but he captures it in a kiss. It has to be a lie, this kiss, so full of emotion that Christopher can’t have.
Pleasure surrounds me as surely as the dark water around a stone.
I sink deeper with every thrust and every breath. His head falls to my shoulder as he murmurs, “Yes, God. Harper. Like that. You’re so beautiful like that.”
Beautiful. He uses the word, but it doesn’t feel like he’s describing me. Not the way I look, anyway. He’s describing the way I feel around him. The way my secret muscles clench and squeeze, fighting the intrusion. He reaches down to move my hips in some specific way that feels only slightly different, until he pushes in again. Then sparks light up a place deep in my body, electricity running to every nerve and making me light up.
A rough sound comes from behind me, and I look back to see Sutton watching us with eyes a sharp crystal blue. They speak of arousal, those eyes, and something else—a secret plan.
A plan, like this is part of his strategy.
Like he always knew it would come to this between the three of us.
Then Christopher thrusts into me again, and I forget to think about Sutton. I forget anything but the feel of this body working over me, inside me, the warm lips on my neck. He tastes my skin along my shoulder. My breast. When he closes over my nipple, I whimper.
“I need you.” Three words. The most truth I’ve ever spoken to Christopher.
His eyes reflect the need back at me. I need you. Or maybe I’m imagining that. And then he closes his eyes, blocking me out again. He thrusts again, hard, making those starbursts behind my eyelids. There’s nothing to do but pant and moan and feel when he does that.
I’m drifting in a nighttime ocean of pleasure, unable to find land but not wanting, never wanting it as long as he does this. My nails scratch at lean, muscled shoulders. He grunts and pushes harder, harder. He bends to my ear, the other side of Sutton. And murmurs, so quiet I almost think I’m imagining it. “Please,” he says against my skin, more feeling than sound.
This man, so proud and so strong. He says please like a man kneeling at my feet.
And I come like a goddess being worshipped, the pleasure fire-bright in my clit and spreading out to my body in waves. Christopher rides my climax with quick thrusts that take me deeper. There’s no air here, but I don’t need it, don’t need to breathe, only need Christopher—and I cling to him. I grasp at him, hungry, desperate, as his body stiffens and pushes, once, twice, and he cries out, hoarse and broken.
Exhaustion makes me collapse back on the bed, my eyes closed. Sleep laps at my skin, threatening to drag me under. God, I can’t fall asleep right now. I shouldn’t, but my body doesn’t understand that. The last thing I feel is Christopher’s lips against my forehead, like a benediction as I sink into sleep.
When I wake up, it’s still dark in the room, no beam of light from between the two heavy drapes. There’s a warm body underneath me, muscles waiting. My hand clenches in springy hair on a broad chest. Before I look up, I know it’s Sutton. A slice through my chest, realizing that we’re alone in the room. Sometime after taking my virginity, sometime after kissing my hair, he walked away. That’s what he always does. He probably has some academic reasoning in his head about how it’s actually protecting me, walking away, instead of breaking my heart again.
“Morning,” he says softly.
“Christopher?”
“He left. Are you feeling okay?” He means the virginity thing, which I want to brush off as nothing. Not a big deal. Only a social construct, except it feels distinctly physical right now. There’s a dull ache between my legs, a reminder of where Christopher has been.
Beneath a white sheet I can see that Sutton’s hard. “I’m fine. What about you?”
A flash of teeth as he smiles. “Don’t worry about me.”
I’m worried about the way Christopher interrupted us in the hallway. About the way he interrupted us last night. We must have reached the part where it hurts him.
My palm brushes over the muscled ridges and flat plane, down to where his arousal burns against my hand. He sucks in a breath when I grasp him with my fist. This part I’ve done before, playing in the basements