Chapter 10 #2
Her sweats hit the floor. My jeans follow.
I run my hand down her stomach and hook my fingers into her underwear and drag them over her hips.
She steps out of them and stands bare in front of me.
My boxers go next and her gaze drops to my cock, hard and thick between us, and I catch the hitch in her breathing, the way it catches every time, like the first time all over again.
I reach for her and she catches my wrists and guides my hands to my sides.
"Let me." Her voice is low, steady.
She presses her palms flat against my stomach and walks me backward until the backs of my knees hit the mattress. I sit. She straddles my lap, her thighs on either side of mine, her hands on my shoulders, the heat of her pussy presses against the underside of my cock.
"Holly—"
"Shh." Her thumbs trace my tusks again, slow. Her forehead tips against mine. "I need you to hold still. Can you do that for me?"
I nod. My hands find her hips—careful, the effort of being gentle when my whole body wants to grip and pull and take making my arms tremble. She feels the shake and presses her mouth to my jaw.
"I've got you," she murmurs, and the words land somewhere behind my ribs and lodge there.
I reach between us. My fingers slide through her folds, parting her, spreading the wetness up to her clit with my thumb while two fingers push inside.
She arches against my hand with a sound that isn't a word, just heat and need pressed through her lips.
Her pussy clenches around my fingers, wet and tight, and I curl them deep while my thumb circles her clit in slow strokes.
"Look at me," I tell her. Dark brown eyes, pupils blown wide, the violet streak in her hair falling across her cheek. I hold her gaze while I work her with my fingers, unhurried. The intimacy of it strips me rawer than any confession I made.
I pull my fingers free and she makes a sound of protest, her hips chasing my hand. She rises on her knees, reaches between us, and wraps her fingers around my cock. Lines me up herself. Sinks down.
Slow. So slow I feel every inch of her stretching around me, wet and tight and pulsing, my head drops back and a groan scrapes out of my throat.
Her breath catches. Her nails dig into my shoulders.
She doesn't stop until she's taken all of me, her hips flush with mine, and then she holds there.
Her forehead pressed to mine, her breathing ragged.
My hands span her waist. The size of my palms against her skin, the way my fingers nearly meet at her spine, feels different tonight. My body caging hers, keeping her safe and protected.
She moves. A slow roll of her hips, unhurried, her pussy gripping my cock as she rises and sinks back down.
Not the frantic pace we've hidden behind for months.
Not the headboard against the wall. Her hands slide up my neck and cradle my jaw, she watches my face while she rides me, reading every shift, flinch and sound I make.
Her scent intensifies—trust and want and a brighter note, warm and open. Hope. Holly smells like hope, and the bond hammers through me in waves that break against my ribs.
"I love you," I say, my hands tightening on her waist, my voice cracking on the last word. "I love you, Holly."
She stops moving. Holds still with me inside her, her forehead against mine, her breath warm on my lips. The words hang in the dark between us and neither of us fills the silence. Her thumb traces my cheekbone. Her eyes don't leave mine.
"I love you too, Rex." Then she kisses me—slow, open, her tongue sliding against mine—and her hips start to move again. Her thighs tighten on either side of mine and her pussy clenches around my cock with each downstroke, a slow deliberate squeeze that sends heat crawling up the base of my spine.
"Fuck," she whispers against my mouth, her hips rolling faster, and I feel her walls start to flutter around me, the telltale clench that means she's close.
My thumb finds her clit between us, circling in time with her rhythm, and her breath fractures.
Her fingers grip the back of my neck and her head drops to my shoulder.
She comes with my name on her lips—pressed into my jaw, her whole body arching into mine.
Her pussy squeezes around me in long rolling contractions that pull me to the edge.
I bury my face in her neck and breathe her in.
Trust and hope and Holly, the scent I've spent six months pretending I could live without.
The orgasm crashes through me, my cock pulsing inside her while her walls milk me in waves, and the word breaks free. Not a thought. A sound, ripped from my throat.
"Mine. Yours. Forever."
The old language, guttural and involuntary. I've held those words in a locked fist for months and letting go wrecks me. My arms buckle. I fall back against the mattress and she comes with me, her weight settling against my chest.
Her arms wrap around my shoulders. Her fingers trace the line of my spine.
"I'm right here," she murmurs against my temple. "I'm not going anywhere."
Her fingers move across my tattoos in the dark, tracing the lines she's memorized but never studied in the light of this—the two of us, together, still.
I pull her closer. My arm around her waist, her back against my chest, her hair against my jaw. I don't reach for my boots. I don't scan the room for my jacket, don't count the steps to the door, don't plan the fastest way from her bed to the stairwell to the alley to my bike.
She presses her palm over my hand where it rests on her stomach. Her thumb traces across my knuckles. In the quiet, her breathing evens out, softens, and the tension drains from her shoulders one degree at a time until she's asleep against me.
The first gray light comes through the window. I watch it cross the floor, the foot of the bed, the pile of our clothes tangled together on the hardwood. Holly shifts in her sleep and presses closer, murmuring words I can't catch, her fingers tightening on mine.
I've never stayed till morning in a woman's bed. Not once. But I watch the light reach the photographs on the wall—Holly's prints, the harbor, the fishing boats, the town she chose—and I don't move.