction, that this is mutual, sends another sharp pulse through me.
I bury my face against his neck, breathing him in, letting the pleasure crest.
“Flavius,” I whisper, not entirely sure what I’m asking for.
He understands anyway.
One of his hands slides between us, knuckles brushing the waistband of my jeans, pausing.
“May I touch you?” he asks, voice rough. “More than this?”
My brain short-circuits for a second.
I want that. God, I want that. The thought of his hand between my legs has been living in a quiet corner of my fantasies for weeks.
But underneath the wanting, another part of me whispers: not like this. Not when everything is burning.
I freeze.
He feels it immediately.
The movement of his hand stops. The rhythm of our hips slows, then stills.
He doesn’t pull away. He just… waits. Breathing hard. Giving me space.
My heart is still racing, my nipples sensitive, my body very loudly voting yes.
My mind, however, is doing what it always does—spinning patterns, fast and relentless.
If we keep going, if we cross that next line tonight, sex will forever be tied to this day. To theft and rage and my parents’ disappointment and the looming threat of decisions I need to make tomorrow.
We’ll remember it as the night we tried to outrun everything by climbing into each other.
I don’t want that.
I want to remember choosing him because I wanted him, not because I needed an escape.
My hands tighten in his hair, not to pull him closer, but to ground myself.
“I want you to,” I whisper. “Really. I do.”
“I know,” he says. There’s a tremor beneath it.
“But I also…” I swallow. “I don’t want tonight to be about running away. I don’t want us to do this because I’m afraid. I want to remember that when I finally have you, it was a choice, not a… not a coping mechanism.”
His eyes close for a long second, jaw clenching.
When he opens them again, they’re darker, but clear.
“I am not going anywhere,” he says. “We have time. We can stop now and still… stay close.”
The relief that hits me is so intense my eyes sting.
“You’re okay with stopping?” I ask, needing to hear it.
He releases a laugh that’s more exhale than humor. “My body is very not okay. But I am okay. Because you just said, ‘when I finally have you,’ not ‘if.’”
I feel myself flush all over again. “That wasn’t a very subtle slip, was it?”
“No,” he says. “But I like it.” A slow grin spreads across his mouth, the kind that looks carved from confidence and heat, all wolfish edges and quiet possession.
The tension in the room shifts—still hot, still charged, but threaded now with something softer.
He eases his hands back to my waist, gently guiding my movements into stillness. We sit here for a moment, breathing hard, pressed together but no longer chasing the edge.
Slowly, I lean back enough to see his face.
“We can… still do some things,” I say, cheeks burning. “Just… not all the things.”
Understanding flickers in his eyes.
“We can kiss,” he says. “And hold. And you can fall asleep on me and drool on my chest. This is also allowed.”
A startled laugh bursts out of me. “I do not drool.”
“We will see,” he says solemnly.
I swat his shoulder, then realize I’m still topless and very much in his lap.
“Um,” I say intelligently, glancing at my discarded shirt and camisole on the floor. “I should… put something on.”
“Only if you want,” he says. “But yes. If we are stopping, better to help my self-control.”
I slide off his lap, legs trembling a little, and grab the softest T-shirt I own—a faded cotton thing that smells like laundry soap.
I pull it on braless, the fabric skimming over sensitized skin.
When I turn back, he’s watching me with that same reverent focus, now tempered with something like pride.
My gaze drops.
He’s still hard. Very obviously hard. The outline of him strains against his jeans, and there’s no hiding it.
“Um,” I say, heat flooding my face. “Are you… I mean, do you need—” I gesture vaguely at his lap, then immediately want to die of embarrassment.
His mouth quirks. “Do not worry about me.”
“But you’re—” I swallow. “That has to be uncomfortable.”
“It will pass,” he says simply. “I am fine.”
I cross my arms, considering. My brain does what it always does—calculates, analyzes, looks for the fair solution.
“I stopped for me,” I say slowly. “But I didn’t stop for you.”
His eyes darken. “Sophia—”