I opened my eyes and there he was staring at me. Looking into my soul, andthat, more even than what his hips were doing, was what sent me over.
“Julian! I’m…I’m gonna?—”
“I know, baby.” His body slapped against mine,slap, slap, slap, slap, each sound sending more waves rolling through me.
They crashed up through me at once, the way your entire body locks and trembles in the middle of a long, satisfying yawn and stretch. That helpless, shaking, almost-too-much tension that you don’t want to end. I convulsed around him, shaking, as cries pulled from somewhere deep.
“Oh my—Oh!Yes! Yes! Yes!Yeeeeeeeees!” I exploded. My hands scrambled for something, sheets, skin, him, anything to anchor me as the wave took over.
A grunt tore out of him the moment I let go, like he’d been holding out long enough for me to release first. His hips slammed into me once more before he tensed and pulsed.
For a moment I couldn’t do anything but gasp. Every nerve lit and exhausted and overwhelmed. I hadn’t known my body could feel like that.
He kissed my temple, my cheek, my jaw, my lips. Then he eased out, both of us slick and spent.
I was still catching my breath when he pulled back, hovering, and looked into my eyes. We lay there breathing into each other.
His expression softened. “Stay there.”
He got up and went to his bathroom, then came back with a warm cloth and a bottle of water from somewhere, set the water in my hand, and gently propped me up like I was something that needed arranging carefully. Then he wiped me down, slow and careful, his hand steady onmy still-trembling thigh while he tended to me like it was the most natural thing in the world.
No one had ever done that. Not once, in my entire life. I drank the water and let him. Unraveling a little bit more at being cared for, with nothing asked back. It was a thing I had not known I was allowed to have.
When he was done he slid in behind me, and pulled me against his chest like that was simply where I fit now.
I still couldn’t breathe right. How was I supposed to, when I’d just learned that I’d been deprived my entire sexually active life. Not just in the years of celibacy after the marriage, but inside it, and before it. My entire adult life. What Julian had just given me didn’t deserve to share a name with any of it.
I groaned and threw an arm over my eyes, laughing quietly into it despite myself.This is how women lose their minds. I could end up one orgasm away from snapping like Lynn Whitfield inA Thin Line Between Love and Hate,swearing up and down he belonged to me.
Julian’s head lifted. “What’s funny?”
Damn it, Alyssa. Lie. Fake a sneeze.I smiled, just enough to soften it. “Just realizing you might have ruined me for anyone else. Don’t let it go to your head.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Might’ve?”
I laughed and shoved at his chest. “Don’t get cocky, Mr. Wade.” Then I mimicked him in exaggerated bass: “Why do you feel so damn good.”
He laughed. “Mutual appreciation, then.”
“Mutual appreciation.”
julian
We lay together quietly.Nothing but our breathing and the distant hum of the night outside my window.
“How many do you have?” she asked, tracing my skin.
“How many what?”
“Tattoos.” Her fingertip circled one on my shoulder. “I keep finding new ones.”
“Seven.”
“Seven?” She lifted her head. “How have I never noticed them all?”
“They’re not exactly in obvious places.”
She settled back down and took that as permission to keep looking. “Well, you said seven. I’m at four.”
