Page 35 of Faking the Heat

Mandy's eyes find mine, then drop to my cock, then find mine again. The candle throws its light across her face in a way that makes it hard to read her expression. She reaches out slowly, like she's giving me time to stop her. I don't. Her fingers close around me and her breath catches, a small, involuntary sound, and she says nothing for a long moment. "I used to think about this," she finally says, almost to herself. "I didn't let myself, but I did."

I don’t groan, I growl, a sound torn from somewhere deep in my chest, raw and feral. My knees hit the floor hard enough to bruise, but I don’t feel it. All I feel is her. My fingers dig into the lace of her panties, yanking them down with a sharp tug that makes her gasp. The fabric clings for a second before I tear it free, baring her to me. She gasps, her thighs trembling as I shove them apart, rough, possessive, and there she is, slick, swollen, glistening in the candlelight like she was made for this. For me.

I don’t tease. I don’t wait. I dive in, my tongue flattening against her clit with a single, ruthless stroke that makes her back arch off the couch. She tastes like sin and salvation, like every dirty thought I’ve ever had about her come to life, and I can’t get enough.

Her fingers twist in my hair, nails scraping my scalp, and when I suck her clit between my teeth, she cries out, a broken, desperate sound that goes straight to my cock.

I don’t let up. I lick her like I’m starving, like I’ll die if I don’t get my fill, and when her thighs start to shake, when her hips buck against my face, I pin her down with one hand on her stomach and fuck her with my tongue until she’s sobbing my name.

"Sterling, I'm going to, I'm going to come," she cries out, her voice echoing in the hollow warehouse, competing with the thunder.

"Not yet," I murmur, sliding two fingers deep inside her. She's tight, her muscles clenching around me as I pump my hand, my thumb never leaving her clit. I want to draw this out, to make her remember every second of this. She's screaming now, the sound muffled by the roar of the storm outside, her body trembling as she crashes over the edge, her pussy clamping down on my fingers in a rhythmic, desperate pulse that nearly sends me over the edge with her.

She hasn't finished shaking when I pull her to the edge of the sofa. My hands find her hips and I don't let myself be careful. I press into her slowly only because I have to, because the feeling of her is so devastating that my whole body locks up around it, every muscle braced against the urge to lose myself completely. I watch her face instead of closing my eyes. I want to see it.

“Sterling,” She breaks off. Her back bows off the cushion, her fingers scrabbling at the fabric. "Oh god. Oh god, you're… I can feel you everywhere. I can feel you in my…” She can't finish. She just grips me harder.

"Fuck," I breathe, the word barely making it out. I can't think. There's nothing left of me that isn't her, the heat of her, the pull of her, the way her body takes me like it's been waiting. I move and the whole world drops away. My hands find her hips and grip hard enough to leave marks and I don't apologize for it.

"Sterling." My name in her mouth sounds like it's being torn out of her. "Harder. I need-please…"

The please destroys me.

I give her what she asked for. The couch screams beneath us, a metallic shriek that bounces off the warehouse walls and comes back louder. I drag her legs up over my shoulders and the new angle makes her cry out, a sharp, startled sound, and I feel it in my spine. she grabs for something, anything, her knuckles whitening around a fistful of my forearm. I don't let up. I can't find the part of me that would. My hands find the cushions on either side of her head and I fist them using them for leverage and the whole couch shakes with it.

She’s babbling now, her words dissolving into broken moans as I pound into her. I can feel her getting close, her pussy fluttering around me, her thighs shaking.

The world narrows down to this, the heat of her skin, the smell of her sex, the way her pussy feels like it's trying to swallow me whole. I'm close, so close I can feel it building in my gut like a tidal wave about to break.

She shatters, her entire body seizing as she screams my name, her pussy milking me like she’s trying to suck me dry. It’s too much, I lose control, fucking into her through her orgasm until my own hits me like a fucking freight train, my cock pulsing as I fill her up, my vision whiting out at the edges.

I collapse against her, my chest heaving, my heart trying to beat its way out of my ribs. Her skin flushed, glowing and beautiful, her pussy still clenching around my cock like she doesn’t want to let go. We stay like that for a long time, tangled together in the dark, the only sound the fading thunder and our own ragged, synchronized breathing.

Eventually, I pull back, looking down at her. Her eyes are open, watching me with a softness I've never seen before, a look that isn't for her parents, isn't for the crew, and certainly isn't for Derek. I reach out and brush a stray hair from her forehead, my hand trembling slightly from the sheer force of the adrenaline crash.

"Was that a performance?" I ask, my voice barely a whisper, needing the confirmation even as I feel the truth of it in the way she holds me.

She smiles, a real, tired smile that reaches her eyes, smoothing out the lines of stress that have been there since the fire. "No, Sterling. That was the first real thing I've felt in years. No rules, no scripts."

I pull her up against my side, tucking her head under my chin, my hand resting on the curve of her hip. We move to the bed eventually, the blankets cool and inviting, the 'Roommate Rules' about boundaries and sacred schedules feeling like relics from a different lifetime. We don't talk anymore; there's nothing left to say that hasn't been written in the sweat and the skin we've just shared. Bowie jumps up onto the foot of the bed, finally satisfied that the world isn't ending, and settles into a purring ball of fur against my ankles.

Mandy falls asleep almost instantly, her hand resting on my chest, right over my heart. I lie awake for a long time, watching the gray light of dawn start to bleed through the windows, turning the darkness of the warehouse into a soft, hazy silver. The storm has passed, leaving the city quiet and scrubbed clean. I look down at the woman in my arms, her breath steady and slow, and just like that, everything changes.

Chapter seventeen

The Gallery of Gazes

Sterling

The air in the Steiner Gallery is too thin, filtered through expensive HVAC and scented with chilled white wine and citrus floor wax. My life smells like cedar and roasted coffee and the ghost of smoke that lives in the fibers of my skin no matter how hard I scrub. Standing here in charcoal gray wool that fits too well, I feel like a man who has spent a decade in heavy boots trying to remember how to walk in Italian leather.

Mandy is beside me in a silk wrap dress the color of a bruised plum, and I have spent the entire cab ride not thinking about four nights ago.

The power went out. That is the official version. The power went out and we sat on the couch with a candle and played a stupid game and told each other things we had spent six years not saying, and then we stopped talking entirely.

We have not mentioned it since. Not the next morning over coffee, not in the twenty-one text messages exchanged in four days, every one of which has been about logistics. Whether the cat is out of the expensive food. What time the car comes. Whether I own a tie. She has been up at six every morning, which she has never once been in the six years I have known her, and I have been taking extra shifts, which is its own kind of answer. It is a silence with weight and dimension and it has been living in the loft with us like a third roommate nobody wants to introduce.

So I put my hand on the small of her back, and I know exactly what that stretch of her feels like without the silk in the way, and I keep my face completely still.