She turns and looks at me with that direct, considering look. “Very good. Come here.”
I come there.
She moves with the particular physical confidence of someone who has spent years living very consciously in her body. She knows it the way an athlete knows their instrument, its capacities and its preferences, and she has opinions about both that she communicates without apology.
I find this arresting in the best possible way. I find everything about Sage arresting.
The dress comes off first, and she makes a sound when my mouth finds her collarbone, then her shoulder, then the curve ofher throat, and her fingers move into my hair with an impatience that is extremely gratifying. Her bra and panties match—both satin and nude to her skin tone. The moment I took to stare at her was not long enough, but I am unable to break free of her long enough to appreciate her body the way it should be appreciated.
I walk her to my bedroom. “Take those off and lie on the bed for me.”
She does so without hesitation, and the results are exquisite. Every inch of her, now amplified by pregnancy, is a delight. This is the moment to take my time, no matter how much of me screams otherwise. Slowly, I remove my clothes, eyes locked on her face. Watching her watch me.
Watching her frustration build.
“You’re doing this on purpose.”
“Yes,” I agree.
“I want to be annoyed about it.”
“I know. You’re not, though.”
“No,” she admits, pulling me closer. “I’m enjoying the show.”
I step between her legs, which are draped over the edge of my bed. “Should I take more time?”
“Don’t you dare,” she says just as pulls me down to her mouth, and for a while neither of us says anything that requires words.
She makes a sound against my jaw when I find the place below her ear that I remembered correctly and have been thinking about with embarrassing frequency. Her hands tighten in myhair, and I think with a satisfaction that is probably excessive,Yes. That.
“Ronan.” The way she says my name when she is running low on patience is a specific thing. It’s lower, more deliberate, with an edge to it that makes concentration difficult.
“I’m getting there.”
“Get there faster.”
“No.”
The sound she makes in response to this is not one she’d make in any other context, and I feel it everywhere at once, and I continue not hurrying because I’m not going to let all this time of thinking about this be resolved in under an hour if I can help it.
She’s not actually as impatient as she’s performing. She is, in reality, entirely with me in this, meeting me with the focused attention she brings to everything, and the performance of impatience is itself a kind of participation, a pushing back against my control that tells me she finds it at least as interesting as I do. But I like this. Her desperation. Her yearning for me.
“Insufferable,” she says at one point, pouting against my shoulder.
But then I move down to take her nipple in my mouth, and she arches herself against me for more. When I reach between her thighs, she curves to meet me. And the moment I settle my cock against her there, she tries to take me into herself.
“Patience, love?—”
“I am out of patience, sir.”
An involuntary growl comes from me upon hearing that, and I begin to enter her as gently as I can manage, which is saying very little. She’s so wet and so hot and so tight that I could lose myself in this moment like a teenage boy in the back seat of his parents’ car.
But I clear the fear and the worry with another kiss. Her soft lips bring me back to myself like nothing else. As much as I want to play games with Sage, now is not the time. Instead, I hold her closer, wrapping her in my arms as she does the same to me with her legs.
I pump into her, feeling every perfect curve of her body, both inside and out. The way she claws at my shoulders, the shake of her bottom lip when she’s close, how she moans my name, it all adds up to the woman I haven’t stopped thinking about since I met her. I am lost in Sage, and I never want to be found.
When she cries out, throbbing on me, I join her, too enamored not to. We lie in the dark afterward and she traces an idle pattern on my chest and doesn’t say anything for a while, which I appreciate. She is not, I have learned, a person who fills silences she doesn’t need to fill.
