My pussy is clenched around his girth, my hands lifting to his face. I tuck a strand of hair behind his ear and watch the ripples in his chest and arms as his body moves with an animalistic cadence.
Ace’s eyes open, and he kisses me again before burying his face in the small of my neck. Our bodies are tighter, willingly responding to every drag of a tongue or graze of a fingertip. I’m not sure how much time has passed yet, but I don’t want this to end.
I could lie here all night, beneath him, beside a warm fire.
My hand lifts to his face, and his jaw tenses under my palm. He’s getting close. So am I.
With his fist full of my hair, he guides my lips toward his, his hips slamming against mine with a need so fierce it’s both deliciously painful and desperately sweet. The hot friction between us sends me over the edge. My breath catches in my throat, my nails digging into the flesh of his muscled arms until they leave indentations.
With one final thrust, he releases himself.
And when it’s over, we’re stuck together, melded and gasping for air.
Brushing hair from my damp forehead, I glance up at him and smile.
He doesn’t smile.
But that’s nothing new because he never really does.
Instead, he pulls out of me and rolls to my side, slipping his arm around me. My back is to him, so I’m unable to read his face or know what he’s thinking. I’m afraid to ask, so I say nothing.
I simply lie there, next to him, basking in sweet afterglow.
For some inexplicable reason, I think about the journal. And then I recall an entry toward the middle half of the book that detailed a weekend of stolen rendezvous. I mean, there were plenty of those in that book, but this one was different. This one mentioned a fireplace and a bearskin rug, which I felt to be rather cliché and unoriginal at the time, but who was I to judge?
Reaching forward, I tug the blanket beneath us up at one corner and run my hand along the rug beneath us. The fur is soft yet coarse, brownish-black.
Without a doubt, it’s bearskin.
Twenty-Two
Ace
* * *
She wakes before I do Saturday morning. I hear her stirring around in the kitchen, cursing under her breath after some loud, metallic clink. If she’s trying to be quiet, she’s failing miserably, but it’s not her fault. This cabin is small. And it’s okay because it’s time to get up anyway.
Tossing the covers off, I trek to the bathroom in the hall and get cleaned up.
Last night marked the first time I’d fucked anyone since Kerenza.
I thought it would be harder than it was. I thought it would feel mechanical and automated, like just going through motions and nothing more. I didn’t think I’d look at her the way I did. I didn’t think my hands would want to explore every square inch of her soft body or that my tongue would crave her the next morning.
My cock is hard as a rock, and maybe some of that has to do with the fact that I just woke up, but thinking about last night – about Aidy and what we did – isn’t helping matters.
Leaving the bathroom, I head toward the kitchen, greeted with the scent of eggs and toast.
“Oh, hey.” She turns to me for a fraction of a second before tending to the skillet where she’s attempting to get a spatula beneath two eggs.
“Need help?” I offer, speaking to the backside of her.
“No thanks.”
I’m not sure if this is an awkward morning after thing or if she regrets sleeping with me or if she’s just not a morning person, but after we fucked last night, I held her until I felt the rumble of her stomach beneath my palm.
We got dressed after that, and I went to grab the crappies off the stringer, got them cleaned up, and then fried them for dinner.
Aidy didn’t act like anything was wrong after that. She read for a little bit by the fire, and I sat on the front porch and listened to the crickets because those are the kinds of things you don’t get to do much living in the city, but now it feels like she doesn’t want to give me the time of day.
“Everything okay?” I clear my throat and take a seat at the head of the table.
“Mm, hm,” she says, back still toward me.
I study her, watching as she plates our breakfast, retracing last night’s actions step by step.
None of it was planned.
I hope she knows that.
I didn’t invite her here with the intention to fuck her.
I wasn’t waiting for some kind of opportunity to kiss her or get her naked, and I sure as hell wasn’t trying to be romantic with the whole sex-by-the-fire thing.
“Aidy,” I say, unable to bear another minute of awkwardness. “Last night-”
She spins on her heels, two plates in her hands, and I stop speaking when I see her face.
It’s bright red.
Sunburn red almost.
But only around her mouth and chin. It spreads down her neck and stops along her collarbone.
“Here you go.” She places my plate before me. Her gaze is averted, her fingertips wrapped around a fork as she sits down.
“Jesus, what happened to your face?” The answer comes to me the second the question leaves my lips. My hand runs to my thick scruff.
Aidy glances at me from across the table, eyes wide, and her hands lift to the cherry-red skin. “Is it really that bad?”
“It looks . . . like rug burn.”
She looks down at her plate and sighs. “I can cover it up with makeup, I guess, but if you ever want to kiss me again, you’re going to have to shave.”
I try not to chuckle. “I’m sorry. I’ll trim it later.”
“Not trim,” she says. “Shave.”
My palm grazes my left cheek. I started growing this out last year, when I was hospitalized after the accident. At first it was to cover the scar and to help make myself less noticeable to the general public. It was a mask of sorts. Covering everything I didn’t want to see anymore.
The scar was a reminder.
And not having to look at it every day has been a saving grace of sorts.
“Please?” Aidy says. Her face falls. “I mean, I’m assuming you might want to kiss me again. I don’t know. Could be wrong. Don’t want to get presumptuous here.”
She cuts into her eggs, mumbling to herself. If she were anyone else, it’d be annoying. It wouldn’t be endearing at all. But everything about Aidy is adorable and sexy and whimsical. She’s definitely not my type. She’s unlike anything I’ve ever given a second look to before. When I really sit and think about it, I still barely know her.
The fact that she’s here, sitting across from me at my lake house, spending time with me despite the fact that she could be with anyone else probably having way more fun, is nothing short of a miracle, and it’s not lost on me.
“I want to kiss you again,” I declare.
Aidy stops chewing and looks up.
“I’m going to kiss you again,” I correct myself.
Her lips pull into a pleased half-smile. “Well then, you know exactly what you need to do.”
I drag my hand across my beard again. “Can I think about it?”
“Nope.”
“You have no idea what you’re asking of me.” I doubt I can make her feel sorry for me, but it’s worth a shot.