“The muffins?”
“Yes.”
I hold his gaze. “Why?”
The corner of his mouth moves. Just slightly. “Because you're here to eat them.”
He steps between my spread thighs like the entire kitchen was built for this moment alone. The morning light pours over us, soft and golden, but the way he looks at me is anything but soft. It’s dark. Hungry. Reverent. Like I’m the only thing in the world that makes sense to him.
Without a word, he hooks his fingers under the hem of his shirt I’m wearing and drags it slowly up my body. Cool air kisses my heated skin as he pulls it over my head and drops it to the floor. His gaze drags over every inch of me like he’s memorizing me all over again—lingering on my breasts, the curve of my waist, the way my thighs are already trembling around his hips.
“Hands on the counter,” he orders. “Either side. Don’t move them.”
I obey instantly, gripping the edge until my knuckles whiten. He wants me displayed. Open. Offered up like a meal he’s going to savor.
He leans in, nose nudging under my chin, forcing my head to tilt back and expose my throat to him. For a long, agonizing second he just breathes against my skin, letting the anticipation coil tighter in my belly. Then his mouth descends.
The first slow, wet drag of his tongue down my throat makes my back arch. He licks me like he’s tasting something sacred—long, deliberate strokes downward, then from my collarbone all the way to just beneath my ear. When he reaches the sensitive spot that always undoes me, he sucks gently, then harder, pulling the delicate skin between his lips with a low, hungry groan that slithers straight down between my legs.
“Reth…” I whimper, already breathless.
He doesn’t answer with words. He answers with worship.
His mouth trails to just below my jaw, over my pulse-point. “This spot right here…I can feel how fast your heart’s racing.”
I quiver as he licks all the way down…down…so achingly slow, until his hot breath fans over the swell of my breast. He pauses there, eyes closed, like he’s breathing me in. Then his tongue circles my left nipple in lazy, teasing strokes—slow, sensual, maddening. Round and round, never quite giving me what I need, until the peak is tight and aching, glistening with his spit.
A broken sound escapes me. Only then does he close his mouth over it.
He sucks me deep, tongue flicking and swirling, pulling my nipple against the roof of his mouth with devastating patience. The wet heat, the rhythmic suction, the way he groans like my taste is addictive—it sends sharp pulses of pleasure straight to my clit. His hand comes up to cup my other breast, squeezing gently, possessively, rolling the neglected nipple between his fingers until I’m panting, hips rolling helplessly against nothing.
He switches sides, giving the other nipple the same torturous devotion—licking, lapping, sucking until both my breasts are flushed, shiny, and throbbing. Every pull of his mouth sends another rush of heat between my thighs.
“Take out my cock, Sophia,” he murmurs against my breast.
My hands are trembling as I reach down and tug his zipper open. The sound he makes when I wrap my fingers around him is almost nothing. Almost. It moves through his chest and into mine and stays there.
A rush of air escapes me when he snakes one arm around my waist and yanks me right to the very edge of the counter. The blunt head of his cock nudges my soaked entrance, teasing, coating himself in my slick. Then he pushes in, stretching me open inch by thick inch until he’s buried to the hilt.
We both moan, and my fingers grip the counter’s edge hard, trembling with the decadent ache of being so full.
For long, perfect moments he just stays there, deep inside me, neither of us moving. His forehead dropped against mine. Both of us breathing hard. Neither of us going anywhere.
“You have no idea what you do to me,” he rasps. “Every time I sink into you it feels like the universe is finally fucking quiet.”
God, I want to put my arms around him. I want to weave my fingers through his thick hair, trace the muscles of his back with my fingertips.
He rolls his hips, and my eyes fall closed, the sensation moving up and down my spine.
A hot breath leaves me when he palms my face with both hands, fingers raking into my hair, lips hovering so close to mine. “When I’m inside you, I forget who I am. What I’ve done.” Another roll of his hips. “I forget what they did to me. Inside you, I’m as whole as I’ll ever be.”
The last sentence breaks me open in a way nothing else could. Not the thick, stretching fullness of him inside me. Not the heat or the devastating possession. Not even the way he’s cradling my face like I’m something sacred.
It’s the words.
Spoken plainly, without armor, while he’s buried to the hilt inside me. Said in the soft morning light with the smell of apple and cinnamon curling around us, flour still on his knuckles, and the muffins warm in the oven.
He has carried the worst of his life in absolute silence for years. And in this quiet, unremarkable moment, he simply laid it down. He let me see the weight of it. He let me be the place where he finally said it out loud. And I understand, with bone-deep clarity, that this is the most intimate thing he has ever given me.
