“Looking at you?”
“Staring,” she corrects.
“You’re worth staring at,” I say, and her face softens in a way that makes my chest ache.
I put one knee on the mattress and lean over her, my mouth finding the curve of her throat, the hollow of her collarbone, the soft swell of her breast.She inhales sharply when my lips close over her and she arches into me, her hands coming up to grip the back of my neck.I take my time.More than she wants me to, judging by how her fingers press harder.
“Cole.”
“Mmm.”
“You’re doing that on purpose.”
“Doing what?”I murmur against her skin.
“Going slow.”
“I am,” I confirm.I move lower, my mouth tracing the curve of her waist, the soft skin below her navel, and she makes a sound that she tries to muffle against her wrist.
I lift my head.“Don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Hide your sounds… your words.”
She looks down at me, chest rising and falling, eyes dark.“Do your worst.”
And I do.I part her legs, savage her pussy with my mouth, and pin her down when she thrashes too much for me to concentrate.When her body draws tight and the orgasm takes her, I lick at her harder to drive her higher.It’s my name she screams and then murmurs over and over again as I bring her down to where she’s loose and boneless against the sheets.
I work my way back up her body slowly, her hands finding my shoulders, my jaw, pulling me up to her mouth.She kisses me with a lazy, heated thoroughness that starts to build again, her hips shifting beneath me with a wordless request I understand perfectly.
I settle my weight over her, moving her legs to force them around me.She digs her heels into the back of my thighs, and when I finally thrust into her, she exhales against my neck in a long, shuddering breath of relief.
I stay still for a moment, just breathing her in.
“Hey,” she says against my jaw, voice low and warm.
“Hey,” I say back.
She laughs quietly at that, and I feel it everywhere, and then I start to move and the laughter gives way to something better.
The other times have been urgent, driven by adrenaline or fear or five years of compressed wanting finding its way out all at once.But tonight we move like a couple who has decided we’re not going anywhere.
Tessa’s hands move restlessly over my back, my shoulders, the nape of my neck.She whispers into my ear that I don’t have the presence of mind to fully process the words, fragments of sentences and my name and sounds that aren’t words at all.
At some point she shifts, pulling me closer, changing the angle, and I groan against her temple.
“There,” she breathes.
“Yeah,” I manage.
But eventually the unhurried quality gives way to a deeper and more insistent need.The pace builds between us until her nails find my back and her legs lock around me and then she’s falling.I follow her over the edge with my face pressed into her hair and her name in my throat.I hold her closer than I need.
Afterward she lies with her cheek against my chest, one hand flat over my heart, her breathing slow and even.I have my arm around her, my hand tracing the same slow path up and down her back that I’ve traced hundreds upon hundreds of times before.
“Cole,” she says into the dark.
“Mmm.”
