“Oh, good,” Poppy sighed in relief.
“Good?” he repeated. “How is that good?”
“Because I thought it was just me. I thought I was making up…” She waved her hand between the two of them. "…this, whatever this is, in my head.”
His jaw tensed. “You're not.”
“You know I was cleared forallnormal activity.” She watched his chest rising and falling in short pants. “You won’t hurt me, or Dylan.” She placed her hand on her stomach.
“Are you saying you want?—”
“Yes,” she cut him off.
He took two steps, crossing the space between them, causing the kitchen to suddenly become like a vacuum. His hands cupped her face so gently, his fingers trembling as he leaned down, covered her lips with his, and kissed her like he was drowning and she was his oxygen mask. There was a desperation in the kiss that she’d never felt from him before and made her brain collapse inward. His tongue swept the recesses of her mouth, like a man who’d survived a famine and nothing in the universe mattered except the taste of her, as if she alone gave him sustenance to live.
She responded by matching his intensity, clutching at the hem of his T-shirt and balling her fists into the cotton. His kiss deepened with a hunger that felt both familiar and terrifyingly new, as though some boundary they’d tiptoed around had just been bulldozed. Her whole body tingled, neurons firing like rockets shooting to space from the base of her spine to the tips ofher fingers. When he pulled back, the pad of his thumb brushed her cheek, and he searched her face for permission once more. She only had to nod, once, it was barely perceptible, and that was enough.
AJ’s hands slid to her hips, and, with ease, he lifted her as if she weighed nothing and deposited her on the kitchen counter. The cold granite bit through the cotton behind her thighs, but the heat of his body eclipsed everything else. He stepped between her legs and kissed her again, this time with more control, slower, like he was savoring the anticipation. His palms found their way under her shirt, skimming up her ribcage, and she arched into him with a moan that was half-plea, half-warning.
He peeled off her shirt, and his hands drifted lower, dragging her pajama bottoms and underwear with them, until she was bare and exposed on the countertop. He knelt between her legs, and he looked up at her with eyes so dark and intent that she thought she might combust. He pressed his mouth against the inside of her thigh, reverent and patient, and she quivered with pleasure.
The heat of his breath fanned her sex, he was slow about it, almost maddeningly so. He discovered every inch of her with his lips and tongue, a cartographer obsessed with details and borders of her most delicate flesh. His fingers splayed against her inner thigh, holding her wide open as he circled her clit, first with a feather-light touch, then deeper, harder, until she was whimpering and clutching at his hair for leverage. He licked her with an intensity that bordered on worship, and she realized, distantly, that she was crying, though whether the tears were from hormones or relief or pleasure she couldn’t have said. Her inner walls pulsed against his tongue as he lapped up her sweet juices.
He brought her to the edge once, then twice, each time pulling back just as the wave crashed, drawing out her pleasure into a kind of sweet agony she’d never experienced.
She tried to plead with him, “Please, don’t stop,” but the words melted into incoherent sound.
When she finally did come, it was blinding and raw, a full-body, tectonic event that left her gasping for air and clutching the edge of the countertop. Her entire body exploded with piercing pleasure, as tingling eruptions of bliss spread from the top of her head to her toes. His hands held her thighs spread wide apart as he flicked her pleasure button at the top of her sex with the tip of his tongue, driving her to places of unrestrained orgasmic indulgence until it became too much. Her hips jerked away, and he began to place featherlight kisses on her sensitized nub as she floated back to reality, and only when she’d returned to her senses did he stand up, his face slick with her release and his eyes shining with awe and satisfaction.
Poppy reached for him, hands shaking, and tugged at his waistband until she’d freed him from his jeans. He was already hard, his tip flushed and leaking, and she stroked him once before he caught her hand in his, halting her. He searched her face again, as if double-checking for regret, for withdrawal, for anything other than want. She surged forward and kissed him, tasting herself on his lips. “Please,” she whispered. “I want you.”
AJ removed his shirt, then pushed his jeans down and off. She waited, her hands gripping the counter, the anticipation of what was to come surging through her, her arousal building once again.
When he was free of his clothes, he picked her up, and her legs wrapped around his waist. She thought he was taking her to bed, but instead he took three strides to the couch and lowered down, her legs straddling him on either side.
His eyes roamed her upper body as his hands moved up and down her thighs. She slid her hand down his chest, over the ripples of his abs, which quivered at her touch, then wrapped her fingers around his thick shaft. He hissed as his head fell back and his fingertips dug into the flesh. She rose up, positioning herself above his rock-hard erection standing at full salute. Using his engorged crown, she rubbed up his tip and down her opening. He swelled in her palm, and his chest rose and fell in ragged pants.
She knew he had never given a partner this much freedom with his body. To allow her to set the pace and to control the experience emboldened her. She leaned forward and whispered against his ear, “I’m so wet, so ready for you. Do you feel my pussy pulsing for you, trying to pull you inside me?”
He groaned, and she felt his dick jerk in her hand. She lined herself up and slowly sank down on him. When she thought she’d taken him completely, his hands moved to her hips, and he pulled her down further with a force that stole her breath.
She gasped as her body stretched. When she was fully impaled by him, her hands ran through his hair, nails scraping his scalp as her eyes locked with his and she rested her forehead on his. So many feelings she had but she wasn’t sure she could process or express them.
She wanted to say more, to ask for more, but she knew she couldn’t, so she asked for what she could, tonight.
“Stay tonight,” Poppy whispered.
The question that hung in the air between them—stay tonight—was so impossibly loaded and so heartbreakingly simple at the same time. She was only asking for one night,giving him a specific and careful boundary, but even as his lips met hers again, even as her fingers intertwined in his hair and her body pressed close, he could feel the dangerous longing blooming in his chest like a bruise. He wanted to stay all of the nights. He wanted to trade in this momentary permission for a lifetime of them, to wake up beside her and cook breakfast and build a whole eternity. But he didn’t say that. He wasn’t allowed to want more than what she gave him, and so he bit down on the ache and poured every unspoken word into the way he touched her.
AJ’s hands firmed on Poppy’s hips, and he gave a brief, wordless nod. The two of them were a tangle of arms and legs on the couch, the air thick with the scent of lemon dish soap and Poppy’s lavender conditioner and the base, animal musk of sweat. She was straddling him, her knees bracketing his thighs, her hands restless and roaming his body, never satisfied with one patch of skin before moving to the next.
Every time her hands ran through his hair or clawed at his bare back, a fresh surge of heat chased up his spine and made him bite back a groan. He was inside her, all the way in, buried to the hilt and surrounded by impossibly snug, fluttering warmth. Her inner walls gripped him in steady, rippling pulses, and his hands clung to the plush, perfect curve of her hips as if he needed physical proof that this was real.
She rolled her body, grinding down on him, and a dizzy, electric pleasure ran from the base of his skull down to the arches of his feet. He let his eyes flutter shut so he could focus on the sensation, the way her body coaxed him toward the edge while her voice in his ear, breathy and needy, anchored him to the present. Poppy’s lips were everywhere, on his jaw, on his neck, on the curve where his shoulder met his throat. She kissed him like she was starved for more than just flesh, and every timeher teeth grazed the stubble along his jawline, he had to fight to keep from losing control.
He waited for it to be too much, thinking he might need to ask her to stop, but it wasn’t. Nothing with her was too much.
She started to move faster, using his shoulders for leverage as she bounced in his lap. Her breathing got loud and ragged, until it matched the little gasps of pleasure that snapped out of her with every thrust. He watched her, memorizing every little tremor in her arms and every quiver of her thighs. He wanted to remember this, to take these details with him into the next morning, the next week, and the inevitable next time when she’d set new boundaries around her heart and he’d have to pretend they hadn’t ever come this close to being more.
