Chapter 5 The Monkey Camp #3
My breath hitches. Again? For a moment, I consider playing along and asking him to do that again.
I can see from the way he's looking at me, challenging me, that he wouldn't hesitate.
If I asked him to, he would do anything for me.
The thrill that runs through me feels like it should be impossible.
Satiated moments ago, but I'm hot and wet and ready again. Needing him. Wanting him.
I sit up and pick up my notebook from where it fell. I flick it open to the next page. "Take off your shorts," I say with a coy smile. "Then you can read what happens next."
He lets out a low groan of arousal but does as he's told. I point to the rock wall and nudge him to sit with his back against it. He does, watching me with his hot, curious gaze the whole time. I hand him the notebook and say, "Read aloud."
His tongue darts out and wets his lips. "She swirls her tongue around the tip—oh, Nora!"
I can't help but smile as his cock jerks beneath my tongue. I grip him gently in my fist to keep him still. "Keep reading."
"Fuck... she swirls her tongue around... the tip. He gasps and throws his head back as she teases him slowly. Then she takes him into her mouth as deep as she—fuck..."
"It doesn't say 'fuck' in the chapter yet," I reprimand him, pulling my mouth away.
He lets out a rough exhale. "I'm struggling to concentrate, Nora."
I give him a playful shrug. "How will I know what to do if you don't read it to me?"
His nostrils flare, and his cock thickens further in my palm. "She takes him into her mouth as deep... as she... can... drawing back with a flick of her—God—her tongue." He breathes in through his teeth. "She does it again. And again. Fucking him with her mouth. Licking him. Sucking him."
I dutifully perform each line, thoroughly enjoying the teasing and the groaning and the way he pulses between my lips.
"She stops sucking his cock and climbs on top of him, riding him," Santi says after a particularly long glide of my tongue.
I frown. "That's not in the scene."
He lets the notebook slip from his grip and cups my cheek. "I want to be inside you again, Nora. I want to feel you coming on my cock again, but if you keep going, I'm not going to last."
A thrill shudders through me.
"Do you want to come again, Nora?" he asks, reaching between my legs to test my arousal. "Do you want to feel me inside you?"
"Yes," I breath as his fingers sink inside me, curling at just the right angle.
He withdraws his finger, and I almost whimper at the loss. "Climb on."
I brace my knees on either side of him and position myself above him. He reaches between us and holds his thick cock right at my entrance. "Fuck me, Nora," he pleads.
I give him exactly what he asks for.
***
The rain has gone quiet by the time either of us speaks again. I'm tucked against his chest, his arms loose around me, both of us breathing like we ran here instead of simply lying still. The fire's burned down to a low orange glow, more ember than flame, but it's enough.
"Well," I say eventually, voice hoarse. "I don't think that's how the chapter ends."
His chest shakes with quiet laughter under my cheek. "No. I took some liberties with the blocking."
"You took several liberties."
"I'd argue they were well received."
I lift my head enough to look at him, and whatever I expect to find—smugness, maybe, or that careful retreat men do right after, the one where they remember they have somewhere else to be—isn't there.
He's watching me. Open, and a little wrecked still, hair a mess where my hands were, and underneath it all steadier than I've ever seen on him in nearly two years of boardrooms.
"What," I say.
"Nothing." His thumb traces a slow line along my spine. "I'm deciding I like this version of you as much as the one who corrects tip math at weddings."
"That version is still in here. She's just had a very distracting day."
"Good. I'd like to meet her again. Possibly daily."
My belly does a small, dangerous flip at that, at the casual, certain way he says it, like he's already decided this isn't a one-time anomaly and already filing it under ongoing instead of isolated incident. I don't know what to do with how much I want him to be right.
I settle back against him instead of examining it too closely.
"For what it's worth," I say, "the notebook thing was supposed to stay embarrassing forever. You've ruined that for me."
He snorts. "I've improved it considerably."
"You've made it impossible to ever write fiction again without thinking about today."
His arms tighten around me. We sit like that a while longer, listening to the rain, the fire ticking down to coals, our hands finding small idle places to rest on each other without either of us commenting on it—his fingers circling my hip, mine resting flat over his heart, counting the slow return to normal.
It's Copérnico who breaks the silence.
He's been quiet for a while—quiet enough that I'd half forgotten he was still up there, sulking after his earlier ejection from the warm spot nearest the fire.
When he finally makes a sound, it isn't his usual hoarse, judgmental bark.
It's lower. Sharper. A single note that cuts through the rain like he means it to be heard.
Santi's whole body goes still under me.
"What," I say.
He doesn't answer right away. He's looking up, past the lean-to's edge, to where Copérnico has shifted his weight on the branch, body angled away from us for the first time all day. Away from the fire. Away from the dry shelter he fought so hard for.
Northwest.
Ears swiveled forward. Tail gone rigid instead of looped lazily around the branch. Every line of him pointed at the dark seam between the trees where the canopy thickens, and the ground, even in daylight, would be a guess instead of a path.
"If my mental map is right," he says slowly, "that direction leads toward the tepuy access zone. The restricted one."
Cold slides through the residual warmth in my veins.
"Cumbre Verde’s route," I say.
He nods once.
Copérnico pauses on a high branch, looking back over his shoulder—at us, my brain insists, despite all logic—and barks again. Then he moves on, steady, unhurried, deeper into the green.
I stare after him, pulse racing.
“We follow him?” The question comes out flatter than I feel.
Santi’s jaw clenches. His hand finds mine, fingers lacing through with a sureness that anchors me even as my stomach turns.
"We need to regroup with everyone else first."