Page 85 of Make Them Cry
I laugh lightly, knowing this man can read me better than anyone. “I’m scared.”
He stalls, leaning back slightly so he can fully look at me. “Of what? Of me? Of the person behind all of this?”
“I mean, obviously I’m scared about everything going on, but this is different,” I bite my lower lip, “I’m scared of this.” I motion a finger between the two of us. “Last time I had a boyfriend, he destroyed me.”
Gage’s big dick is still inside me. Still pumping. Still laying claim as I share my doubts with him. He’s so perfect, and I’m so…not.He could have anyone.
Gage reverently kisses me on the cheek, then the other. He’s not done peppering me with kisses. He starts on my forehead, moving across my jaw, to the spot behind my ear that makes my body react. I thrust my hips, and his dick grows even harder. “I’m not afraid of us, River. I’m more afraid of the world not being ready for us.”
“What do you mean?”
He pumps his dick inside me until we’re full on having sex again. “You and I together are powerful. So fucking powerful. We can do anything we set our mind on.”
I giggle lightly. “Like take down a corporation who allows bullying on their servers.”
He kisses me on the mouth, quickly, before saying, “Especially that.” He pushes inside me a bit harder, my body lighting up as soon as he does. “Fuck these people for thinking they could mess withmy girl.”
I literally swoon right here. Hearing Gage call me his girl has my body coming alive. I want to be his girl more than anything. All my fears and self doubt washes away, and I’m overcome with the need to make this man come again inside me. I want him more than anything, and watching him lose control has donesomething to me. It makes me want to watch it happen all over again. To know I’m the one causing him all this pleasure.
Our pace slows, then builds again. He palms the small of my back, draws me into another long slide that makes my vision stutter. My nails score his shoulder, and his answering inhale is a shaky thing I remember for later. I want to learn him like code—pattern by pattern, edge case by edge case, until there’s nothing I can’t read with my eyes closed.
“River,” he murmurs, and the way he says it—like awe, like ownership we both voted on—undoes me. I gasp against his mouth and he holds me through it, coaxing, grounding, whispering nonsense and my name until the world lands soft.
My orgasm crashes, and my mind spirals. I’ve never come twice in one night. Ever. Gage follows closely behind, his dick pumping faster as his orgasm courses through him.
We don’t rush the comedown. He presses tiny kisses to the corner of my mouth, the tip of my nose, the hollow at the base of my throat. I stroke the back of his neck, tracing the damp hairline, counting breaths until mine match his.
“Hey,” he says finally, forehead to mine. “You okay?”
I nod, dizzy and happy. “Yeah. You?”
He smiles. “Best I’ve been in a long time.”
I pull him down for one more slow kiss, lazy and satisfied. The urgency’s faded, and what’s left is warm and sure. The kind of quiet that doesn’t feel like an absence but a choice.
We end up half on, half off each other, limbs knotted under the throw. He tugs the blanket up, tucks me in like I’m something tokeep. My ear finds his heartbeat. He strokes my spine idly, long lines that smooth the last static out of my system.
“I needed this,” I admit into his shoulder.
“Me too.”
“I mean—” I fumble for the right words, the ones that don’t make me feel too breakable. “I neededyou. Not just the kissing. The… being. With you.”
His hand stills, then presses—firm and steady. “You have me,” he says simply. “Even when the noise is loud. Especially then.”
Tears prick, unexpected and uninvited. I blink them away and use humor like tape. “You’re going to regret saying that when you get tired of me.”
“Don’t you dare,” he says, dead serious. “I could never get tired of you. It’s not physically possible.”
I exhale. The danger hasn’t gone. Regent still breathes. Tasha might still be the shadow at our feet.
But right now, in this small bright pocket, I’m not prey. I’m not a problem to solve. I’m just a woman in a warm tangle with the man who finally stepped out of the dark.
“Stay,” I ask, because the night feels better when I’m greedy.
He kisses my temple. “Always.”
We don’t make it to the bed. We fall asleep on the couch, tangled and warm, the blanket barely big enough and somehow perfect. Just before I slip under, I feel him tug me closer, one arm cinched around my waist like a seatbelt.
