10. The Breaking Point #2
I lean into her palm. My eyes close. My forehead drops until it rests against hers, and I breathe — not the shallow, panicked breaths of thirty seconds ago, but the deep, uneven breathing of a man who is allowing himself, for the first time in memory, to be held.
Her other hand comes up. Both palms on my face now.
She holds me the way I held her against the hallway wall — but different.
Not desperate. Not furious. Tender. Patient.
The hold of a woman who understands that the man in front of her is more afraid than he has ever been, and who is choosing to stand in the fire with him instead of stepping back.
I kiss her.
Not like the hallway. Not yet. This begins quietly — my mouth against hers, barely moving, breathing more than kissing.
A question asked with my lips and answered by the slight pressure of hers.
She tastes like coffee. Like warmth. Like the one thing in my entire kingdom I didn't earn and don't deserve.
Then she opens her mouth.
Her tongue touches mine and the silence ends.
I pull her against me — hard, sudden, my hands dropping to her waist, lifting her off the floor. She wraps around me — legs locked at the small of my back, her arms around my neck, her mouth on mine, devouring and being devoured. The coffee mug clatters into the sink. Neither of us flinches.
I carry her out of the kitchen. Through the hallway.
Her mouth drops to my neck — teeth and tongue against the tendon that runs along my jaw — and my knees nearly give out.
I press her against the hallway wall to catch my balance.
She grinds against my stomach. The heat of her through her jeans brands my skin.
"Upstairs," she whispers against my ear. "Your room."
The stairs. I take them two at a time with her weight in my arms and the taste of her still on my tongue and I don't stop until we reach my door.
"If you walk through this door," I say, "I won't be able to go back to pretending this is just a contract."
She holds my gaze. No wall. No armor.
"I've been sure since the garden," she whispers.
I carry her through.
The door shuts and everything becomes urgent.
I set her down. We stand chest to chest, breathing hard.
She reaches for my shirt and her fingers work the buttons with a ferocity that pops the third one clean off — it pings against the hardwood and neither of us cares.
She shoves the fabric off my shoulders. Her eyes drop to the scar on my ribs.
Her palm flattens against it — warm, certain, possessive.
"Does it still hurt?" she asks.
"No," I say. It's both a lie and the truth.
I pull her tank top over her head. She lifts her arms and she's not wearing a bra and the sight of her — the warm olive of her skin in the amber light, the swell of her breasts, her nipples hard and dark — empties my mind of everything except the urgent need to have my mouth on her.
I push her back against the wall.
Not gently. The impact punches a gasp from her and her eyes go wide and dark and her tongue wets her lower lip and the look on her face — surprised, aroused, hungry — is the look of a woman who didn't know she wanted this until it was happening.
I pin her wrists above her head. One hand holding both. She tests the grip — not to escape, but to feel it. Her back arches off the wall, pressing her bare chest against mine.
"Is this okay?" I ask.
"If you let go, I'll kill you."
My mouth finds her throat. Not softly. I drag my teeth along the tendon, then suck the skin hard enough to mark.
She hisses — the sound traveling through her ribs and into mine — and her hips rock forward, seeking contact.
I give it to her. I press my thigh between her legs and the pressure makes her moan — a low, throaty sound that I feel in my cock like a physical touch.
She grinds against my thigh. Slow at first, then faster — riding the muscle through her jeans, her breathing turning ragged, her wrists twisting in my grip not to get free but because she needs somewhere to put the tension building in her body.
I release her wrists. Her hands fly to my belt. She unbuckles it with a speed that makes it clear she's been thinking about this — maybe not today, maybe for weeks — and drags my zipper down. Her hand pushes inside my briefs and wraps around me and my whole body jerks forward.
She grips me — firm, certain, no hesitation — and strokes once, base to tip.
My vision whites at the edges. She does it again.
Her thumb finds the slick head and smears the wetness there and the sound that falls from my mouth is not a word.
It's not a sound I've ever made. It's the noise a man makes when the last thing holding him together finally gives.
I grab her hand. Pull it away. She makes a sound of protest but I'm already dropping — not to my knees, not yet — I'm undoing her jeans, dragging them down her legs with her underwear in one rough pull. She kicks free. I spin her around.
She faces the wall. Her palms flat against it, her back arched, her breathing fast and sharp. I press against her from behind — my chest against her shoulder blades, my cock hard against the curve of her ass, my mouth at her ear.
"Tell me what you want," I say. Low. Into her hair.
"You know what I want."
"I want to hear you say it."
"I want your hands on me." Her voice shakes. Not from fear. "I want you to stop thinking and just — touch me."
I reach around her body. My hand slides down her stomach — flat, taut, the muscles jumping under my fingers — and between her legs.
She's soaked. The slickness coats my fingers instantly and the feel of it — hot, abundant, the physical proof that she's been wanting this as desperately as I have — makes a groan roll up from my chest.
I part her with two fingers. Find her clit with my middle finger and circle it — firm, direct, no teasing, not tonight. She slams her palm against the wall. Her hips buck back against my cock, then forward into my hand, caught between two points of contact, chasing both.
I work her from behind — my fingers stroking her clit in fast, tight circles while my other arm wraps across her chest, holding her against me, my mouth on the side of her neck.
I can feel every response in real time — the way her thighs shake, the way her breathing dissolves into fragments, the way she pushes back against me harder and harder, grinding her ass against my cock while my fingers drive her toward the edge.
"Matteo — God — I'm —"
"I know." I can feel it. The way her body tightens, the way her clit pulses under my fingers, the way her inner muscles clench around nothing, desperate to be filled.
I slide two fingers inside her from behind. She cries out — sharp, stunned — and I curl them forward and stroke the swollen spot on her front wall while my thumb takes over her clit, pressing and circling in tandem. My mouth stays at her ear; I want to hear every sound up close.
"Let go," I say.
She does.
Her orgasm hits hard and sudden — her body clenching around my fingers, her forehead pressed against the wall, a broken shout muffled against her own forearm.
I feel it in waves — the rhythmic grip of her around my fingers, the full-body shudder, the way her legs give out and I have to hold her up with the arm banded across her chest. I don't stop until the last tremor fades and she's sagging in my arms, boneless and breathing in sobs.
I turn her to face me. Her eyes are glazed.
Her lips are swollen. She looks wrecked and gorgeous.
She grabs my wrist — the hand that was just inside her — and brings my fingers to her mouth.
She holds my gaze and sucks them clean. Slowly.
Deliberately. The wet heat of her tongue, the taste of herself that she's choosing to take — the act is so brazen, so completely her, that my cock throbs hard enough to hurt.
Then she pulls me to her and kisses me — deep, filthy, the taste of her still on her tongue transferring to mine — and whatever was left of my ability to think rationally catches fire and burns.
"Bed," she says. Her voice is hoarse. "Now."
We crash onto the mattress.
Not gracefully. I fall back onto the mattress and she follows — standing at the edge of the bed, her hands hooking into my trousers and briefs where they're still bunched at my hips.
She drags them down and off in one pull, tossing them aside without looking.
Then she climbs over me, and instead of straddling my hips she slides down my body — her mouth dragging a line from my chest to my stomach to the trail of hair below my navel — and before I can process what's happening her hand wraps around the base of my cock and her mouth closes over the head.
My spine arches off the bed.
She's not tentative. She sucks me with a confidence that suggests she's been thinking about this — the weight of me on her tongue, the way her lips stretch around my girth, the hollow of her cheeks as she pulls up and the devastating pressure as she sinks back down.
Her tongue works the underside in flat, firm strokes.
Her hand twists at the base in rhythm with her mouth.
I fist the sheets. My jaw locks. Every muscle in my body pulls taut.
She takes me deeper — I feel the back of her throat and the gag reflex she swallows through and the obscene, wet sounds of her mouth working me — and I understand, distantly, that I'm losing this battle.
That if she doesn't stop in the next ten seconds, I'm going to come down her throat, and I don't want that. Not tonight. Not the first time.
I reach down. My hand cups the side of her face — not pulling, not pushing. Just there. She looks up at me. Her lips stretched around my cock, her eyes dark and wild, a string of spit connecting her mouth to me when she pulls off.
"Come here," I say. My voice is destroyed.