Chapter 23

Lainey

I woke up warm, blankets pulled up to my chin. Comfortable. I was one of those annoying fan sleepers who couldn’t settle without the whir of air being pushed around the room. Sam had remembered this and turned on the ceiling fan without me asking.

After I’d luxuriated in his massive shower, we’d eaten queso in bed and watched an episode of a World War II docuseries. When I’d suggested it, he’d almost fallen over in shock.

“What?” I focused on the piece of avocado quivering precariously on my chip. “I saw a good review. I’ve already watched the first one, but I’d rewatch it with you.”

“You watched a World War II docuseries? When?”

“I didn’t see you a lot this week.” I avoided his eyes, focused on my guac. “It reminded me of you.”

He froze, a forkful of rice halfway to his mouth. “That’s the hottest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

It was a little intoxicating, doing something as mundane as watching a history documentary in bed. Spending a Friday night curled up with a bag of chips between us felt like playing house. I was being granted a sneak peek into what our future might be like if we hung onto this for the long-haul. Fun. Comfortable. Flirty.

So comfortable, in fact, it felt a little dangerous. This was only starting, even if it didn’t necessarily feel like it. My trust issues screamed I was getting too attached too quickly. Apparently, I was getting better at tuning them out, though, because I’d slept like a baby.

Until the brush of calloused fingers across my stomach stirred me. Outside the curtains, it was still dark. At some point in the night, the t-shirt I’d stolen from Sam’s drawer had ridden up, and he was capitalizing on it. He stroked a small patch of skin, back and forth. Every nerve ending in my body came alive.

A soft gasp escaped when his thumb dipped, charting a path to my navel

“Yes?” His breath was warm, beard tickling the back of my neck.

“Yes.” The night was quiet and still. We were inside the bubble again. Any noise above a whisper would interrupt the heavy, heady air between us.

“I should have let you sleep.” His fingers swept lower, bolder. He blazed a path across my stomach to the waistband of my underwear before traveling back up to my ribs. “But I couldn’t help myself. You are so gorgeous laying in my bed, wearing my clothes. I had to feel you.”

“I want you to. Feel me.” Please . He maintained that steady rhythm of his hand. My thighs clenched.

“Tell me where. I want everything, Lainey. Tell me where to start.”

I gulped. Everywhere sounded like an excellent place to start. I wanted to feel him all over me. My legs shifted restlessly, sliding against him.

“Where, Sweetheart? Higher?” His palms flowed over my skin, up, up, until the edge of his hand barely grazed the rise of my breast. I sucked in a breath.

“Yes. Higher.”

“What about here? Lower?” He toyed with the lace of my panties, circling around and around where cloth met the skin between my hips. I arched against him, pressing into his hips to feel the hard length of his arousal.

His groan blended with mine. He was already hard. It went straight to my head. More heat flooded between my legs when I repeated the motion. He’d barely even touched me and I was already wet. Every moment we’d spent together for the last few weeks had just been an on-ramp; a build-up for what was about to happen. Even the fireworks in the R 3 ’s parking lot had just been a precursor to this. In the quiet dark of his room, hearing his quickening breath in my ear, it felt different. Serious. Deeper.

His hand flattened, squeezing my hips back against him. “Feel so good right there, Honey. Soft and sweet.” He grunted, digging his cock into me. “But you want me up here, is that right?”

I wanted to whimper when his hand moved, releasing his grip on my hip. His thumb swept once more up my chest, cupping me, his fingers never quite landing right where I wanted them. The ensuing ache between my thighs was nearly unbearable. He kissed a line down my neck. I actually did whimper when I felt his teeth graze my shoulder.

“Sam.” My legs churned beneath the covers, scrambling to find some relief from the sweet heat rushing through me. I was burning up, and he wasn’t where I needed him.

“Hmm?” He licked a spot near my throat lazily, like he had all night for this. I wasn’t even sure I had ten more minutes before I was going to combust.

“Stop teasing. Please.”

I unintentionally set something off with my desperate pleading. He moved so quickly my head spun. Rough hands pulled me onto my back and then he was over me, sinking his hips, lining us up right there.

Our mouths clashed, tongues tangling. I grabbed at him, scrambling to pull him closer. He thrust his hips. My head tilted back on the pillow, following the direction of his fingers in my hair. Mouths opened wider. I wanted to claw at him until our bodies melted together.

When he sucked my bottom lip into his mouth, my fingers pulled at the elastic of his waistband. He had the same idea I did, pushing at my shirt. Between the two of us, we flung it away somewhere into the dark of the room. His lips were wet against my throat, tongue lapping at my pulse point.

“Show me, Honey. Show me what you want. What you like. Goddamn. ” He groaned against my skin when I bucked against him. The friction was so good and still so far from what I really wanted. I was hot for him, absolutely panting, still tugging on the cloth at his hips. He was rock hard, moving his hips mindlessly against mine.

A frustrated, animalistic noise ripped from his throat and he jerked away, propping up over me, fists on either side of my head. I groaned at the loss of his skin against mine.

“Touch yourself.” He sounded gritty.

“Sam.” His name a sigh, breathless as I tried to arch closer. I dragged one knee up his waist. He caught it, pinning it to his side to stroke my skin. A reminder that no matter how much the veins in his arms stood out or how urgently he pressed against me, he’d be gentle. He’d never treated me like glass, but sometimes he looked at me with a reverence I wasn’t sure I deserved. Times like now.

His eyes roamed my body, bare except for a scrap of underwear. He looked like he was dreaming and didn’t want to wake up. His dick strained against the front of his pants. Lips red from how I’d practically attacked him only seconds ago.

“Sam,” I repeated his name, sounding dazed. I cupped my breasts, fingers pulling at my nipples like I needed him to. I rolled them, biting my lip to stop from groaning. Sam’s throat worked as he watched. I didn’t have the time or inclination to feel self-conscious about his stark appraisal. Not when he was looking at me like I was his dream come true.

He studied my pinching fingers like it was the most important thing in the world. He grunted when I tugged at them. His hips pulsed against mine involuntarily.

“I know you like it a little rough, Sweetheart. Show me how you get off.” His words made me shake. He pressed my leg tighter to him, holding me open for those little rhythmic presses that did nothing to ease the heat between my thighs. He only drove me higher. “If it were my hands on those tits, my fingers working you over, what would you want me to do?”

I pinched harder, pulling my nipples with one hand while the other trailed down my stomach. What would I want his hands to be doing? This.

I dove beneath my waistband, driving my fingers through the drenched wetness I found there. Too slick. I couldn’t find any sort of purchase. My finger pumped inside. I added another.

“Wait, baby, fuck, let me see.” I hardly noticed when he ripped my panties off, baring all of me to him. I was lost, consumed by his words and his eyes on my body. Those whisper-soft strokes that had moved from my knee up my thigh.

“Sam! I need…I need….”

He grabbed my wrist, dragging my fingers to his mouth. Moaning at the taste. “I’m right here, Honey. God, the taste of you.” He ducked down, nipping and biting along my ribcage as he sank down lower, muttering the whole way. “Haven’t stopped thinking about it for a week. So sweet.”

I turned molten when his teeth bit into the skin around my hipbone. He was still sinking, leaving a trail of stinging bites across my thighs and muttering obscene things into my pores. It filled me up, bubbling over until I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed him, all of him, right now.

“No. No, I need you.” I tugged at his shoulders, fingernails digging. He looked at my face, eyes flickering between my desperate gaze and my breasts and my pussy.

“One taste. Just one…”

I cried out when he flicked his tongue against my swollen flesh. The feeling pulled taut inside me. My legs tightened on his shoulders. “No, no, please. Sam, I need you inside.”

The words had no sooner left my lips than his hand was between my legs, dipping his fingers into me. He whispered about how wet I was. Moaned and sucked on me, pumping, telling me again and again how good I felt. Hot and slick and his .

A fierce orgasm spiraled from my core when his teeth scraped over me. The pain and the sweetness and the Sam of it all flung me into the stratosphere. Fireworks exploded behind my eyelids. I burned up. The whole time I gasped and pulsed and begged for more. He kept up his running monologue, driving me higher, somehow, when I should have been coming down.

I couldn’t tell when the climax ended, or if it even did. I snatched at him, hands sliding on sweat-slicked skin. He scrambled up, capturing my mouth in deep, sucking kisses that at once made me feel like I was dying for air and breathing for the first time.

“…so beautiful, Lainey. Fuck, you’re so perfect.”

“Now, Sam. Now, I need you.”

“Wait, Honey. Condom.”

“No.” He was too late. I’d already worked his shorts halfway down his thighs and now that I had him in my sights, it was game over. I gripped him. He was steel-hard, precum leaking from his tip. I swiped my thumb across it, using the slick liquid to ease the way as I pumped him in my fist. He shuddered, head dropping to the pillow beside mine. I craned my neck, pressing kisses to every inch of skin that I could: cheek, neck, beard. He tilted his head, lips capturing mine. More slickness against my hand.

“Stop. Shit, Lainey. I need a condom.”

“I have an IUD. I’m clean.”

“I…” His hand gripped my wrist, like he couldn’t think with me holding him. I was well beyond thinking. My thinking brain would have told me it was irresponsible to have unprotected sex for the first time with a man I wasn’t even sure I could call my boyfriend. But this was Sam, and I knew in my bones that he would rather throw himself in front of a moving vehicle than hurt me. “I’m clean. I swear.”

I pulled him closer, stroking the head of his cock through my folds. It reminded me of that night in his car, when he’d exploded all over me. I wanted that again. But I wanted him inside me when it happened.

Breath hissed through his teeth. He scooped my leg up again, opening me. I liked the way he moved me to suit his desires. With anyone else, it might have made me feel lifeless or used, like a sex doll to be bent to his will. But with Sam, it felt desperate. Like I’d brought him to the brink and he could never get enough of me. I felt treasured and wanted. Maybe I wouldn’t mind being his sex doll.

We were both grinding and sliding against each other. When I positioned his dick at my entrance, he met no resistance. My breath caught as his first few inches slid inside. I felt stretched. Yes.

There was that friction I’d been missing. Sam cursed violently, pushing my knee into the mattress, opening me up even more. He trapped my other hand against the pillow with his, while he stared down at where we were joined.

“Look at you.” He pushed in a few inches more, holding me when my legs jerked at the feeling. “Taking my cock like a dream. You’re made for it, Sweetheart. Made for me.”

I nodded, biting my lip, trying to stem the flow of my needy, desperate cries. I felt like I was made for him. Or he was for me. I’d never fit with someone so perfectly before. Blackness fizzled around the edges of my vision by the time he pushed all the way inside.

“Breathe, Lainey. You with me?” I gasped an inhale just before his lips fell onto mine. Breathing. Yes. Oxygen. That was good. In and out. In and out. Just like how he was pumping back and forth inside. Stretching me, hitting the most perfect place. I was babbling, a mixture of his name and “please” and “oh my God” and “don’t stop.”

“Never. I’m going to fill you up. When you feel my cum leaking out of you tomorrow, you’ll know you’re mine. You want that, Sweetheart? I’ll fuck you until you’re full of me.”

“Yes! Sam, I want it.” Absolutely, God, yes, did I want it. Just like in my car, his words took on a stream-of-consciousness pattern, like his brain had disconnected a little and every word out of his mouth was the raw, unvarnished truth. It made me wild. I clutched at him, squeezing his fingers in mine, running my other hand down his flexing abdomen. His muscles were insane, popping while he thrust into me.

“Good. So good. Stay still. Right there.” He dropped hectic, open-mouthed kisses on my face, sometimes landing on my mouth. The hand on my knee slid upwards, thumb teasing my clit as he shuttled in and out. “Come on my dick, baby. Fuck, the way you squeeze me.” He kept talking, but I was gone. Eyes wide, head thrown back, weightless with a climax I could never have imagined. His praise, his dirty words, the way he touched me and moved with me…

Every muscle clenched. He groaned and told me how amazing I felt. So tight and hot and wet and then he was shouting, snapping his hips into mine as he came, saying how much he loved, loved, loved it. So good. And my name over and over and over.

He collapsed over me and we lay together like that, connected and panting. I stared up at the ceiling and tried to catch my breath. After a few moments, he raised up on his forearms, looking as stunned as I felt.

I didn’t know what to say. Who had words for this kind of thing? My soul had left my body, and I wasn’t sure when or if it would return. He swallowed, eyes searching my face.

He said my name again. Breathed it while the tips of his fingers trailed across my cheek. Hair. Forehead. Lips. I clutched him to me, threading my fingers through his hair. His forehead rested against mine.

When I finally returned to myself, stretching my toes and stroking up and down his spine, my body felt different. Or maybe it felt the same as always, and something else had shifted.

Either way, I felt changed, somehow. It didn’t feel scary at all. It felt like I wanted to do it again.