Page 62 of The CEO’s Assistant

Wren crawled up beside her, her mouth wet and her hair a mess, and Cordelia kissed her. She could taste herself on Wren's mouth—salt and musk and the warm slick of it—and the kiss was deep and slow and unhurried. Cordelia could feel Wren smiling against her lips.

"You're smiling," she said.

"I am."

"Smug is not a good look."

"It's an excellent look, and you know it." Wren kissed her again. Then she shifted onto her back and pulled Cordelia over her, one hand on the back of Cordelia's neck, and said, "Your turn. Do whatever you want."

Cordelia looked down at her. Wren was spread out on the bed, lean and long, the lines of her visible in the low light—the ridge of her hipbones, the flat plane of her stomach, the dark hair between her legs already wet. Her eyes were half-closed, and her lips were parted. She looked, in this moment, like someone who had never once in her life been afraid of being wanted.

Cordelia bent her head and kissed Wren's throat. She felt the pulse there, fast and hard, and she opened her mouth against it and felt Wren's breath catch. She kissed her way down—collarbone, sternum, the small soft skin of Wren's breasts, the tight peak of one nipple under her tongue. Wren's hand tightened in her hair.

"Yes," Wren said. "Like that. Don't stop."

Cordelia used her teeth, gently, and Wren arched under her. Wren made a low, unguarded groan that went straight through Cordelia's body like a current. She moved to the other breast and gave it the same attention. Her mouth was warm and wet, her tongue slow, one hand cupping and kneading the breast her mouth had just left. Wren's hips rolled in the air.

"Lower," Wren said. "Please."

Cordelia moved lower. She kissed Wren's stomach, the skin jumping under her mouth, and she put her hands on Wren's thighs and spread them and settled between them. She could smell Wren now, warm and rich, and she could see her, the wet pink of her, the slick that had spread to the inside of her thighs. She looked up and found Wren watching her with those hazel eyes that missed nothing.

Cordelia put her mouth on her. She started slow, a long stroke with the flat of her tongue that made Wren's hips buck and her hands fist in the sheets. She found the rhythm that Wren's body asked for, and she matched it. She kept her mouth right there on her clit, her tongue moving in firm, steady strokes, her hands holding Wren's thighs open. Wren was loud in a way that Cordelia had not expected and could not get enough of.

"There… Right there, don't stop, harder, fuck⁠—"

Cordelia did what she asked, and Wren came against her mouth with a sound that was almost a sob, her whole body rigid and then shaking, her thighs clamping around Cordelia's head and then falling open.

Cordelia kissed the inside of her thigh and looked up. Wren was breathing hard, one arm over her eyes, her chest heaving. Then she moved her arm, and Wren's eyes found her. Something shifted in them. Cordelia saw it happen, the change that came over Wren in the space between one breath and the next. Wren sat up, and her hands went to Cordelia's shoulders, turning her, guiding her down onto the bed. It was the motion of someone who knew how to give and was moving, out of sheer reflex, to give again. To turn the attention back outward, away from herself, because that was where she was safe.

Cordelia caught her wrists and didn’t say anything. She held Wren's hands and guided her down flat on her back. She held her there, one hand on Wren's sternum, and she did not let her turn it around. Wren resisted, briefly, a tension in her body, a lift of her chin, the reflex of a woman who had spent her whole life making herself useful so that nobody could get rid of her. Her hands came up and gripped Cordelia's forearm, and her jaw tightened.

Cordelia looked at her and pressed her hand a little firmer on Wren's chest and shook her head, once. Wren went still. Something in her face cracked open, and her eyes went bright and wet. Her mouth softened. Her hands released Cordelia's forearm and fell to the bed, palms up, and she lay there under Cordelia's hand with nothing shut and nothing held back, and she let it happen.

Cordelia bent her head. She kissed Wren's mouth, very softly, and then she moved down again, slowly, her hair dragging across Wren's skin, her mouth following the same path as before but slower now, with the patience of someone who intended to take her time and knew she was allowed to. She put her mouth between Wren's legs that were already shaking.

She was quiet this time. The loudness was gone, and what replaced it was something more raw—small broken sounds, breaths that caught in her throat. Cordelia kept her mouth on her and her tongue slow and her hands gentle on Wren's hips, and she felt Wren climb toward her orgasm, felt the shaking intensify, felt the muscles under her hands begin to tighten and coil.

"Stay with me," Wren whispered, and her voice broke on it.

Cordelia stayed, and Wren came apart under her mouth, a wave that rolled through her body and left her trembling and silent and gripping Cordelia's hair so tightly that it hurt. Cordelia didn’t pull away, and she rode it out with Wren and slowed her tongue with her.

When she finally lifted her head, Wren was crying. Her eyes were open and wet, and the tears ran sideways into her hair, and she did not hide her face or turn away or wipe them. She lay there and breathed and let them come, and her hands released Cordelia's hair and fell to the bed, and she was quiet.

Cordelia understood exactly what she was watching, a thing learned so early and so thoroughly that it had become essential. Wren had never once let anyone take care of her. Wren had made herself indispensable and useful, the one who gives, because giving was the price of staying. And now she was the one who had been given to and taken care of yet she had not been gotten rid of, and that disrupted the pattern inside her.

Cordelia said nothing about it. She swiped her mouth with the back of her hand and crawled up the bed and lay beside Wren, pulling the sheet over both of them. She put her hand on Wren's stomach, warm and still. Wren turned her head. Her eyes were red and wet, and she looked at Cordelia with something that was a kind of raw, blinking bewilderment, as if she had just woken up in a place she did not know she was allowed to be.

"Hey, you here with me?" Cordelia asked.

"Yeah." Wren's voice was hoarse. She sniffed. "That was⁠—"

"I know."

"I don't know what happened."

"You just let someone take care of you."

Wren laughed. It was a wet, broken sound, and Cordelia found herself laughing too, her forehead against Wren's shoulder.