“Am I hurting you?” he asks. He’s sweating, though the room is cool. He looks like he’s the one in pain. “I…it was as slow as I could go.”
“No,” I whisper, my head falling back, my whole body straining to spread, to take more. “It was a good gasp.”
“Oh, God.” His hand runs over me, beginning at my neck, running past my breast. “Look at you like this. It’s so perfect.”
He drags out slowly and pushes back in. His palm grasps my breast, and he leans over to take my nipple between his teeth. “It’s so good with you,” he murmurs. “I fucking knew it would be.”
My muscles begin to clench and clamp down on him against my will. His fingers press into my skin, his tendons strain. A drop of sweat lands on my breast and he licks it off.
“More,” I whisper, and he groans.
“It’s been too long, Lucie. I’m gonna come if I go any faster.” He pulls almost all the way out, then thrusts back in, hard and fast, only twice.
“Do it anyway.” My voice is pleading—not my own. My heels dig into his ass, forcing him to move.
He curses as he gives in, rutting into me. I clench around him, overtaken again by that blinding liquid heat and I cling to him through one wave after another as if I’m drowning.
When my eyes finally open, he’s looking at me through heavy lids, as if drugged. “Lucie,” he says, and his lids fall shut again. He’s still hard, still inside me. He pulses softly in and out. “I don’t ever want to stop doing this.”
I hold out my arms. “Come here,” I command, and he does, letting his weight rest atop mine briefly before he falls to my side and pulls me to his chest.
I breathe in, wishing there was some way to preserve this moment—his smell, his arm wrapped around me.
I love you. I have always loved you.
I silence the thought before it can escape. Nothing could ruin this faster than saying that to a guy you aren’t even dating—a guy who has no clue that you’ve adored him since you were small. A guy who’s moving away.
“Conferences are a lot more fun than I expected,” I tell him instead.
“I’ve got to say this isn’t what I pictured.” He laughs. “Okay, that’s not true. I pictured this outcome repeatedly. I just didn’t think it would actually occur.”
“The fact that you got a hotel room leads me to wonder if you were at least a little optimistic it would occur.”
He turns me, pulling my back to his chest. “I’m leaving for Tokyo in the morning. There was no reason to drive back to Elliott Springs.”
I grow still. He’s gone as often as he’s home, and it’s one of the reasons he will never want the things I do: because he’s decided his career and a family are incompatible.
“I’m sorry,” he says, moving my hair away from my neck so he can press his mouth to my skin. “I wish—”
He lets the thought trail off, but he didn’t need to complete it. He wishes it was different. He wishes we wanted the same things.
“It’s okay,” I reply. “You don’t need to apologize. It answered some questions.”
“Questions?” His lips graze the shoulder I raise.
“I wanted to know what it would be like to sleep with someone other than Jeremy. He used to imply that there was something wrong with me. Because I didn’t finish.” I laugh. “It’s pretty clear that the problem wasn’t me.”
“Ah,” he says, his voice playful and unhappy at the same time. “So now you can go out in the world, free to pursue your orgasm-heavy fairy tale.”
The words twist around my heart and give it a tight squeeze. “Precisely.”
The room falls silent, and this is all so new to me that I’m not sure what happens next. I’ve never had a one-night stand or a one-afternoon stand. I’ve never gone to someone’s hotel room. Am I supposed to leave, now? He probably needs to get back to the—
“Lucie?” he asks, his voice quiet against my ear, his cock—hardening again—pressed to my ass.
Ah, thank God. He doesn’t want me to leave.
I push backward, a silent ‘yes, by all means,’ and he slips a hand between my legs, fingering me until I’m begging him to get inside me. He does, at last, and my eyes fall closed as I give in to the pleasure.
It’s slower this time, leisurely, but the consistent pace is already pushing me reliably toward yet another orgasm.