Storm 1, Self-Restraint 0
Dawson
My jeans clung to my thighs, heavy and cold, outlining every inch of me like a second skin.
My bare chest was splotched with water, the droplets trailing down and gathering at my waistband, a fact I was hyper-aware of only because of the way Sadie’s eyes kept darting there and then jerking away, like she’d been caught gazing at something indecent.
She stood across from me, silent, her face lit by the candle flames flickering throughout the space.
I’d asked her what we were doing and she’d said she didn’t know.
As much as I wanted to push her for an answer, to make her admit that something was happening between us, that it wasn’t a fluke or a one-time thing, I knew that was not the right thing to do.
Instead, I focused my attention on her. I wanted to make her feel the things I could not say to her.
I wanted to overwhelm her with sensation to the point that she couldn’t deny it anymore.
I’d always been good at waiting, at holding my ground while the world tried to shake me loose.
I can ride out the Oregon winter storms and the most obstinate of colts.
But when it came to Sadie, my patience dissolved.
She’d always been the exception, the one force in the universe that could make me reckless.
Standing in the kitchen, half-clothed and soaking, I wanted all of her in a way that bordered on painful.
The restraint I’d built up over years was nothing compared to the ache of needing her touch.
I could feel her stare on my skin, more real than the cold water that clung to my torso.
She kept glancing at my waist, quick and hungry, and every time her gaze darted away, it left an impression.
I could have reached for her, but I held myself in place, hands open at my sides, waiting for her to decide if this was something she wanted to move forward with.
She stepped closer, a foot between us, her fingers clutching the dish towel so tightly the veins in her hand stood out.
She dabbed at my chest, her touch almost clinical at first, but the more her hand moved, the less she seemed to be thinking about drying me off and the more she seemed to be cataloging the shape of me.
The storm outside pressed at the windows, rattling old glass, but inside the only noise was the ragged cadence of her breathing and the quiet hum of the refrigerator.
She shifted her weight and the towel fell.
It landed on the slate floor with a thud that seemed to echo through the empty house.
Without it, her hands hovered just above my skin, and then, with a quick exhale, she let them settle on the top button of my jeans.
She didn’t look up, not at first. She focused on the job at hand, literally, careful and deliberate, so slow it made me want to scream.
My pulse quickened, pounding so loud I was sure she could hear it through my ribs.
Her hands trembled when she pulled the zipper down, and I wanted to help, to do anything that would make her feel safe, but I also wanted to see what she would do if I waited.
She caught the waistband between her thumb and forefinger and tugged, but the denim was soaked and clung to me like shrink wrap.
We both gave a half-hearted laugh at the struggle.
It broke the tension for a split second, and I used the moment to brace a hand on the counter behind me and shift my hips to help.
She gripped the waistband and tugged down, peeling the jeans down over my thighs, my knees, my calves.
When they pooled at my ankles, she crouched, removed my socks and worked the cuffs over my bare feet, her hair brushing the tops of my thighs as she did.
When she finished she remained on her knees in front of me.
Her face an inch from my straining erection.
I stood there, dripping and completely exposed, not even the thin comfort of cotton between me and her eyes.
She stared, and I let her. I wanted her to see what she had done to me, how much I wanted her, how much I trusted her with my nakedness.
A flush crept up her throat, painting her skin pink, and her eyes flicked up to my face, searching for something.
I wasn’t sure what she found there, but it seemed to calm her.
She straightened and brought her hands to my hips, settling them there for a second before letting them wander, slow and reverent, over my waist and up to my chest.
Her touch left trails, electric and hot, and even though I’d been freezing a minute ago, now my skin burned wherever she touched me.
Her hands mapped me—my scars, my muscles, the sharp line of my hip—like she was relearning a language she thought she’d forgotten.
Every place her fingers lingered, my nerves fired.
I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep still.
She reached for me, but I caught her wrist, gentle but firm, holding her pulse between my thumb and first finger. I saw the question in her eyes, half uncertainty and half daring.
“You’re overdressed,” I said, the words coming out rougher than I intended. I tugged, careful, inviting her forward.
I pulled her to a standing position and lifted her shirt up and off.
As soon as her arms fell to her sides, she hooked her thumbs in the elastic waistband of her sweats, pushing everything—underwear included—down her hips and thighs.
She stepped out of the oversized garments, and she stood tall, baring herself to me and leaving me breathless.
The sight of her, unguarded and luminous in candlelight, was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
Every inch of her was familiar and shockingly new, an echo of my best memories, but made sharper and more real by the years in between.
For a moment, neither of us moved. The tension that had been building between us for days—years—was a living thing, an atmosphere that pressed in on my skin and filled the space with the electricity of anticipation.
Each time her eyes traveled over my body, I felt it as a physical touch, warm and hungry.
I let her look, let her take me in, because that was what I wanted, more than anything was for her to see me, all of me, and know that I was hers, if she wanted me.
She stepped forward, so close I could feel the tremor of her breath on my chest. Her hand came up, trembling slightly, and for a second I thought she’d touch my face.
Instead, she reached lower to my straining erection, curling her palm around me, delicate and reverent, like she was testing the reality of what she held.
Her thumb flicked over my engorged crown, and I nearly buckled.
She glanced up, her eyes twinkling with both hunger and shyness all braided together in her smile, and then she sank to her knees on the kitchen tile, her bare thighs folding beneath her.
The sight of her naked, kneeling for me, looking up with that mix of challenge and invitation, short-circuited my brain.
I braced myself against the edge of the counter, knuckles white.
She tightened her slender fingers around me, grasping me firmly, gliding up and down my shaft in a tantalizing rhythm, recalling the exact motions that drove me wild.
Then she leaned forward, her mouth wrapping around my tip.
The first touch of her lips—warm and wet and impossibly soft—sent a full-body shudder through me.
She circled the head with her tongue, then took me deeper, her mouth a hot velvet sleeve that undid every hard-won ounce of self-control I had.
She worked me with a precision that was less technique and more instinct, matching my shallow breaths and low, strangled groans.
Each time I thought I was on the verge of losing it, she would ease off, letting her hand do the work while she looked up at me, dark lashes fluttering, waiting to see how much I could take.
My body reacted the way it always had to her: helpless, desperate, hungry in a way that was almost embarrassing.
My hips flexed, my vision tunneled, and I had to fight to remain standing upright.
When it got to be too much, I threaded my fingers into her hair, not to force her, but to steady myself.
She hummed, a sound that vibrated all the way through me, and my knees buckled.
I barely caught myself on the counter behind me.
She laughed around me, and the vibration made me curse under my breath.
She pulled back, lips glistening, and grinned up at me, triumphant and a little wicked.
I wanted to repay her, to make her body sing the way she’d made mine, but the second I bent to pull her up, she surprised me by rising on her own and pushing me backward until I hit the living room wall.
She pressed her chest to mine, skin to skin, and kissed me with a kind of urgency that left no room for doubt.
She wanted this as much as I did, and that knowledge almost undid me.
We stumbled together, moving in mutual desperation toward the couch.
She was gasping, her hands in my hair, my face, my chest, anywhere she could touch as she walked on her tiptoes.
In one swift motion, I picked her up and carried her to the couch.
I lowered down, and she straddled me, knees on either side of my hips.
The wet heat of her sex pressed against my steel-hard shaft, slick and insistent.
I could feel how ready she was. She arched into my hands when I filled them with her breasts, cupping them, thumbing the peaks and pinching them until she gasped.
I ran my mouth along her throat, her collarbone, lapping up the salty tang of her skin and the pulse that raced beneath it.
She was all motion, rolling her hips against me, grinding herself along my length in a rhythm that made my head spin.
I’d always loved her breasts, the perfect shape of them, the way they fit my palms so perfectly, how sensitive she was when I teased the soft undercurve with my tongue.
She moaned when I sucked her nipple, and the sound shot straight to my core, making me throb with pent-up desire.
I pressed kisses lower, over the swell of her ribs, then back up to her neck and jaw, because I wanted her to feel how much I worshipped her, how many years I’d spent thinking about what it would be like to have her again.
Her hands roamed my back, nails dragging down my shoulder blades, leaving trails of heat in their wake.
She grew more and more restless until finally, she leaned back, bracing herself on my thighs, and lifted her hips.
I watched as she reached between us, guided me to her, and hovered just above, letting the anticipation stretch out until I was nearly mindless with need.
She rubbed my crown along her slit, teasing both of us.
Finally, she lined me up and sank down, slow and steady, her eyes locked on mine as she did.
The sensation was shockingly intense. I had to grit my teeth against the urge to grab her hips and thrust up, because I wanted to savor the feeling of her, every inch, every pulse and clench as her body took me in. She bottomed out and stilled, shivering, her head tucked against my neck.
I wrapped my arms around her and held her tight, not trusting myself to speak.
I wanted to say so many things, wanted to tell her how much I’d missed her, how sorry I was for everything that had come between us, but the words wouldn’t come.
Instead, I poured everything I wanted to say into the way I touched her, the way I moved inside her, hoping she’d understand.
For so long, my future was bleak. Now, I didn’t know what it held.
I didn’t dare picture it, not really. But the idea that I might have a second chance with her, both terrified and electrified me.
I knew with a certainty that felt bone-deep that I loved her.
There hadn’t been a single day, since the moment I first learned what the word meant, when I didn’t love her.
Even when she was gone, even when that love was the thing that hurt most. Even when I’d convinced myself it was over, that I’d ruined it beyond repair.
I still loved her, and I wanted her to know it.
Not just as something I felt, but as something I did.
If she wouldn’t believe my words—my words, worthless and clumsy as they were—maybe I could speak in a language she always trusted: the way I touched her, the way I let her see me.
All the things I’d wanted to say to her, all the apologies and explanations and desperate, wordless pleas for forgiveness, they pooled inside me now, a pressure that threatened to break me apart.
I’d never had the right vocabulary for her.
Not when we were kids, not when we were falling in love, not even now after a decade of carrying her memory around like a scar inside my chest. But I could give her this: my body, my hands, my hunger, every ounce of restraint I could muster to prove to her that I meant to go slow, that I wanted this to last.