Page 59 of The Devils in the Details

“You’ve made your point.” I said it through my teeth, because composure was a habit and habits died hard, even when the man currently working two fingers inside me with the precision of someone disarming a bomb was looking at my face like it was the most interesting thing he’d seen all week.

“I haven’t.” His voice was low. Rough. A rough sound that I was rapidly becoming addicted to.

“I’m going to revise the invoice.”

“Fine.”

He added a third finger. Crooked it. The stretch was intense—not pain, exactly, but the fullness of being taken by something that did not fit easily and was fitting anyway—and my back arched off the mattress with the enthusiasm of something that had been waiting for this input and was now compiling a very detailed report.

I said something that was not a word in any of the eight languages I spoke. It might have been his name. It might have been a plea. It might have been the noise of a man whose composure had shattered.

Ari watched it happen. His fingers worked inside me, slow and thorough, and the expression on his face was satisfaction, pure and warm and entirely undisguised, like he’d won something.

He had.

He pulled me off the bed. I had approximately one second to register that my feet were no longer touching the mattress before my back hit the wall and my legs went around his waist by pure instinct, the reflex of a body that had decided horizontal surfaces were overrated and vertical ones were the future.

My shoulders were against the plaster, my thighs locked around his hips. The specific physics of a man who was very strong and very motivated, holding me up with his hands under my ass and the wall taking the rest of the weight, and my brain did a quick recalculation of several previously held assumptions about gravity and personal capability.

“This is showing off.” My voice came out breathless, which was Ari’s fault entirely, and I planned to invoice him for the respiratory compromise.

Premium rate. Itemized.

“It’s not.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“Keeping you exactly where I want you.”

I had no comeback for that. None. Zero. The silence of a man who had been verbally disarmed by six words delivered in Ari’s lowest tone.

I did not try to find one because trying would have required brain function and my brain was currently allocating resources to more pressing concerns, such as the fact that Ari’s cock was pressing against my ass and the condom was nowhere to be seen.

It appeared. One-handed. Ari rolled it on with the efficiency of a man who treated logistics as a secondary concern, and I filed this under impressive and also not the moment to comment.

He pushed inside. Slow. Relentless. The blunt pressure of his cock against my ass was its own kind of arithmetic. My head dropped back against the wall.

The plaster was cold against my shoulders, Ari was warm everywhere else, and the contrast registered somewhere below my sternum.

I breathed through it. The stretch. The fullness. The fact that Ari’s forehead was pressed to my temple, his breath warm against my skin, his hands gripping my hips and thighs hard enough to leave marks, and the marks were going to be spectacular and I was completely fine with that.

“You can move.” My voice came out rough, rougher than I’d intended, which was Ari’s fault entirely.

“I know.” His voice against my temple. Low. Certain.

He didn’t move. He waited. His cock buried inside me, stretching me open, his hands holding me against the wall.

I made a sound. Closer to a plea than anything I had ever made in my life, the noise of a man whose composure had reached its operational limit.

Ari moved.

One thrust, deep and hard, and my thighs tightened around his waist with the enthusiasm of something that had been waiting for this input and was now compiling a very detailed report.

Then another. And another. Each one deliberate, each one hard.

His mouth found my throat. My jaw. My mouth between thrusts, kissing me with the focus of a man who had decided that multitasking was underrated and he was very good at it.

My hands gripped his shoulders. The muscle there shifted under my palms with each thrust. Sounds came out of me. Not words. Sounds.