27. “Hold onto me instead.”
“HOLD ONTO ME INSTEAD.”
HALE
She’d been talking for ten minutes.
Words stacking over words the way they always did when something sat heavy on her chest and she’d rather circle it than cut straight through.
Her mother’s house. Her brother showing up. The old hurt she’d finally dragged into the kitchen and set between them.
She stopped at the window, turned back toward me, and picked up right where she’d left off. Her hands wouldn’t settle. She pulled at the hem of the shirt, bit at her lip, picked up her phone and set it down again.
I didn’t interrupt.
She crawled back onto the bed still mid-sentence, straddled my thighs, and kept going. Shaun this time. The things he’d said. The things he’d done. The way men like him always thought damage counted less if they were sorry afterward.
“You’d never do that,” she said.
“Do what?”
“Cheat.” A pause. “You flirt a lot. I don’t think you even know you’re doing it half the time. You’ll compliment Mrs. Collins’s hairdo, and she’s seventy, the same way you compliment the barista on her latte art. But you’d never do what my father did. What my brother did.”
“No,” I said. “I’d never do that to you.”
“I know,” she said, and there wasn’t a question in it.
Not I hope so. Not thank you. Just, I know. A fact she already trusted, not a thing she was deciding.
Her gaze drifted somewhere over my shoulder, and her fingers started up a small absent pattern against my chest.
She was right there in my arms and hadn’t made it back to me yet. So I moved.
I tipped her onto her back slowly, took both her wrists in one hand, and settled them above her head against the pillow.
She went still. Not tense. Present. There was a difference, and I felt the exact moment all that restless energy left her. One long exhale followed, like she’d been holding it for hours.
I stayed right there and let her breathe.
Her focus came back to my face.
There she was.
My grip tightened just a fraction before I caught it. Hard enough that I felt her pulse jump under my thumb.
“Sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay.” She’d relaxed into the hold, which was its own answer.
It hit me then, how glad I was to have her right here in front of me instead of on the other end of a phone, her state of mind something I had to guess at.
I dipped my head and brushed my mouth over hers. Barely there at first, then deeper, letting more of my weight settle.
Her hips rolled up into me.
I pressed her wrists firmer into the mattress, testing the hold, and felt her breath break against my mouth.
“Yeah. Thought so.”
I worked down her throat, teeth grazing just under her jaw. Her breath hitched.
It got to me, that sound. Fed something greedy in me.
“Ever been tied up?” I asked.
“No.”
“Would you like to be?”
She thought it through, cautious like she was about everything.
“I don’t know,” she said finally.
“We’ll take it slow then. Call it an experiment.”
I released her wrists and sat back on my heels. Then hooked a finger in the hem of the shirt—my shirt again—and pulled it up and over her head in one smooth motion. I kept my attention on her face.
“Just your hands,” I said, nodding toward the iron headboard. “Hold on.”
She reached up without hesitation, fingers wrapping around the bars. “What? No rope?”
“Don’t need rope.”
“Why not?”
“You won’t let go.”
Her mouth curved. “You sure about that?”
“Yup.”
“How come?”
I leaned down, close to her ear. “Because you know I won’t like it.”
She considered that. “That’s all you got?”
“That’s all I need.”
Her fingers flexed around the iron but didn’t release.
“Now close your eyes.”
After a second, her lashes lowered.
I took my time with her clothes because there was no reason to rush.
She was warm under my hands, her breathing slow and even. I let my palm drift down her belly, and she shivered, a full-body thing she didn’t bother hiding.
I pressed my mouth to her shoulder. The curve of her neck. The space between her shoulder blades. Learning what I already knew and finding what I didn’t.
“If you let go,” I murmured against her skin, “I stop.”
Her knuckles whitened around the bars.
I dragged it out on purpose, teasing out every spot that made her hips lift and then making her wait for more. Her breathing kept catching and breaking, finding its rhythm only to lose it again.
At some point her grip loosened. Reflex, not defiance. I covered her hands with mine and guided them back to the bars.
“I said don’t let go.”
She held on.
“Look at you,” I teased. “Keeping me happy after all.”
I moved lower, pressing her thighs wider. She opened for me without a word, letting me hook her legs over my shoulders and settle her exactly where I wanted her.
Her thighs trembled, her hips lifted. But I did nothing but stay there, my breath ghosting over her pussy. Close enough to tease, not enough to satisfy.
“Hale.”
“I know,” I said. “I know what you want. Stay right there and let me decide when you get it.”
A soft whimper escaped her, but she settled.
I waited just long enough for her to feel the absence. Only then did I lower my mouth and lick, one long, flat drag over her wetness.
Fuck, she tasted good.
I’d meant to make her wait. That had been the whole point. Then she made that broken little sound, and I went back for more.
Again.
Again.
She arched hard off the bed, and I settled in like I had all night. Broad strokes, tight circles, sucking gently on her clit, then harder when she started grinding against my tongue.
She flooded my mouth, salt and heat and her. Every moan, every twitch of her thighs, every time she said my name like she couldn’t help it, I gave her more. I held on tighter and kept her right there, where it was almost too much.
“You have any idea what you sound like?” I asked, dragging my mouth over her inner thigh.
She made another ruined little noise.
“Yeah,” I said. “That. Keep doing that. Let me hear you.”
I kissed her clit then gave it a quick flick. I couldn’t help myself. I liked her on my tongue.
Another long drag, then I sucked.
Her back bowed. A string of soft, desperate sounds spilled out. My name once, fractured—then nothing coherent. Her eyes squeezed shut, and she let me have her like that.
She broke, thighs quaking, a choked cry tearing from her throat while she held onto that headboard like her only tether.
I worked her through it, gentling only when the tremors turned languid.
Yasmine was always half somewhere else, composing the shot, reading the room, working out what something meant. Right now she was nowhere but here. With me. Holding on because I’d asked her to.
“You did so good,” I murmured, pressing soft kisses against her heated skin. “Held on the whole time.”
“More,” she said, voice rough.
Heat punched low in my gut.
“Yeah?”
“Yes,” she hissed.
“Greedy.”
“For you?” Her mouth curved. “Apparently.”
“Say it.”
“Fuck me, Hale. I want to feel you.”
Yasmine Valentine was going to break me.
I slid my hands over her hips. “Turn over for me. On your knees.”
She went easily, lifting her ass, knees spreading wider on the sheets. Her hands went right back to the headboard before I said anything.
I didn’t comment on that.
I knelt behind her, one hand pressing at the small of her back until she settled deeper into the arch. I rubbed my dick along her cunt once, twice, then pushed in slow, jaw tight by the time I was all the way in.
A low groan escaped her; mine answered it.
“Shit, Yasmine.” I stopped there, buried deep, one hand locked on her hip while I remembered how to breathe. “You feel too damn good.”
She shifted back against me.
“Careful,” I said, voice rougher than I meant it to be.
I’d wanted her in this exact position since the first time, and now that I had it, I wasn’t in any hurry to be done with it.
Her hips moved again.
“Brat,” I said, and felt her tighten around me.
I cupped her tits, working her nipples as I started fucking her with deep, measured strokes, pulling almost all the way out before sliding all the way back in.
“With me?” I rasped against her ear.
“Yes. Please, Hale—harder.”
That did something ugly and hot to my self-control.
The bed creaked under us, headboard tapping faintly against the wall with each drive forward. She pushed back into every thrust, meeting me with a rhythm that wrecked what was left of my patience.
She said my name again, raw and pleading. Loud now, not caring, and I filed that away as one of my favorite things.
“Let go of the bars if you need to,” I said against her ear. “Hold onto me instead.”
Her fingers flexed, then released. One hand reached back, gripping my thigh; the other fisted the sheet. She pushed back harder, meeting every thrust.
“Right there. Fuck, Hale, like that.”
She knew what she wanted and went after it, and Christ, I liked that about her. Liked it so much my rhythm broke for half a second.
I felt her tightening, close again. My hand slid down, fingers finding her clit, circling firm, while I lost myself.
She came hard, tightening around me, and whatever control I’d been pretending to have went with her.
“Fuck.” I buried myself deep and followed, my mouth pressed to her shoulder because I didn’t trust what else might come out of it.
We stayed like that a moment, still joined, both of us trying to catch our breath. Then I eased out slowly, turned her over carefully, and settled her back against the pillows.
Her breathing slowed. Mine followed.
I brushed my thumb over her bottom lip.
“Good?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah.” She gave me that lazy little smile. “We should try the rope next time.”
“Whatever you want.”
I pressed my forehead to hers, wrapped my hands around her wrists again, gentler this time, and kissed her slow. Not chasing anything. Not building toward anything. Just that.