Aubrey
Iclose the suite door behind us and keep my hand on the knob.
"This isn't pity," I say. "I mean it. I'm not anyone's pity hookup. I'm not the viral girl you make feel better because strangers on the internet watched me baby-talk a cat."
Linden stops three feet inside the room.
The suite has a couch, lamps, a table, and a bed visible through an open doorway. I can't imagine eating cereal over a sink here.
His jacket is still on. His shirt is open at the collar. The pink scratches across the backs of his hands look narrower than they did yesterday, but still a bit on the painful side.
He looks at me without moving closer. "If I wanted to be kind, I'd send you downstairs with a car and an apology."
My fingers tighten on the knob.
He says, "I don't want to be kind."
Oh.
Okay.
My knees give a little.
"I want your mouth," he says. "I want my hands on your hips. I want you naked in that bed, making sounds you're going to pretend you didn't make. There's nothing charitable about it."
My brain briefly flatlines.
"You practiced that?" I ask.
His eyes are full of hunger. "No."
"Concerning," I try.
"Hardly." He steps closer, slow enough that I can stop him.
I don't.
The room is too quiet, and I'm all too aware of my skin under the hoodie, the T-shirt, and the tank underneath, all my practical layers suddenly too much.
He reaches past me and turns the lock.
The click goes through me.
"Still here?" he asks.
"Yes."
"Say it properly."
My face gets hot. "Yes, Linden."
His name on my lips changes his face. Barely.
Enough.
He leans in and kisses me.
He doesn't test. He doesn't give me a polite first press or a careful second where we both pretend this is still undecided. His hand cups the side of my neck, thumb under my jaw, and his mouth takes mine like he's done pretending he hasn't wanted this for hours.
I make an extremely dignified sound.
Half gasp, half startled bird.
He backs me into the door, not hard, but just enough that the knob nudges my lower back. His other hand lands at my hip over my hoodie, his fingers spread and pressing through the layers to me underneath.
My hands go to his shirt. His chest is solid under it. He's so much larger up close.
He breaks the kiss first. "Take off the coat."
"I'm not wearing a coat," I counter.
"The jacket. Hoodie. Whatever you want to call it."
I don't move. "Wow."
"Take it off, Aubrey." The command is simple. No raised voice. No theater. He says it as if my body already knows what to do and he's only reminding it.
My body likes the reminder.
I unzip my hoodie. My hands aren't shaking. I'd some like credit for this...
I shrug out of it, and he takes it from me, folds it once, and puts it over the back of a chair.
"Don't be neat," I say. "It's unnerving."
"I'm trying not to ruin it. Saving all my energy for ruining you."
My stomach flips.
His fingers find the hem of my T-shirt. He lifts it over my head.
The tank stays, clinging across my stomach and chest. I should be used to my own body.
I live in it. I haul laundry bags, carriers, supply bins, and other people's crises with it.
Still, standing in a hotel suite with a gorgeous man who looks at me like he has no interest in being casual, I want to make the joke before he can have the thought.
"I come with a middle," I say. "Full disclosure. Very limited return policy."
His hand stills at my waist.
Crap.
Wrong joke. Bad joke. Emergency exit, please.
His gaze drops to my stomach, then comes back to my face. "Don't do that."
My throat tightens. "Do what?"
"Hand me a knife and call it humor," he exclaims.
Well then.
He takes the bottom of my tank between both hands and pauses.
I could say no.
I don't.
He pulls the tank up and off.
The air hits my skin. My instinct is to turn toward the bathroom, or grab my shirt, or start explaining bras, belly, thighs, gravity...
Linden doesn't let me run my mouth. "Stay there."
My feet stay planted.
He studies me. My full stomach. My heavy breasts. The curve of my hips. The scar on my left wrist.
"Fuck," he says.
"Good oh-shit or emergency oh-shit?" I ask.
His eyes come back to mine. "Aubrey." His voice is thick with want.
"Right," I tell him. "Shutting up."
"Don't." He steps close enough that his shirt brushes my bare chest. "I like your mouth."
"My mouth is a public nuisance," I quip.
"That's why I like it." He kisses me again.
One hand settles high on my back. The other slides over my side, then lower to the outside of my thigh. His hand stays steady when he finds softness, and he keeps me right where I am.
"Bedroom," he says against my mouth.
We make it to the bedroom with only one minor collision involving my tote, his shoe, and my dignity. The bed is already turned down.
I sit on the edge of the mattress to take off my boots.
Linden crouches in front of me before I get the second zipper down. "I've got it."
"You do footwear?" I ask.
In answer, he takes my ankle in one hand. His hand is huge around the back of my heel, but careful. He eases the boot off and sets it by the bed. Then the other. His thumbs press briefly into the arches of my feet, and I almost make another embarrassing noise.
He looks up.
"No," I say. "Don't file that away."
"Filed." He stands and strips off his jacket, then his belt, shirt, and shoes.
He comes back to me, and I scoot backward on the bed. A mistake. Now I'm on display, bare from the waist up, pants still on, hair coming loose from its sad bun. He puts one knee on the mattress, and the bed dips under his weight.
"Lie back," he says.
I do.
This is alarming. I have opinions. I have policies.
Yet this man says two words and my body says, Sure, seems legitimate.
He follows me down but doesn't cover me. His mouth goes to my neck, then my collarbone, then lower. He takes one breast in his hand, his palm warm, thumb moving over my nipple until my back lifts off the mattress. I whimper.
"That," he says.
"What?" I ask.
"That sound."
I pause. "I didn't make a sound."
"You did."
Then his mouth closes over my nipple and that whimper comes again from my lips.
I grab at his shoulder. He uses his teeth lightly, then his tongue, then repeats it on the other side until I'm gripping him with both hands.
He opens my pants and draws them down my legs. The rest of my clothing goes with them, and then I'm naked on a bed with a man whose last name I don't know staring at my pussy like he's lost his mind.
I try to close my thighs.
His hands catch my knees. "Open."
My whole body goes hot. "Linden."
"Open for me," he declares.
I should bristle. I do, a little. My mouth gets ready with a smart answer about manners.
My thighs part.
His eyes go right to my pussy again.
"Oh, fuck." His grip on my knees changes. "You're soaking wet."
Then his mouth is on me.
I slap a hand over my own mouth, which is deeply stupid because we're alone and the whole point is sex, but my body has chosen panic etiquette. Linden stops immediately.
"Hand down," he says. "I want to hear you. If you need quiet, tell me. If you're hiding, hand down."
My hand lowers.
"Good girl."
Good girl.
Good girl?
Oh no.
My pussy clenches on nothing, and he sees that. He absolutely sees it. His mouth goes still, and my stomach pulls tight.
"There she is," he says.
I'd like to crawl under the bed right about now.
But all thoughts vanish when his tongue finds my clit. And he works it. I mean, really works it.
I'm already close to begging. He takes his time with his mouth, learning pressure and rhythm, holding my thighs open when they try to close around his head.
Every time I get close, he changes something. Slows. Pulls away to kiss my hip. Uses his fingers on the outside of my pussy, spreading wetness, not giving me enough.
"Linden," I beg.
"Hm."
"Please," I beg.
His finger circles my clit, light enough to make me furious. "Ask properly."
When I don't, he stops.
My hips chase his hand.
"Ask," he says again. His mouth returns to my thigh, close enough that I feel the heat of him. "Ask me to make you cum."
Nope.
Absolutely not.
"Please," I say, barely.
"Please what?"
I stare at the ceiling. No help there.
"Let me cum," I say.
"Look at me," he commands.
I look down.
His eyes hold mine as he puts his mouth back on my clit. Two fingers slide into my pussy, slow and thick, and I grab the bedding with both hands. He curls them, searching. The first press is good. The second makes my hips lift.
He pauses there.
"Oh my god," I exclaim.
"Yes." He strokes that spot again, steady now, his mouth working my clit. "Give it to me."
I break.
Hard.
My thighs strain against his hands and my voice does this weird yodeling thing as I cum. I'm whimpering and gasping through the aftershocks, but he just keeps going and going until finally I push at his forehead because my clit is becoming too sensitive.
He lifts his head.
His mouth is soaking wet.
I shouldn't stare at his mouth.
I stare at his mouth.
God I want to lick myself off him so bad.
Is that gross?
Probably. But I want it.
"Again," he says.
"I— I'm not sure I have another one in me."
"You do, Aubrey," he insists.
The second orgasm is even more... mind-blowing...
He stops me at the edge twice, pulls the pillow away when I try to hide, then puts his mouth back on me until I cum with his name basically yelled on my lips. "Linden Linden LINDEN!"
Then he crawls up my body, and the weight of him over me shuts me up better than any argument. He isn't crushing me though. He keeps himself braced on one forearm, thigh between mine, but he's there. Big and hot and real. My legs part around him without instruction this time.
His mouth finds my ear. "For tonight, you're mine."
That shouldn't work.
It should set off alarm bells.
It should make me shove a knee into a vulnerable place. I'm not his. I don't belong to men like him. I don't belong to anyone.
My pussy clenches against his thigh.
Linden goes still.
He makes a rough sound.
"Fuck," he says. "You like that."
"No, I don't," I counter.
He lifts his head. "No?"
I glare at him.
He waits.
Damn him.