She grabs my face with both hands, eyes fierce with alcohol and something else. “Say it again.”
“You fit me,” I repeat. “And those marks? They’re just part of you. They’re lines that mean you’ve lived, and they’re beautiful.”
She swallows, the muscles in her jaw jump, and then she grins—a thief’s grin—before she smashes her mouth to mine like she’s taking possession. The urgency returns. The hunger in both of us is a physical thing now, and everything we do pushes and pulls between want and worship.
Her blouse rips loose under my hands, causing the buttons to scatter. I trail my mouth down her throat, and she bucks against me like a wild thing. We stop pretending we’re careful. I rip her jeans, because why spare a button when the night wants no modesty, and her panties slip sideways with one slick pull.
She moans when my fingers press into her, hot and slick, and the sound fuels me. I don’t go for slow comfort. I go for hungry, needy, and earned. My mouth finds the places she keeps secret: the soft hollow under her arm, the thin seam at the hip where the stretch marks begin, the pale ridge on her lower belly. I kiss every single line and watch her face break open.
She grips the back of my neck, and her nails drag. “Cole,” she pants. “Please, don’t stop.”
And so I don’t.
I trace her with my tongue, kiss with heat, and when I lower myself between her thighs, it’s with reverence. I take her pussy into my mouth like I mean it—slow, worshipful, then faster, harder, until the bedrock of it all trembles. Her hands clutch my hair, her legs tighten around me, and the moans spill out of her, not like embarrassment but like something relieved.
“Cole!” She climaxes with a scream.
When she collapses against me, her whole body shaking, I let her rest a beat and then watch the hunger flare again in her eyes. She’s not done, and neither am I. We keep discovering each other—mouths, hands, names whispered like desperate prayers. There’s a roughness to our touches, an edge that says we’re not kids who don’t know how to handle this. We are adults who have held back and are now paying with interest.
She pushes me back onto the couch and straddles me, and I have this insane urge to show her everywhere she belongs. She grinds against me, using me like an anchor, and I catch her jaw in my hand, tilt her face down to mine, and kiss her with a possessive fierceness that’s almost tender. Her breath is hot between us, and she whispers my name like a talisman.
“Cole, please take me,” she demands, sobering with intent. “Take me like you mean it.”
I do.
I hold her by the hips, lift, and guide her forward. When I sink into her, it’s slow, an unhurried, full entry that makes the roomhush. The way she wraps her legs around me is an admission and a demand. I set a rhythm: deep, long strokes that pound and release, and then soft, while my hands explore and memorize all of her. Every time she cries my name, something in me loosens that had been taut for too long.
At one point, she leans forward, breathless, and kisses the inside of my wrist. “You’re… you’re rough,” she murmurs, a smile in the haze.
“Someone has to be,” I say, voice rough. “You’re soft enough for the both of us.”
She laughs, a shaky, stunned sound, and then reaches for me the way a drowning man reaches for a lifeline.
We move slower now, not because the fire is gone but because tenderness has its own force. I pull her down until we’re chest to chest. She trembles with release, and I can feel the shudder travel through her like a secret made safe.
Catching me off guard, she pushes off me, kneels between my legs, and takes me into her mouth with an attention that takes the breath out of me. It’s not about speed; it’s about devotion. Her hands smooth across my thighs, steadying. I let myself fall into the sensation because she’s giving, and because giving back to her in any way is a privilege I don’t waste.
When she brings me to the edge and I beg for more, with my hands tangled in her hair, “Shiloh, fuck!”
She looks up at me, ferocious and tender at once. “I like taking care of you,” she admits simply. “I like this.”
“You do?” I rasp, and I mean every single syllable.
“Yes.”
She works me to where I can’t stand it, then climbs back on top, and together we move toward some slow, raw center. I hold her close, whispering compliments about the shape of her shoulders, the way her belly folds when she laughs, the little freckle by her collarbone, and each one seems to stitch a tear in her doubt.
We shift from the couch to the wall, with her thighs clasped around my hips. The world compresses to the two of us, and she protests again, “I’m heavy.”
“You’re perfect,” I assert, my voice hoarse. “Tell me what else to say and I’ll say it. I’ll say you look good. I’ll say I like everything. I’ll say I want you. Over and over. And mean every word.”
“It’s not just words,” she replies. “I need… proof.”
Then she bites my shoulder—playful and fierce.
I give her the proof she needs by the way I lift her and press her to the wall, the palm of my hand at the base of her spine holding her steady. Her protest is a wet laugh, a breathy insistence that she’s too much, but her body contradicts every word as it molds to mine.
I slow the motion until she can feel every inch I give and every inch she takes. “This is proof,” I murmur into her hair. “You in my arms, against the wall. Mine.”
