Chapter 29 – Davis
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
DAVIS
“Whoa,” she said on an exhale when the automatic doors slid open, and they stepped inside. The Sapphire Lodge was perched on a cliffside high in the mountains overlooking Red Falls, and although she knew it existed the same way she knew the moon existed, something that was always there, glowing steadfast in the distance, she’d never set foot inside it. But it was beautiful, with rustic stone walls, dark wood beams crossing a lofty arched ceiling, and massive chandeliers sparkling above a pebble-lined creek that ran through the center of the atrium.
She still didn’t want to know why her grandmother had a frequent stay discount here—although she suspected it had something to do with a certain big-hearted man who lived in Billings. But she couldn’t deny that the woman had great taste. She also wondered how much her grandmother had spent to fund their sex sleepover, because this place had to be expensive as hell no matter how often a seventy-year-old woman used it for her clandestine hookups.
Then she looked up at Kev, dressed in the fine clothes his friends had gotten him, with his fresh shave and his perfect hair, not a single curl out of place, and sighed, realizing those were concerns for another time. There was only one thing she wanted to concern herself with tonight, and he was standing right beside her, so gorgeous it hurt to look at him—a little pang in her chest.
Smiling down at her, his dimple on full display, he said, “I think this is the nicest place I’ve ever seen.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked, noticing the hotel restaurant across the lobby. They hadn’t had dinner yet, and it was about that time.
His gaze roved down her throat, across her collarbone, tracing the neckline of the little red dress she wore. The one she loved for the way it hugged her curves and made her tits look phenomenal. When he licked his lips, his eyes dipping briefly to her cleavage, they could have been standing in the middle of a deserted frozen wasteland and flames still would have flickered up her neck when he replied, “Starving.”
“Do you”—her breath caught, her stomach swooping when he stepped closer, slid his hand into hers, and pulled her to his side—“want to get dinner before we go to the room?”
Leaning in, brushing his lips along the side of her neck, he whispered, “The only dinner I want is you.”
After the ten indescribably long minutes it took to check in, they barreled through their door, his overnight bag landing on a chair while she tossed hers…somewhere. She didn’t know. Didn’t care. Too frantic and wild and a single breath shy of ripping his nice new clothes off his body just to get at him. She couldn’t kiss him enough. Couldn’t touch him enough. Couldn’t wait another second.
“I love you,” she said, or tried to, the words half lost between his lips. “I need you.”
She reached for his pants, for the top button. But he grabbed her wrists, stilling her, and said, “Wait.”
The word was a slab of ice, and she froze inside it. No. Not again. Please.
“Did you say wait?” Fear flashed through her, her heart stalling out, a lump of lead taking its place in her chest. Her eyes stung. Shit , she was going to cry. “Kev, y-you don’t want?— ”
“Oh, fuck. Baby, no.” He grasped her face, his devastated expression making it clear he’d just realized what he’d said. Then he took her hands and placed them on his chest, holding them there over his pounding heart. “We are absolutely doing this tonight. Multiple times if I have anything to say about it. Nothing short of this lodge catching fire will stop me from getting inside you—and even then, I’ll keep fucking you until the walls burn down around us.”
In an almost violently relieved rush of air, her lungs started working again. “Okay,” she said, her heart finding a steadier rhythm even as his words, the intensity behind them that felt like a promise, yanked some string inside her, leaving her unraveled. “Okay, good.”
“It’s just, this night means so much to me. I mean, look at me.” He held up a trembling hand. “I’m shaking. I’ve never felt like this before. I’ve never been so nervous. I don’t want to rush this. I want to take my time with you. I want to remember every single second.” His eyes turned half a shade darker, a storm out at sea with its sights set on land. “I want you to remember every single second.”
Gazing up at him, wondering how it was possible to need someone so thoroughly it barely fit inside her, swelling and expanding until it was all she could see or hear or feel, she said, “I want that too.”
“Will you”—when he swallowed, she wanted to lick the bobbing point of his Adam’s apple—“undress for me? I want to watch you. I want to see you. Is that okay?”
Yes , it was okay. But right then, she knew she’d do just about anything he asked. Whatever he needed. Whatever he wanted. She’d do it.
With a slow nod, she placed her hands on his chest, urging him to take a step back. “Sit down,” she said. “On the bed.”
He obeyed, his erection straining against his pants in a way that looked painful. And she wanted to touch him, to undo his zipper, reach inside, and finally know how soft and warm his skin would feel under her fingertips, how hard he would feel with her hand wrapped around him. But if he needed them to take their time, she could do that for him. She could slow down. She could behave.
Their room was beautiful too: dark wood furniture, ornate curtains, an enormous bed with a crisp white comforter and a padded headboard. But it was too bright. So she walked to the door and dimmed the lights. On her way back to him, she removed her earrings one at a time, set them on the dresser, and stood directly across from where he sat on the bed. Close but just out of reach.
His eyes seared a path to her, his gaze so blistering it felt, for a moment, like the walls really were burning down around them. While he watched, she reached back, tugged at her zipper, released it slowly. His pupils were blown, lips parted, and she realized that as much as she wanted him, she wanted this too. His attention wholly on her, his hunger for her so clear in the tight, flickering muscles of his jaw. In his hands fisting the bedding at his sides.
Turning her back to him, she slid one dress strap over her shoulder, and then the other, letting the bodice pool around her waist. Then, slowly, she bent forward, working the dress inch by inch over her hips, down her legs before kicking it off to the side.
“Davis.” He exhaled sharply behind her. “You really do have the best ass in the entire fucking world.”
Straightening up, she looked back at him over her shoulder. “The best?” she asked, running her palm over the round curve of one cheek, feeling sexier than she ever had with another partner. Feeling sexier than she ever had, period. It was impossible not to when Kev looked at her like that. Like he was two seconds and one pair of panties away from losing his mind, tearing off his clothes, and taking her right there on the dresser.
When he nodded, she gave him a soft smile, an even softer “thank you.” Then she hooked her finger under the slender strap of her lacy black G string, pulled, and released it with a muted snap .
He reached down, repositioning himself in his pants. And then he let his hand linger on his erection. Like he couldn’t leave himself alone while he watched her. Like he knew the deep ache it generated between her thighs when he stroked himself absently, his attention glued on her G-string strap. The strap she hooked her finger beneath again, running it up and down the silky material, pulling it free of her cheeks before tugging it snuggly between them again.
“ Fuck .” It was a low, pained groan, and it spurred her on, heating her blood, making that ache swell into a hot, incessant throb.
She unclasped her bra, slid it down her arms, and dropped it onto the dresser. Then she gathered her hair off her neck, holding it up while she peered over her shoulder again, twisting just enough to give him a view of the outer curve of her breast.
“Was that slow enough?” she asked, tracing her fingertips down her neck, skimming the side of her breast.
“Turn around.” His voice was dark, commanding. And when she did, his gaze feasted on her, devouring her from her lips to her neck. From the base of her throat to the tips of her breasts. “Come here.”
One slow step at a time, she moved toward him, not stopping until she was so close his breath ghosted across her bare skin.
Grasping her hips, he pressed a kiss onto her belly and said, “Thank you.”
“For what?” she asked, threading her fingers through his hair.
He glanced up at her from beneath his lashes, sliding his fingers along the waistband of her panties. “For leaving these.” His voice was so low it rumbled through her bones, through the floorboards beneath her feet, when he said, “For me.”
If she thought she’d taken her time undressing for him, it was nothing compared to his patient, brain-scrambling pace as he worked one side of her panties down, and then the other, kissing every new inch of skin he uncovered.
She was breathing hard, fighting for air, lightheaded and swaying as his teeth closed gently around the point of her hip, as his tongue skated across the skin below her belly button. He’d barely touched her, and she was already near loss-of-consciousness levels of turned on. And he knew it too, staring up at her with a mischievous grin while he slid her panties down, but only halfway, breaking all the laws of physics to keep them suspended on her ass. Even though the triangle of black fabric in the front still covered her, it was a technicality. It gaped away from her body, loose enough to pull to the side, to slip a finger inside, maybe a tongue. But he didn’t. He didn’t do any of those things.
Instead, while she considered begging him to free her from the suddenly unbearable restriction of flimsy lace, he spun her back around.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, her vision going white around the edges. Being almost naked already made her feel vulnerable, but not being able to see him behind her, not knowing what he was about to do. She could barely stand it.
At the first graze of his tongue along the crease where her ass met her thigh, she gasped. When he did it on the other side, she moaned. When he bit the string of her panties, pulling them down the rest of the way with his teeth, a tremble tore through her. But it wasn’t until he brought her panties up to his nose, closing his eyes and inhaling deeply, that blind need nearly doubled her over.
“Kev,” she whispered as he rose to his feet behind her, his lips brushing over her shoulder, his fingers sliding across her stomach. His erection a firm and insistent presence against her back.
Naked except for her heels, she ground her ass into him, doing it again when he groaned into her ear. His hands found her breasts, cupping them, his thumbs circling the sensitive skin around her nipples.
“Do you ever read romance novels?” he asked, slipping a hand down her body, his fingertips brushing a featherlight trail of flames across her belly, his other hand still cupping her breast, his thumb still teasing her nipple.
With his hard body at her back, his soft lips at her neck, his skilled hands roaming all over her, she felt like there were ten of him, twenty, everywhere at once, surrounding her like wind, like water, overwhelming her senses while soothing them at the same time .
“No,” she answered him, her chest heaving, breaths coming hard. “I like mysteries. Thrillers.”
“So you’ve probably never read a wolf shifter romance.”
Squirming when his fingers dipped in a low pass from her right hip to her left, skimming so close to where she ached for him before leisurely skating away, she asked, “That’s a thing?”
His laughter fanned out over her skin, firing goosebumps along her neck, across her shoulders. “Oh, it’s a thing,” he replied with another shallow pass of his fingers, his thumb gliding back and forth over her nipple in a slow, almost lazy pattern. Like he didn’t know what it did to her. Like he wasn’t aware of the way it pulled her insides tight, winding, coiling, making her shudder and writhe in his unbothered arms.
“In these books,” he said while she shuddered, while she writhed, “the couples are always mates, fated to find each other and love each other forever. And when the male, who’s been searching for his mate his entire life, finally gets that first taste of her.” His fingers slid down another inch, almost there, so close. “When he first licks her.”
“W-what happens?” she asked, delirious, pushing herself up to her tiptoes to get him where she needed him.
He closed his teeth over her shoulder, a slow glide of pressure and warmth that centered her spiraling nerve endings, then whispered harshly against her skin, “He loses his goddamned mind.”
And just when her eyes closed and her knees threatened to buckle, his hand dove between her legs, holding her up, cupping her.
“Fuck, Davis,” he ground out. “You’re so smooth. So bare.”
Reaching back to grasp his neck, clinging to him while he pressed the heel of his palm over her clit, she stammered, “I wanted to…for you. Did it yesterday. Had to…beg my girl to— ah ,” she gasped when he pinched her nipple, “fit me in.”
“You did that for me?” he asked, a little awed, while he stroked her, petting her silky, ultra-sensitive skin.
She nodded.
“Did it hurt? ”
“Only for a second,” she said, remembering the bright sting, the sudden burn fading to an almost comforting glow.
“How does it feel now?”
How did it feel? Was there even a word to describe his touch? The gentle reverence of his hands? There wasn’t, but she settled on “Amazing.”
His forehead dropped to her shoulder as he slid his fingers between her folds, parting her. When he found out what she already knew—that she was so wet, so slippery, it wouldn’t take more than a single firm thrust to be inside her—he let out a tortured moan.
“Those books are fucking wrong.” He burrowed his face into her neck, his voice strained and muffled. “I haven’t even tasted you yet, and I’m already losing my mind.”
She arched back, her hips rocking helplessly into his hand, her mind careening past lost and hurtling toward utter oblivion.
Dipping two fingers shallowly through her core, he painted her slickness up one side of her labia, leaving her even more sensitive to the cool air in the room. “So soft,” he said, dipping inside her again, dragging his fingers up her other side. “So sweet.” The next time he slid through her center, he found her opening and sank one long finger in deep.
She’d never had a religious experience before, but when a second finger joined the first, she thought this must be close. The euphoria, the clarity, the overwhelming rightness of it as he squeezed her, his palm putting some golden ratio amount of pressure on her clit, his fingers pumping, curling, stroking. But the sensation was short-lived, and when he pulled out of her, she whimpered at the loss.
“I’ve been dreaming about tasting you since the day I met you,” he said, bringing his glistening fingers to his lips. “Fantasizing. Obsessing over it.”
Twisting toward him, she watched as he closed his eyes, parted his lips, and sucked his fingers into his mouth. While she staggered, struggling to stay on her feet, not entirely sure she was conscious anymore, nothing but sensation and desire and need, he hummed. “Do you know what you taste like?”
She shook her head, the motion making him swim in her vision.
Sucking on his fingers again, groaning in pure, unguarded satisfaction, he pulled them free, brought his lips to her ear, and whispered, “Mine.”
Then he spun her around again, pulled her close, controlling her body like she was a puppet and he held her strings. He sat back down on the bed, looked up at her with eyes that were almost entirely pupils, nearly black, and said, “I want to watch you the first time I make you come.”
Incapable of doing much else, she nodded, grasping his shoulders as he kissed the hollow between her breasts. “I can feel your heart pounding,” he said, pressing kisses over the swell of her left breast. “Like a drum against my lips.”
She could feel it too, battering her ribs. Each beat making only one sound over and over again: y ours, yours, yours.
He swirled his tongue around her nipple, catching her around her waist when her legs tried to give out. When he sucked her nipple into his mouth, flicking his tongue over the peaked tip, some primal sound escaped from her throat. The kind of sound that, if she were a lioness, would have every lion from every neighboring pride prowling the plains to find her.
“You’re already so close,” he said, not a question, as he took her other nipple gently between his teeth, kissing, licking, sucking. “Do you want it now? Do you want it fast? Or can you wait? Can I be slow?”
“I…don’t know,” she admitted, barely able to hold her head up, barely able to keep her eyes open. “Just, don’t stop.”
“I won’t,” he promised, taking her ass in his hands. “But I think it would be better like this.” Rising from the bed, he hoisted her into his arms and spun her around, swapping their places. And then he sank to his knees. “Yes,” he said, almost a hiss as he spread her legs wide and settled between them. “This is so much better. ”
It all felt almost indecent. Being naked aside from her heels while he was fully dressed. Sitting on the bed while he was on his knees in front of her. But when he spread her legs even wider, when he spread her apart with his thumbs, baring her to him, it also felt like the most perfect thing she’d ever known.
“Lie back if you need to,” he said, brushing the pad of his thumb over her clit, his barely there touch making her legs shake.
It was less that she needed to and more like she had no other choice. Collapsing back onto the bed when he brushed his thumb over her again, his touch so soft she almost wept, she raised her arms above her head. Her entire body thrummed with anticipation, so keyed up for so long she had to grasp at a pillow, needing something to hold on to, almost terrified of the pleasure he was drawing out of her.
“I don’t think I got enough last time.” He ran his finger through her slick center again. “I think I need more.”
She expected the firm sensation of that finger penetrating her again. Waited for it. So when warm breath and soft lips found her instead, his tongue slipping deep inside her, she released a rasping moan.
“Shh,” he soothed, kissing her right inner thigh, then her left. “Save your voice, baby. I want to hear it all night long.”
Oh god. She wasn’t going to survive this. She’d known he’d be good in bed. It was obvious by the way he touched her, kissed her, handled her. But this was something else. This was a man who’d done his homework, read up, took fucking notes. Like the way his tongue slid inside her again. The way it licked a slippery path up to swirl around her clit, making her dig her heels into his back, pull her pillow over her face in case he made her scream into it.
“No,” he said, reaching up and tugging the pillow free. “Don’t hide from me.”
Then he disappeared between her legs again, his hand cupping her breast, his fingers pinching her nipple, his tongue feathering over her clit so fast she had to bite her knuckle not to cry out .
None of this was normal. None of it made sense. He was too good, so incredible she wondered for a brief, delirious moment if she was dreaming. If she’d wake up before she even finished, covered in sweat and panting with need.
But then he slid his hands under her ass, tugging her hips forward, lifting her up to his mouth, holding her there while he kissed her, made love to her with his tongue, dragging slow, firm licks over her clit, and she knew this wasn’t a dream. This was real. And the sharp edge of pleasure he kept her balanced on was excruciating.
Dropping her head back, her chest heaving while he pulled away from her and lowered her down to the bed again, she felt the hot sting of frustrated tears prickling her eyes.
“Do you need to come?” he asked, his voice quiet, tone soothing even as he brushed his thumb over her swollen clit once, twice, three times.
“Please,” she begged, her prickling tears welling, filling her eyes while he held her down with one hand on her belly and pushed two fingers inside her.
And as he slid them in and out so slowly her mind blanked, her inner walls fluttering around him, he said, “I shouldn’t have left you like this for so long.” His fingers curled, his fingertips dragging over that spot deep inside her that made her entire body turn liquid, thick as honey. “It was rude of me.”
She floated above the bed, lost track of herself, the boundaries of her body starting to blur.
“Davis, look at me.” The command grounded her, and she tried to follow it, she really did. But her head was so heavy, her limbs so far away from her control, her muscles so rubbery and useless. “Look at me,” he said again, and with a straining, punishing effort, she finally did.
In less than a single breath, the hunger in his gaze transformed into a heartbreaking, soul-deep sincerity. “Anything for you, baby,” he said, sliding his fingers out, back in again, picking up speed. “Everything I have. Everything I am. It’s all for you. ”
With her last remaining shred of strength, she raised herself up onto her elbows. And when their eyes locked over her belly as he sank between her thighs again, electricity sparked. It flashed along her spine when he gave her clit a long, deep suck. It ignited in her core when he flicked his tongue over her again and again. It flared white hot through her entire body when she reached down and grasped his hair, holding him in place while she bucked and cried and came apart against his mouth. While pleasure gripped her, unrelenting, holding on to her for so long, wringing her out so thoroughly, she only realized it had wrung out her tears too when her harsh moans faded and his soft whispers rose to fill the void they’d left behind. When he crawled up onto the bed beside her. When he brushed her hair back from her tear-soaked cheeks and said, “Davis? Shit, are you okay?”
She couldn’t answer. Because she didn’t know. It was all so good. So perfect. So much better than she’d ever dared to hope for herself. And this was only their first night together. What would it be like when they really knew each other’s bodies? What would it be like with practice?
“Baby?” There was a note of panic in his voice. “Did I hurt you?”
“No,” she said through jagged, body-racking sobs. “You didn’t hurt me.”
Gently, he ran his hand down her body, slipping it between her legs, cupping her. It wasn’t sexual this time, not entirely. It was only pressure, comfort. “Then why are you crying? Was it bad?”
“Bad?” So abruptly it shocked her a little, her tears transformed into gasping, breathless laughter. “Kev, it was the best thing that has ever happened to me. I left my body. I transcended this astral plane. I’m pretty sure I know the meaning of life now.”
Smiling down at her, he lowered his head and kissed her so tenderly she almost started crying again. But she held herself together. She had to, because they weren’t done.
While she came back to herself by degrees, gradually regaining control over her emotions and her limbs, she placed a hand on his chest and pushed him back. Urging him to stand at the end of the bed, she sat up, reached out to unbutton his shirt, and slid it from his shoulders. Then she unbuttoned his pants, relief and thrill and so much love tumbling through her when she realized he wasn’t going to make her stop. Not this time. Hopefully never again.
Still needing to prove it to herself, she pulled his zipper down and reached inside. His boxer briefs were wet, the round head of his penis slick and dripping, the rest of him hard and ready and everything .
“I’m not sure how long I’ll last,” he gritted out, his abs flexing when she spread his slickness over his slit, swirling her thumb around his head. “I almost lost it already just from watching you.”
Reluctantly pulling her hand free, she slid his pants down over his hips, then his boxer briefs. While he toed off his shoes, she finally did the same. And then they were both naked. Completely.
“Stay there for a second. Right there,” she said when he tried to move toward the bed. “I’ve been wanting to look at you like this for so long, Kev. Every time I saw you without your shirt on,” she admitted, not even slightly embarrassed, “this is what I imagined. What I fantasized about. Your naked body close enough for me to touch, to feel.”
While he stood for her, perfectly still except from his heaving chest, she took him in. His broad shoulders were the perfect shape for her fingers to curl around. His pecs were made for her palms to press against. The firm ridges of his abs called out for her tongue, wanting to be licked and traced. The proud, swollen jut of his erection begged for her mouth.
“You’re so beautiful,” she told him. “You’re beautiful here.” She reached up, cupped his cheek, brushed her thumb over his lower lip. “And here.” She trailed her fingers along his collarbone, down the line between his pecs, through the valley between his abs. “Here too.” When her fingertips danced along the underside of his shaft, his skin there just as warm and soft as she imagined, he sucked air in through his teeth. When she closed her fingers around him, sliding her grip up and down his rigid length, he threw his head back, grunting a low and long “ fuck ” at the ceiling.
Giving his head a single slow lick that made him shudder, she released him, sliding her hand back up to his chest, resting her palm over his heart. She waited for him to look at her again before she said, “You’re beautiful here too, Kev. All the things that happened to you could have turned you cold, closed you off. But you have the warmest heart. You have the most beautiful heart.”
When he covered her hand with his, his expression fell, the fire in his eyes banking, flickering out. “Are you sure?” he asked, the sexy, confident man he’d been a minute ago looking suddenly so defenseless, so scared. “What if you’re wrong, Davis? What if I?—”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m not wrong. Not about this. I trust you with my whole entire heart. Now you just have to trust me too.” Sliding her hand free, she moved back in the bed and said, “Come. Be with me.”
Silently, he followed her, crawling over her, settling his hips between her open thighs, lowering himself onto her chest. The soothing heat of his skin seeped into hers. The solid weight of his body pushed her into the bed, calming something inside her that had been unsettled over the last few months. Because she’d needed to feel him like this too. She’d needed to feel his warmth, his weight. She’d needed him healthy and vital and safe in her arms.
While the moment seared itself into her memory, carving out a space in her heart where it would live forever, she took his face between her hands and said, “I love you.” She kissed one corner of his mouth. “I trust you.” She kissed the other corner. “Make love to me.”