Oh. Yes. He had the makings of an excellent dirty talker.
His strokes shortened even more, so he was barely moving, simply agitating that bundle of nerves deep inside her. “Do you remember?”
She bit her lip and whimpered. “Yeah.”
“I thought there couldn’t be anything better than tasting you right here.” He punctuated every word with a thrust.
“And now?”
He gave her a fierce, half-crazed smile. “There’s nothing better than fucking you.”
“Am I the best you’ve ever had?”
His thrusts grew faster, less coordinated. “You know you are.”
“Have I ruined you for all women?” Her greatest fear. Her greatest desire.
His eyes were unfocused as he slammed into her, his slippery fingers rubbing her clit so hard she couldn’t make sense of anything. She was concentrating so intensely on her rushing orgasm she barely made out his response, hissed through set teeth as he fucked her.
“Yes.”
When Jacob rolled off her body, Akira wanted to protest, but she bit her lip, keeping the weak words inside. Muscles too lax to move, she lay there, eyes closed, and listened to him stagger away to the bathroom. A jolt of satisfaction ran through her at his unsteady steps.
He was only gone for a few minutes before returning, his large, competent hands shifting her so he could pull the comforter over them both. She smiled sleepily when he cursed at the number of pillows on her bed, shoving most of them to the floor before wrapping himself around her. His heat seeped through her skin, and she gravitated toward it.
He pressed a chaste kiss against her temple and sighed, his chest moving up and down under her cheek. “Akira…”
Her toes curled at the deep tone, the way he dragged out the syllables, caressing every one with intimate knowledge.
His palm lifted her wet hair and fanned it out on his chest to dry. “Akira,” he repeated, this time with a wondering air.
Perhaps it was the curious bubble of privacy they were in, in a house with revelers barely a floor away, but when she opened her mouth, the unguarded admission spilled out. “I love the way you say my name.”
“I love your name.” He kissed her shoulder, tightening his hold on her. The wiry hairs on his legs scraped her skin as he tangled them together. “I always thought it was the prettiest thing I’d ever heard.”
“I hate it.” She stiffened, waiting for him to pounce with a demand for further clarification.
He nuzzled his cheek against her hair. “Why?”
She shut her eyes. His voice was curious but not badgering. That was his trick, wasn’t it? That patient stoicism. Never overtly demanding she reveal her secrets, but making it clear he would be there if she wanted to.
So damn seductive.
Her inner struggle didn’t last long. Sighing, she gave him the shortened version. “My father—or really, my father’s father—wanted two offspring, a boy and a girl. Allegedly, the story goes, after I was born my mother handed me to him and said, ‘You better be satisfied with this one, because you aren’t getting another one out of me.’ All she had to do was win her father-in-law over to naming me ‘Akira’, and she turned me into a tidy little inside joke.”
“I don’t get the joke.”
“Akira is traditionally a boy’s name. Considered fairly unisex now, luckily for me.” She smiled without mirth. “I think my mom knew when I was born I wouldn’t satisfy him as a daughter, let alone a daughter and a son. Like, oh, you made me have a kid? Here. Have a useless one.”
A fine thread of tension had invaded his limbs, but his voice was measured when he spoke. “Mei should never have told you that.”
As it always did, her soul soaked up his disapproval of her mother like grass soaking up rain after a drought. “It was the truth, I have no doubt.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Akira tugged the blanket higher. “Eh. It’s not like I had some crazy illusion about how much either of them wanted me for me.”
“How come you never changed it? If you hate it?”
