Well Suited (Red Lipstick Coalition #4)(55)

I turned us around in a slow sway like we were dancing, putting his back to the bed, stepping him into it, pressing him to sit. His arms curled around my waist, bringing me close, my body between his thighs and his face buried in my burgeoning breasts. And I watched him, tracing the smooth plane of his forehead with my eyes, marveling at the thick crescents of his lashes, the lush swell of his lips as they closed over my nipple. The pink of his tongue. The angular bridge of his Roman nose. The silky black strands of his hair against the white of my fingers.

He was beautiful, devoted in ways that were unfathomable in depth and beyond my understanding. I’d once thought it was perhaps only the baby that had triggered this in him. But if I combed back through the months, analyzed every touch, if I went back to the beginning, nothing had changed. From the first time he’d touched me, I had known. I had known he was different, that what we shared was other. It was why I’d run from him.

I’d known he would change me. And I would never willingly step into change.

It was a fault of mine, born from a desire to protect myself. But there was a level of protection I could never fully provide, discovered in him. In the way he gave and gave, in every moment of patience, in every word he spoke. He would do anything for me, my partner, lover, friend.

This was the pinnacle, the height of my understanding, the closest to love I could imagine.

I shifted, sliding one knee outside his thigh and into the bed, climbing into his lap. The other knee mirrored its twin, my hand cupping his neck and my lips finding his. Broad hands squeezed my ass, our height difference erased as I brought my hips to his, sought the hard length of his cock. The smooth crown brushed the aching center of me, drawing a deep moan from him, a moan I swallowed. His hands flexed, spreading my ass, shifting my hips until he breached me.

The kiss finally broke, our eyes locked and lust-drunk, lips parted and breaths mingling, the tip of my nose brushing the bridge of his as I lowered my hips, filling myself with him.

A fluttering of his black lashes, a deep, heavy sigh, the click of our bodies as we fit together, unmoving but for a pulse of his cock inside of me and an echoing flex of my core.

Words sat weighted on my tongue, foreign but for the feeling they evoked. Words that paled next to the fathomless, nebulous emotions I felt, but they were the best I had.

I couldn’t say them. But I could show him. So I did.

First with my fingertips on the smooth line of his jaw, with my eyes that searched the depths of his, eyes that could see the tether between us as clearly as if it were a tangible thing. Then, with the rock of my hips, I took my pleasure and gave it back in a wave. It was an exchange, a dance we knew every step to, one that had become second nature, a latent instinct.

He drew a breath that drew me into him and captured my mouth with a press of his lips, a sweep of his tongue. And with every motion, every breath, every heartbeat, I heard the words of my heart echoed back to me through him.

Every wave of our bodies brought us closer, my body opening up, my hips settling deeper, the grind of my clit against him spurring me, the pressure hot and building, seeking a vent, an escape, a release. Slow we moved, achingly slow, painfully slow, the intent to hold out, hold off, but the effect was the opposite—the throb of his cock, the pulse of his desire brought me closer, close enough to forsake my plan strictly for want of my pleasure.

Deeper was the grind of my hips, harder was the flex of his. Faster came the wave, tighter his fingers squeezed.

A throaty moan, rumbling and low. He took control of my hips, buried his face in my neck, buried himself in me to the sting of my thighs against his, the swell of his cock inside me. My orgasm was stayed, my attention wholly on him. The thick, ropy cords of muscle tight under my hands. The noisy rush of his breath. The pinch of his brows and the painful grab of his hands. With a hard thrust, he stopped us both for a single protracted moment of complete abandon. And he came with a deep throb and a silent cry before he raised me up and slammed into me to the beat of his heart.

And still, in the mindless stretch of his release, as he took what he needed, he gave me what I did, his body meeting mine without intent to press that delicate flesh between my thighs in the rhythm I desired, the angle and pressure I sought. But he did, that attunement of our bodies and the sight of his pleasure triggering a chain reaction that shuddered down my spine.

The orgasm first commandeered me. I was a creature of feeling and nothing more, my body its own and my mind lost. I was aware only on the very fringes, only in the places we touched. My sight was gone with a flash and a burst, my will dissolved.

I rode the feeling, drifting back to the ground like a cottonwood bloom, spinning and floating in the eddies of my desire. But before I made landfall, he kissed me.

Possession. It was a kiss of possession, bruising and deep, volumes and volumes of words spoken without sound. It was transcribed, transferred in the most elemental of ways, impressing upon my heart all the ways in which I was his and he was mine.

A warm, salty tear slid over the curve of my cheek and into the seam of our lips. His hand cupped my jaw, his thumb brushing the track.

The kiss broke. My eyes closed, my face turning into his palm so I could press a kiss to its soft center. I didn’t want him to see me cry, didn’t want to speak. I hoped he wouldn’t ask, because if he asked if I was all right, I wouldn’t be able to hold myself together.

But he didn’t. He knew without knowing. He saw without seeing. It was his way, the simple understanding, the intuitive grace with which he handled me.