HER EYES BOLTED OPEN. “I knew it! I’m going to get the carving knife!” she said, as she started pushing off his lap—but he held her tight.
“You don’t need a knife if you want to kill me,” he said. “All you need to do is say no. Because I’ll drop dead if you don’t take me within the next two minutes.”
“Take...you? Oh, take you! You mean I’m in control.”
“That’s what I mean.”
“But why?”
“Because you said no sex, therefore you have to be the one to reverse that order. Because I like the idea of being your slave. And because...I trust you with my body, like I’ve never trusted anyone before.”
She felt tears prickle, as they always did when he said something that moved her.
He groaned. “Hey! Cut that out. Tears aren’t sexy.”
“But big tough guys who turn to putty when they see them are.”
“I’m scared of trolls, that’s all,” he said.
“I don’t think you’re scared of anything, Matt.”
He cupped her cheek in one hand and looked at her, very seriously. “I’m scared of you, Romy, and that’s the truth,” he said. And then he gave a shaky laugh. “But here’s a hot tip to help you with my seduction—I’m an easy lay—it won’t take much to make me come. So the floor is yours. Or the couch. Too bad there’s not a chandelier or you could—”
“Shut up and kiss me,” she said, leaping straight into the fray before anything could snatch the chance from her—and almost before she finished saying it his mouth was on hers, his tongue in her mouth.
One, two, three seconds—and he sat back, took her hand, put it over his heart. “Feel that?”
“Yes,” she said. “It’s banging like a drum.”
“I am going to come so hard for you,” he said.
Oh God, just hearing him say that! “I’m going to make you,” she said. “But first, I’m going to kiss you and you’re not going to kiss me back—this is just for me.”
He kept himself still as she brought her mouth to his. First she kissed one corner, then the other.
When she pulled back to look at him, he touched her mouth and breathed out slowly. “That’s just the start, right?” he said.
Instead of answering him, she leaned into him again, trailing tiny kisses between those two corners, sometimes letting her tongue slide between his lips, sometimes not.
She pulled back again, watching for his reaction. “Well?”
“Well,” he said, and licked his lips. “Am I allowed to ask for more? Because I want more, Romy. I want you to kiss me all night.”
And with a little cry of surrender, she planted her mouth over his. “Open,” she said against his mouth. “Now you can kiss me back.”
And obediently, he did, his tongue gliding deep and wet into her mouth, seeming to touch everywhere at once. She swiveled on his lap to straddle him, her arms twining around his neck, knees digging into the back of the couch either side of his hips as she brought her body snugly against his. Her hips moved back and forth, and so did his, as if their bodies were already planning to take over the show. He felt so good there, her toy now, and the thought that she could do whatever she wanted to him was an exhilarating one, even if all she really wanted to do was strip off their clothes and impale herself on him.
But she remembered how in San Francisco, when she was climbing the stairs, she’d wished she could be memorable for him, and so she forced herself to slow down, to throttle back. She would tell him what to do to her, because he wanted her to do that, he trusted her to do that—and being the one he trusted was already something memorable.
Her hands went to the hem of her T-shirt. “Do you know what I want you to do to me when I take this T-shirt off?” she asked.
“Tell me.”
“I want your hands on my breasts. And then your mouth. I want you to coax my nipples out, to not stop until you do.”
“Oh Jesus,” he groaned. “I am so up for that.”
She laughed, low and soft, and scooting back as far as she could on his lap, lifted her T-shirt up and off. Lowering her arms to her sides, she lifted her chin. Displaying the wares. Watching his eyes drop to her chest. Seeing him swallow hard. Her breasts seemed to swell from the heat in his eyes, begging to be released from the confines of her bra.
“Well?” she said.
“Well,” Matt said fervently. “I could drool a fucking river looking at you.”
“Hands. On me.”
And as he raised his hands, placed them gently over her covered breasts and her heart gave a savage leap. He raising smiling eyes to hers and she knew he’d felt it.
He started to move his hands in circles over the white mesh of her bra, and her nipples tingled as though getting ready for him. One firm squeeze, and he pulled his hands back but only far enough for his fingertips to take over the work, drawing the lightest of circles around her areolae, which were on clear display through the mesh of her bra.
She huffed out a shuddering breath, so hot for him she thought she might scream. One more circle, another, another, each one infinitesimally smaller than the last, heading inward to his twin targets.
She squirmed on his lap, frustrated, and the way he laughed low in his throat told her he knew exactly what he was doing to her. Well, of course he knew!
But she wasn’t entirely clueless, either, and when she made a little figure eight on his lap with her backside, using her hips to propel her, he actually gasped, his cock doing an involuntary lunge upward against her heat. “Ride me if you want, Romy. Do anything to me. Ask anything of me.”
“Then...then I want your fingers on my nipples, right on them, right now, rubbing,” she said.
“Your wish...my command,” he breathed out, and used two fingers to rub each nipple through the white mesh. “Tell me when I can use my mouth.”
A deep, drawn-out moan of a “Now” had him going straight to the job, holding her breasts in his hands and bending forward to lick around one areola, then the other, moving back and forth, back and forth again and again, before shifting to her nipples and using the flat of his tongue to lick her like an ice cream, then the tip to stab into the centers.
“Soooo gooood,” she sighed.
“Don’t I know it,” he groaned, and gave each nipple a lightly sucking kiss.
“Take off my bra,” she said. “I need you to touch me properly.”
“How about I do it like this?” he said, and peeled the cups of her bra down. He leaned back to look at them, licking his lips as though he could taste her. “Ahhhh, God, it’s a crime, how sexy you are.”
She slipped her hands under his T-shirt, ran the palms up his chest. “You feel so hot.”
“I am hot. Hot for you. Hot and hungry and ready.”
She pulled her hands free, sat back to give him room. “Then take off your T-shirt.”
He pulled it up and off lightning fast. “Romy, please touch me,” he said. “Please.”
She put her hands over his pecs, rested them there for long seconds, absorbing the thud of his heart and then moving her hands in the slow circles he’d used on her. “Are your nipples as sensitive as mine?” she asked.
“Find out,” he said, and she moved her hands, softly, delicately circling them with her fingertips.
“Yes,” she said. “They’re hard. Oh, I wish you could feel mine.”
“Say the word and I’ll get back to work.”
“First, I want to do this,” she said, and leaned in so that her breasts were only just touching his chest. She closed her eyes, lost in the moment. “Oh, I like that.”
He bucked against her, as though jolted by a burst of uncontainable energy.
“Don’t,” she ordered, even though she loved it. “Stay still and let me do this. It feels so wonderful.” And it did, her skin against his, the crunch of his hair against her nipples, the graze of his own small nipples against her.
“Are you trying to torture me, Romy?”
“What do you mean?”
“Do you know how hard it is for me to wait?”
“Yes, because I’ve waited ten years for you, wanting this.”
“So you’re punishing me?”
“No,” she said. “No, never. I would never hurt you. I want to give you everything.” For an instant, she sensed a withdrawal in him, and the next moment his hands were in her hair, his forehead pressed to hers.
“Not those words tonight,” he said.
“Why not, when I mean them?”
He released her, eased back, not answering. “Come on, get rough with me. I want you to fuck my brains out and make me beg.”
Her hips moved, her core sliding over him, back and forth. “Does it feel good to have me do that?”
“Yes, you know it does—you can feel how hard I am.”
“So say the words. Tell me exactly. I like it when you say the words to me.”
He smiled again, a sexy curve of mouth. “It feels so good when you ride my cock. You make me so big and hard, I can’t wait to be in you. I want to make you wet. I want to fill you up. I want to do you fast and slow and make you come all night.”
“Yes,” she panted, restless, seeking.
“So can I?”
“Not until you make my nipples come out. Undo my bra.”
Swiftly, he undid the back clasp of her bra and stripped it from her.
“Get to work,” she commanded.
He recupped her breasts with his hands, going straight for the nipples now, thumbing them gently, then harder, then pinching them between thumb and forefinger.
The air was full of small sounds. Sighs and moans and gasped-out breaths and tiny sucking sounds, rasps from his jeans against her as she writhed on his lap.
“Now your mouth,” she said. “Lick them. Suck them. Say again you’ll do anything, but this time I want to know it’s only for me, no other woman.”
“Only for you, Romy. Only ever for you will I do what I’m told, always you, only you, forever.”
She closed her eyes, surprised that the words brought her pain, and he seemed to take that as his cue to increase the pressure because he went hard at her now, hands squeezing her breasts, settling in to suck on her, focused on only one, going hard, hard, hard, as though he were starving for her, so that she was arching her back and dragging his head closer and tighter. The intensity hovered just short of pain.
She let out a low, keening cry, and he went crazy, his sucking almost frenzied. And unbelievably, with one last, long, luxurious suck, her nipple popped out into his mouth.
He pulled back, looked at it and she felt herself flame.
“I am so horny,” he said, low and hoarse, as his fingers went to where his mouth had been, pinching and rolling. “I’m scared I might actually come.” And he shuddered as though to underscore the truth of it.
“Suck me again,” she said, and he bent his head and kept sucking, this time using his fingers on the other nipple as though to prepare it. And then with one final light bite, he switched sides, using the same technique, the same firm suction, the same concentration, and it happened fast his time, the nipple suckled into his mouth, eager and ready.
“Now,” she said. “Now. I need you inside me now.”
“Not yet,” he begged, as he continued to lash one nipple with his tongue, twirl the other with his fingers, pinching, rolling, squeezing.
“Now,” she said again.
“One minute more,” he begged, and latched onto her nipple, sucking and sucking until she was shifting on his lap, whimpering, panting.
“I’m going to come if you keep going!” she cried.
“Good.”
“No!” she said, and pushed against him so that she tumbled backward and would have fallen to the floor if he hadn’t caught her hips, pulled her up, held her steady.
“You are driving me fucking wild, Romy,” he said.
Their eyes clashed, warred. She undulated on his lap and a look of triumph came into her face. “Then kiss me, show me,” she said, and he dragged her in, lunging his cock so high and tight against her she almost wished he’d take over, roll her under him and jam his cock into her. His mouth landed on hers, his tongue thrusting as though he were fucking her mouth, and she lost all sense of time and space until there was only heat and lust and musk.
Her slave. He really was her slave.
“Let me have you, Romy,” he said against her mouth, between deep, drugging kisses. “Let me have you now.”
And she was off his lap, dragging him up after her, kissing him again as her hands went for his jeans. Unzipping, hands diving, gripping him, squeezing him. “I want to see you naked,” she said, and stepping back, she flicked a hand at his jeans. “Get them the fuck off.”
“You bet,” he said, and while he kicked his way free of his jeans and all but tore off his boxer briefs, she stripped off her sweatpants, her underwear.
And then she stopped to breathe before lowering herself onto the couch, where she laid herself out like a feast, and when he looked at her she felt a surge of power that this man, of all the men in the world, would want to be hers even for a fleeting moment.
* * *
As Matt looked at her, so confident on the couch, tenderness almost blinded him. She’d asked him to tell her he’d do anything only for her, no other woman.
To him it seemed so obvious, it didn’t need to be said. Ten years of running only to her, ten years of doing whatever she asked. Even the fact that she’d asked him to take her, that night in San Francisco, the first time she’d ever outright asked, was proof. Because he’d held himself so rigidly back from her for so long—and yet he’d obeyed her. Of course he had. Here in London, too. It wasn’t in him to deny her what she wanted. She’d always belonged to him, in every way but this—and now she was claiming this, too. Did she not see that he always would have done this for her if she’d asked? That he’d already done everything he could think of to keep her with him, even when the only way he could think of was to deny himself this final piece?
His body one giant throb straining toward her, held back only because he’d put himself at her command and she was reveling in her power over him.
Her silky light brown hair was spread out above her head. One arm was crooked beneath her head, the other stretching up the back of the couch, her hand flopping over the back of it. Creamy skin. Sleepy eyes. Mouth swollen from his kisses. Those small pink nipples, hard and impudent and all the more amazing because he’d had to work for them, and because she’d demanded he work hard. The tiny tangle of hair at the apex of her thighs, which made him want to fall to his knees and beg her to open her legs for him.
As though she’d divined that unspoken need, she spread her legs so that one foot was on the couch, the other on the floor. Like she was saying: yours.
“Ah, Romy,” he said looking down at her. The moment felt too big for words, the air heavy with the promise of something special.
“Come,” she said.
And slowly, he lowered himself on top of her, waiting for her arms to enclose him, folding his own tightly around her at the same time as he closed his eyes—the better to sharpen the moment. He stayed like that, quiet and still, for the longest time, absorbing her.
When he opened his eyes, it was to find her waiting for him. She strained up to kiss his mouth, deep and soft, and she kept kissing him as he slowly, so very slowly, entered her.
He stopped when he was all the way in, wanting to remember this moment because surely sex could never be so blissfully perfect again. And then he moved. Out, in, out, keeping it slow and rhythmic so she knew exactly what to expect.
Over and over he entered her, and she kept her mouth on his all the while. He wanted to take forever, wanted to immerse himself in the sound of sex, the arousing smell of her, the taste of her mouth, the pant of her quickened breaths, the feel of those delicious little nipples poking against his chest, the strength of her inner thighs gripping the outside of his as though she’d never let him go. But his cock was trying to slip the leash, desperate for the finale, and his orgasm was building, grabbing at him despite his efforts to slow it down.
Not yet, not...yet. He ground out the words in his head, but he knew it was a stroke or two only away. His breaths were heaving so much, he had to move his mouth off hers, gulping in air as his hips rubbed against hers. Oh God, not yet, I want more.
And then Romy’s whole body went stiff. A gasp, and cry, her wet heat tightening around him as he sucked against her neck, then licked, then sucked, then licked.
“Let me say it, Matt,” she said.
Oh God, he knew. Knew what she wanted. He shook his head, no. No! Let me just have this.
“I have to say it, Matt.”
Panic. “No!” Aloud? In his head? “No, no, no, please no, just let me, let me, Romy.”
But it was out of his control. Push, push, push, push, his body inside hers, owned. Her heart was thumping in time with his, the smell of her wrapping around him as surely as her arms. Oh, please, no.
“I love you, Matt,” she cried, and the words pushed him over the edge so that he abandoned himself to the waves. “I love you, Matt. I love you, love you, love you. Ahhhhhhhh, I love you. Love.”
Silence.
Full. Heavy. Lost.
His arms unwrapping, his mind unraveling, his body shivering.
He eased himself up over her, hands on either side of her, looked down into her face and all he could think was, No, please don’t say it, even though it was too late.
She watched him. Boldly, unwavering, unapologetic.
Was she expecting him to say something? Because he had nothing to say.
He moved off her, stood, located his jeans and put them on. Found his T-shirt, dragged it over his head. He was covered, but he still felt exposed.
Romy sat up without taking her eyes off him. “What is it, Matt?”
“You know.”
“Just words. Three little words.”
“You promised not to say them, that night in San Francisco. You told me you refused to love me.”
“And yet you knew I did.”
“But you didn’t tell me, you didn’t say it. And then... Ah Jesus. You said them like that. At that...that moment. That’s not love, Romy.”
“So if I’d said them over dinner, that’d be different? You’d have welcomed them over dinner?”
He shifted his shoulders. He felt worn out. Exhausted. “Well, doesn’t matter, does it, because now I’ve heard them. So...thanks. I guess.” He gave a throat-clearing cough, wanting his voice to be steady. “I’m going to catch up with Teague tonight, have a few beers.”
More silence. Stretching, as she watched him.
Another clear of his throat. “You know, Teague...”
“Yes, I know Teague,” she said. “Your friend. The man I’m supposed to be with. That Teague.”
“He and I...” Pause. “We’re going to...” Pause. “I’m...due there soon.”
“And is it going to be an all-nighter with Teague?”
“Maybe.”
“You asked me for tonight, Matt. All night.”
Again, his shoulders shifted. “Plans change.”
She sighed as at last she got off the couch. “Okay then, we understand each other,” she said, and put on her sweatpants, her T-shirt—not hurrying.
“The whole...whole friend thing. We all need to get back to that. You. Me. Teague.”
She sighed again. “You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Matt. We...you and I... I guess we sorted out those ‘new times’ we were curious about, so we’re good. On the same page.”
“Are we?”
“Well, maybe the same book, different chapters. You gave yourself to me to do with what I wanted, I did what I wanted and now we both know what’s what, how we feel.”
“Romy—”
“I love you and want to have sex with you because of that. You want to have sex with me, but don’t want to love me because of that. I guess that translates into you being at chapter five while I’m up to chapter twenty-five. But whereas I know I want to finish the book, you’re bored with it and want to move on to a different story.”
“That’s not—I mean—”
“What? Did I misinterpret something?”
Matt tried to figure out how to say his feelings were more complicated than that, but when he thought of all the plans he’d made for himself just a few hours ago, all he could come up with was: “I need you, Romy.”
She sucked in a breath, like he’d hurt her. “Yes, I think I know that. But I need you all the way, no secrets, no fears. And that’s different from the way you need me.” She smiled, with a roll of her eyes that managed to be both dismissive and defensively dramatic. “I shouldn’t have called it love, I know, when you can’t feel it, when you don’t...don’t know the...the agony of it. And it is agony, it really is. But I’m running out of nouns and adjectives, so you might have to give me some help there. I mean, we’re not friends anymore, are we? I haven’t been feeling much of a sense of camaraderie this week. I don’t think what we just did was affectionate. We’re not really having a casual fling because you’re not using a condom the way you always do. So if you don’t want it to be love, I don’t know... Fuck buddies perhaps? Except that I’ve broken the cardinal rule so that’s obsolete. How about ex-hookup?” She ran her hand over her hair, smoothing a tangle. “How strange that I thought I was different, being the only female you weren’t interested in fucking...and now I’m just like all the others. Right down to telling you I love you at the peak of an orgasm, like the worst cliché. But I understand it now, Matt. I understand all those women who choose that moment to do it. It’s that gap in the tower wall, you see. We can’t help saying it at that moment because you make us feel so close to you, like we really could slip inside and find you. I even know why they don’t want to be your friend at the end—because it hurts to see you and not have you. And you know what? I’m glad I’m not different. I never wanted to be different. I want to love you. And I don’t want to be your friend at the end, either.”
She picked up her underwear and headed for her bedroom, saying over her shoulder, “Better get your skates on or you won’t make it to Park Lane by eleven.”
Ten minutes later, Matt found himself outside Romy’s flat, leaning against the wall like a drunk, one hand over his eyes. The agony of love. She’d called it agony, what she felt for him. He stood there for a full five minutes, battling the stinging at the back of his nose he was starting to get used to.
And then he took a deep breath, and headed out into the night.