Aiden’s strangled roar is like a bomb going off in the apartment and I wait, muscles tense with expectation to feel his liquid warmth in my mouth. I want it. I want that intimacy with him so terribly bad. But it never comes and suddenly, I’m being jerked to my feet. I’m gasping for air, gasping from the wild pull of lust in my belly being jostled—and I’m being turned by Aiden’s strong grip toward the counter. I’m bent over face down, my cheek landing on the cool marble. Laboring to breathe, he takes a big handful of my backside, fondling it roughly, before his fingertips travel down. Around to my wet sex.
Without preamble, two fingers are thrust inside me.
“You like me coming in your sexy mouth, Stella, then we’ll arrange it. Believe me. As often as you want.” Tennessee flavors his tone more than usual. “But your first day as my girlfriend?” I look back over my shoulder to see him shaking his head, eyes glittering with need. “Nah. You’re going to leave here with the memory of my cock between your thighs. You’re going to spend the day missing it. Wanting to climb back on it as soon as nighttime hits.” His fingers leave my flesh, moving in a tight drag through the valley of my bottom, stopping at my rear entrance and—using the wetness he gathered—he tucks his pinkie inside of me. “You like that, too, sweetheart?” I moan incoherently in response. “Yeah, you do. We’re both a little dirty, aren’t we?”
Behind me, I hear the tear of a condom wrapper. The sound of latex being applied.
Of course he’s protecting me. Of course.
“I’m dirty just for you,” I gasp, my fingers clawing at the marble counter.
I have no time to wonder if that admission was too revealing, because Aiden is pulling me upright again, spinning me around to face him. He captures my mouth with a low growl, hooks his elbow beneath my left knee, yanking it up to his hip—and slams his shaft home between my legs. My scream is unrecognizable, victorious. I don’t know how to feel any other way with this full pressure stretching, seeking, marauding inside of me.
“Oh Jesus. Oh fuck yes, you hot-ass girl,” he grunts. Pumping, pumping.
My backside is flattened against the cold edge of the counter, Aiden taking me hard, our gasping mouths attempting to kiss, to lick, to make any sort of contact, but what’s happening below is too consuming. We’re too primed for it. Wet, willing female. Hard, horny male. My face ends up buried in his neck, his hands boosting me higher until both feet are off the ground and he bucks into me wildly, slamming me repeatedly against the side of the counter.
His mouth finds my ear, laps at it. “You like getting rough dick, Stella?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“Did you think I’d be able to fuck you any other way after you let me stroke your throat?” he rasps into my neck. “So good to me on those knees.”
His unfiltered words, the knowledge that this man is a coin with two very different, equally appealing sides, has me tightening up, my climax creeping in to twist muscles that were never used before yesterday. They know Aiden already, though. They choke up around his length and make him gasp my name, his hips sprinting into a wild pace. Now my right leg is being levered up by his hooked elbow, too, nearly bending me in half in our quest to get him deeper. Deeper. And yes, it’s both of us. He’s not just taking me, I’m heavily involved, opening my thighs for his pleasure and clawing at his shoulders, his hair.
It’s the sound of our flesh smacking together, the digging of his fingers into my knees and that place, that incredible, elusive place inside of me that he hits, hits, hits, that causes me to seize up, my entire body shaking under the onslaught of pleasure.
“Aiden!”
“Got you. Got you so good, Stella.” He grinds himself deep, his breath stuttering in my ear, his stomach hollowing against mine. “Ah shit, I’m coming, too. You’re doing it to me with that hot squeeze. Fuck!”
Even in the midst of my orgasm, a storm of pressure and release taking place beneath my belly button, my jaw can’t help but drop over the force of Aiden’s finish. Being the focus of it is nothing short of magnificent. A rush like no other. He pins me to the counter and bellows my name into my shoulder, his huge frame shaking against mine, transferring his sweat to my skin, his grip bruising where he holds my legs up and open for his pleasure. I’m the focus of lust and the consumer of it at the same time. I’m both. I’m…part of a we.
That realization hits me hard on the heels of such a physical uproar and I find myself clinging to Aiden, arms and legs wrapped around him tight, it’s anyone’s guess if he can breathe. “Okay. We’re doing this. Okay.”
I don’t realize I’ve said those words out loud until Aiden tightens his hold, cradling me against his still heaving chest and crossing to his bedroom. A moment later, he’s lying down beside me in the mess of soft sheets, his arms banded around me like steel.
It’s almost too much, too intimate, to be face to face with Aiden when my emotions are like leaves trapped in a gust of wind, but he holds my chin and doesn’t let me look away. “You’re right, Stella. We’re doing this. Our way.” He kisses my forehead. “There’s no script. We get to decide what our way looks like. Okay? Help me figure out what that is.”
Communicate.
I…can do that, right? I told him about Nicole last night. Shared things that I’m ashamed of and he still got up this morning to make me eggs. They ended up on the floor, but still. The thought was there. He kissed me, made love to me like he’d die without my touch. Our bond is real and it’s not going to go anywhere. No matter what I say. That realization is so freeing, some extra space opens up in my lungs.
“I guess…I guess it’s just taking a while for me to believe this is my life now. New York, the decorating job. You. It all happened so fast. It’s this huge jump from who I was before Bedford Hills and who I am now. I don’t know which one is the real me.” Swallowing, I reach up and mold my palm to his stubbled jaw. “I just know I like this me a lot better. I like myself with you.”
He must have been holding his breath, because it all sails out now in a peppermint rush against my forehead. “That’s a damn good place to start,” he says thickly, looking me hard in the eye until I nod. Then kissing my mouth, our lips opening wider, tongues eventually seeking friction until Aiden rolls me over onto my back with a groan, his weight pressing me down into the mattress. “We both feel real like this,” he whispers, slowly giving me his shaft, inch by inch until he’s buried deep and I’m gasping. “Everything about you, everything about us…is real.” He rears back and pushes forward, his forehead dropping to mine. “Feel it, Stella.”
His meaning isn’t only physical, it’s emotional, and I can’t shy away from that. Not when he makes love to me again and I have nowhere to look but his eyes, reading the promises there. And coming close, so close, to making some of my own. There’s something holding me back from diving in uninhibited to what Aiden is offering me that I can’t quite name, but I bury the doubt in kisses and arches of my back until he stops looking too deeply and gives in to the bliss.