CHAPTER FOUR #2
"God," he breathed, and his other hand came up to tangle in my hair again, pulling just enough to tilt my head back and expose the line of my throat.
His mouth followed, pressing kisses along my jaw, down the curve of my neck, and the scrape of his teeth against my pulse point made my entire body shudder.
I was wearing his shirt and his cologne and the memory of every careful thing he'd done all day, and none of it felt borrowed anymore. It felt like mine. He felt like mine, his hands on my skin, his breath hot against my throat, the hard line of his body beneath mine.
His palm traveled higher beneath the shirt, skimming the ridge of my spine, and I felt his fingers curl against the bare skin of my ribs. The callus on his thumb—the one I'd noticed earlier—dragged across my side, and I made a sound that was embarrassingly close to a whimper.
"Tell me to stop," he murmured against my collarbone, his lips moving against my skin with each word. His hand stilled, waiting.
I looked down at him. His eyes were dark, nearly black in the low light, and his breathing was ragged.
There was a restraint in the set of his jaw, in the way his fingers trembled just slightly against my ribs, that told me he meant it.
He would stop and never mention it again if that was what I asked. I knew he would.
The thought should have been comforting. Instead, it made something reckless flare in my chest. I leaned down until my lips brushed his ear. "Don't you dare."
His hand moved again, sliding around to my stomach, fingers splaying flat against my bare skin.
The heat of his palm burned through me like a live wire.
His fingers were slow, deliberate—tracing the line of my ribs, the dip of my waist, the curve beneath—and every inch of skin they crossed caught fire.
Then his palm slid higher, and his thumb brushed the underside of my breast through nothing but the thin cotton of his shirt, and my whole body went rigid.
"Fuck," I whispered, the word falling out of me.
His thumb moved again slowly, experimental, dragging across the sensitive skin—and I felt my nipple harden against his palm through the fabric. A sound escaped me that I didn't recognize, something between a gasp and a moan, and his hand tightened, cupping me fully through the shirt.
"Tell me this is okay," he said against my neck, his voice so rough it barely sounded like him.
"It's okay." More than.”
His thumb found my nipple through the cotton and rolled it. I arched into his hand with a sharp, involuntary jerk of my hips. The movement pressed me harder against him, and I felt him—hard, unmistakable—beneath me, and the sound he made vibrated against my collarbone.
He did it again. The same slow, maddening roll of his thumb, and then again, and each time my body responded before my brain could catch up, hips rolling forward, back arching, breath coming in short, desperate bursts.
The shirt was too much fabric. The bra was too much. Everything between his hand and my skin felt like an insult.
"Take it off," I heard myself say.
His hand stilled. "What?"
"The shirt. Take it off."
He pulled back just enough to look at me, and something about the expression on his face—the restraint warring with want—made my chest ache. His hand slid from beneath the shirt, fingers curling around the hem, and he pulled it upward in one smooth motion.
Cool air hit my stomach, my ribs, the bare skin of my back, and then the shirt was gone—tossed somewhere behind me, forgotten. I was sitting in his lap in nothing but my bra and the borrowed shorts, and the look on his face was worth every second of vulnerability.
"You're beautiful," he murmured, and the words were so quiet that they didn't sound like a line. They sounded like a fact he was reporting to the room.
His hands found my waist again, thumbs pressing into the hollows above my hips, and he pulled me closer—or maybe I moved, maybe I couldn't help it—until there was no space left between us.
His mouth found mine, hungrier now, less careful, and his hands slid up my sides, over my ribs, and cupped my breasts through the thin lace of my bra.
His thumbs went to my nipples through the fabric, circling them with agonizing slowness. I couldn't help the moan that escaped me, the sound echoing in the quiet penthouse.
"Ethan," I gasped, my fingers digging into his shoulders. My body felt like it was on fire, every nerve ending alive and screaming for more.
He lowered his mouth to my collarbone, his lips trailing fire across my skin. One hand slid from my breast down my stomach, fingers splaying against my bare skin. I tensed, anticipating where he was heading.
"You're shaking," he murmured against my neck, his breath hot and ragged.
"Because you're taking too long," I managed, my voice barely recognizable.
His low chuckle vibrated against my throat. "Patience."
But his hand didn't hesitate. It slipped beneath the waistband of his borrowed shorts—my underwear beneath—and I held my breath.
His fingers met bare skin, and a flash of gratitude shot through me for my habit of keeping everything neatly trimmed.
At least one thing about this situation wasn't humiliating.
"Fuck," he breathed as his fingers found me, slick and wanting. "Julia."
My hips moved against his hand of their own accord, seeking more pressure, more friction, more of everything.
"Look at me," he commanded, his voice rough.
I forced my eyes open, meeting his dark gaze. The intensity there made my breath catch. His fingers continued their devastating exploration, finding the spot that made my thighs tremble.
"I want to hear you," he said, his voice dropping to something barely above a whisper. "I want to know what you sound like."
I met his eyes, letting him see exactly how much I wanted this. "Then you should probably fuck me."
Something shifted in his expression—the last thread of restraint snapping.
In one fluid motion, he stood, lifting me with him.
He carried me down the hallway like I weighed nothing, his steps long and purposeful, and my legs wrapped around his waist on instinct.
His mouth found mine in the dark corridor, and the kiss was nothing like the careful ones from the sofa—this one was hungry, open-mouthed, tasting of whiskey and desperation.
His hand gripped my thigh hard enough that I'd feel it tomorrow.
The bedroom door hit the wall with a dull thud.
He set me down on the edge of the mattress, and I barely had time to register the dark sheets, the low light, the sheer scale of the room, before his shirt was gone—ripped off, not unbuttoned, buttons pinging against the hardwood somewhere I couldn't track.
His belt buckle clanked once, loud in the quiet, and then his pants were on the floor.
I was already working the shorts down my hips, kicking them free, hooking my thumbs into the waistband of my underwear and shoving them down my thighs.
He moved to help, his hands rough and efficient, and then we were both naked, and the cool air of the penthouse hit every inch of skin that wasn't pressed against his.
He was beautiful. I didn't have time to be embarrassed about staring because he was already pushing me back, his weight settling over me, his hands pinning my wrists above my head. The position arched my back off the mattress, my breasts pressing against the solid wall of his chest.
His mouth moved down my throat, my collarbone, the valley between my breasts. He kissed the curve of one, then the other, and when his tongue circled my nipple, I bucked beneath him hard enough that his weight shifted.
"Ethan—"
He didn't answer. His hand released one of my wrists and traveled down my body—over my stomach, my hip, the inside of my thigh—and I felt my legs fall open for him without my permission.
His breath was hot against my ribs, and then he was moving lower, his lips tracing a path down my stomach, his stubble scraping against the sensitive skin.
His hands hooked under my knees, pushing them up and apart, and I felt his breath against me—hot, uneven—and understood exactly where he was going.
"No."
The word came out sharper than I intended. His head lifted, dark eyes finding mine in the dim light. A question lived in the set of his jaw.
"Not that," I breathed, my voice raw. "I want you inside me first."
Something shifted in his expression—surprise, maybe, or approval—and then he was moving, reaching for the nightstand with the kind of fluid efficiency that told me he knew exactly where everything was in the dark. His hand found the drawer, pulled it open, and came back with a small square packet.
Gold foil. Of course it was gold foil. The man who ordered takeout in Mandarin and bought books he didn't want because someone else had touched them had gold-foil condoms in his nightstand, and I should have laughed, but I couldn't because he was tearing it open with his teeth, and the sound of the foil splitting made something low in my stomach clench.
He rolled the condom on with one hand, the motion quick and practiced, and then he was over me again, his weight pressing me into the mattress, his forearm braced beside my head.
His other hand slid beneath my thigh, hitching my leg high around his hip, and the angle was obscene—I could feel the blunt head of him pressing against me, hot and insistent, and my whole body trembled.
"Look at me," he said.
I did. His eyes were black, the pupils blown so wide there was almost no brown left, and the expression on his face was something I'd never seen on anyone—hungry, wrecked, barely controlled. He looked like a man standing at the edge of something and deciding to jump.
He pushed inside me in one long, devastating stroke.