sent here to test my ability to be a decent human being.
Nope. Can’t stay in here. Not when I’m an insensitive jerk who wants her so much his entire body feels like it’s strung too tight and if he doesn’t get inside her in the next ten seconds, he’ll come apart at the seams.
In the bedroom, I shuck off my clothes and slip under the covers. Maybe by the time she gets out here, I’ll have calmed down enough to do what I said I wanted to do, which is take care of her. Her father is in the hospital, and she’d already been dealing with a massive amount of stress before that, so what she probably needs right now is someone to hold her, not try to get inside her. Sex might be a great way to relieve stress, but I’m not sure it’s appropriate for all kinds of stress. A sick parent and a family business on the edge of going under—those things probably call for cuddling and comfort foods, not sex.
The shower shuts off, and I hear her padding around in the bathroom as she brushes her teeth and then flips off the light. I quickly shut off the TV I wasn’t even watching when she appears at the foot of the bed. Her eyes are bright despite her obvious exhaustion. She’s wearing my shirt, and the way it engulfs her and drapes down to her knees, along with the way her towel-dried hair is wavy and damp around her face, gives her a vulnerability I haven’t seen before. I want to pull her into my arms, curl her up around my body, and turn the lights out, keeping her safe from everything for as long as I can.
She crawls onto the bed and over to me, then straddles my lap and runs her hands up my bare chest. Skin to skin, her nearness immediately makes my heart start to beat faster. Sage leans closer and looks me straight in the eye.
She doesn’t say anything, simply dips her head and loosely touches her lips to mine, then teasingly swipes the tip of her tongue across my lips. I let out a low, short grunt and feel her lips curve into a small smile. Her hips start to work back and forth across my hardening cock, in small movements that grow more urgent with each pass. My hands are balled up into fists at my sides, and I command myself to keep them there. Not because I don’t want to touch her, I do—God, I fucking want to touch her so badly the bones in my hands feel like they might tear through the skin from how tightly I’m grasping them—but she needs my compassion, not my cock.
But when Sage deepens our kiss, I nearly break. Her tongue slips across mine as we breathe and moan into each other’s mouths. Her hands move from my chest and onto my shoulders, then down my arms and to my hands. She takes my hands in hers and places them on her thighs. I give in and release my fists, laying my hands on her legs, moving them up and up, under the T-shirt, where she’s bare beneath the fabric.
Her skin is what finally breaks my resolve to keep things in the cuddle zone for tonight—that and the way she moans each time she rubs her pussy across my length. I pull my hands back from kneading the taut globes of her ass and run them back over her hips, drawing one hand down between her legs so I can tease her clit with the pad of my thumb. As I work that spot slowly and gently, Sage breaks our kiss and lets out a breathy sigh as her eyes close. I slow my thumb to a near stop, then murmur her name and wait for her to come back to me a little. She opens her eyes drowsily.
“Is this really what you want?” I ask.
She looks up at the ceiling for a moment before returning her gaze to mine. Her voice lowers to a near whisper.
“You said you wanted to take care of me. This is how I need you to do that right now.”
A long shuddering breath escapes as I take in the woman in front of me, overwhelmed by what she’s handed over to my care with those words. Even if I was a hundred times stronger and had a will of iron, I couldn’t deny her anything