Chapter Eighteen
QUINN
I didn’t care that this was a bad idea. I didn’t care about any of the reasoning I’d made after the last time we’d had sex. I wanted this, and I wanted it more than I wanted to be professional or keep face with Sawyer or any of the stuff that, at that moment, seemed so insignificant and far-off. He held me closer to him and kissed me, eliminating any protest that my brain could have formed.
I broke away to open the door, and I’d barely gotten it closed before Sawyer had me against him again. He kissed me with intention, with a lust, pressing his tongue to mine and exploring my mouth like it was the most important thing for him to do. I could barely keep up; I could barely breathe, trying to remember what it was like to breathe easy.
I managed to lead us towards my bedroom. As we walked, clothing came off. I pushed my dress off my shoulders, and he dragged it off my waist; I undid the buttons on his shirt as we backed into my bedroom and he pulled the garment off. Eventually, the fumbling grew irritating, but we’d reached my bed, so it didn’t matter.
He lowered me down gently, like I was made of glass, and I let my hands roam over his chest. I knew SEALs did extensive physical training and had to be in absolutely amazing physical shape; under my fingertips, hard muscle nearly made my mouth water. I broke free from his kiss long enough to press my lips to his neck, his collarbone, mapping his torso with my mouth. I pressed a kiss to his hip, and before I could get much further, he grabbed me and pulled me back up.
We locked eyes for a moment, him unsure whether he’d grabbed me too hard and me unsure whether I liked it. Slowly, I began to smile, and that smile was all the incentive he needed. He kissed me again, pulling away my bra while I fumbled with his belt. We were all fumbling and frantic kissing and gasps for breath; the assertive sexiness of our first encounter was gone. When I produced a condom from my bedside drawer, I nearly dropped it in my eagerness to get it open.
But this was better. This was sweet, and honest. This time, as he lowered himself over me and slid against me, he gasped, and the sound was music to my ears. We found a rhythm every bit as easily as we had the first time, something more patient and deliberate than before. He sat back and pulled me up, grabbing my hips in his hands and lifting my ass up without even seeming to exert much effort. Then he began to drive himself in again.
The angle made my head spin. I cried out as he drove into places I’d never been able to reach myself. I chanted my approval, gripping blindly at the bedsheets. When I opened my eyes to look at him, his head was thrown back.
He began to slow down, and I stared up at him almost in irritation.
“I won’t last much longer,” he said, his voice a low growl. He slammed against me once, making me yelp, and then followed that with long, slow strokes.
I could barely keep my head on straight enough to answer. “I don’t care. But please, harder.”
He picked up his speed but didn’t drive as deep as he had before. I could tell he was doing this to taunt me and I glared up at him.
“Harder,” I grunted.
He thrust into me forcefully, and I cried out. Then again, long, slow.
I decided to take him by surprise. He began to build up pace again, and instead of letting him set a rhythm, I clamped down on him. His eyes shot open, and surprise painted his features before he detonated, hips bucking without his control.
His loss of composure set me over the edge; as his hips bucked, I pressed up to meet him and found myself getting lost in the throes of my own pleasure. When we finally came down from it, he moved away from me slowly. He pressed a kiss to my cheek and stood up, walked to the bathroom.
I was confident that I needed a shower, or at least to tidy up, but I didn’t care. I could wait. I felt spent, and further, I felt incredible. When the sink turned off, I worried that Sawyer was on his way out the door. He returned to the bedroom and sat back in the bed with me, pressing a kiss to my shoulder.
“You surprise me,” he said. “You know, I think we’ve really gone and blown the whole patient-doctor thing.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I don’t know. I’ve seen it work in sitcoms. I’m sure there’s still some amount of professionalism we can maintain.” This I said to the man who had been inside me about five minutes previous.
He grinned, presumably for that very reason. “Oh, I’m sure,” he said. He glanced at the door, almost like he expected someone else to walk in.
“Do you need to leave?” I asked him. I couldn’t blame him if he did; a lot of the men I’d dated I’d dated just for the sex, and they’d left afterward. With Sawyer, some part of me expected that to continue. Even though we’d had an incredible date—I hadn’t laughed so much in a long time. Still, I knew I could romanticize things, and it was very possible he’d gotten what he came here for, and now he had other things to do that day.
Sawyer shook his head and said, “Actually, I was going to ask if you were okay with me staying.”
I frowned. I couldn’t think of a reason why I wouldn’t be okay with it. I supposed some people might worry about being clingy or moving a relationship too fast, but at this hour, it was honestly more convenient for him to just stay over.
“Of course,” I said. Then I laughed. “No, Sawyer, you can screw my brains out and leave me forgetting my own last name, but staying the night is where I draw the fucking line.”
He laughed at that, and I leaned against his chest slightly. I wasn’t sure if that was too intimate, but it felt like the natural thing to do, and his arm came around me, holding me to him. It felt safe to be there. It felt like he’d never not been there, like I’d always had Sawyer in my bed.
He was dangerously familiar. I didn’t know what to make of that. But when he pressed a kiss to the top of my head, I became filled with the idea that this was something I couldn’t let go of so easily as I let go of all my previous relationships. This felt like something that I could very well get attached to.
“I was just making sure,” Sawyer said. “I don’t want to go back home.”
The therapist in me perked up when he said that, and I tilted my head up slightly.
“Why’s that?” I asked. I didn’t mean to turn the bed into a therapist’s office, but I couldn’t seem to turn that curious part of my head off. I could almost hear Babs in the back of my mind chiding me, shouting, ‘Don’t psychoanalyze me!’ But this was a fair question, I thought, and besides, he didn’t have to answer it.
“If I go home, I have to deal with my dad,” Sawyer said. He made a face. “I don’t want to deal with him.”
“Is he particularly angry with you today?” I asked. If that was the case, I could certainly understand. But then I also understood just wanting to stay away from toxic people.
He made some kind of sound as though he didn’t really want to explain himself. Sometimes men got particularly exhausted after sex; I didn’t know whether it was that, the topic, or some mixture of both that made him generally not want to answer it. In any case, I didn’t want to turn my bedroom into a therapy room, especially when the legal parameters of my office didn’t apply here.
“We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” I told him. Tomorrow, when he would come into my office as a patient. I would probably wear something baggy and pretend we’d never even looked at each other, let alone locked eyes in the middle of an orgasm. This was a complete and total mess, but maybe it was working. Babs might have been right all along—but, of course, she had recommended I not see him as a therapist.
Either way, we had an appointment the next morning.
“We’ll talk about it then,” Sawyer agreed, and he yawned widely.
That was the last thing that I remembered before I fell to peaceful sleep in his arms.