Chapter 23 #3
My hands find her waist. Her coat is still on and I need it off, need the barrier gone. I push it from her shoulders without breaking the kiss and she lets it fall, helps it fall, shrugs out of it while her mouth stays on mine.
Her fingers work the buttons of my shirt. Not gracefully. Two of them stick. She makes a frustrated sound against my lips that goes directly to my cock.
"Having trouble?" My voice is rough.
"Your buttons are hostile."
I pull the shirt over my head. Faster.
She laughs into my mouth and the vibration of it travels through my entire body like a current.
Her hands flatten against my bare chest. The contact after three weeks of deprivation sends a jolt through me so acute my muscles lock.
Twenty-one days since I felt her warmth against my skin. Twenty-one days of calls and texts and the slow, maddening accumulation of wanting her with nowhere to put it.
"Jane—"
She pushes me backward. Not gently. My calves hit the edge of the bed and I sit. She stands between my knees, looking down at me. Her hair is falling across her face. Her breathing is faster now—I can see her pulse in the hollow of her throat, rapid, visible.
She pulls her shirt over her head.
I stop breathing.
She reaches behind herself. Unhooks her bra. Let’s it drop.
I reach up. Both hands.
She inhales sharply. Her hands fly to my wrists—not to stop me. To hold me there.
"I've been thinking about these." My thumbs move. Slow circles. Feeling her respond.
"Get on the bed," she says.
I obey.
Because the look on her face—that look, certain and wanting and completely unguarded—tells me this is her taking something for herself.
And it’s the sexiest thing I've ever seen.
She climbs on top of me. Straddles my hips. Her weight settles against me and the pressure of her body on mine after three weeks of aching for it makes my hands grip the sheets.
"You've been patient," she says. Her palms slide up my stomach. Over my ribs. Mapping me. Remembering me.
"I've been losing my mind."
"Good." She leans down. Her mouth brushes my ear. "Me too."
I grip her hips. Pull her tighter against me. The friction makes us both gasp—her grinding down involuntarily, me pushing up without deciding to.
"Off," I manage. My hands find the waistband of her jeans.
"Demanding."
"Jane. Off. Now."
She rolls beside me long enough to strip the rest of her clothes. I do the same. Seconds. Clumsy. A knee collides with a hip. Neither of us cares.
Then she's back on top of me—bare skin, warm, real, the full weight of her pressing me into the mattress.
"Costco box," she says against my mouth.
She reaches. Finds it. Tears the cardboard with impressive decisiveness and pulls one out. I watch her roll it on—steady hands, slightly trembling fingers, the precise coordination of a woman who is determined and very, very ready.
"Look at you," I manage.
"Don't talk." She positions herself. Her thighs bracket my hips. I can feel how much she wants this, the wet heat of her as she lines up.
The sensation of it alone makes my jaw clench.
"Jane—"
"I said don't talk."
She sinks down. Slowly. Taking me inch by inch with her eyes locked on mine the entire way.
Tight. Hot. The grip of her body around me pulling a groan from somewhere below my lungs.
"Oh—" She breathes. Adjusts. Shifts her hips. "You feel—"
She doesn't finish. She doesn't need to. I can read it on her face—the stretch, the overwhelm of taking all of me again after twenty-one days without. Her eyes flutter. Her lips part. The flush moving up her chest already.
"Take your time."
"I am not taking my time." She rolls her hips. Both of us make sounds that would alarm hotel staff. "I missed you too much."
Then she rides me.
This woman moves with confidence and hunger and the rhythm of someone who learned exactly what she likes and is going after it.
My hands grip her hips. Thumbs pressing into the soft flesh above her hipbones, guiding her rhythm, pulling her down harder on every downstroke.
The slap of her body against mine. The sounds she makes—low, involuntary, my name threaded through all of it.
"There—yes—" Her head falls back. The line of her throat catches the mountain light through the glass.
I sit up. Her legs wrap tighter. My mouth finds her neck. Her collarbone. The spot below her ear where she shivers every time.
"I missed us," I say against her skin. The words come out rough. Stripped of any performance. "Every day. Every hour.”
"Show me."
I flip her.
She gasps—sharp, startled.
"West—"
"I need to feel you." I push into her again, deeper than the angle above allowed, and the sound she makes drives into the base of my spine. "Let me feel you."
Her legs wrap around my waist. Her nails bite into my back—the specific sting of Jane Cooper holding on—and I drive deeper.
She meets me. Thrust for thrust. Her hips lifting to take more of me, her body demanding exactly what I'm giving her.
"Right there—don't change—"
I don't change. I give her exactly what she asked for. Deep. Hard. Steady. My hand slides between us. Finds her clit. Circles.
"West—I'm—"
"Yes, baby." I can feel it. The way she's tightening around me. The trembling in her thighs. The particular tension that means she's close and climbing.
"Cedar Falls," she gasps.
My hand stills.
"What?"
Yes.”
Her eyes open and lock on mine as I continue to drive into her—bright, clear, absolutely certain.
“Yes to Cedar Falls. Yes to this. Yes to all of it—”
"Yes!"
The word rips out of me—raw, unguarded, the most undisciplined sound I have ever made in my life.
She comes. Hard. Her whole body seizes beneath me, back arching clean off the mattress, hands gripping my shoulders so hard I'll have crescents in my skin tomorrow.
The rhythmic, devastating clench of her around me is immediate and complete—pulling, squeezing, claiming every part of me at once, dragging me over the edge seconds later.
I bury my face against her neck and groan her name. Jane. Jane.
Not controlled. Not composed. Just hers.
We lie there.
Both breathing hard. Still tangled. The mountain view unchanged in the window.
Her fingers trace lazy patterns on my back. Over the marks she just left.
"I said yes during—" She starts laughing. Can't stop. "I literally said yes to relocation during—"
"No take-backs." I warn.
"It was a contractual agreement made under extreme duress—"
"It still counts."
She laughs harder. Her whole body shakes underneath me.
I pull back enough to see her properly.
Her face is flushed. Her eyes are the color of whiskey, and I’m drunk in them. She looks like a woman who just said yes to a new life while coming apart in a Cedar Falls penthouse and has absolutely zero regrets about either.
She pushes my hair off my forehead. Begins pressing small, deliberate kisses to my face—my jaw, my cheekbone, my nose, the corner of my mouth—with the focused attention of someone cataloguing something they intend to keep.
I love it.
I love her.
"You need to sign that contract," she says.
I start to laugh.
"I'm serious. There's a start date, West. July first. You need to call whoever handles that and sign it before they give the job to someone less—"
"Less what?"
"Less annoyingly qualified."
I roll onto my back. She tucks against my side immediately—automatic, her head finding the space below my shoulder, her hand settling on my chest.
My hand finds her back. Slow circles. She’s warmer than I remembered. Better than three weeks of memory.
“I love you so much, Jane Cooper.”
She's quiet for a moment.
Outside, Cedar Falls sits in February gold, unhurried and warm and not going anywhere.
Then, against my chest, quiet enough that it’s only for me:
"I know. I love you too. Now call them."
I close my eyes.
Sign the contract.
Choose her.
Both feel exactly right.