Fucking yes, he thought, but instead of saying it he moved, taking hold of her hand as he shifted to one side of the bed, liking the way she half crawled to keep up. He was so hard now, his head so full of pictures of her, that he didn’t notice how the bedcovers felt beneath his bare skin, didn’t notice the pillows beneath his back when he leaned onto them. He patted his right thigh and watched her straddle him slowly, her body already so knowing even though he hadn’t noticed her doing the same study of him as he’d done of her. Left wrist on his right shoulder to steady herself, more weight on her left leg as she lowered onto his lap.
“It’s all right,” he said, gripping her hips, evening her out, groaning when that wet, soft part of her slid along his shaft. She moved once, up and back, her breath hitching, and he yanked her closer, getting his mouth on one of her breasts, criminally neglected so far.
“Oh,” she breathed, leaning into his mouth, wetter again already, and he grabbed for the box of condoms.
He’d barely dragged it toward them when she took it from him, backing up so that his lips and tongue lost contact with her, which made him press his fingertips into her hips in frustration. But that was nothing compared to her, the way she tore at that box—no patience Layla Bailey, nopleasantnessLayla Bailey—desperate and direct and fully herself when she got one free, tearing the package and taking his cock in hand, her tongue peeking out as she rolled it on.
He sucked in a breath through his teeth. He thought,Her hand on me is electric, not hell electric but heaven electric; every gate here is to heaven. Until now, what kept him from coming—in his pants while he ate at her, while she came on his face, on her skin when she talked about that toy, when she looked at his cock—was an iron will he’d forged inside hell, a vigilance he exercised over his body at all times for all these years.
But here, in this hot heaven, it all melted away.
He said, “Layla, please. Let me in there. Put your hand back in my hair and take—”
She did. One hand in his hair, the other guiding him to her entrance. Just the tip, at first, while she gasped and got used to his size, and he could not describe what happened inside him as she lowered herself: an awareness of his body that was so different from what he was used to that he had to tip his head back to rest on the headboard, to watch her through slitted, watering eyes he didn’t want her to see—because it wasn’t pain, he did not want her to think it was pain.
But with her moving like that—her tight heat around him, her weight on his lap, her eyes lowered to where they were joined, he would never be able to say all the things it was. Relief but withdesperation at the edges—to get deeper, to go harder, whenever she was ready. Pride pleasantly blunted by gratitude, by the knowledge that it wasn’t really him, it washer; she was the key to this working, everything about her from the first time he saw her. Insane pleasure, pleasure like he’d never felt, sitting alongside familiar hurt—that fucking left leg, that vibrating elbow that had reacted to him squeezing at her—but it didn’t make him feel even a little afraid.
He was a tower now. Burned out once but getting rebuilt.
He pulled her closer, shoved her down harder onto him as he did, telling her without words he was okay, he was done with anything tentative. She moaned, her hips rolling with intention now, her breasts rubbing against his chest, andholy shit, if she didn’t come soon—
Well. If she didn’t come soon, he would, and then he’d get this condom off and go back to licking her, getting his hands on her, making her come another way until they could do this again. He would do anything she wanted; he would not rest until he got to feel her clench around his cock the way she had around his fingers.
But he did want it this way, this time.
She gasped out his name, her hand going even tighter in his hair, and he realized he’d punched his hips and thrust up into her deeper. He murmured an apologetic, “Okay?” and she huffed out a shocked-sounding laugh, then moved her mouth over to his ear, right side. She didn’t whisper, didn’t say it right against his skin, which was good, which was perfect.
“You feel—I’m so close, Griff. I’ve never—”
He set a hand between them then, not on her clit but on her sternum, his palm flat where her heart pounded, because whatever the end of that sentence was—I’ve never had it better,I’ve never come like this, I’ve never felt so good—he knew it would break him open.So he pushed her back with that palm, changing the angle, going impossibly deeper, so deep he had to clench his teeth, grunt with effort and frustration and the little control he had left.
Still, he watched it happen, this final thing he needed to set him over the edge—there, there it was. That glazed look, that arched back, that different kind of gasp, the lights in her coming on bright again as she rode him, crying out and clenching her muscles—Layla, he thought, or maybe he said, maybe he shouted, but he didn’t know for sure.
Because he was coming then, too—following her, his whole being getting scrubbed out and clear of soot, his body scaffolded first by her pleasure and now, for now—
He was something entirely new.
* * *
It lasted through the second time.
The newness, that was.
He’d brought it on himself, that second time. Her beneath him, no care for how much weight he put on his left side, his cock in charge of everything once she’d put her mouth on it for a while and, as she put it,wandered.
He thought she might kill him with that wandering.
Now, though, he felt it. Not enough to make him regret it; he could’ve literally died during it and not regretted it. He’d have found a way to haunt Michael long enough to apologize for missing the wedding, then he would’ve happily returned to the world of the shades with this one memory, this one night with Layla.
In the bathroom, moving quietly, he wrapped part of his leg, slid a pair of sleep pants on, hating the feeling of the bandage and fabric meeting, but he didn’t want to go back out there with the wrap showing. After that, a silicone patch on his side, whereitching often got to him, then a T-shirt. He stood still for a long moment, waiting—trying to tell if it was going to get worse, but maybe the orgasms had fucked up his senses more than usual, too much oxytocin or whatever the hormone was, because he couldn’t determine yet the kind of night he was going to have.
Or rest of the night, early morning, whatever time it was now. After the first time with Layla, when she’d come out of this bathroom wrapped in the same kind of robe he’d seen her in only a couple of mornings ago, she’d gone to the windows—an L-shape of them, floor-to-ceiling—and taken in the view a room like this offered. Way in the distance, there it was—the huge iron tower, not sparkling but still glowing, and he stood behind her, nuzzling her hair to the side to get to her neck, listening to her tease him about his big billionaire room (“Not a billionaire,” he’d said, biting at her skin), his view he should’ve told her about before (“Didn’t think you’d have a reason to see it,” he told her, his tongue curling around her earlobe), his booking the best corner of the whole hotel when it wasn’t even his wedding (“Selfish,” he murmured, ignoring his hard cock, flicking her nipple).
She said, through panting breaths, that the tower sparkled every hour until eleven, and he slid a hand inside the robe and said, “Or earlier,” which she did not understand and he did not explain. He walked her into the window until her forehead tipped against it, until she drove her hips back into him and he touched her until she came again.
Now, when he emerged from the bathroom, the room was darker, the lights outside dimmed, the tower off for the night. Layla, too, was off—a barely visible lump between the wrecked white covers, a ribbon of her hair curling over one of the pillows.
He stood still, unsure how to handle this next part. He could go lie on that little couch Michael had sat on earlier, try to getsome rest there, but it’d be bad news for tomorrow, worse than whatever he already had coming for him. He could get in the bed, but with the pants on, he’d probably go crazy, and anyway, in all likelihood, he wouldn’t sleep. He’d be restless, annoying to someone else, even in a king-size.
