12. Heather #2
“I spent ten years married to a man who made me feel invisible.” I hold his gaze. “You’ve made me feel seen since the moment you handed me a coffee with oat milk and two sugars, stirred counterclockwise. I’m not here because of Kirk. I’m here because of you.”
Something shifts in his expression. The last of his doubt draining away, replaced by something that looks a lot like hope.
“Say it again.”
“I’m here because of you.”
“Again.”
“I’m here-”
He kisses me before I can finish.
This kiss is different from the others. There’s no hesitation in it, no careful restraint. He kisses me like he’s drowning and I’m air. Like he’s been holding his breath for six years and finally, finally, he can exhale.
His hands slide into my hair, cupping the back of my skull, angling my head exactly where he wants it. I moan against his mouth and he swallows the sound, his tongue sliding against mine, tasting me, claiming me.
“Bed,” I gasp when we break apart. “Now.”
“Not yet.”
“Grayson-”
“I told you.” He backs me toward the window, the cold glass pressing against my bare shoulders. “I’ve been thinking about this for six years. I’m not rushing it.”
His mouth finds my throat, and I forget how to argue.
The glass is cold against my skin, a sharp contrast to the heat of his mouth as he kisses a path down my neck, across my collarbone, along the lace edge of my bra. His hands find the clasp at my back, and then that’s gone too, falling to the floor somewhere I can’t see.
“Tell me to stop,” he says against my breast.
“No.”
“Tell me this is a mistake.”
“It probably is.”
“Then tell me you don’t want this.”
I catch his belt and pull him against me, pressing myself into the evidence of how much he wants me.
“I’m done lying to you.”
His groan vibrates against my skin. He drops to his knees in front of me, and the sight of him there - this powerful, controlled man, kneeling at my feet like I’m something worth worshipping - makes my knees go weak.
“I’ve imagined this too,” he murmurs, hooking his fingers in the waistband of my underwear. “You, against a window. The whole city below us. No one able to see, but you feeling like everyone’s watching.”
“Grayson-”
“I’ve imagined making you fall apart right here.” He presses a kiss to my hip bone, then lower, his breath hot through the thin fabric. “Making you come so hard you have to grip the glass to stay standing.”
“Please-”
“Please what?”
“Please stop talking and - oh-”
He pulls the lace aside and puts his mouth on me, and I stop thinking entirely.
The first orgasm hits me before I’m ready for it.
One moment I’m standing there, my hands scrabbling for purchase against the smooth glass, and the next I’m shaking apart, his name falling from my lips like something holy.
He doesn’t stop - doesn’t even slow down - just works me through it with his tongue and his fingers until I’m gasping, oversensitive, nearly sobbing.
“That’s one,” he says against my thigh.
“One?”
“I told you.” He rises to his feet, his mouth finding mine so I can taste myself on his lips. “I’m taking my time.”
“I don’t think I can-”
“You can.” He lifts me like I weigh nothing, my legs wrapping around his waist automatically. “You can and you will.”
He carries me to the bed.
He lays me out on the white sheets like I’m something precious, something worth savoring. The city lights stream through the window, painting stripes of gold across the bed, across my body, across his face as he kneels between my thighs.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, and the word sounds different in his mouth. Not a compliment - a fact. An observation. Something he’s cataloged and filed away along with all the other details he’s been collecting for six years.
“So are you.”
He laughs - a real laugh, surprised out of him. “Men aren’t beautiful.”
“You are.” I reach up, tracing the line of his jaw, the curve of his cheekbone. “You have the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. I noticed that the first time we really looked at each other, on the terrace. I thought - this is a man who knows what it feels like to be alone in a marriage.”
His breath catches.
“I was alone,” he says quietly. “For eight years. Even when she was lying right next to me, I was alone.”
“You’re not alone now.”
“No.” He turns his head, pressing a kiss to my palm. “I’m not.”
Then he’s lowering himself over me, and the weight of him - solid, warm, real - is the best thing I’ve ever felt.
“I need you,” I whisper. “Please, Grayson. I need-”
“I know.” He reaches between us, positioning himself, and I feel him right there, right at the edge of everything. “I know what you need.”
He slides into me in one long, slow stroke.
The stretch. The fullness. The overwhelming rightness of him exactly where I’ve needed him for weeks.
My body opens around him like it’s been waiting for this - for him - and I feel it everywhere. Not just where we’re joined, but radiating outward: through my stomach, my chest, my throat. My eyes sting. My fingers dig into his shoulders. I can’t tell if I want to laugh or cry or both.
“God-” His forehead drops to mine, and his voice is wrecked. “Heather-”
“I know.” I can barely speak. “I know.”
He starts to move, and the sensation whites out my brain.
I’ve had sex before. Obviously. Ten years of marriage, and Kirk wasn’t celibate. But it was never - it didn’t feel-
This.
Kirk treated sex like a transaction. Something to be completed efficiently, his pleasure the goal, mine an afterthought if it was a thought at all. I learned to perform enjoyment, to make the right sounds at the right times, to lie still afterward and wonder if that was really all there was.
This is nothing like that.
Every stroke sends sparks cascading through my nerve endings.
I can feel him everywhere: the weight of him pressing me into the mattress, the heat of his skin against mine, the way his breath catches every time he pushes deeper.
My hips rise to meet him without conscious thought, chasing something I can’t name, something that’s been building since the first time he touched the small of my back.
“Look at me.” His voice is rough, commanding. “I want to see you.”
I open eyes I didn’t realize I’d closed, and his face is inches from mine. Sweat at his temples. Jaw clenched with restraint. Eyes so dark they’re almost black, and fixed on me like I’m the only thing in the universe.