Page 759 of Hell Hath No Fury
She had been waiting too, without knowing what for. Until he lifted her thighs with the upturned palms of his hand, until he fit his cock—no hands—into the notch of her sex, until he slammed all the way inside, and she might have screamed and not cared at all.
Then she knew what she’d been waiting for: to be filled so full she couldn’t breathe. She’d been suspended by her hands—now his. Her palms slipped from the metal and landed on the soft fabric of his T-shirt, the hard bulge of straining muscles as he pumped into her, and she wasn’t touching anything but him.
He pulled back and plunged inside, finding a rhythm that filled her up and turned her inside out. Her head fell forward, cradled in the side of his neck. Just that small shift, and it grew impossibly intimate. As if every part of her fit into every part of him. He stilled, the muscles she caressed quivering under the force of his lust.
“Kennedy,” he said, though it lilted up at the end like a question. Like an apology between strangers on the street.I’ve dropped my hat; here let me help you.Had he ever said her first name before? Surely not, because she would have rememberedthis. She would have remembered the way it poured spiced honey all through her body and then pooled right at her sex.
But the uncertainty made her pause. She needed to tread carefully, to step lightly through the minefield of human interaction that happened while one’s cock was inside another person. And it wasn’t his fault, not at all. She knew better than to ask him what the matter was and what could she do? Those questions didn’t have answers. He wasn’t a grocery list of things to say or do or think; he was flesh. He was a curl of flesh at the base of his ear and the ruddy skin spread over his collarbone and the painful doubt in his voice.
Their bodies were so joined, so connected that she could count each part of him that moved. The pulse in his cock. The muscles that trembled with restraint. That was it. No rise and fall of his chest, no flare of his nostrils. And as she took inventory of her own body—no puff of air against her skin.
“Breathe,” she murmured.
His eyes widened. She could tell he wanted to recoil by the tensing of his abs against the soft flesh of her belly. She held tighter: she nudged him back onto the grass and pushed the oxygen mask in place and saidjust breathe.All those things he’d done for her, and now she paid him back—only different. Only this time it was her arms around his shoulders and her muscles clenching around him and as she whisperedjust breathehe groaned and shuddered and exploded right there at her core.
They stumbled together in a snowfall of limbs. Her hand latched onto thick, unforgiving rubber. She landed atop tall rubber boots and a bundle of tubes as the whole rod, with all its jackets, tumbled onto his back.
He grunted.
Though she didn’t think he was too injured, especially when he reared up, promise glinting in his eyes. A boot heel dug into her back, but his slippery fingers on her clit, now those were theperfect counterpoint. Pain to pleasure, the rush and release. Her stroked her in clumsy strokes, the tangle of their bodies leaving no room for finesse.
Her breath stuttered, hips rocked. Almost, almost—it almost wasn’t enough. Too light, too sweet. Her climax was going to peter out before it had fully begun. But his head fell back, mouth open. A low groan escaped him as his cock jerked inside her. He was coming again, or maybe it was a final pulse of the first, and the sweet surprise on his face was enough to make her climax in hard, pleasure-pain jerks.
With a sigh, he rested his cheek on her breast and nestled in. She stroked the soft fuzz on his head and murmured empty promises against the front of his shoulder.
This had been inevitable, the scales left imbalanced, and now they were equal, leveled, on the same plane. Wasn’t that life anyway, the right place and right time? Wasn’t that the point of a relationship, anyway—being together?
And here they were, a man recovering with halting, shuddering breaths and a woman with tear tracks down her cheeks. She didn’t know where they would go from here, but she was no longer waiting for an ever-uncertain future. She had now.
And more than that, apparently, because he murmured against her sweat-dampened skin, “Okay, let’s go.”
“Where?”
“On the date.”
“Now?”
He pulled back, rolled off her. His eyes were steady under the heft of his eyebrows, but she sensed the uncertainty within him. “I get off at six. I’ll take you to dinner. I’ll even help you look up apartments or duplexes or wherever you want to live. Unless you already have a place.”
She paused. “I don’t.”
It felt like an admission to more, though what she was agreeing to, she couldn’t have said. But secretly, she knew, and maybe she always had. It was written on the card he never opened. It was written in his eyes.
Every time you told me to breathe, it felt like you were telling me to live. You were telling me you cared. So I thought you would understand when I tell you I care too.
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