When we make it home, Lindsay kicks off her shoes haphazardly in the entryway and staggers up the stairs. I carry her luggage, pulling out a pair of pjs and her toiletry bag, leaving them on Penelope’s bed. My brows lift in confusion when I find her washing her face in my bathroom.
“Linds? I put your stuff in your grandma’s room. I changed the sheets this morning.”
She looks at me in the bathroom mirror. “Dude, no. Nonna died in that bed. I figured we’d share yours.”
I can practically hear Winston’s disapproving groan behind me. It’s not ideal, and I’m more than a little frustrated, but I’m trying not to judge. Some people are weirded out by death and their proximity to it. I understand. Plus, she’s heartbroken andneeds comfort. She drove all the way up here from Boston for the comfort she can only find in me. I’d be a shitty friend if I denied her that.
We take turns in the bathroom changing, brushing our teeth, and going through our respective nighttime beauty routines. Lindsay takes an ibuprofen, chugs a glass of water, and covers her eyes with a sleep mask. I play on my puzzle app to pass the time until I hear Lindsay’s light snores. Then I tiptoe out of the room and down the hall to the study. I’m not sure why I assume that’s where he’ll be. The only plan we had was to meet in my bedroom. But I know he’s here. I know he’s watching.
My hand is still wrapped around the door knob, the door letting out a final pitiful creak before it’s closed when a pair of strong arms wrap around my middle, hot breath against my ear. “You are so fucking beautiful,” he rumbles.
I try to turn in his arms, but his grip is like a vise. My hand reaches back to cup the side of his face. “I’m sorry I took so long. I didn’t expect her to want to sleep in my bed.”
His dick is a hard steel pole against my ass. My breath hitches when he thrusts against me. His hand squeezes my breast, then moves down to my stomach. Another squeeze. Then, his fingers slip beneath my boxers. I didn’t bother with underwear, since I knew we’d have this sneaky playtime, and also, I feel like I’m missing a few pairs, and clean underwear is hard to come by until I do a load of laundry.
“What is it, sweetheart? Are you lacking in attention?” He asks. I’d find it patronizing if his voice weren’t so gravelly and low. “Do you need my touch?”
The part of my brain that’s desperate to avoid the insinuation that I’m needy or clingy wars with my need to come. Being seen as clingy is a turn-off for most, if not all men, right? I think of Lindsay, being ghosted after falling hard for that twenty-five-year-old. I can’t see Winston’s eyes since he’s behind me, but thesound that escapes his lips, and the way he’s gripping my body, doesn’t seem like he’s turned off. If anything, he seems hungry to provide what I want.
But what I need from him is just release. Not anything more, right? If it’s just sex, I shouldn’t worry about pushing him away. Our needs are perfectly aligned. I want to come, and he wants to make me come. Why am I so terrified by the thought of him breaking my heart?
I nod, trembling too hard to offer a verbal response.
“Let me take care of you.”
He walks us backward until we’re both sitting in the oversized chair with the high back. His favorite. Where I always find him reading, or drawing in his sketchbook. He settles my body between his muscular thighs, pulling my back flush against his chest. His fingers graze my nipples through my t-shirt, and my breath turns into shallow pants. Winston’s touch is slow, agonizing, and sends an electric current straight to my clit.
“Please,” I whimper. He rewards me with a hard pinch of my nipple. It hurts, but the pleasure covers it like a blanket, and I arch my back, needing more.
His hand moves even slower, down my belly, stroking lovingly across it, then down the center of it, then lower, and lower, until his middle finger swipes along the wet seam of my pussy. He does it again, from the bottom of my entrance, all the way up to my clit, before circling it.
I cry out, and his free hand covers my mouth.
“Shh. You need to be quiet, Natalie. You don’t want Lindsay to hear, do you?”
I shake my head, desperate to do what he says, not only because it would be a disaster for Lindsay to hear me, come in here, and discover that I’m getting finger fucked by the freeloading specter living in her house, but also because thisdominant side of Winston is so hot I can barely keep myself from falling apart in his arms.
“Good. You’re so good for me, sweetheart.” His mouth is hot on my neck as he kisses and sucks my sensitive skin, continuing to whisper praise against my throat. I feel his pointer finger and middle on either side of my clit, and when he starts to move…
“Ohgod,” I mewl against his palm. Two strokes later, and I’m coming, my vision blurring as my body jerks in his hold.
“Let it out, my love. Bite my hand if you need to.”
I can’t focus on the endearment, on how I haven’t heard it before now. My body is on fire, and I’m trying to escape it and bathe in it at the same time. The only thing I can do is sink my teeth into the fleshy skin in front of my mouth until I start to come down.
Winston’s hand leaves my mouth, and I hear him chuckle. His hands roam my body, caressing and rubbing as he kisses my temple. When my breathing returns to normal, he shows me his palm. It’s bleeding, and the surrounding skin is an angry red.
It feels like a stone drops into my stomach. “Oh. Oh, Winston. I’m so sorry.” I pull his hand closer to my face so I can examine the bite more closely.
“It’s okay, Natalie,” he reassures me. “I’ll be healed in under a minute. Quicker, if I shift into mist and back.”
I get off his lap and wait. He sits there, his lips parting as his green eyes linger on my tits.
“Well?”
“I’m not going to shift. I want this mark to stay as long as possible.”
I shouldn’t like the sound of that as much as I do, but fuck it. Winston is bringing out a new side of me, and I…like it.
