Scandalized(40)

“Gigi,” he says, eyes drifting open. “Take me in.”

He licks and sucks at my chest when I lean over him to dig in my nightstand. I feel him go still for a fraction of a second when he hears me open a new box of condoms. And I see the smile in his eyes when I look at his face as I tear the foil. He’s still looking at me as I turn my attention down, as I put the condom on him with less grace and speed than when he put one on himself our first time.

“Why are you smiling?”

“You know why,” he whispers.

I can’t help it. I love the weight of him in my hand. If I didn’t feel the gravity of my own need, I would play and tease and touch with fingers and tongue, but I’m impatient and he is, too, arching his hips, hands urging me forward and over him.

It’s only the second time he’s been inside me, and the moment I sink down I have to cup my hand over his groaning mouth, bite down on my own lip so I don’t cry out.

He presses his head back into the pillow, neck corded with restraint, and it feels like every part of my brain turns on. My body becomes a precision machine, working the hard length of him into me again and again, moving against him, finding what feels good. After we find a rhythm together, he stares up at me, eyes black, mouth moving in silent speech. His mouth forms a silent, Like that?; a soundless Fuck spoken through a smile. I stare at his lips as I move, watching him lick them. Watching them make quiet sounds of pleasure. Watching as he pulls them back in a dirty little growl.

This focus means pleasure comes at me sideways, rising like a ship out of darkness until it’s there in the deepest part of me, climbing up my spine and filling my chest with a cry I trap there, lips sealed and head thrown back. For a second I lose track of what he’s doing while I’m falling; all I can do or feel is my own relief and what seems like a streak of wild silver tearing through me.

Just as I start to come down, he sits up, almost like he can’t take it anymore, digging a hand into my hair and coming for my mouth. Alec rolls us over, taking charge again, and I have a thought that feels almost like a brag, a betrayal, that if anyone ever saw him like this, they might fall into madness knowing he’s exactly what the world wants him to be behind closed doors.

I love his breathless laugh—the sound I’ve come to recognize as his elated disbelief.

“Shh,” he whispers down at me, and then I get it, what made him laugh, what made him happy—my melting down beneath him, the way I’d started to let out these tiny rhythmic cries, forgetting where we are, and the roommate only two walls away. His hand comes firmly over my mouth, and he presses a kiss to my cheek, reducing his movements into tiny, teasing snaps of his hips. “Are you trying to wake up the neighborhood?”

Turning my face into his neck, I press my mouth there, whispering an apology I don’t mean, an apology he doesn’t want. “I like watching you struggle to be quiet as much as I like making you loud,” he says, and then, testing me, he pushes up onto his hands, staring with playful warning before he starts to move in long, hard strokes.

But at some point, we transition from frenzied to slow. With him over me, holding me, his mouth open against my neck, I fall into a pleasure trance. This is making love without a goal, just moving together, lost in the same thing. I’ve never in my life felt so connected to someone before, like we’re sharing the same high. I wrap my arms all the way around him and try to focus on every tiny sensation: the smooth glide of his chest over mine, the quiet sounds carried on his breath against my neck, the warm, gentle friction of his hips against my thighs, and the thick drag of him in and out and in and deeper in.

Afterward, a long time later, when he’s come to a gasping stop over me—sweat-slick and worn-out—he collapses at my side, turns on the light, and runs his fingertips along my hairline, down over my jaw, looking at me. Touching my ribs, tracing the mark his teeth left on my breast. Sliding his hand down my stomach, he comes to a gentle stop between my legs.

“You’re so warm. Are you sore?”

“No.” Sleepily, I drag my finger along his collarbone. “Maybe I will be tomorrow.”

He turns his gaze away from my face and down to where his fingers rest over me. My fevered pulse still beats there. “I can’t stop touching you.”

“I know.” I close my eyes. I don’t feel like I’m living in the same world I do during daylight. If this is what contentment is, I never want to leave this bed. “I like it.”

His fingertip runs over my clit, slowly circling. “I like this tiny, soft part of you. I like what happens to your expression when I touch you here.”

My voice is slow and drowsy. “What happens?”

“I’ll have to make up a word for it. It’s like relieved begging.” I laugh as he pushes up onto an elbow to get a better look at my face. I’d be self-conscious if I were more awake. Or if it wasn’t Alec. “You’re so beautiful it makes me feel this sweet sort of anguish. I’m desperate for you, Gigi.”

“Desperate for me? Please. I’m a sure thing.”

A distracted smile is there and gone. “Before I return to London, I’d like to state for the record that I claim this bottom lip.” He shifts his touch. “But also this single freckle on your shoulder. I’ve gone hunting and it’s your only one.” He gives me a thoughtful once-over. “Your eyes when you laugh—they’re also mine. The curve of your spine when you’re coming. The soft skin of your thighs against my neck.” His hand returns, cupping me between my legs. “And this, right here. I’m greedy for these things.”