And then he stopped.
“You’re a sadist,” she accused with a broken laugh.
“Do you want me to stop?"
She met his eyes. She wanted to be sure he knew how much she meant it when she said “No.”
Three more times he pulled her to the edge of release. Three more times she shivered and shook with the strain of holding off her orgasm as he explored every inch of her with his tongue. At last, she slumped over him, hanging her head between her shoulders, fingers still curled around the headboard. She wanted to cry, she wanted to scream—she wanted tocome, goddammit.
Derek bundled her into his arms, turning her so she lay on the bed, exhausted and panting, her thighs wet and quivering. He pressed his lips to her sternum, his beard tickling the tops of her breasts. “You did so well,” he purred, peppering her skin with soft kisses. “You’re so beautiful like this, Jo.”
“Frustrated?” she said, arching an incredulous eyebrow at him.
He smoothed his thumb over her brow. “Uncensored. Raw.No filters, no snappy comebacks. Real.”
She leaned into his palm as it curved around her cheek. “Will you fuck me now, please?”
He dropped a soft kiss on the tip of her nose. “Yes, little menace. I’ll fuck you now.”
Derek lay down beside her on the bed, bundling her against him, her back to his front, and lifted her top leg to hook it back over his thigh. She heard the foil of the condom wrapper opening and then the thick head of his cock pressed against her entrance. She shuddered in anticipation and shifted to give him better access. At this angle, despite how ready she was for him, he felt impossibly thick as he slid inside her in one smooth stroke.
When he was seated fully, holding himself buried in her heat, she was struck with the most intense wave of relief. Likethis—this moment when he finally filled her, when her body stretched to make room for him—was the thing she’d been needing all along. Not just tonight, but for years. For a lifetime. Like she had been waiting for him to fill all the empty space and make sense of her disparate parts.
His forehead fell against her shoulder as he began to thrust, shallow strokes directly into that hidden place behind her clit. “How does it feel?” he asked, his voice tight and rough.
“Like you should always be inside me.”
He grunted and slid a hand down her belly to stroke lazily at her oversensitive clit. “I’d like that,” he whispered against the nape of her neck.
Her eyes fell closed, relishing the contradiction of the gentlelonging in his tone and the relentless way he worked her slowly, steadily, towards the orgasm he’d denied her all night. “It’d be pretty hard to get any work done.”
She felt his smile curl against her skin. “It would be worth it.”
Jo reached up with one hand and raked her nails through his beard. “Make me come now, please.”
And so he did. He worked her with his fingers and his cock until she shook in his arms, her stomach muscles contracting as the most powerful climax she’d ever known wracked her body. It went on and on, wave after wave of delicious pleasure mixed with a tinge of pain as her overworked clit throbbed beneath Derek’s thorough attention. Her lungs burned, every part of her stripped back to pure sensation. His cock kicked inside her, heat flooding between them as he gave in to his own climax.
She hardly remembered him disposing of the condom, though she had a distinct memory of the moment he left her body, of the sudden emptiness that rushed in to highlight the space where he had been. And then he was back, washing between her legs with something soft and warm.
“Next time, we should skip the condom,” she mumbled into the pillow. “Then you wouldn’t have to leave.”
“I didn’t leave,” he said.
“You did,” she said. “I can feel it.”
He was gone again, likely getting rid of the washcloth, but only for a moment. A moment that felt far too long. He tucked her in beneath the oversized comforter and unreasonably silky bedsheets. She curled into him, burying her face against hischest and tangling their legs, vaguely aware of the gentle way he stroked her hair, her back, as though he hadn’t completely destroyed her moments before. As though she was somehow supposed to simply go on with her life now that he’d rewired every nerve ending and synapse.
Beneath her cheek, his chest rumbled as he spoke, the deep, low words floating through the darkness. “I haven’t been with anyone but you since the last time I was tested. All my results were negative.”
“Mine too,” she said around a yawn. “I have them on my phone.” She made to reach for the device, not that she was exactly sure where it had ended up.
He stilled her hand. “I believe you.”
She nuzzled down again. “I have an IUD. So we could…” Another yawn. “Next time.”
He hummed at that. “Go to sleep, little menace,” he murmured against her hair.
She wanted to argue, to fire back something bratty just to see the exasperation on his face, but she was so tired and his arms were so warm and she couldn’t remember a time when a man had been so tender with her. She could be the little menace he accused her of being tomorrow. Tonight she wanted to be soft, to bask in this feeling that she was cherished, to sleep with his skin on her skin and possibility hanging in the air between them. Raw. Uncensored. Real.