13. Ryan #5
The bedroom was dark, city light coming in low through the blinds, and I laid her down and took a moment I hadn’t planned to take—just looking at her.
Hair loose across my pillow. Eyes dark and soft, still catching her breath from the window, watching me with an expression that made rational thought difficult.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever had in my bed. I was aware of that with a clarity that sat low and certain and didn’t leave any room for pretending otherwise.
I came down over her slowly, bracing my weight on my forearms, and she reached up immediately—both hands, one at my jaw, one sliding into my hair—and pulled my mouth to hers.
She kissed me like she’d been thinking about it.
Like she had opinions about exactly how this was going to go.
I kissed her back and the sound of her exhale against my mouth hit me low and hard—not just want, which I’d been managing since she ran into me, but the clear understanding that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.
We were adults now. Whatever had kept us apart before didn’t matter anymore. This was what mattered.
She tugged at my waistband.
“Off,” she said against my mouth.
I got my jeans and boxers off and came back to her and when my weight settled between her thighs she made a sound—low, involuntary, completely unguarded—that went straight through me and landed somewhere I was going to be feeling for days.
Her hips lifted slightly, involuntary, chasing a pressure she hadn’t asked for out loud, and I had to press my forehead to her shoulder for a second just to get my bearings.
She felt like everything I’d been not thinking about for nine years.
I ran my hands over her slowly. Her collarbones, the curve of her waist, the soft skin of her stomach. I wanted to know all of it. I pressed my mouth to her throat and felt her pulse jump under my lips and felt my own pulse answer.
“Ryan.” Her voice was lower than usual.
“I’ve got you,” I said against her skin. “Tell me what you want.”
A beat. I felt her pause—the half-second of held breath before she said it—and I didn’t know who had taught her to swallow what she wanted instead of asking for it.
But whoever that was had lost her. That was their problem now.
She was in my bed. She was mine. And I was going to make sure she never hesitated again.
Then she looked at me directly.
“Don’t be gentle with me,” she said. Her voice was steady. “I don’t want gentle. I want—” She stopped. Started again. “I want you to just take me. I want to not be in charge of anything today.”
The room was very quiet.
She’d said it out loud and she wasn’t flinching and she was waiting to see what I did with it.
Did I want to?
I’d been holding myself in check since the second she walked into the building.
Hell, from the second I met her. Measured, careful, letting her set the pace because that was what she’d needed and I’d known it.
Underneath that—underneath every quiet moment and every restrained touch—was the version of me that had wanted to press her against every available surface since the first time she looked at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking.
So yes. I wanted to.
“You don’t have to be in charge of anything. You’re mine. And I take care of what’s mine.”
I watched the tension leave her body all at once.
Before settling over her, I grabbed a condom.
I kissed down her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her breast, taking my time even though every nerve I had was telling me to stop taking my time.
I took her nipple into my mouth and she arched into it with a sharp inhale and gripped my hair hard and the pull of it went straight through me and I had to breathe through it carefully.
I gave her the other side and she made a sound that was low and broken and I filed it away with everything else I was learning about her—what she responded to, what made her grip tighten, what made her say my name like that.
When I finally settled between her thighs she was warm and slick against me and I felt it everywhere. I was so hard it was a physical effort to hold still.
“Look at me,” I said.
She did. Eyes dark, lips parted, chest rising and falling fast. Maren bit her lower lip then a devilish grin graced formed.
I pinned her wrists above her head with one hand and felt her whole body shudder against mine—the full-body yes of it—and the last of whatever I’d been holding carefully in check came loose.
“Yes,” she said on a breath. “Ryan. Yes.”
I pushed inside her in one long stroke.
She gasped—sharp and unguarded, her back arching hard off the mattress—and I held still, jaw tight, every muscle locked, because she was warm and tight around me and it felt so good it was almost unbearable and I needed a second before I did something irreversible.
Her wrists flexed against my grip. Her hips rolled up toward mine with unmistakable intent.
I exhaled through my teeth.
Then I gave her exactly what she’d asked for.
I started to move—deep and deliberate, not gentle, not tentative—and the sound she made punched straight through me.
I found the angle that made her breath stutter and stayed there, relentless, and every time she made a sound I felt it in my spine, in my chest, in every place I’d been keeping this locked away.
She felt incredible. She felt like something I’d been stupid enough to walk away from once and was never going to be stupid enough to walk away from again.
“Tell me how that feels,” I said against her ear.
“So good,” she said, breathless. “Ryan. God. So good. Don’t stop. Please don’t stop. Keep fucking me!”
“Good girl,” I said.
She clenched around me so hard I had to lock every muscle I had to stay in control. I felt it register in her face—the surprise of it, the way her breath caught differently—and I filed it away immediately.
“Oh,” I said against her throat. “You like that.”
“I—” She stopped. Started again. “Yes!”
“Tell me what you want,” I said.
“Harder,” she said. “I want—harder. Please.”
I gave it to her. Drove into her deeper, harder, exactly what she was asking for, and she cried out and her back arched off the mattress.
“Look at me,” I said. “Maren. Eyes on me.”
She brought her eyes to mine. Dark and blown and completely undone.
“Don’t close them,” I said. “I want to watch you come around my cock while I fuck you.”
She groaned and I could’ve sworn she got wetter.
“You feel perfect,” I said, my voice rough, my rhythm not letting up for a single second. “This pussy was made for me, Maren. You understand that? It was made for me.” I grunted as I pounded into her, giving her what she wanted.
“Yes,” she breathed. “Ryan—”
“Say it.”
“S-say what?” she stuttered out the words.
“You’re mine, Maren. Mine.”
“Yours…”
“Say it again,” I demanded, losing my control as she squeezed around me, our breaths mingling, sweat forming between us.
“Yes. Yours. I’m yours. Please—”
“Good girl,” I said. “Such a good girl.”
She clenched around me when I said it and I groaned against her skin and felt her everywhere—warm and tight and so perfectly mine it was almost disorienting, like some part of me had always known this was where I was supposed to end up and had just been waiting for the rest of me to catch up.
She doesn’t know yet, I thought. She thinks this is something we’re still figuring out. She doesn’t know I decided the second she opened that door wearing my college sweatshirt.
She was going to find out.
I slid my free hand between us and found her clit and felt her whole body jolt.
“Ryan—”
“Look at me,” I said. “Keep your eyes on me. Let go, baby. Come for me. Come around my cock.”
She came apart with her eyes locked on mine—shaking, gasping, my name breaking apart in her mouth, her whole body arching into mine.
I worked her through every second of it—my hand and my hips and my mouth at her throat—until she was trembling and boneless and the grip on the headboard had gone slack.
I let myself go moments after. Both hands braced, her name the only coherent thought left in my head, everything else burning off at once. It hit me harder than I expected and I understood with complete clarity, forehead dropped to hers, still breathing hard, that this had never been just want.
It had always been her. I’d been scared enough to walk away from her the first time and I was never doing it again.
After we cleaned up, we lay there in the dark. The city hummed outside, indifferent and lit up and entirely irrelevant.
After a while she stirred, casting a look toward the bedroom door. Her clothes were in the living room. It was a long walk.
“Hey,” I said.
She looked back at me, a satisfied, lazy smile on her face.
I got up, pulled open the top drawer of my dresser, and tossed her a T-shirt. She caught it and held it up—gray, Minnesota Hockey, worn soft—and then she smiled at me.
She pulled it over her head—it hit her mid-thigh—and looked down at herself, then back up at me.
“Just so you know,” she said, completely serious, “I’m keeping this.”
“I know,” I said.
“And the next time you come over,” she continued, “I’m answering the door in it.”
I looked at her sitting in my bed in my shirt with her hair wrecked and her eyes bright and her mouth fighting a real smile she hadn’t decided to give me yet.
“Is that a threat?” I asked.
“It’s a promise.” She tilted her head. “We both know how that ends.”
I reached over and pulled her back down onto the bed and she laughed—bright and startled and completely real—and I kissed her once, slow, with my hand in her hair.
“Then you better keep it,” I said against her mouth.