Page 56 of Say You'll Stay
Then, with a barely audible “come in,” she steps back, allowing me entrance.
I follow her into the apartment, the familiar scent and sounds of her enveloping me like a long-lost embrace. The door closes softly behind us, a period at the end of one chapter, a promise of a new beginning.
Cara turns to face me, arms wrapped tight around her middle. A protective instinct surges through me, fierce and unyielding. I long to gather her close, to shield her from the world, from the poison I’ve allowed to seep into the cracks of our foundation.
But I hold back, sensing her need for space, for control. She draws a fortifying breath, the words visibly forming on her tongue.
“June, we need to talk about—”
But I cut her off, unable to bear the thought of rehashing my sins, of picking at the scabs of our fractured bond. “Can we just…can we have tonight?”
My voice cracks, raw and bleeding. “One night, to just be June and Cara. To forget the world outside that door exists. Please, sweetheart. I’m begging you.”
Conflict wars across her face, the battle between self-preservation and longing. It’s excruciating, watching her weigh the decision to open herself up to me once again, knowing I’m the one who planted those seeds of doubt.
“Please,” I whisper again, the word a broken litany. “I need you.”
Something in her expression shifts, crumbles. With a muted noise somewhere between a whimper and a moan, she surges forward, claiming my mouth in a bruising kiss.
I meet her with equal desperation, fingers tangling in her hair, pulling her impossibly closer. It’s messy and graceless, more a violent collision of need than a tender embrace.
Cara presses against me, all soft curves and shifting muscle. She licks into my mouth, a hot slide of tongue that sends bolts of liquid fire straight to my core. Her hands slip beneath my shirt, nails scoring paths of delicious possession along my ribs.
I walk us back towards the bedroom, unwilling to relinquish even an inch of contact. We fall to the mattress in a tangle of limbs, the springs creaking in protest.
Clothes are shed with fumbling urgency, a trail of fabric breadcrumbs mapping our frenzied journey. When she finally writhes beneath me, bare and flushed and perfect, it’s like coming home and witnessing the divine in a single stolen moment.
“June,” she gasps as I lavish attention on the column of her throat, teeth and tongue painting abstract devotionals into her skin. “Please.”
I answer her plea with action, fingers tracing arcane patterns along the sensitive flesh of her inner thighs. When I finally, tortuously breach her sodden folds, her back arches clean off the bed, a primal moan torn from her lips.
I work her mercilessly, stoking the flames of her rapture with the kind of single minded focus I usually reserve for atonement. She is my altar and I, her penitent worshiper, determined to prove my devotion with each flick of my tongue, each curl of my fingers.
Cara shatters on a choked sob, my name a broken hallelujah as she clenches rhythmically around my digits. I coax her through the aftershocks with reverent caresses, each tremor a benediction.
When she finally stills, chest heaving, I crawl up her body to claim her mouth once more. She licks her essence from my lips with a decadent hum, the vibration shivering across my nerve endings.
Rolling us over, Cara straddles my hips, a wicked gleam in her eyes. “My turn,” she purrs, a delicious promise and implicit threat rolled into one.
She takes me into the wet silk of her mouth without preamble, the sudden envelopment ripping a guttural groan from my chest. My hands fist in her hair, fighting the urge to thrust into the tight suction of her throat.
Every stroke of her tongue, every rhythmic hollowing of her cheeks drags me closer to the edge of bliss. When she takes me to the hilt, nose buried in the wiry thatch at the base of my cock, my vision whites out, a howl of ecstasy shattering the heated silence.
But she pulls off before I can find my release, a petulant whine escaping me at the loss. Crawling up my body with feline grace, she positions herself above my straining arousal, a Cheshire grin curling her kiss-swollen lips.
“Tell me you want me,” she demands, eyes dark and glittering with unbridled hunger.
“Fuck, Cara,” I pant, the words a desperate rasp. “I want you. I need you. Please, love. Don’t make me beg.”
She hums, a considering sound, even as she notches the thick head of my shaft against her dripping entrance. “You beg so pretty,” she muses, a sultry tease. “But I suppose you’ve been a good boy tonight.”
Then, with a sinuous roll of her hips, she sheathes me to the hilt.
I let out an animal noise, fingertips digging into her hips with bruising force as she rides me with single-minded abandon. It’s fast and dirty, a frantic coupling infused with every unspoken fear and desperate hope.
As she clenches around me, her breathy moans a siren’s song in my ear, every nerve in my body pulls taut, coiling in anticipation of cataclysmic release. I bury my face in her neck, losing myself in her scent, her softness, the slick slide of her body against mine.
For a few precious, stolen moments, there is only this. Only us, moving together, chasing oblivion and salvation between rumpled sheets. The world beyond these four walls fades away, inconsequential. Unreal.