I know her so well. I know her expression. There’s something she wants that she won’t let herself ask for.
“Tell me,” I say. “Tell me what you want.”
She shakes her head.
“You’re going to make me guess.”
She nods.
“You want to come home with me?”
She’s never spent the night. On the Bear trip, she crawled out of my tent and back to hers. After the naked ice cream, I asked her to stay, but she said she’d promised her grandfather she’d make him a big breakfast in the morning before a fishing trip.
It’s strange to spend so long not knowing what you want—not knowing, even, that you want anything—and then suddenly to have everything make perfect sense.
“We can leave your truck here.”
Panic flashes in her eyes.
“They all know already, Han.”
She nods. “Yeah. But.”
“But what?”
I have never wanted her to trust me, trust this, more than right this second.
Her eyes flick to her truck. To my face. To my car. And then she nods, a small, tight yes.
I exhale. I hadn’t even realized I was holding my breath. Waiting for her, like a verdict.
She gets into the car next to me. The now-familiar scent of her, a whole garden of exotic blooms, follows her. My mouth is dry, my chest tight. I’m nervous again, the way I was the first time we kissed. Like someone on the edge of a high board at the Olympics. Everything I’ve ever done before was practice for this because it never mattered until now.
I drive us back to my place, come around to open her door. She stands up, colliding with me. It’s not some well-rehearsed move, not for either of us. It’s guileless and graceless, two bodies wanting to be as a close as possible as quickly as possible. “Hanna,” I gasp because the feel of her against me is perfectly too much.
She tugs my hand, leading me toward my building, and I laugh, at how bossy and eager she is, and she looks back at me and laughs, too.
“I’m never going to be cute and meek,” she says.
“Bullshit. You’re cute. You’re so fucking cute.” I catch up to her, grab her head, and kiss her pink cheeks, making her blush deeper. “But good on not being meek. I’ve never had a thing for meek.”
We race up the stairs together. I unlock my door and wrestle it open, and then we collapse against the inside of it, kissing. Our mouths are open and greedy, our tongues clashing and demanding. I fall to my knees, tug off her shoes, and wrestle her leggings down, smiling at the heather gray cotton thong she’s wearing—even when she’s impossibly sexy, she’s so very, very Hanna.
“I like this,” I say, running a finger down the center of the small triangle of fabric, making her shiver. I do it again, watching her. Her head falls back against the door, her eyes closing. I’m already so hard. I want to bury myself inside her… but not until she’s ready for it. Way more than ready. I want her hungry and helplessly begging.
So, I spend a long time on my knees in front of her, tracing every edge of the thong, stroking her through the soft, practical cloth. Learning where the teasing feels best to her, what makes her tip her hips up for more, what makes her moan. I stroke down, too, to where the fabric narrows and I can feel her labia starting to swell with arousal, where her slickness makes the cloth and her body silky. I touch with fingers, with my tongue, with an open-mouthed kiss that makes her choke out my name. I tug the thong to the side so I can slide a finger inside her, and I nuzzle higher up, through the cloth, giving her heat and friction over her clit.
“Easton…”
“You want something?”
“More.”
I smile against her mound. “Yeah?”
“Please.”
“I like how you’ve accepted that your lot in life is going to be begging me for pleasure.”
She groans. “You’re Satan.”
“Hardly. Would Satan do this?” I lick through the cloth, nipping and grinding until she’s panting and trying to ride my face.
“Probably,” she gasps.
I tug her panties down, lift one of her legs to my shoulder, and go to work in earnest, kissing and licking and circling.
“Easton.”
“That’s right, Han. Say it.”
“Easton!”
I work her clit until she goes over the edge, shuddering and clutching my hair and crying my name.
She sags back against the door; I struggle to my feet, reaching for her.
“Legs around my waist,” I order.
She obliges without protest, and I carry her to my bedroom, lowering her, limp and smiling dreamily, onto the edge of the bed.
I grin at her. “I like you like this. You’re too blissed out to give me a hard time.”
“Oh, I can still give you a hard time. Just give me a minute to recover.”
“Nope,” I say. I tug her shirt up, unfasten her bra, toss both to the floor. Then I strip out of my clothes.
“Just stand there and let me worship you,” she says.
“Nope,” I say again. “I’m in a hurry.” I open the nightstand drawer and pull out a condom, rolling it on. Despite my words, I take a little extra time with it, because she’s watching my every move, her pupils huge and dreamy. I wouldn’t want to deprive her of her fun.
Who am I kidding? I love her eyes on me.
I give her a little push, and she falls backwards onto the bed, laughing. I crawl up between her legs. “Mmm,” I say, fingers parting her so I can slide my cock through her folds—not into her core, not yet. Just following the same exploratory paths that my fingers did earlier—all those sensitive curves and folds, and the hard bud of her clit, now so sensitive that she gasps when the head of my cock finds her and I stroke her, back and forth.
“Too much?”
“God. No.”
I work myself against her until her eyes close and her mouth opens; then I line my cock up and very gently nudge inside.
The deep gasp-groan she lets out is extremely gratifying.
“You like that?”
“So much.”
“Is it helping with the ‘it’s been a while’ problem?”
“Mmm. Not sure yet. Keep going? I’ll let you know.”
I chuckle. Of course sex with Hanna is like this—combative, playful, fun. All that foreplay I didn’t know I was having. All those times our back-and-forth turned me on, and I couldn’t admit to myself how very, very much I wanted to tussle with her in a completely different way.
Now I can. And it’s—
Well, it’s hard to hold back, but it’s been a long time for her, and I don’t want to hurt her, not even a little. So, I only take what she gives. I push in just a fraction at a time, stealing more depth in her core as her cheeks pink up and her lips redden and her eyelashes cast shadows on her skin, her eyes drifting closed in pleasure. And I’m not complaining. She’s so, so tight. Snug around my cock, hot and wet and perfect.
I slide a hand down between us and idly play, enjoying the whimpers I can pull out of her. She yields more to me, and I take it, making her moan.
I could do this all night.
Until she clenches her inner muscles around my cock.
“Are you doing that on purpose?”
“Mmm-hmm.”
She’s strong.
“Unngh. Hanna, stop. You’re going to make me come if you keep doing that.”
“I don’t want to stop. It feels too good.”
It does. It feels so fucking good.
I press my thumb to her clit and circle it. She throws her head back against the pillow, lifts her hips, and whimpers, her grip on me suddenly erratic and pulsing.
“Are you coming?” I demand. “God, that’s hot. That’s so fucking hot.”
I thrust into her, and she cries out, clutching my ass, raking her fingernails down my back, biting into my shoulder. “More,” she says.
I oblige, not holding anything back, plunging deep inside her, filling her, getting my fill of her.
She’s softened and gone boneless under me again, but that’s okay because she’s gazing up at me with big blue trusting eyes. And I’ve never been much for eye-contact during sex—it always feels like too much—but I can’t look away from her. This woman, this friend, this funny, smart, very hot person who makes me feel more like myself than I’ve ever felt in my life, who already fits my world like she was made for it, and all I want is this. Her.
My chest is bursting with emotion, my throat, my eyes—it’s like there’s nowhere for it all to go, and it’s coiling inside me, rising in a spiral up my spine, boiling from my root, and I’m clutching her like a drowning man, coming so hard it’s all I can do to hold on, calling her name over and over.