Chapter 36
"Emma," Ben whispers, his finger softly tracing my cheek. "Wake up, baby bird."
"What?" I groan, peeking with one eye. "Now? It's not even daylight."
"Exactly. It's the perfect night for it." His grin is alive while I feel half-dead.
He's already washed, hair combed to the side, and smells of mints and his cologne. But he's also only in his boxers and even though my vision is blurry, I can see very well why I'd be tempted to pull him back into bed.
"Whatever it is, it better be worth it. Could've sunk into two more hours of cuddling," I mumble against the pillow.
He smiles, says a brisk, "Come on, I have to show you something," and pulls down the sheets from my body.
I'm tempted to smack him, but I peel myself out—naked because that's still the law in our house, and clothes never survive Ben anyway.
The cold air kisses my skin, pulling my nipples into stiff peaks.
I drift toward the window with the city sprawling beyond the glass—jeweled towers blinking over the black expanse of Central Park.
I rub my arms, arch my back, and that's when I hear him behind me.
"Fuck..." His voice is rough, but not from sleep.
"What?" I say, biting back my grin. Then toss over my shoulder: "The skyline steal your thunder?"
Two strides and his body seals to mine, his bare chest solid against my back.
"Not even close. The skyline doesn't make me insane. Your ass, on the other hand..." He palms my butt-cheeks hard.
"Weren't we about to go somewhere?" I gasp, feeling his fingers digging in. "Or what happened to your meticulous plan?"
"Yeah, well, that changed the second you got up all naked and perfect, begging to be fucked against the glass,” he breathes.
Before I can say anything, he nudges my legs wider with his foot. Then he grabs my hips and draws me flush against him, over and over, teasing me through the fabric where I'm already wet for him.
My hands shoot behind my back, tug my fingers against the waistband of his boxers and his abs, and drag them down.
When he surges free, he drives his hips forward and slides right through my folds, but not inside.
A sharp gasp escapes me from the friction and I look down between my thighs at the thick, jutting length of him—the flushed head pulsing impatiently and dripping.
I stroke the head, smear the slick across my fingertip, and lift it to my mouth, savoring the taste of him. He's delicious... both sweet and salty in that way only he is...
He lets out a low rumble and I'm ready to turn around, take him in my mouth, but he moves back.
His right hand snakes around my throat—pressing hard tight enough to feel my pulse flutter beneath his fingers.
"Tell me—do you like this view?" he rasps into my ear, and his thumb hooks on my jaw, tilting my head down.
I instantly realize he doesn't mean the outside.
The night in combination with the glow from the corridor turned the glass into a mirror, and it's catching us clearly in its reflection.
We lock eyes in the window just as he breaches me, inhaling sharply together, and every muscle in me instantly pulls toward him, like my whole body is magnetized.
Then inch by inch, he pushes himself in until I have to rise onto the tips of my toes while he makes me watch my own body take him.
The stretch hits with that sharp-sweet ache my body loves so much.
I watch us moving together in the dark reflection—my hips tilting to meet him, his mouth near my ear, breath rough as he drives a slow, consuming grind into me, his free hand rolling my nipple between his fingers until fire flickers under my skin.
His eyes are locked on me in the glass, and there’s no question in them, just a raw claim. I belong to him and he knows it.
I will always belong to him—more than I belong to myself.
"Tell me," he breathes and dips his knees, lifting me with a deep upward thrust. "Do you?"
The sensation makes me whimper, clenching hard around him. "Yeah, I love this view. Really, really, love this view,” I gasp.
"Good answer, baby,” he says, and takes my chin between his fingers, turning my face toward him.
"Give me your tongue." He presses my chin down just enough for my lips to part, my mouth his to devour, and I flick my tongue out.
He looks at it, his face molten, then laps his tongue around mine and sucks it in his mouth.
Our mouths clash, raw and demanding as we moan into each other, the sounds guttural, like we're trying to consume each other whole.
When I come, he kneels immediately, mouth devouring the release straight from me, licking me through every last tremble. Then he rises and drives back into me—no preamble, just raw, unchecked hunger.
My body pitches forward, and I whimper against the window, fogging it.
"You're leaving me," he breathes, the words scraped raw. "You know how much I hate that. It drives me insane."
"I know," I gasp, feeling him twitching.
"Will you miss me, baby?" His voice thickens.
"Yeah."
"How much?" he says, moving inside me.
“A lot,” I moan. “What are you going to do about it?”
He exhales roughly against my neck, almost a growl. "You know what I'll do about it, Emma?" He drags my hands above my head and plants them beside me, his palms swallowing mine whole. His iron body cages me completely as he kisses my shoulder, almost too tender for what he says next.
"I'll make you sore. So sore that every step you take, you’ll think of me. And every time you sit, you’ll ache and remember I was in you.”
Oh God. My knees wobble—and secretly I'm begging. Yes. Do it. Brand me so I carry you with me.
"You're crazy," I whisper, breath fractured.
"Crazy?" His laugh is breathy. "Yeah. I'm also very devoted to you. Watch."
His fingers lace over mine, trapping my hands to the glass before I can think of running, and then—he drives into me with full length.
My back arches, the pain from feeling him stretching me mixing with pleasure until they’re indistinguishable.
My hips jerk back, instinctively trying to meet him.
Then he does it again, faster, harder, and a loud, helpless moan breaks from my throat.
As if I'm begging. Begging him to continue, not to stop.
He fucks me like a man etching his soul into me, the glass rattling in its frame under our hands, threatening to drop us thirty floors.
I don't care if we do, or if I cry so loud I could wake the whole city. Let the world see us. Let them know that I want this to last forever.
Ben slides his hands down my thighs, lifting me slightly, angling me the way he knows ruins us both, and his breath shudders against my neck as he settles back inside, deeper than before—so deep my vision doubles.
Something in him snaps—his hips piston with brutal force, his mouth on my neck turned ravenous.
Tears sting. My face burns. I'm back on my toes, whimpering with each thrust. It's too much.
Too. Much. God. My. Body. Will. Break God..
"Ben..." I wail his name, air hammered out of my lungs.
His gaze locks onto mine in the mirror—infatuated, unhinged, completely gone. This must be the moment he talked about—I can tell he wants me even closer, and he won't slow down.
And sure enough, he only tightens around me—his grip, his breath, the brutal precision of his strokes. His finger lands on my clit, rubbing it feverously. His shoulders tense, the tremor running through his thighs. He’s getting close, and so am I.
The pleasure starts curling low in my belly, sharp and rising, turning the pain into pure heat.
"Ben..."
My knees buckle, but I’m caught between the glass and him, nowhere to go, nothing to hold on to but him.
“Ben!” I cry, louder, raw, unable to hold it anymore.
The moment the plea leaves my throat, his hips slam forward, his fingers dig into my hips as if he’s bracing for impact and he grunts.
A visible shiver rips through our bodies as I cry out. He crashes his mouth into mine, like he wants to swallow the proof of my undoing, and then—he roars. A raw sound that echoes off the walls and pours straight into me as the throb of him inside becomes overwhelming, almost violent.
The shock of his release triggers mine, my body clenching around him. Ben grunts again and slows, his hips rolling through the final pulses until we're both shaking in the aftershock.
We collapse against the glass, his forehead dropping against my shoulder as he fights for breath. Meanwhile, my legs barely hold. My whole body feels liquid.
He pulls out with a slick sound, the warm spill of him running down my thigh, like evidence of what he did, how much he has, how completely he came apart in me.
Before I can breathe, he drags it up my thigh with the tip, gathering everything at my entrance—and he thrusts it back into me to the hilt.
"Stay full of me," he rasps a command to my body, working it into every tight inch inside.
A broken gasp tears from me, half-shock, half-need.
I should say something, laugh, or complain at what he keeps doing to my insides.
Ben wraps his hands around me and walks us backward, still buried inside, when he sits us on the edge of the bed.
He leans back on his hands, gaze burning through me, telling me without words it's my turn to ruin him.
We turn our heads at each other and I start moving on him, feeling him filling me in all the sore places that should rest, and the realization hits me: I'm crazy too. Crazy enough to want more, even though I won't be able to walk as he predicted.
Mad enough to ask him to break me in the way only he can.
How could I ever resist him when he looks like this—hair undone, that wicked spark in his eyes. His mouth is red and swollen, carrying the memory of me biting his lips back.
He palms my breast as I start moving against him again, then glances at his watch and rasps, "Shit, we don't actually have time."
I stop and twist toward him with hair sticking on all my sides, my face flushed. "So this wasn't your only grandiose surprise?"
He looks at me like I'm the one who undid him, then hauls me to my feet by my hips and stands himself.
Before I can take a single step, he hoists me over his shoulder like a doll, arm locked around my aching thighs.
I try to kick playfully, but he only locks his grip.
"Put me down, caveman," I protest, laughing despite myself.
"Not a chance. You'll run," he says, walking with me across the hall.
"You're going to drop me," I whine, pinching his ass.
"Not in this lifetime." He smacks my butt-cheek, then plants a gentle kiss over it when I yelp. "Shower. Then we go. No more dawdling."
I think he means airport, suitcases, the inevitable arrivederci wedged like glass in my chest, but when we make it to the elevator, I realize we're going up.
"Rooftops again?" I arch my brow, and he pulls my hoodie over my damp hair. "Thought we'd graduated from that."
"Rooftops will always be our thing," he says, half a grin pulling at his mouth, and threads his hand around mine like a knot. "There's one more thing I want to do before you leave."
When the rooftop doors swing open, night air rushes around us—the kind that smells crispy and exciting.
Ben pulls me out with him, tethered by our joined hands.
Below us, the city that never sleeps lives up to its reputation—horns bleating, trains exhaling.
Up here, it's hushed, the sky stretched like a slab of onyx pricked with fire. As if someone had taken a pin and punctured holes until the darkness bled starlight.
I freeze, making him halt beside me. "What? How is this possible? Stars in New York?"
"I make things possible for you," he says, smiling from ear to ear.
"You know how to ruin a girl with gestures, don't you?"
"If gestures ruin you, wait till you see my intentions," he says, and opens his coat to pull me in until I'm swallowed by him, the weight of his warm chest rising against my cheek.
"Remember Mount Tamalpais?" he asks. "Blankets, cheap wine, talking about your first book while we stargazed?"
"Yeah." I smile. "Back when we were just friends. One of my best memories."
"Mine too." His voice softens. "I was already done for you, just very good at hiding it. Even in front of myself."
His arm closes around me, the kind of hold that says don't move yet. His other hand lifts, pointing toward the skyline.
"Right there, just setting, that's Castor and—"
"Pollux," I finish for him, spotting the twins. "That's your Gemini sign."
He nods and turns his head the other way. "And here, perfectly opposite, which can't be a coincidence—"
"It's not," I jump in. "There are no coincidences."
He smiles, when he sees me light up. "I agree with you on this one." And then his finger shoots up. "Well, that steaming teapot there, that's Sagittarius. You. My piccola furia. Just waking up, while I waited for you all night."
I huff a laugh, stunned and shaky. "Both our stars are visible in the sky."
"Yeah." His voice is soft, but it lands deep.
"Wait, so that's why you've been glued to your phone all day? You were scanning constellations?"
His grin is boyish. "Yeah. I had to make sure it was visible. We got lucky tonight."
"You did. You bend the odds, remember?" I tip my head, studying him against the navy sky, winded by his smile.
His hand slides in his pocket and comes back with a small velvet box.
I take a step back from his coat, unable to look away from it. "Ben?"
He reads me instantly, like he always does, seeing the panic in my eyes, mixed with the want I can't hide. Once again, I am in a position to want something way ahead of its time.
His jaw flexes once, and then his voice comes, stripped bare. "I want nothing more than to put a ring on your finger tonight. Right here, under this sky."
A pause. His breath clouds between us as he takes me in, everything in him unguarded.
"But not like this. Not while the air's still dirty with everything we're leaving behind.
I don't want shadows in your head. I want your mind only on us.
Unburdened. So you can actually feel it.
Enjoy it. So, for now, this will have to do, not as a placeholder—as a vow. "
The lid clicks open, and the sparkle hits my eyes instantly. Diamonds woven into a bracelet, two constellation circles looping into infinity. Twin stars. Him and me.
"Oh my god..." I gasp. My skin prickles through my sleeves despite the jacket. "Ben! It's beautiful. And it must have been extremely expensive."
"The money doesn't matter to me. I wanted you to have a symbol of what I feel for you. Infinity."
"It's perfect. The thought. The place. The meaning. All of it."
He takes my hand and fastens the clasp with fingers so tender I want to cry. "You may not wear my ring yet, but you're tied to me. Already. Always."
The bracelet settles against my wrist and I shake my hand, catching the glint of it.
My breath shudders out. The tears I've been swallowing all day finally spill, the freezing wind smearing them on my cheeks before they fall.
"Always," I whisper.