Chapter Fourteen #2
By the time we reached the top step, my shirt was half untucked in a configuration that suggested either a strong wind or several minutes of focused attention from large, careful hands.
I was not entirely steady on my feet. This was also Ari’s fault. I planned to invoice him for the coordination deficit. The rate would be premium.
The bedroom was dark. Low light from the hallway spilling through the open door, throwing long shadows across the wide-plank floor and the bed that dominated the far wall. The sheets were clean.
I had people for that, Ari had said once, and the memory arrived with a warmth that had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the man currently steering me through the doorway with one hand on the small of my back.
Ari closed the door. The latch caught, soft, final, and the room got quieter in the way rooms do when the rest of the world has been deliberately excluded.
He turned to me. Those black eyes found mine in the low light, held, and the expression on his face was something I had no category for—heat, yes, but beneath it something warmer, something fixed, the look of a man who had been waiting for this and was now determined to do it properly.
His hands found the hem of my shirt, pushed it up over my shoulders, and the fabric came away. The shirt landed somewhere behind us. I didn’t track where.
Logistics, again, academic.
He looked at me. Really looked. His eyes moved from my face down my chest, my stomach, the line of my hips where my trousers sat low on my waist, and the attention was so deliberate, so specific, that my skin warmed under it like something being measured by an instrument calibrated for exactly this purpose.
“You’re staring.” My voice came out steadier than it had any right to, given that I was standing in Ari’s bedroom in nothing, but my stretch pants and the distinct awareness that his eyes on my skin was a sensation I wanted repeated at regular intervals.
“I’m aware.” His voice was low. Rough. The rough that I was rapidly becoming fond of.
“Most people find it polite to pretend.”
“I’m not most people.”
“No.” I held his gaze. Those black eyes warm in the low light, giving away everything now—all the heat, all the focus, all the things he had been keeping behind glass for weeks. “You’re not.”
His mouth found my collarbone. Warm. Insistent.
His beard scraped the sensitive skin where my neck met my shoulder, and whatever clever remark I had lined up evaporated the way dew does when the sun hits it, which was ironic because the sun was nowhere near this bedroom and I was evaporating for entirely different reasons.
His thumbs found my nipples. Traced them, slow circles, the calluses rough against the sensitive skin, and the sound I made was low and involuntary.
Ari’s mouth moved down my chest. His tongue flat against my skin, tracing the line of my sternum, and my hands found his shoulders because standing was becoming a theoretical concept rather than a practical reality.
His fingers were at my waistband, pushing my pants down my hips.
The fabric pooled at my ankles. I stepped out of it—one foot, then the other, the movement requiring more coordination than my nervous system was currently allocating to lower-body functions—and then I was bare, standing in Ari’s bedroom in nothing but the low light and the heat of his eyes on my skin.
He paused. His eyes moved from my face down my body, and the expression on his face was satisfaction, pure and warm and entirely undisguised.
“I hope the view is worth the wait.” I said it evenly, because composure was a habit and habits died hard, even when the man looking at you like you were something he had been wanting for longer than was professionally appropriate was standing three feet away with his clothes still on, which was its own kind of problem.
“It’s better.” Two words. Quiet. Complete.
The kind of statement that did not require elaboration because the elaboration lived in the way his eyes held mine and the warmth behind my sternum had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the fact that Ari looked at me like I was worth looking at.
I am going to die.
I reached for his shirt collar. His mouth found mine, warm and insistent, and I kissed him with the focus of a man who had decided that talking was overrated and kissing was underutilized.
We ended up on the bed. Ari’s weight settling over me, his chest against mine, and my hands found the broad planes of his shoulders, the scars that mapped his skin like topography I wanted to memorize.
His shirt was gone—somewhere—and the feeling of his skin under my palms was something my nervous system filed under “permanent storage” without consulting my better judgment.
His mouth found my neck. My jaw. The soft place below my ear that made my entire body go tight when he bit it, and the sound that came out of me was not human and I did not care.
Then his hand moved down my stomach. His fingers wrapped around my cock, warm and firm, and whatever dry remark I had lined up did not survive the contact. My hips jerked off the mattress.
He stroked me. Slow. Thorough. His thumb rubbing over the head of my cock, spreading the wetness there, and the coordination of it was something my nervous system had not been designed to process.
His eyes watched my face. Black. Dark. Giving away everything—the heat, the focus, the satisfaction of a man who was doing something he had been thinking about and was now enjoying the hell out of it.
My head tipped back. My hips lifted. My cock pulsed in his hand, leaking, and I clocked, with the fraction of my brain still operational, that Ari was doing this on purpose.
The slow pace, the watching, the deliberate thoroughness—this was calculated, and the calculation was working exactly as intended.
He reached for the nightstand. The drawer opened, closed, and he came back with lube and a condom.
He coated his fingers, and then his hand pressed between my legs, and the first touch of his finger against my ass made my thighs tense with the awareness of something about to happen that my body had been waiting for and my brain was still catching up to.
“Easy.” His voice was rough. Lower than I’d ever heard it, the tone of a man holding himself together with the discipline of someone who had decided that thoroughness was more important than speed.
His finger pushed inside. Slow. Careful. The stretch registered—not pain, pressure, the fullness of being opened by someone who was paying attention to every reaction.
A second finger joined the first. The stretch deepened.
Ari’s free hand held my hip, keeping me still when my body tried to move.
His fingers crooked, found the spot that made my vision go white, and the sound that came out of me was not dignified, but it was enthusiastic, and Ari’s response was to do it again, slower, watching my face with the focused attention of someone collecting data he intended to keep.
“You’ve made your point.” I said it through my teeth, because composure was a habit and habits died hard, even when the man currently working two fingers inside me with the precision of someone disarming a bomb was looking at my face like it was the most interesting thing he’d seen all week.
“I haven’t.” His voice was low. Rough. A rough sound that I was rapidly becoming addicted to.
“I’m going to revise the invoice.”
“Fine.”
He added a third finger. Crooked it. The stretch was intense—not pain, exactly, but the fullness of being taken by something that did not fit easily and was fitting anyway—and my back arched off the mattress with the enthusiasm of something that had been waiting for this input and was now compiling a very detailed report.
I said something that was not a word in any of the eight languages I spoke. It might have been his name. It might have been a plea. It might have been the noise of a man whose composure had shattered.
Ari watched it happen. His fingers worked inside me, slow and thorough, and the expression on his face was satisfaction, pure and warm and entirely undisguised, like he’d won something.
He had.
He pulled me off the bed. I had approximately one second to register that my feet were no longer touching the mattress before my back hit the wall and my legs went around his waist by pure instinct, the reflex of a body that had decided horizontal surfaces were overrated and vertical ones were the future.
My shoulders were against the plaster, my thighs locked around his hips.
The specific physics of a man who was very strong and very motivated, holding me up with his hands under my ass and the wall taking the rest of the weight, and my brain did a quick recalculation of several previously held assumptions about gravity and personal capability.
“This is showing off.” My voice came out breathless, which was Ari’s fault entirely, and I planned to invoice him for the respiratory compromise.
Premium rate. Itemized.
“It’s not.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“Keeping you exactly where I want you.”
I had no comeback for that. None. Zero. The silence of a man who had been verbally disarmed by six words delivered in Ari’s lowest tone.
I did not try to find one because trying would have required brain function and my brain was currently allocating resources to more pressing concerns, such as the fact that Ari’s cock was pressing against my ass and the condom was nowhere to be seen.
It appeared. One-handed. Ari rolled it on with the efficiency of a man who treated logistics as a secondary concern, and I filed this under impressive and also not the moment to comment.
He pushed inside. Slow. Relentless. The blunt pressure of his cock against my ass was its own kind of arithmetic. My head dropped back against the wall.
The plaster was cold against my shoulders, Ari was warm everywhere else, and the contrast registered somewhere below my sternum.