Chapter Thirty-Eight
QUINN
I didn’t know how to respond appropriately to what I’d been told. The only thing I knew how to do, and knew how to do well, was to prove to him that I loved Sawyer regardless of what had happened. I kissed him, or he kissed me, and the world went quiet for a moment. I didn’t remember a time we’d kissed so carefully, so conscientiously, with such cautious tongues and lips and teeth and I knew we were going to be alright.
His hands moved down my arms, and he held my waist to pull me closer to him, and in response, I tilted my head to deepen our kiss. He held the back of my head in his hand, and I struggled not to get entirely drunk on this breathlessness. It was probably horribly inappropriate to kiss him like this after what he’d told me. We should be talking, I thought. We should be talking.
But God help me, I didn’t want to talk. When he pulled me still closer, my thigh brushed against his crotch, and he hissed at the contact against his building hardness. I couldn’t help but smile a moment, and that smile vanished when he pulled me back to kiss me again. He broke to pull his shirt off over his head, and he pulled mine off, too.
Instead of trying to have him pick me up and awkwardly carry me across the house, I led him by the hand to his own bedroom. He pressed me against the mattress, the weight of him over me both comforting and suffocating in the best ways possible. My bra came off, his pants came off, all in a flurry of fingers and pulling and breaking kisses.
His breathing was ragged when he pulled from me and placed a kiss on my jaw. My neck. I felt his teeth scrape the delicate skin on my collarbone and he left a mark there, and I couldn’t care enough to get upset that I wouldn’t be able to hide it well. His hands replaced my bra, and earning soft gasps from me as he replaced his hands with his mouth, tugging with his teeth in just the ways I needed him to.
My heart thudded in my chest and the heat growing between my thighs was nearly unbearable. I gasped something into the air, only barely recognizable as his name, as his fingers pulled at the edges of my underwear. I felt, at the same time, an unbearable need and the feeling that we had all the time in the world.
The scruff on his face scratched brilliantly down my stomach. He pressed his mouth to the flat of my stomach before scooting backward on the bed. His hands slid under my ass, and he pulled me towards him, sitting up only slightly to kiss the inside of my knee. Scalding kisses, scorching kisses, as he made his way up my thigh, and when he nipped the upper part of my thigh, I yelped a bit and heard him chuckle, low and throaty, in response.
“Sawyer, I—” I found myself unable to speak as he brought his kisses higher, and then his lips, his tongue, it all burned between my legs and I wrapped my fingers up in the sheets because his hair was too short for me to tangle my fingers in.
One of his arms came down around my waist to hold me relatively still, but still, my back arched up as his tongue circled my clit, refusing to give that shock of pleasure that might send me over the edge. I closed my eyes and cried out, trying to push my hips up, to force him to bring me what I needed. In response, his arm pressed back more insistently, his other hand holding my leg open against the bed.
I drove my ass further into the bed, spine nearly aching for how hard I needed a release. Before I could become upset, before this could become unpleasant, he zeroed in on that button, flicking and sucking and turning me into a complete mess within a few seconds, gasping for breath and attempting to hold on to my senses during my orgasm.
As I started to become more aware of myself, he brought his mouth back up my torso, leaving soft, almost reassuring kisses in his wake. I pulled him up to kiss me—my years of being revolted by what a man could do to me were far past—and he was more than happy to oblige, and for a few moments we only kissed. Until, that was, I shifted myself and brushed against the tight hardness of his erection.
He broke away from me to sort through the drawer next to him until he produced a condom. I watched him roll it down his length, and I shook my head slowly at the sight before me. He looked like absolute sin, muscled and erect and panting in front of me, like an animal in heat—but then what did that make me, panting every bit as much with my hair a complete mess and sweat gathered on my back.
I expected him to push me back against the mattress and make quick work of his own release, and instead, he pulled me close to him, continuing to kiss me. It felt like we truly did have all the time in the world. For a moment, this was beautiful, and then I began to feel more urgent.
“I need you,” I told him, and he could only grunt in response.
He pressed himself against me, not entering, merely testing the waters, and I groaned in frustration at his patience. Inch by agonizing inch, he eased himself into me, making soft sounds in my ears when he wasn’t pressing kisses to the side of my neck.
I pulled my hips up to match him, to nudge him further up inside me, and we both gasped. His head bowed against my neck as he began to move, slowly, in deep thrusts that had me babbling and aching and pulling at his shoulder blades.
“Please. Please.” I didn’t even know what I was asking for. I didn’t even know what I needed. I needed more, all at once, at yet I needed for this never to end.
He thrust faster, and yet somehow deeper, and he brought his hand between us to grind his thumb against my clit. I shouted out into the night as he drove against me and his thumb sped up, and soon, I was lost. I cried out, I shouted, tears collected in the corners of my eyes and I struggled not to tear skin on Sawyer’s back as my ankles dug into his skin.
He followed soon after with a broken cry against my neck, jutting himself once more, twice more, as I tightened around him nearly unbearably. It grew silent, then, save for the sound of us breathing. I didn’t know that I’d ever have a full set of lungs again. I didn’t know that I ever wanted to be anywhere else.
He pulled away from me slowly and tossed the condom in the trash. I saw stars when I closed my eyes, and he returned to my side, collecting me in his arms, and I leaned my head against his chest. His heart thudded wildly in my ears, and it filled me with pride to know that I’d done that to him in any capacity.
“I love you,” he said to me. His voice was both quiet and the loudest thing in the room, rumbling through his chest to travel to my ear.
I curled up against his tired body and pressed a kiss to the naked skin. I knew, at that moment, that this was exactly where I was meant to be. No matter what it meant to the rest of the world.