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It turned out that kissing Cara while horizontal and divested of all clothing was the greatest thing he had ever done.
“Oh my god,” he mumbled as he took a breast in one hand while they plundered each other’s mouths. It was a revelation, how soft she was. But then as his other hand found her lean thigh and slid upward, how taut she was.
Her hands, which had been clutching at his back, started migrating southward. He wasn’t having that, so he let go of her hardness and softness alike and intercepted her. Threading their hands together, he pressed their joined hands down on the mattress above her head. He was momentarily mesmerized by the sight of her hands clutching his own, the black-red lacquer of her nails in stark contrast to the white sheets. She moaned, and he ripped his attention from their joined hands in favor of revisiting the breast he’d unhanded, but with his mouth this time. She moaned again, and louder. He chuckled against the stiff peak, and as her hips chased his, moved his lower body out of her range. When she started to object, he was back at her lips shushing her with his own as he licked into her mouth.
He must have let down his guard for a moment. He wasn’t sure how it had happened, but suddenly, there were her legs, wrapped around him. She clasped her ankles behind his back and leveraged herself up so she was rubbing her center against him. Shewas giving off an incredible heat that he already felt might consume him, and he wasn’t even inside her yet.
Inside her.
The very phrase—the shape of the words themselves in his mind—unleashed something inside him. It was as if his control, as she’d called it yesterday, had been hanging on a hook, and those two words somehow had the effect of unlatching that control. Decoupling it from any sense of order or decorum.
He wrenched himself from the grip of her legs, relishing the sound of dismay that resulted. Normally, he sought to soothe expressions of dismay, but not now. Now, he wanted another one. So as he reached for the condom he’d brought with him to the bed with one hand, he used the other to seek out her clit and press down on it with his thumb.
And there it was, another mewl. Not of dismay exactly, but of entreaty. And then another, more frustrated this time, when he needed both hands to unwrap the condom. He sheathed himself, and positioned himself over her. Her pupils were dilated, her hair was spread out on the pillow like a wild crown made of leaves and sticks, and the upside-down heart of her top lip looked as if it were glowing.
She was glorious, and he was lucky, so very lucky.
“Yes?” he whispered, and when she nodded, her pupils almost fully blown, he said a silent prayer of thanks and sank into her.
The relief that slammed into him was stronger and sharper than yesterday, and it came on so fast. He forced himself to move slowly inside her as his fingers found her clit again. From putting his mouth on her yesterday, and paying attention, he’d intuitedthat a fairly firm pressure was called for. He tried to sync the motion of his fingers and his hips, and he must have been doing something right. She began moaning almost continuously, but she never closed her eyes or looked away. She merely stared at him with that soul-exposing gaze.
Even when she started coming, she kept looking at him. It felt as if it were her gaze rather than her body that pulled his orgasm out of him. When he collapsed, shaking and sweaty and disconcerted, it was all he could do to keep his weight off her. He rolled to his side, keeping his hands on her, but then he thought better of it. She hadn’t wanted him touching her last time, afterward.
It was difficult to take his hands off her. To put space between them and to smile at her across that space as if his world had not just been utterly upended.
She smiled back.
“What is this called, this part of your lips?” he suddenly asked, pointing to the top edge of her upper lip but not actually touching it. “This part that looks like an upside-down heart?”
“I think they call that a Cupid’s bow.”
“Why do I only see it when you’re not wearing lipstick?”
“Because I draw my lipstick on in such a way as to obscure it.” She demonstrated with her fingernail.
“Why?”
She shrugged. “I feel like it makes me look... unserious. Like, it’s too cute.”
No it isn’t, he wanted to say. Well, itwascute. But nottoocute. Andcutemight not even be the right word, given that he wanted to drag his teeth along it pretty much all the time. It made him a little crazy. But it also made him a little sad. The idea of Carapainting over a part of herself made something in him want to gather her in his arms and . . . he wasn’t even sure what.
They didn’t speak anymore. He watched her, over the next few minutes, fall asleep, her eyes growing heavy, closing for longer and longer periods, until it was just her black lashes against her skin, her chest rising and falling slowly. He pushed back against his own exhaustion. He would have liked nothing more than to drift off to sleep beside her, but there was poultry to receive. There was Christmas to stage. He avoided waking her as he slipped out of bed and dressed. He left the room with an odd sort of hollowness in his chest.
He didn’t have experience with affairs of this sort, but he was fairly certain they weren’t supposed to come with hollowness in the chest.
Matteo was cheered when, at home to change clothes quickly before meeting the goose man—he hadsemenon his pants!—the phone rang with a call from Torkel.
“I need to ask you a favor,” Torkel said.
“Of course.”
“Sebastien’s ring is being made by a jeweler in Witten. It’s done, and he assures me he can ship it to me in time for the ball, but...”
“You’re worried there will be an unforeseen delay and you’ll be ringless for the big proposal,” Matteo finished.
“Exactly.”
“Shall I pick it up and keep it for you?”
