Page 42 of The Night Of
I came awakewhen the hinges on Jonathan’s bedroom door squealed. The house was almost 150years old, and there were some squeaks that even WD-40 couldn’t fix.
Night had fallen. I’d slept through the rest of the afternoon and the evening. It was dark outside Jonathan’s bedroom window, the kind of stillness that only happens after midnight.
My eyes opened, gliding to the door and the shadow crossing toward me. I stiffened. In a single second, I’d cataloged where I was, where my weapon was, how fast I could get to it, and what my routes were if I needed to open fire. And then I relaxed, exhaling as I sank back into the mattress.
Jonathan stood over me, his gaze softer than normal, a small smile curving his lips. His jacket was gone, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to his elbows. My eyes drifted over him, the lines of his body, his long, lean legs inside his suit pants. He’d always worn great suits. He had always driven me crazy with them.
“This is unprecedented,” he said, his voice low and throaty. “A gorgeous man in my bed.”
Hunger unfurled within me. I stared at him.
He was still wearing the same tie from earlier, the one I’d wrapped around my fist in the Oval Office. I took it in my hand again, my fingers running up the length of navy fabric until I grasped it beneath the loose knot at his throat. I pulled him until he was bent over the bed, bent over me, his face inches from my own.
His lips parted. His eyes were twin stars in his dark bedroom. His face hovered over mine, painting me with short, quivering breaths. He waited.
I pulled him down the last inch and closed my lips over his.
Jonathan kissed me back like he was a man starved of oxygen and he needed to pull it from me to stay alive. I’d never been kissed as deeply as he kissed me, had never felt a man pour all of himself into the movement of his lips on mine. His kissing left me dizzy, made me feel like I was in free fall and the only thing I could do was hold on. I gripped his tie tighter in my fist and threaded my fingers through his hair, cupping the back of his head.
Jonathan moaned.
“Come here,” I managed to whisper between the meeting of our lips. His tongue tangled with mine as he clambered onto the bed and straddled my lap. I still had the American flag quilt over me. His cock tented his suit pants, casting a shadow over the stars and stripes.
I took his face in my palms and devoured his mouth with deep, plunging strokes of my tongue. It was my turn to moan, to shiver, as his hips pushed down into mine and I felt the hardness of his cock grind against me through the layers between us.
More. I needed more contact, more Jonathan. I pushed the quilt away with my feet and cradled his head, wrapped one leg around his, and rolled. His eyes went wide as he ended up on his back in the center of his bed, me above him, caging him in my arms.
Jonathan’s body may have been pliant, but his lips were not, and he locked them on mine, greedy for more. His hands wrapped around my neck. His legs tangled with my own.
I didn’t want to stop, but I had to. Not because of my injuries. Jonathan was right: some rest and a painkiller, and I wasn’t cringing with every move. So what if I had stitches in my side? Jonathan was in my arms.
No, I had to stop because, before this went any further, he and I needed to get some things straight, things that should have been hammered out last year before we were shit-faced.
“Jonathan,” I murmured. It was agonizing to try to stop kissing him, almost impossible. “Jonathan…” Another kiss, and then another. I ran my fingers through his hair as I balanced on one elbow. Cradled his cheek. Then held him down and, finally, peeled myself a half inch away from him. He tried to chase me, his lips searching for mine in the space between us. His eyes opened, confusion tangling with lust. “Jonathan, we need to talk.”
There are no other words in the English language that can douse an inferno as quickly as those four. I watched Jonathan go from panting and near wild to locking down, locking up, slamming the barriers behind his eyes and shifting his gaze away. His lips, kiss-swollen and red as a strawberry, thinned.
“Don’t do that,” I said, nuzzling his cheek. “I’m not saying we need to stop.” I pressed my hips down into his, our cocks sliding against one another through my boxers and his pants. He jerked. His eyes flicked back to mine.
“What do you want to talk about?” His voice was husky, deeper than I’d ever heard it before.
He was expecting a thousand terrible things. I kissed his nose, the curve of his cheekbone. The corner of his eye. My thumb brushed a strand of hair off his temple. This was a time for tenderness. “How far does this go? I need to know how far you want to take things.”
He frowned.
“Is there a secret room upstairs with whips and chains and paddles? Is there a dungeon where you want me to—”
He flushed, getting what I was asking. He shook his head. His fingers kneaded the skin at the small of my back. “No dungeon, no secret room. And I’m not…” He shook his head. “I’m not looking for pain. I don’t want you humiliating me. That’s not what I imagine when I think of you and me.”
I kissed him, a chaste, soft brush of my lips on his.
“I want to trust you, completely, in every way. Even, or especially, in this way. I want you to take over. Takemeover.”
A part of me roared, the raw, carnal part that wanted to pin Jonathan down and plunder him, give him so much pleasure he begged for mercy, begged me to stop making him come and come and come. I wanted to put him on his knees. I wanted to roll him over, spread his legs, bury my face in his cheeks. I wanted to take him to the brink and hold him there. I wanted to take him apart in this bed, piece by piece, until he was limp and boneless and covered in my come, gulping for breath, chanting my name until he couldn’t even say that anymore.
I wanted to possess him, crawl so deep inside him he felt me on the inside of his soul. I wanted every moment of his days and nights to be filled with thoughts of me. I wanted to paint myself on his every bone and muscle and molecule, and I wanted to start right here, right now.
But first…
