Alix blinked into pale light and the hush of a world still storm-stunned. For a second, she couldn’t place herself. There was only the slow ache in her muscles, the press of warmth along her front and back, the faint scent of sex tangled with Grace’s shampoo.
Right. The Westin. The suite with the huge window where snow still stitched the sky to the runway. The not-so-subtle miracle of Grace, everywhere, all over her.
She now knew one thing to be true. Grace Ortega was a sex Goddess.
Alix had thought she knew what good sex was. Turns out she’d just been grading on a curve. She’d had flings and her fair share of pillow princesses, awkward fumbling, a handful of partners who thought foreplay was optional. But no one like this. No one who met her energy and then took her apart with it.
Grace breathed against the base of her throat, a tiny sound escaping as she shifted. A strand of hair brushed her cheek.One hand lay splayed across Alix’s ribs, fingers curved like she’d fallen asleep mid-claim.
Alix didn’t move. She couldn’t.
If she could have bottled this exact second — the weight, the quiet, the proof of it all — she would’ve. She’d live right here, in this square of warmth, under the nameFinally.
A plane revved somewhere far away, dull through the glass. Grace stirred. Her nose nudged Alix’s throat. A sleepy sound hummed up like a question.
“Good morning,” Alix whispered.
“Hey,” Grace said back, voice wrecked and velvet. She didn’t open her eyes. Her thumb traced a lazy line along Alix’s side, over tender skin that answered with a full-body shiver.
They lay there listening to the heat tick in the vents, watching the barrage of snow out the window. Everything in Alix felt warm and sore and absurdly pliant, like someone had replaced her bones with jelly. She pressed the bridge of her nose to Grace’s hairline and breathed in the clean, faintly sweet scent. Memory fluttered everywhere. Grace laughing into her mouth, marking her with exquisite pain and precision, the deliciously brutal way her hands had learned Alix’s back, the shock of being known so fast and so easily.
“You okay?” Grace murmured.
“Okay doesn’t even begin to describe it.” Alix smiled, eyes stinging for no good reason. “You?”
Grace’s answering exhale carried a little laugh. “Mmm. Yes. Wrecked, but in a marathon-running, mountain-summiting, perfect oral defense kind of way.”
“Perfect oral,” Alix agreed and felt Grace’s smile against her skin.
Neither reached for the clock. Morning dragged its feet in the best way, the room filling with that particular pale winter glow that made edges soft. Alix could have stayed like that all day,greedily entangled with Grace. But the more she let herself feel it — the weight of Grace’s thigh braided with hers, the exact heat where their stomachs met — the more some hungry, grateful spark inside her woke up again, restless and achingly ready.
She nuzzled Grace’s neck, kissing where she’d left a mark the day before, nipping and sucking at the sensitive skin until Grace yielded, letting Alix roll her onto her back. She lay beneath Alix with sleepy eyes and wild bedhead and the kind of smile that made Alix’s heart pound like it had an audience.
“I will never, ever get enough of this,” Alix whispered against Grace’s mouth, their hips beginning to move together, Grace’s leg hitching up to wrap around her.
“Ever,” Grace agreed.
They kissed slowly, like the world could be convinced to match their pace. Like the frantic touches of yesterday had finally sated all that they’d been holding back, and now they could take their time with one another. There was nothing urgent in it, only a sweet, molten insistence that melted nerves and unspooled worry. Mouths learned again what they now knew by heart. Fingers threaded through hair and smoothed along familiar curves, touches more about reassurance than discovery. Her favorite cadence ofyes, yes, still yes.
Alix positioned herself between Grace’s spread thighs, craving the feel of Grace’s slick arousal against her own. Grace was so warm, so wet, and so incredibly responsive. Her gasps, her moans, the wrinkle of concentration between her brows as she pressed her hips up into Alix.
Alix was gentle, knowing they were both sore and spent from hours and hours of wringing every last drop of pleasure they could from one another. Alix teasingly nipped at Grace’s knee as she held it aloft to get just the right angle to make Grace’s head fall back against the pillow, her back arching, those gorgeous breasts pushing into Alix’s palm as she lazily rolled her thumbover Grace’s hard nipple. Grace made a sound that was only for them, and Alix’s chest went bright and achy.
“Alix,” Grace whispered, and her own name on Grace’s lips sounded like a prayer.
They moved together without hurry or expectation, leaning into the slow pleasure of one another, the bed a warm little sanctuary they’d made. Every brush of skin drew a line of heat. Every shared breath stitched them up where the coming goodbye had already started to fray them. Alix closed her eyes and let herself feel it, the slow build of sensation braided with the sharper, fragile rush of wanting — wanting this, wanting more, wanting later and next week and New Year’s and morning coffee and a hundred ordinary, stupid things.
Grace’s fingernails dug into Alix’s hips, holding her right where Grace needed her, and watching Grace turn rigid with an orgasm and cry out her name undid her own resolve, sending her over the edge of her own climax.
When they finally went still again and Alix settled beside Grace, chests rising in the same rhythm, Grace tucked her face into Alix’s neck like she’d been doing it for years. Alix slid a hand into her hair and carded gently, a soothing loop — down, up, pause; down, up, pause — that steadied her own racing thoughts.
“God,” Grace said into her skin. “This is so unfair.”
“Brutal,” Alix agreed. She focused on the tangible feeling of her hands in Grace’s hair. “Promise you won’t laugh?”
“I’d never laugh at you,” Grace lied politely.
Alix swallowed. The tenderness in her felt like a glass she couldn’t carry without spilling. “Will you spend New Year’s with me?”
