Chapter Thirty
QUINN
I could not have possibly measured the effect that his words would have on me. I nearly melted on the spot, and when Sawyer leaned in to kiss me again, I welcomed that as something to ground me. He needed me, I’d known that, but to know that he considered me something he cared about in a romantic way and not just as a convenience was a big deal to me. I curled my fingers up in his shirt and bit his bottom lip.
He broke away to smile at me, and he pressed his mouth to mine again. I nudged my head to the side when I needed to breathe and kissed the side of his neck, wrinkling my nose when I felt the hard scratches of whiskers forming on his cheeks. His hands came around to my legs and I wrapped my arms around his neck, soundlessly agreeing to what he suggested without words.
He hoisted me up like I didn’t weigh anything, and I was more than happy to continue to bite and kiss my way down his neck, along his cheek, as far as I could reach to his shoulder. He led us to his bedroom, at least I presumed as much, and set me down gently on the bed.
Getting our clothes off took almost no time at all. I sighed at the feeling of his skin against mine when he pressed himself over me. When we pulled away from our kissing, breathing heavy, sometimes our stomachs or chests would touch. The swell of my breast matching the hard line of his chest, my mouth to his, I wanted to be covered in this feeling.
Where I’d wrinkled my nose earlier at the feeling of his stubble against my cheek, now I gasped at the feeling of it rasping on my neck. Scratching along the base of my throat while he rubbed slow circles into my thighs, I was taken aback by the affection in his touch. He felt like he was only trying to feel me, as much as I was trying to feel him; as much tension as there was in the room, I got the feeling that we could just as easily go to sleep now and skip everything else.
But I wanted everything else. I slipped a hand below his waist and he took that hand and lifted it up, above my head, and held it there. We made eye contact for a moment. I was surprised at the suddenness of his gesture, but I was also completely helpless in his hold.
He broke our eye contact to kiss down my torso, moving not in a straight line but covering all the skin with his mouth, tracing my navel with his tongue, leaving me a maze of searing kisses. The palm of his hand rested between my legs, and he moved his fingers to trail innocuously, ineffectively, only reminding me that they were there and not providing release.
His breath hit the side of my hip, and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t process the sight of him driving me insane as well as feel him do that. I expected him to trail slow, merciless circles around where I needed the most pressure, to agonizingly wait before delivering pleasure.
He pressed two fingers inside me at the same time that he kissed me. I yelped, not expecting the sudden jolt of pleasure, and to eliminate any pain his thumb came down on my clit. My hips bucked up into his hand pitifully, and I moaned into his mouth, unable to successfully return his kiss.
He said nothing, merely kissed down my neck and held himself up over me as he pumped his fingers in and out of me. It was his thumb, though, that I kept grinding up against, bringing me closer and closer until he hooked his fingers up towards my belly button and I shouted when I climaxed.
I hadn’t expected him to do that so suddenly. While my heart began to calm down, he kissed me, and then released me once more.
I could only lay there, dazed, utterly spent and yet craving more.
He sat up and started going through his drawer. I snatched up a condom before he could and undid it carefully—as much as I appreciated the animosity behind taking off a condom with one’s teeth, I didn’t want to tear it. Instead of letting him do it, I rolled the condom down over his erection.
“Quinn,” he murmured like he had more to say and didn’t know quite what.
I let him hover back over me, holding my waist with one hand and supporting himself on his elbow with the other. His weight over me was enough to make me feel drunk on the moment. I wanted to keep him there forever. I could feel him pressed against me, and slowly but surely, he pressed into me.
The groan he issued as he seated himself inside me was enough to ready me for another orgasm. Oddly, I couldn’t force myself to feel the same rush to do so as I usually did. He moved slowly, carefully, but drove deep and hit his mark inside me often enough to have me disoriented, grasping at the sheets.
I could hear him speaking, too, and it wasn’t long before his thrusts were deeper, faster, more insistent. The bed squeaked beneath us, and my eyes slammed closed as he burst with a shout, still moving, coming to a slow stop.
I still had my lips pressed to his neck, to his cheek, to any exposed skin. He moved away from me with care and disposed of the condom in the wastebasket by his bed. I expected him to get up, then, to go and clean up as he usually did. I probably could use it, too—though the smell would air out by the morning, it wouldn’t do to revel in this dirtiness now.
Instead of getting up, though, he rolled off me and pulled me closer to him. I inhaled the soap-sweet smell of his bare skin and tried not to think about the way that I felt. It was always easy to get lost in the moment, I knew, and I was guilty more than most of letting myself believe that anyone I slept with was someone special.
I looked up at Sawyer’s eyes, drifting closed, exhausted. His hold on me didn’t lax. I thought of how familiar he was to me, and how I’d been trying to reconcile that with the fact that some part of me still wondered if I was supposed to be his therapist. He had come to his last meeting, after all.
With the steady rise and fall of his chest, my head moved, too, but in a pleasant way. Rather than be disruptive and cause a problem with my going to sleep, it lulled me. I listened to his heartbeat.
I’d been so scared when Stacy came to the table at dinner. I’d been so convinced that she would say something just right and Sawyer would run off with her. That, or he would break again, and all the progress we made would shatter. Instead, he’d held his own, talked to her without growing angry or making a scene, and then had done everything he possibly could to extinguish the idea that he might prefer her over me. And then some, in my opinion.
I thought back to how she’d specified Sawyer and my relationship as a point of conversation. Sawyer hadn’t liked that—I couldn’t remember exactly what he’d said, but he didn’t like it, and it made him suspicious. Still, that was only all the more reason to feel at ease. If Sawyer were dismissive of the situation, I might be more worried.
Now, I didn’t know if I could worry about anything, except maybe having to ever get up and leave. It seemed perfectly reasonable at that moment to never get up from this spot.
Off to the side, on the bedside table, a phone buzzed. I thought at first that it was mine, so I sat up to look at it. My patients all had my phone number and permission to call me at any time if they were in an emergency. I’d calmed several suicidal patients down that way, and gotten CPS to some houses where kids needed help. In any case, it was good for me to check my phone when it went off, and so I sat up to look at what was going on.
It wasn’t my phone, though. The screen was different. I glanced at the time on the digital alarm clock and was only more confused as to who could be texting him. I wasn’t going to go through his phone; that was hugely rude, and I wouldn’t breach his privacy like that. But I was curious, so I peered over to see if I could read what was on the screen from where I was.
‘Good to see you again. XO,’ from ‘Stacy’ in his phone.
I wrinkled my nose. The first emotion that came up, try as I did to stop it, was anger. I hated that he still had her number, hated that she had his number, and didn’t want to know how it came to be that she was saved in his phone. I didn’t want to think that he’d added her back in recently, and I didn’t want to think that he’d never deleted her in the first place.
I especially didn’t want to think that she was texting him regularly. There was no way for me to confirm or deny that without looking at his phone in-depth, and I’d already decided not to do that. But based on that text, I reasoned, I didn’t have anything to worry about. I thought about what Sawyer said, about not needing anyone else. He cared about me, and I was beginning to care about him far more than I’d intended to.
What Stacy said didn’t matter. I laid back down in bed and shook my head to myself. I wasn’t going to be some ridiculous jealous girlfriend about this. She had his number, and she’d texted him—that wasn’t a big deal. He was obviously not interested in her, and he was obviously aware of how dangerous he was for her. If Sawyer knew those two things, he could keep her away. And he wouldn’t do it because I wanted him to—he’d do it because he knew he had to.
I could help him, too, if he needed it. If Stacy continued to butt her nose into our relationship, I knew I would eventually need to do something about it. Now, though, there was nothing to be done. There were crickets off in the distance, chirping quietly. There was the sound of Sawyer breathing quietly beside me. When I set my head on his chest, there was the sound of his heart thudding. If I focused hard enough, I could feel mine, too, clunking along sure and steady.
I knew the truth. Hell, maybe Stacy had sent that text knowing that I would see it. I knew her, and I knew Sawyer. There was nothing for me to worry about. There wasn’t ever going to be anything for me to worry about, not so long as I could continue to trust Sawyer the way that I did so unyieldingly unconditionally.