Chapter 15 #4
She pounced on him and pushed him to his back. His underwear came off much easier, bless it, and once she’d hurled it away, she straddled his hips and let herself stare.
His skin was soft and hot beneath her hands as she slid them up his sides, over his chest, along his neck.
She’d never enjoyed how bright the light was in her bedroom, and it had forever irritated her that she could see the dust that collected in corners when the intent to clean had not been as strong as the intent to eat or sleep or do a thousand more important things.
With the brightness, she could see every bit of Maxim’s body that had been hidden before now.
The flushed length of his cock demanded her attention, and it was lovely, sure, with its ruddy head and shining tip, and it jerked in the most delightful way when she brushed it with the back of her hand.
There were other parts of him that were just as satisfying to explore: the ridges of muscle above his hip bones, a faded leaf tattoo at the top of one thigh, a half dozen little moles scattered along his rib cage.
Pippa traced each part of him just like he’d done to her earlier.
And just as she had done, he lay still and let her.
His skin tensed beneath her fingers and his breath quickened as her fingers brushed his flat nipples and trailed over the coarse hair that led down the center of his stomach.
She reached the rippled skin of the scar, still pale and as large as her palm, and she stopped.
He didn’t seem to react as much to her touch here. She’d tried her best to heal it fully, yet was there still numbness? Lingering damage that she hadn’t been able to heal that day?
Pippa pressed her palm to the scar. “Why won’t you let me heal this for you?” It had happened because Maxim had been in the wrong alley at the wrong time. He had nearly died surrounded by splintered pallets and puddles of restaurant wastewater.
Maxim gripped her hand, pulling her attention out of her head and back to the fact that he was fully naked and sandwiched between her thighs.
His mouth quirked into a little half-smirk, though his eyes were serious. “Maybe I like it,” he said. “Maybe it reminds me of you.”
He let out a grunt of surprise as Pippa pounced on him again, kissing him hard enough to send them both to the mattress.
Maxim swept a hand through her hair and kept her pinned close against him as he delved between her legs once more. She moaned into his mouth, trying to buck and get him deeper, closer.
Oh, she was through with waiting. Pippa reached out to the magic surrounding the nightstand by her bed and pulled on the drawer.
Yet magic required concentration, and her current focus was on dexterous fingers and soft lips and a very firm dick currently poking at her stomach.
What she’d intended to be a gentle tug to slide the drawer open instead bloomed out of her control.
The entire drawer wrenched out of the nightstand and crashed into the opposite wall, spilling its contents across her floor.
Shit, fuck, whatever. Pippa flicked the magic and a condom flew into her hand.
Maxim peered over the edge of the bed and gave a raised eyebrow to the toy collection rolling and bouncing over the carpet.
“I thought witches didn’t use magic wands?”
“I will walk out on you.” The threat was a lot less believable when she was actively ripping open the condom wrapper.
“We’re in your home.”
“I’ll bequeath it to you. Mazel tov on your new rent, Mr. Sheppard.”
He was hard beneath her hand as she rolled the slippery latex onto his length, and his chuckle caught in his throat as a garbled groan.
Pippa rose to her knees and aligned him with her entrance, then dragged the head of his cock through the slippery mess her body had made of itself.
Her head tipped back at the beautiful pressure.
She’d put a hand on his chest to steady herself, and now she felt his breathing shudder and his heart hammer against her palm.
She eased down slightly, barely, not nearly enough.
Then again, and again, until he slid in deep.
Scalding pleasure raced up her spine at the tight fullness. She wanted to close her eyes, lose herself in every sensation. But even more than that, she wanted to watch Maxim as she took him.
He looked enraptured. According to his expression, her pussy was life, and death, and everything delicious and exquisite. Muscles jumped in his arms as he held onto her hips, and when she began to move, he said her name in a way that melted most of her body below her navel.
So Pippa moved faster, harder, her ass smacking his thighs and her breath coming in high, cracking moans. Her skin was hot and tingling and with every buck of her hips, pleasure bloomed higher and higher until it burned hot at the base of her skull.
Maxim rubbed her clit with the pad of one large thumb, and the heat crested so high she could hardly breathe. He pushed harder.
Oh . . .
There.
Her orgasm swept through her in a bright, searing wave. She cried out, holding onto Maxim’s shoulders as if he could keep her tethered. Little skittering aftershocks pulsed along her legs and through where her body stretched tight around him. Her breath slowed, and she drifted back to the room.
“That was ridiculously hot.”
Pippa let out a laugh that was more of a wheeze. “Wh— Ah, really?” She dragged a hand over her forehead. Sweat had dampened the hair by her ears and along her nape, and she felt a drop trickle between her breasts.
But when she looked down at Maxim, the level of lust in his gaze quickly evaporated any of her doubts. She bit her lip.
“So,” she said. “What do you want now?”
He sat up, leaned forward, and took her lower lip between his teeth, tugging slightly and making her gasp. His chuckle sounded far too self-satisfied.
“I want to fuck you, Pippa,” he murmured. “I want to fuck you hard.”
“Well I’d really like that too, but I’d also like to know if we’re already doing away with the ‘shuck’ joke, or—“
She let out a squeak as he fluidly rolled them over. His hips slid along her thighs and his weight pressed her into the mattress. He guided himself back into her and started to thrust slowly, building his pace until he was drilling into her and fully driving the thoughts out of Pippa’s head.
His sweat-slicked skin moved between her knees and slipped under her hands. She tasted salt on her tongue when she sucked his neck, then reveled in the way he groaned as if he were falling apart in the best way.
“I need you to come again.” His voice was a desperate, broken growl.
“I need that too,” Pippa panted, reaching down to her clit.
“Do you know how much I’ve thought about you coming on my cock?”
She wasn’t capable of much more than an inquisitive sounding whimper, so she did that, though she did touch herself harder.
“So many times. Too many times. And now I’ve felt it, I can’t get enough. I want you to come until you can’t stand.” He was beginning to sound breathless. “I want— I want you to be exhausted and sweaty and . . . filthy. Then I want to clean you up and— Fuck, fuck, just start all over again.”
Oh stars. Pippa quickened her fingers into brutal strokes as her orgasm crept up slowly through her toes, then sent her careening off the edge.
This one was bigger than the first. Lights danced behind her eyelids and she cried out, arching her back against the bed.
She squeezed her legs around Maxim’s hips to keep him close, keep him deep, and every one of his merciless thrusts drove her even higher.
She was weightless and breathless and bodiless.
Maxim slowed. As the fog cleared from her senses and the ringing faded from her ears, she realized she’d been digging her nails into his back.
There was a red welt on his shoulder where—oops—she’d bitten him without realizing.
If he’d noticed, it didn’t seem like he was about to say anything.
The hard fuck had become something else.
He cradled the back of her head and gripped her thigh, holding her leg high against him as he rocked into her.
He let out a shuddering sigh that tickled her neck. “You feel— Shit, you feel incredible.”
That spicy, herb-y sensation of his aura surrounded her in a comforting haze. It was strange, in a way, to simultaneously feel so at peace, so connected with someone, and wholly out of her mind with arousal. Or maybe this was what happened when you said “I love you” and meant it.
“Maxim,” she whispered, and he rose up high enough so he could meet her gaze. His weight was braced on his straightened arms and it did some distracting things to muscles now just out of reach of her mouth.
She wanted to say something perfectly sweet or outrageously hot, but when she saw his flushed cheeks and kiss-swollen lips and rumpled hair, she ended with, “I love making a mess out of you.”
Well, that was kind of both.
He huffed a laugh through a crooked grin. “You’re very good at it.” Then he began to move again, kissing her jaw, her neck, his breath hot puffs against her skin.
Every nerve in Pippa’s body still buzzed from her orgasms. With each of Maxim’s thrusts, the parts of her that were tight and tender and aching grew hotter, brighter.
She was unfurling. Dissolving. Her jaw ached from being caught around her silent scream, and she arched into him and held onto his arms so that she wouldn’t completely shake herself apart.
Maxim’s pace grew more rapid and a guttural groan rumbled in his chest when she clenched around him. His eyebrows were drawn down and—oh, there—the tic in his jaw. The tic that meant he was holding himself back somehow, trying as hard as he could to keep it all together.
Exactly the opposite of what she wanted.
Pippa pulled him down to her, then pressed a kiss to that tic. It pulsed beneath her lips and her tongue before she brought her mouth to his ear and whispered, “Give it to me, Sheppard.”
His exhale began as one of surrender, then twisted and shuddered into a low groan.
He pounded into her with a vigor that set her breasts bouncing and the bed frame rattling against the wall.
When he came this time, it was louder than she’d expected: a broken, choked cry let out without the worry of being overheard.
They lay together after, Pippa sprawled on top and her sweaty cheek pressed to Maxim’s sweaty chest. She lifted her head to look at him.
Maxim’s eyes were closed, his long blond eyelashes resting flush against his cheekbones. The corners of his mouth twitched after a second as if he could feel her watching him.
“I’m not sleeping,” he said, a little defensively.
“You could if you wanted to.” Pippa settled her hand flat on his sternum and rested her chin on her knuckles. “I wouldn’t think any less of you for needing a nap after fucking my brains out.”
Maxim gave a soft laugh. He shifted beneath her, settling with one arm bent behind his head and the other slung over her back. His fingers traced light circles around her shoulder blades.
“I don’t need a nap. A breather, maybe. A short moment of respite.”
Pippa couldn’t hold back her smile. “A moment of respite? What era have you traveled to? Are you going to besmirch my reputation next?”
“I’ve been expanding my literary cuisine.”
“Incredible.” She rose onto her elbows. “You know, if you’re suddenly into historicals, I do have this book about a duke you might be interested in reading.”
“How do you know I haven’t read it already?”
Pippa scoffed. “Right.”
Maxim continued, his expression serious. “You don’t know what I skimmed when I was desperately trying to sleep on your couch.” He gave her ass a swift, soft smack, and Pippa yipped in surprise.
A little part of her said that she should get dressed and check around the apartment complex for any lurking demons.
But not right now. The bed was soft, the warm man beneath her silently begging her to test his refractory period.
Probably. She’d oblige in any case. The outside world, with its horror and danger, seemed far, far away.
Pippa pressed a kiss to his chest. Soft at first, but as soon as she tasted his skin, she wanted more. She flicked her tongue along the plane of one pectoral, then glanced up to see his eyebrows raised and an amused smirk crinkling the corners of his eyes.
“It’s the strangest thing,” Maxim said dryly, “but I swear your intentions right now are less than honorable.”
Pippa smiled against him, then began a slow path down his body. “Let’s get filthy.”
They collapsed into the bed eventually when exhaustion and contentment proved more overwhelming than the need to make new discoveries, several of which included Pippa’s toy drawer.
Pippa hummed contentedly and shimmied closer to Maxim. She couldn’t properly move her legs anymore, and her head felt packed with warm, downy fuzz.
They’d given themselves a hasty cleanup, then crawled beneath the covers together, Maxim’s arm draped over Pippa’s waist and her ass pressed tight to his stomach. His breathing had already slowed and he made a sleepy, snuffling sound against her hair. This was perfect. Everything was perfect.
She smiled into her pillow and fell into a sleep so deep she didn’t even smell the smoke when it came.