I’m wearing a plain white nursing bra and panties. I sure as hell didn’t plan this, so I’ve got nude nursing pads shoved in the cups, and I haven’t trimmed since—well, not for a while.
I’d totally lose courage except there’s a huge tent in Adrian’s pants, and his breath is speeding up, his chest rising and falling like it does when he pulls up at the dock after sculling on the river.
There isn’t much light in the room, only the bedside lamp and the TV that he left on CNBC, muted.
I step out of my puddled dress and start plucking bobby pins from my hair.
“Here,” he rumbles, stalking forward. He guides my hands back to my sides. “I’ve got it.”
He frowns in concentration as his fingers search for pins, carefully pressing my hair to my scalp before he slides them free so it doesn’t hurt. He’s done this for me many times before, but usually, I’m sitting at my vanity or standing at the sink, and his eye will catch mine in the mirror, and once he’s done, he’ll ease down my bra or negligee and tease my nipples as we both watch.
Usually, I marvel at how handsome he is, delight in how his dark hair contrasts with my blonde, how his rough cheek scratches my soft skin when he bends forward to kiss the crook of my neck.
Now, my chest aches to look at him, a feeling somewhere between longing and loss, hunger and despair. He’s right here, and I want him back.
“Why’d you have to do it?” I murmur as I undo his tie the rest of the way and slip his shirt buttons open, one by one.
“Don’t think about it,” he murmurs back, dropping the pins in his pocket. “That’s the past.”
“How do you stop thinking about the past?”
He kisses me for an answer, like he can make me forget. I can almost taste his longing, his hunger. His desperation.
He devours me as he walks me backward to the bed. My heart bangs and blood rushes through my veins, any reluctance dissolving under the onslaught of his familiar feel. I don’t have to stand on principle or hold a line or punish him anymore. Thank God, if I just let it, my body will betray me.
I tug his shirt free from his pants and drag it off his shoulders. His skin burns under my fingers. His breath is fast and warm in my mouth.
I missed him. Oh, lord, I missed him. More than any of the things I’ve ever had to leave behind.
He fumbles with the clasp of my bra, his hands shaking. The back of my thighs hit the bed. I shove his hands away and unhook the bra myself, tossing it to the floor along with the pads. He unbuckles his belt and jerks it from the loops. A heavy pulse slugs away between my legs.
I want him inside me, and I can’t look at him hard enough. The veins that run down his hard biceps and forearms. The ridges of his abs. The sparse dark hair peeking above his waistband. I love his body. I know every inch of it. The small splotchy birthmark on his left pec. His taut, winking belly button. The mole in the crease of his right elbow.
The expression on his face when he’s lost in the sex, theawed, greedy, dreamy look that makes him look like a guy my age, still relatively new to this, still astonished at his good luck.
He grabs my panties, tugging them down as I kick my legs free, and we get in each other’s way as we both unbutton his pants and push them down, boxers and all. I knock his chin with my forehead.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, even though it was my fault, as he hauls me toward the headboard, stretching my arms over my head, cuffing both my wrists with one hand, laying his weight on top of me and wedging a knee between my thighs.
He slows his kisses to tug my top lip and then the bottom, his hips working, his hard cock poking my belly. This is how we fuck, him on top, kissing and sucking and stroking until I’m squirming.
Everything is happening like it’s supposed to—my pussy soaks the wiry hair on his thigh, and my nipples ache, milk beading on the tips, the need pulsing between my legs growing stronger—but I don’t want this, not like this, not the same as before when this was all a lie. Before he lounged on a sofa while some woman he couldn’t care less about jacked herself up and down his dick like it was her job, idly breaking my heart and ruining our lives because he either didn’t know what he really wanted or what he had or both.
What aprivilegeit is to be loved and have the choice of whether to fuck it up irreparably or not. I’ve never once in my life been in a position to shit on someone’s love, to be desperately wanted and to casually throw it away.
A wave of fury crashes through me. He doesn’t just get to say it’s the past and act like nothing’s changed.
I bite down on the lip kissing me and shove his chest with all my strength.
“Fuck.” He jerks his head away, his fingers flying to hismouth. I taste copper. He rolls to sit on his butt beside me. “What the hell, Cora?” he growls.
I push myself up to my elbows. He glares at me warily.
“You can just say no.” His fingers come away from his mouth with a smudge of blood.
An idea pops into my head. I have no ability to gauge if it’s good or not, and no desire to think it through, either. I crawl off the end of the bed, feeling his eyes on my exposed ass and pussy and loving it. He might not love me, but he loves this.
“We don’t need to do this if you’re not ready,” he calls after me as he turns to sit with his back against the headboard. “Come back. Let me just hold you.”
