He laughs, more in his chest than his mouth, and then his lips close over my breast, and neither of us is laughing. He goes slow, thorough, like he’s checking that every part of me made it back—hands over my ribs, my hips, the inside of my thigh. When his fingers slide between my legs and find how wet I am, I moan low.
“Grace.” Just my name, and it carries everything.
“I know,” I say. “Come here. I want you.”
“Not yet.” He moves lower, lips dragging over my belly, then the sharp line of one hipbone. He kisses down the front of my thigh, open-mouthed, tongue leaving a wet trail that cools in the air. My muscles jump under him.
He reaches my knee and keeps going, pressing his mouth to the inside of my calf, then my ankle, then the arch of my foot. I squirm, toes curling, but he holds my ankle steady and moves to the other leg. He kisses up from my toes this time, slow and deliberate, teeth scraping lightly at the tendon behind my knee.
By the time he reaches my inner thigh, I am twisting under his hands, hips lifting on their own, breath coming short.
“God…Decker… I’m ready…please…” My chest is heaving.
“I’m not done yet.” His head drops, his shoulders push my thighs wide, and his mouth is on me—no ceremony, like a man who missed a meal. I cry out and grab his hair. He works my clit with his tongue and one thick finger, then two, watching me the whole way up my body, and I don’t have to fake a sound. He pulls the first orgasm out of me faster than I’m ready for and holds me through it while I shake and curse at him.
“That’s one,” he says against my thigh.
I laugh. “Get up here, bear.”
He slides up my body then, chest brushing mine, the weight of him settling over me without crushing. His hands hook under my thighs and lift, drawing my calves over the crooks of his elbows until my legs are hiked high along his sides. The shift opens me wider, hips tilted up so my knees nearly touch my ribs. He leans in, forearms braced beside me.
“I’m not glass,” I tell him. “You won’t break me.”
“No,” he says, low. “You don’t break.”
But he’s still just hovering there, staring at me as if I might disappear. I reach between us and angle the tip of his cock against where my pussy is open for him.
“Fuck me,” I whisper, eyes locked with his.
He lines himself up and sinks in, the thick head parting my pussy in one steady push. My body gives around the blunt pressure, walls yielding to the heavy girth until he’s seated deep, hips flush to mine and the full length buried.
“Oh, my God.” The sound is low in my throat. I feel the way he fills me completely, the dense weight of him forcing a deep ache that borders on too much and settles into raw fullness instead.
He stays locked there, arms braced, a tremor running through his shoulders. My calves rest against his elbows, my thighs spread wide around his torso. Every small shift of his weight grinds the head of his cock against that sensitive spot inside.
“Sweetheart…” He holds still, his jaw tight, his whole body shaking with the effort of not moving.
“Move,” I plead.
He does. Slow and deep first, pulling sounds out of me I don’t try to stop. Then harder when I ask for it, my nails raking his shoulders and down his back. He gives me exactly what I want and a little more, and the wave builds low and unstoppable, just as it always does.
“Decker!” His name comes first, but the sounds after it make no sense at all as I buck against him. “Yes,” comes next. “Yes, God, yes!”
“Fuck, you’re beautiful.” His eyes are fixed on me. Dark. Intense. The bear close.
“I love you, bear.” I don’t know where it comes from, but with the waves still surging, now seems like the right time.
His lips drop to mine, his hips still rolling small, maddening circles. “I love you too, Grace.”
The breath that eases out of me seems to take years of tension with it. And then, without thinking, I turn my head and tilt my chin.
His mouth goes to my throat.
To the join of my neck and shoulder, where it’s gone a hundred times, where it’s touched down and stopped and pulled back every single time. His teeth press against my skin. And stop.
He goes rigid above me and inside me, holding at the edge of the thing he’s refused himself, and I feel the question in the locked set of his jaw better than any words.
I take a fistful of his hair and hold his mouth right where it is.
