Chapter Twenty-Three #3
He cupped her breasts, his thumbs tracing over the stiff peaks of her nipples, and only then did he draw back, his eyes falling to admire the impression of what he was being permitted to do, of how pleasing it looked, at how right.
“I am ready,” she whispered to him. “Rhys.”
He inhaled carefully, the air stuttering and ragged as he drew it in, and without ceasing his touching, lifted his eyes to meet hers and nodded.
He kissed her again, harder this time, and she felt his fingers drift down along her body to cup her between the legs, as though he wanted to be absolutely certain before he did anything else.
When he found her wet and swollen, a groan tore from his chest, his hips stuttering forward in response as his fingers tested at her entrance.
All of it would have been delicious to observe, even from a distance. Being beneath it, inside of it, was so overwhelming that Seph was finding it difficult to keep her eyes open. She had only ever touched herself in that spot with curious and tentative brushes.
Rhys touched her firmly, steadily, like he knew exactly what she needed. His fingers had always been nimble, but in this moment, they verged on actual magic.
She squirmed, her body rocking into this exploration and murmuring pleas for more escaping her lips all of their own accord.
Each syllable seemed to shatter him, his body trembling in the places where it touched hers, until he could resist no longer and shifted his weight backward, taking his hand away from her to wrap it around his erection.
“Yes?” he said once more, dragging the feel of him against her entrance, giving her a taste without taking fully. “Now?”
“Yes,” she agreed, shifting forward so that she took him in, just a little, out of nothing but pure bodily instinct. It made them both gasp. “Now,” she managed, lifting her arms and digging her fingers into his hair. “Now.”
He used the heel of his hand to anchor her hip, his fingers still damp from the evidence of their want grazing against the dip of her waist. He eased into her, excruciatingly careful and slow, those burning, green eyes alert and locked on her, despite the difficulty she was having in keeping her own eyes open.
He did not seem to mind. If her lashes fluttered, he still watched. He still drank in her face as he claimed her, inch by inch, until their bodies were slotted fully together, joined completely.
She could feel his heartbeat inside her. Could feel every thrum of his pulse through this new connection, this sharing of their very being.
He gazed down at their connected bodies as he began to move, seeming to admire the look of it, memorizing the ways they changed each other.
She would have looked, too, if she hadn’t been afloat in sensation, in the feeling of being part of one another and the satisfaction of having the ache that had been tormenting her, that had simmered and roiled in Rhys’s presence for all her life, finally, finally addressed.
The feel of his skin under her palms and fingers was electric. The scent of the soap in their hair and the soft lavender of the linens around them seemed to blossom and engulf her. Even the sound their joining made was delicious, rhythmic, and lush.
He leaned backward, transferring his weight onto his heels as he pulled her with him, lifting off her so that he could trace his fingers over her exposed body as he moved, so he could access the very site of their union if he wished.
And it seemed that he did wish that.
She watched between her lashes, fascinated and drunk on the pleasure of it as he stroked around her entrance with his thumbs, without a single shake or faltering in his rhythmic pumping.
“Oh!” she gasped, her back arching off the mattress as he pressed just in the center, like he knew all the secrets of her body that she had never been told. “Oh, God!”
The last thing she saw was the flash of his grin, his teeth glowing in the low light as he coaxed her over the sheer drop to madness with those fingers of his, with that body of his, with everything that made him who he was.
Hers. He was finally hers.
And she came apart with that knowledge, that final triumphant realization, her legs seizing around his hips and her fingers digging into the sheets at her sides. It was a burst of color and light and utter, mind-breaking relief that stole her breath away.
In the spasms that followed, the languid, helpless flop of her limbs as she felt the Earth return to its rightful place, she felt his mouth dropping soft kisses on hers, his hands stroking her hair, and his voice murmuring in her ear, telling her how well she’d done, how beautiful she was, how perfect.
Later, Rhys would explain to her that watching her reach her own pleasure had brought him to his own. That he had spilled between her thighs and against her sex because it had happened so suddenly and with so much force that he’d barely had time to react.
For now, he only kissed her and held her.
And when she could breathe again, he retreated from the bed to get her a warm towel and clean her body and his own before wrapping them in sheets and blankets and arms and dousing the lantern for good.