Without another word, he dumps me onto my back, hovering over me with dark eyes and tense muscles. He jerks his hips back and slams them forward.
“Oh, fuck!” I cry, scrambling at his back. “Don’t stop.”
Through the fog of feeling so full of him, the sounds of the headboard slamming against the wall, the way I’m crying out with each of his shallow, punching thrusts, I’m distantly aware of how beautiful he looks. The lock of hair in his eyes sways back and forth with his sure, powerful movements. He’s watching me with an angry brow, but I know it’s not anger he feels. I can tell in the way he keeps licking at his lips as he watches me, something sharp and satisfied flashing in his eyes every time I yelp out with abandon.
I dig my heels into the tops of his ass cheeks as he fucks me, curling a hand around his neck to bring him down for a breathless, badly-coordinated kiss. It’s mostly just tongues and wild panting, and when he wedges a hand between us to press against my clit, he swallows my whimper.
“Come on,” he grunts, fingers moving expertly against me. “Give me one more.”
I dig my fingers into his back, trying to get him closer, too overwhelmed by the sensations happening to do much more than sob out a hard breath. His eyes keeping moving back and forth between my tits, bouncing with the motions of our bodies, and my own gaze. It’s crazy, but mere minutes ago, I wouldn’t have thought I could come again. Now, I can feel it building low and deep, a twisting tangle of sweet ache driving me to grind against his hand with every bed-banging thrust.
“Sebastian,” I gasp, ensnared by his piercing stare, and his ragged voice husks back.
“That’s right. Give it to me, one more. Come with me.”
I can tell he’s already close, that crease between his eyes growing tighter, but he doesn’t look frustrated. His eyes shine back at me and he just looks so fucking pleased. Like he has this absurd amount of wealth and popularity and opportunity, but being inside me like this—his hard body with all its sharp edges plunging into me—is all he’s really wanted. It’s scary and breathlessly elating, like a jump from the highest cliff into the cool, chaotic waves of the river below.
When it finally happens, that explosion of white-hot everything, I claw wildly at his back, body bowed into an arch against his pounding hips. It seems like such a cliché to say I see stars, but that’s exactly what happens, a burst of sparking phosphenes detonating behind my eyelids as my body clenches and seizes around him.
He buries his face into my throat as his movements grow frantic and wild, a hand curling into the crown of my hair to shove me down against his wake. From over his shoulder, I watch the muscles in his back shift and roll like a stalking feline, feel the punch of his breath against my skin when he grunts, slamming into me and trapping me there between the bed and the hot pulse of him inside of me.
I can see his orgasm ripple through his muscles, starting at the base of his back and climbing up his flexing shoulders. Still caught in the gust of my own, I idly card my fingers through his hair, soothing him through it.
His clenching muscles release all at once, but he doesn’t miss a beat, wedging an arm behind me to roll us smoothly to the side. I collapse on his hard chest with a damp exhalation against his collarbone. The feeling of his dick slipping out of me makes me squirm against him, already missing it.
“Shh,” he whispers, threading his fingers in my hair, tucking me up beneath his chin. “So fucking good.”
We lay there for so long that our breath evens out, his palm gliding up and down my back in leisurely strokes. Sometimes he’ll pause there, fingers tracing over something I can’t see or feel, until he presses a kiss into my hair and repeats the circuit.
It takes too long for me to realize he’s feeling the raised edges of my scars.
I’d forgotten they existed at all.
Rolling over, the glare of blinding daylight creeps through my eyelids, forcing them to flicker open. I’m bundled up in Bass’s comforter, engulfed in his delicious, Sebastiany smell. The day before rushes up to me like a gently crashing wave. The ice, the kittens, Sebastian’s ridiculous house, and then finally having sex with him. I stretch slow and easy, waiting for an ache that doesn’t come. Part of me worried I’d end up regretting not waiting longer, but in the light of day, laying here in his bed, all fucked out and reenergized, mostly I’m thinking that I want to do it again.
There’d been a couple times in the night I’d woken to the feel of him slotted up behind me, arm curled around my waist, cock hard and insistent against my ass. A couple times, we’d stirred enough to trade a few slow, wet kisses, but we never stayed awake long enough for it to escalate into anything.
I roll over and run my hand along his side of the bed, but it’s empty and already cool to the touch.
“Bass?” I call, ignoring the flicker of anxiety that passes through my chest. I’m so used to him being there—pressed up against me and hounding me—that it’s weird that he’s not in the bed. A flicker of irrational panic shoots through me and I sit up and scan the room. His clothes are no longer on the floor. My eyes land on the closed bathroom door.
Duh, he’s probably with the kittens.
I pull on the LAX sweatshirt and cross the room, noticing that the sun is out. The drip of melting ice taps out on the balcony, and I trip over a discarded pillow in my haste to grab my camera. There’s only six days until the exhibit, and I’ve been like a madwoman capturing image after image. Most of them are going to be shit, but there has to be something in there worth keeping.
Outside, it’s still cold as fuck, my feet stinging against the chill of the balcony floor. But in his ‘yard’, everything is melting. I get up against the rail to drowsily land a few shots. The branches are weighed down with ice, but beginning to lift with the thaw, like the yawn of a world waking up, stretching its arms high above its head.
It’s typical southern weather, freezing enough to cause a shit-ton of problems one day, then eighty degrees the next. The good news is that the roads should be okay to drive on. The bad news is that the road should be okay to drive on. There’s no getting out of returning to the Briar Cliffs.
Putting my camera away, I tap on the bathroom door before slowly pushing it open. The first thing I see is my reflection in the mirror. My hair is a mess, disheveled from our night in bed. I get this crystal-clear memory of Sebastian’s fist wrapped up in it as he fucked me, somehow both tender and relentless. It makes me shiver, wrapping my arms around myself as I poke my head, hoping to find him.
But the bathroom is empty.
As I gather my hair up into a loose knot, I hear the tiniest little peep from the box we’d given Abby and her kittens.
“Hey, mama,” I say bending down. The babies are wiggling around, nursing on Abby’s belly. At some point during the night, she had one or two more. There are clearly six kittens in the box now, all dry and fluffed up. I spend a long moment internally squealing over the cuteness as Abby lazily kneads a paw in the air, spreading her belly as if to say, ‘Look what I made’.
“You did good,” I assure her, chancing a slow, cautious pet on her head. She flinches a little but ultimately pushes into it, looking too tired to keep up her street cred.