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Kissing his way back up to my neck, he pauses to bite just above my collar bone, which makes me writhe shamelessly under him. I should make him stop because he’s probably leaving a mark, but his teeth sinking into my skin spikes a moment of pain, which he follows by lavishing intense sucking on the spot, and that sequence feels too incredible to care. The only marks I’ve allowed him to leave on my body so far have been his handprints on my ass, sometimes to the point of bruising. But right now, he can mark me wherever he wants.
“You keep wiggling and grinding against me like this, you’re going to make me come.” He says the words like a warning, but I don’t need to be warned.
“I want you to come. I love when you do that.”
“What do you like about it?”
“The way your thick cock surges, stretching and filling me. The way your muscles all lock right before you let go. The heat when you spill inside me.”
His muscles seize, and the final seconds of his cock swelling before he erupts brings on rapid breathing that gives way to guttural groans as he empties his load, giving me all the anticipated heat that I’ve just confessed to liking. I do like it. Fuck, I love it, and I love what comes after: the brief window where he’s spent and shaky. He recovers pretty quickly, but for a little while, he’s got nothing left to give. Because he’s just given it all to me.
Maybe he could’ve just as easily given it to any woman alive, but it feels like he’s just given his whole self to me. I’m not supposed to want the whole of him, and I remind myself of that at least once a day, but I can’t go a day without needing to be reminded again.
We recover and clean up, and then he marks my ass with his handprint and fingers me to orgasm twice more on his couch, bringing my total to three for the evening, and we haven’t even made it to his bed yet.
“Want to watch TV?” He offers me a blanket instead of my clothes.
“If you’ll watch true crime with me,” I say, wrapping the blanket around my naked body.
He laughs and shakes his head. “What channel?”
After a few episodes, he pauses the show. “Doesn’t watching this stuff make you feel worse about the world?”
“No,” I say. “It makes me feel more informed about the world. Putting on blinders and pretending it’s not a dangerous place just makes it more dangerous. That’s not really a luxury women can afford.”
“I fucking hate that you have to feel that way.”
“So do I, but it’s reality.”
“You know I’d do anything to keep you safe, right?”
“But no one can keep anyone safe, not all the time, no matter how hard they try.”
He kisses my forehead. “I know, but I’d try.”
I never thought I’d be attracted to the protector type, but I never knew a guy who fit that bill but could also accept my independence. Teague’s different. Dangerous in his own right.
When he hits his murder-porn tolerance, he doesn’t ask if I’m done watching, too; he just points and clicks the remote before the next case can be introduced. “What if I wasn’t done watching?” I ask.
“I can only take so much tragedy in one night.” He tosses the remote onto the coffee table. “Besides, you’ve got a whole rainy weekend ahead of you to solve cold cases.”
That makes me smile because I do try to solve them on my own before the end. It’s a personal challenge to see if I can pick up on all the clues and figure it out ahead of the reveal. And I can’t help but share my theories and my excitement when I think I’m getting close. It drove my ex crazy. He could never figure them out. Lousy husband, worse detective.
As soon as I stand, Teague scoops me up in his arms and starts carrying me down the hall. The first time he picked me up, I protested and said I was too heavy. It wasn’t performative. I was genuinely concerned because I’m not a tiny woman. He proceeded to show me he could not only lift me, but carry me with ease, and once we reached his bedroom, he wasted no time demonstrating how easily he could toss me around on his mattress. And then he made me promise to never again balk when he picked me up.
He also tried to forbid me from saying anything negative about myself. That one proved too unrealistic for me, so we’ve compromised: I can say things that are less than flattering as long as I’m not beating myself up over it, and I have to accept that he’s going to counter with a positive comment.
I’m not allowed to deflect his random compliments either. I had no idea I couldn’t take a compliment, but deflecting them is a hard habit to break. I’m trying. I know I’m a reasonably attractive woman, but I’m not petite and I’m not in my twenties anymore and I’m not a fitness junkie or a yoga enthusiast—learning to stop the comparison game is a much bigger challenge than solving cold case murders on my TV.
Teague drops me onto his bed, and I laugh. The first time he did it, I yelped and not from delight. It wasn’t like he’d shoved me out of plane or thrown me off a cliff, but it was a shock to be dropped without warning. Now, I expect it and know I’ve got a soft place to land, no reason to panic. I crawl between his sheets and pull the comforter up to my shoulders. I’m not hiding from him, just the chill in the room.
His warm body slides next to mine, and I can’t deny the increased feeling of comfort and safety. My fight-or-flight reflex still pings when I have thoughts like this, but his firm hand sliding between my legs goes a long way toward vanquishing it. When his gravelly voice says, “Roll over,” there is nowhere else I’d rather be.
I try to walk softly back from the bathroom, still half asleep. I’m not sure what time it is, but there’s no sun blasting through his blinds, so I first think it has to be ridiculously early, but then I hear the rain and realize it could be too cloudy to tell.
Teague is one of the few people I know who works as much overtime as I do. His hours aren’t called overtime since he owns the company, but there’s no magic word that can be added or removed to make the hours any less tiring. I don’t want to wake him, so I don’t lift my phone to check the time. The room is serenely dim, and the brightness from my phone would splinter the twilight.
Shadows flutter across the wall, and I lie still and watch the patterns cast by leaves dancing in the rain. The wind gusts and heavy drops patter against the windows. Thunder rolls and Teague rolls over in sync with it, making it seem like he could’ve been the source of the rumbling. His eyes open when another round of lightning flashes.
