She rolls my balls together one more time before stroking her hand over my hip to my ass, which she squeezes before digging into my back pocket.
“A whole roll, hmm?” she murmurs.
My eyes are still closed, but I can see her smile.
“Otim—oppom—optimist,” I finally force out.
“You like me touching you.”
“Feels—so—good.”
“You feel so good in my hands. I have to know how you feel inside me.” Foil tears, and then she’s stroking me again, this time to roll the condom down my length.
Instinct takes over as soon as she’s done, and she gasps as I push deep inside her.
“Can’t—slow,” I grunt.
“Don’t—oh God—want you—yes yes yes—slow. Want you—there. Oh God, yes, there.”
My body is on fire. My hips jerk erratically as I pump into her tight vagina, heat radiating around my dick, which is so hard and primed and ready that I don’t know how I’m not coming inside her after two thrusts.
Fuck, she feels good.
“Flint, yes, there, ohmygod, there,” she chants, bucking her hips to meet mine, her hands wrapped around my back, her legs hooked around my ass, everything about her driving me wild.
I’m teetering on the edge, and I don’t think it’s just the edge of coming.
This edge is much more dangerous.
Much more risky.
Much more worth it.
And terrifying as hell.
I should be telling her she’s beautiful.
I should be worshipping her whole body, not just slamming into her like a wild beast staking a claim.
I should be ordering her to come for me.
But all I can do is squeeze my eyes shut and let my cock do all the talking.
Which is the last thing this woman deserves.
“Oh God, Flint, oh God oh God oh God, there, I’m—I’m—yes yes yes aaaaahhhhhh,” she moans.
Her vagina clenches like a fist around my cock while her legs strain and straighten, her pussy pushed up against my hips.
She’s coming so hard around me that dots dance in my vision, even with my eyes closed, and I finally let go.
I let go, my own pent-up orgasm railing out of me like a runaway train while I moan into the sensation.
My cock is pulsing. Her vagina keeps squeezing and releasing me, clenching and relaxing, spasming around me while I come harder and longer and deeper than I can ever remember.
I feel it in the pit of my stomach.
In my balls.
In my toes.
In my biceps.
Everything—everything—straining into release in the grip of this woman who has utterly bewitched me and whom I’d happily follow to the very ends of the earth.
“Oh God, you’re good,” she pants. “So good. So so good.”
Her fingers are curled in my hair again. Her legs go limp, but I can still feel aftershocks squeezing my cock inside her as the last of my own orgasm rolls through me.
I don’t know if I’m breathing.
I don’t know if I’m still alive.
All I know is that if there’s meaning to life, it’s this.
It’s Maisey, beneath me on a furry rug in front of a fireplace, her breath coming in sweet little gasps while she peppers my head with kisses.
This is it.
This is everything.
This is home.
And it’s terrifying as all fuck.
Chapter 28
Maisey
It takes me a long time to catch my breath.
Even longer to catch my emotions.
If I’ve ever come that hard before, I don’t remember it. I don’t know if I’ll even remember sex before this.
Every inch of my body is satiated. Every nerve at ease. Even my brain is mostly a calm, happy soothing slate of blankness.
The fire crackles and pops next to us, and the rug I almost didn’t get for it being completely impractical is warm and soft beneath my back, almost tickling my neck, but not quite.
Flint eases off me and settles in beside me, looping an arm over my belly and pressing a gentle kiss to my temple.
No hurry.
Nowhere else to be for either of us.
I let my eyes slide closed and tilt my head so it’s touching his and listen as his breathing evens out.
He doesn’t ask if it was good for me. Dean used to do that all the time. Wow, babe, was that as good for you as it was for me? He never listened to my answer, so I quit saying anything beyond mm-hmm.
But Flint doesn’t ask.
Because he knows it was good? Because he knows if I need or want something different next time, I’ll ask? Because there won’t be a next time?
Because it wasn’t good for him?
Dammit.
Brain has engaged.
I told him it was good, didn’t I?
Did I?
Everything that came out of my mouth while he was inside me is a blur.
Yet despite the insecurities settling in, I’m stroking the back of his hand with my fingertips as if I’m claiming him. This hand. I love this hand. The thick veins. The strong bones. The soft skin and rough hairs and long, blunt-tipped fingers. This hand is mine.
“Junie says everyone knows you’re a player,” I whisper.
He makes a noise that’s not a full grunt.
I don’t say anything else, and eventually, he makes another noise that’s not quite a sigh and not quite a grunt.
I still don’t say anything.
And eventually, my patience is rewarded with a quiet confession.
“I know what it’s like to feel abandoned,” he says slowly. “I wasn’t physically abandoned as a kid, but emotionally . . .”
I shift just enough to be able to look at him.
His eyes are still closed, but he keeps talking.
“It’s easier to keep people at arm’s length than to risk letting them hurt me.”
Forget his hand.
I need to touch his face. His cheeks. His temple. His lips. “That’s a lonely way to live,” I whisper.
“I look at you, and I see me.” His lids flicker open, and I lose my breath at the raw vulnerability shimmering in his beautiful hazel eyes. And yes, they’re hazel. Shimmering in golds and greens tonight. “Hurt so much by the people who are supposed to care the most. Afraid to open up to anyone again. But so desperate to fit in that you’ll bend over backward giving and giving and giving until there’s nothing left for yourself.”
Heat prickles my eyes. “You fit here. You’re loved here.”
“There’s understanding the logic of it, and there’s feeling it, and they’re not the same.”
His voice is getting husky, and it’s taking everything inside me to not give in to the urge to let tears fall.
This man doesn’t want my pity, and I don’t want him to think that’s what I’m feeling. “That’s a little too relatable.”
“You get it. Nobody else—” He stops, clears his throat, briefly closes his eyes, and then he looks at me again, his thumb lazily stroking my belly. “I’ve never trusted anyone else to get it.”
“Why me?”
“Because it wasn’t until you started showing up to fix chicken coops and paint nurseries and organize roofing jobs that I would’ve done if you weren’t here that I realized what I was doing.” He squeezes his eyes shut again and lets out a massive sigh. “And I didn’t realize it. Someone pointed it out, but they weren’t wrong. Everything you’ve done for Hell’s Bells—you took over what I was doing to fit in. You get it. You know how it feels to want so desperately to belong that you’ll sacrifice everything you want for yourself to know that the people around you like you, even when you’re telling yourself you have to do all of the things because no one else will and this is where you’re needed.”