Chapter 5 #2
I catch his wrist. I guide his fingers under the waistband of my leggings, under the cotton of my underwear.
I press his hand against me. His palm covers everything; his middle finger long enough that the tip of it slides between my folds on the first pass, and I am already so wet I embarrass myself.
"Oh." The sound breaks out of him. Low and wrecked. "Nina."
"Yes." I rock against his palm. "Like that. Don't stop."
His finger finds my clit.
He's paying attention. One slow stroke at a time, reading my face for the small shifts that tell him more or softer or there. He figures me out in thirty seconds. His thumb keeps working circles while his middle finger slides down and pushes inside me, my forehead drops onto his shoulder.
"Garrett."
I work my own hand down between us. The front of his jeans. I find his cock through the denim, he is hard, and huge. My grip doesn't close around him even through his pants. His breath punches out of him the second I press along his length.
"You don't have to," he says.
"I want to."
I undo his belt, the button, the zipper.
I slip my fingers inside and close them around him, skin on skin.
The sound he makes is not a sound a human throat could produce: a broken-open rumble that drops into a register below his purr before he catches it and pulls it back.
His cock is hot against my palm, heavier than I expected, thicker at the base than at the tip.
I stroke him once, slow, root to head, and his whole body shudders.
"Nina." His forehead presses into my neck. His finger curls inside me and I forget how to breathe. "I won't last. It's been."
I kiss the corner of his mouth. My thumb slides over the head of him, finding him already slick. "It's okay. I'm not going anywhere tonight."
On the floor by the fire. His finger inside me, his thumb on my clit.
My grip on his cock, stroking him in time with the way he strokes me, the two of us holding each other's gaze because he won't look away and I can't. His other palm stays locked on my waist like a man clutching a lifeline.
The firelight finds the sweat on his chest. The shadows of his horns fall across my face and shift when I shift.
My orgasm climbs.
"Garrett."
"I've got you." His voice has gone deep and rough, stripped of everything but the low rumble. "I've got you. Let me see you, sha'li."
I break apart on him.
I bite down on his shoulder to keep from crying out.
My grip tightens on his cock and I stroke him through it, and a few strokes in he comes with me: a shudder that rolls from his shoulders into his hips, his free hand fisting in the small of my back, the hot pulse of him against my palm.
He buries his face in the curve of my neck.
The purr breaks open into something ragged, something I feel in my collarbones and the roots of my teeth.
We breathe.
My cheek against his shoulder. His forehead against my neck. The fire pops. The wind hits the north wall of the cabin and the logs shift under the snow.
He lifts his head. His eyes are open. Wet, rimmed red, the firelight catching in them. He looks at me like I'm a miracle he wasn't supposed to be allowed.
"Sha'li." Barely a whisper. The word dragged from a place so far down in him it doesn't sound like language. Like a man surfacing from a long way under water and remembering how to use his mouth.
My throat closes.
"I'm here." I cradle his face in both my palms. My thumbs find the wet at the corners of his eyes. "I'm right here, Garrett."
He cries.
Not sobbing. Silent tears, the kind that fall without permission. They track down his cheeks into the dark fur along his jaw, and his shoulders shake.
I wrap my arms around as much of him as I can reach. I pull his head to my chest. I hold him. I don't shush him. I don't tell him it's all right. I let him feel what it is to be held by a woman who is not afraid of what he is and is not trying to make him smaller to survive it.
His arms come around me. Careful. His palm at the back of my skull, cupping it like a thing he might break, and the purr settles into something quieter now, barely there, a hum I wouldn't hear if my ear weren't pressed to his chest.
My cheek is wet against his hair.
He falls asleep against me. I stay still until his breathing evens out, his arms heavy around my waist, the purr fading to nothing.
Then I reach for my phone on the side table.
The screen lights up the dark. I open my email, scroll past three unread messages from Mami, and find the one from the Houston recruiter I flagged last week.
I read it twice. I don't reply. I set the phone face-down on the floor and press my cheek back against his hair.
I hold him tighter.
I don't pull away.
The fire burns down. The storm works at the north wall of the cabin and the snow stacks against the boards, and on the floor by the hearth I hold a seven-foot minotaur to my chest and I already know I'm in too deep to come back out.