We made it to the hallway at the top. That was as far as our patience lasted.
He pressed me against the wall and kissed me so deep I couldn’t breathe. My legs were still locked around him, and the friction of our bodies grinding together through two layers of denim was maddening, close but not close enough, the heat building without release. I dropped my legs, and my hands went to his belt. His went to the button of my jeans.
We undressed each other with more urgency than grace. His jeans hit the floor, and I pushed down my own and kicked them off. He slid his hand between my thighs over the thin cotton of my underwear and found me wet and ready, and the sound he made, this low, wrecked groan that seemedto come from somewhere deep in his chest, almost undid me right there.
“Christ, Kayla.” He pressed his forehead to mine. His fingers stroked over the fabric, teasing my clit, and my hips bucked into his hand. He hooked his thumb under the waistband and pulled them down, and then his fingers were on bare skin, sliding through slick heat, and I bit down on his shoulder to keep from crying out.
He knew what he was doing. His fingers moved with a quiet competence, reading my responses, adjusting pressure and rhythm, circling my clit with his thumb while two fingers pressed inside me. My back arched off the wall. My thighs were shaking.
“Not yet.” I got the words out between breaths. “I want you. Inside me. Now.”
My jeans were on the floor two feet away. I pushed off the wall, dislodging Ben’s hand, and reached for them blindly, digging into the back pocket. My fingers closed around one of the foil squares Trish had pressed into my hand on her way out the door.Just in case. Don’t argue.I hadn’t argued. I’d shoved them in my pocket and turned red, and now I could have kissed her.
I tore it open, rolled it onto him, and his breath caught and his hips jerked into my hand.
He lifted me back against the wall, and I felt him push into me. And the stretch of it, the fullness, made the air leave my lungs in a rush.
He held still for a second, one hand braced against the wall, the other gripping my thigh, and his forehead dropped to my shoulder. I heard him exhale, slow and unsteady, like he was trying to hold himself together.
I shifted my hips. He groaned and started to move.
He pressed me up against the wall with an effortlessness that reminded me of exactly how strong he was, and eachthrust drove deep enough to hit something that made my vision blur. I gripped his shoulders, his biceps, the back of his neck, anything I could hold on to while my body climbed toward something I could already feel building at the base of my spine.
He was vocal in a way I hadn’t expected. Not words. Sounds. Low, rough exhalations that matched his rhythm, the occasional muttered curse when I tightened around him, my name said once against my collarbone in a voice I barely recognized as his.
The man who said almost nothing had been saving it all for this, and every sound he made sent another wave of heat through me.
“Bedroom,” I managed. “I want?—”
His arm locked under me, and he carried me down the hall, still buried inside me, each step sending a jolt of friction that made us both gasp.
He lowered me onto the bed, and the pace changed. Slower. He braced himself on his forearms and looked at me. The half-light from the hallway caught his face, and what I saw there—the naked want, the care underneath it, the absolute absence of anything except this moment and this room and the two of us in it—made my chest crack open.
He started to move with a rhythm that was devastating in its steadiness, deep, unhurried strokes that hit the right angle every time, building pressure without rushing it, his hips rolling against mine while he read every signal I gave him.
Every hitch in my breathing. Every dig of my nails into his back. Every involuntary sound I made when he found the spot that turned the world white at the edges. I could feel myself tightening around him. I wrapped my legs back around his waist and pulled him closer.
His rhythm faltered. His breathing fractured. He drove deeper, faster, sliding his hand between us to press his thumbagainst my clit, and somewhere in the climbing heat and the building pressure and the sound of his breath coming apart against my neck—I let go.
His thumb circled my clit once more, and I came apart. The orgasm broke through me in waves, deep and full-body, starting where he was buried inside me and spreading outward until my fingers tingled and my jaw went slack and I couldn’t do anything except hold on to him and let it take me.
He followed seconds later, his body going rigid, his hips driving forward one last time, his face buried in my neck, my name on his lips.
For a long time, neither of us moved.
His weight settled over me, heavy and solid. His heart hammered against my ribs. His hand rested on the curve of my hip, his thumb tracing an absent, idle path across my skin as his breathing slowed.
I lay beneath him and felt the quiet settle. Not the wrong kind, not the expectant kind that had filled the house all evening. This was the kind that came after something necessary and true, when there was nothing left to prove and nothing left to hide.
My body was loose and spent in a way I’d forgotten I could feel. Every muscle unwound. Every thought dissolved into sensation—the rise and fall of his chest against mine, the damp heat where our bodies were still joined, the slow drag of his thumb across my hip bone as sleep started pulling at the edges of everything.
I closed my eyes. Let his strength hold me. Let the quiet stay.
Chapter 20
Ben
I didn’t know what time it was when I surfaced.
