“Alicia—” He breathes my name, hands finding my hips, steadying me, pressing me hard against him exactly where I need friction.
I kiss him again, deeper this time, and when I rock against him, the groan he makes is the most satisfying sound I’ve ever heard.
This. This is what I needed. Not control. Not strategy. Just feeling.
His mouth finds the curve of my neck, and I arch into the touch, head falling back as his lips trace a path down my sternum. When his hand slides up my back to unclasp my bra, I don’t stop him. When the fabric falls away and his mouth closes over my breast, I cry out—sharp and unrestrained.
“I’ve been thinking about this,” he murmurs against my skin. “About you. Every goddamn minute.” His mouth drags along my collarbone. “I kept thinking about what you’d feel like.” His voice is rough, almost reluctant. “Whether I could make you lose that control you hold onto so tight.”
I should feel powerful, being the object of his desire. Instead, I feel wanted—and that’s somehow more intoxicating.
I reach between us, freeing him from his jeans, and when I wrap my hand around him, his hips jerk involuntarily. He’s hard and hot in my palm, and the sound he makes when I stroke him is pure desperation.
“Condom,” I manage, voice ragged. “Now.”
He reaches for the box I set down—already here, already within reach because I planned this, engineered this—and tears a condom open with shaking hands. I watch as he rolls it on, and the sight of him—hard, ready, because of me—makes me ache.
His hands find my hips, drawing me over him. I brace against his shoulders, and for a moment we just stay there—poised, hovering—his eyes on mine in the gray light. His jaw is tight with the effort of waiting. Letting me set the pace. Giving me the control I came down here needing.
I line myself up and hold his gaze as I take him in—slow, deliberate, one inch at a time, because I want to feel every second of this.
The stretch is—God. It’s exactly what I imagined and nothing like it. The fullness is almost too much, and I stop halfway, breathing through it, adjusting, while his jaw goes tight and his hands grip my hips hard enough to bruise. He holds perfectly still, giving me the control I said I needed.
I take the rest of him in one slow sink and we both go still.
I’ve forgotten what this feels like, being joined with someone, and with Noah it’s somehow more intense than I remember.
“Okay?” he asks through gritted teeth, hands gripping my hips like he’s fighting for control.
“Perfect,” I breathe, and then I move.
The rhythm comes without negotiation—my hips rolling, his hands at my waist tightening, guiding, pressing me down as I rise. I set the pace, and he lets me, and for a while that’s enough: the slow drag of him inside me, the friction building with each roll of my hips, the sounds I’m making that I’d be embarrassed about if I had any capacity left for embarrassment.
He watches me with dark, heated eyes that see too much. That’s the part I didn’t account for. I planned for the physical. I didn’t plan for being seen while it was happening.
I kiss him just to have somewhere to put that feeling.
I wanted control. I wanted to dictate the terms, keep this physical, manageable.
But my body doesn’t recognize those rules. It only recognizes him.
When his thumb finds the sensitive bundle of nerves between us—when he starts moving in counterpoint to my rhythm—control becomes irrelevant.
“Noah—” His name breaks on my lips, and I’m not in charge anymore. I’m just a woman chasing sensation, chasing release, chasing something I can’t name.
“I’ve got you,” he murmurs, one hand sliding up to cup the back of my neck, bringing my forehead to his as his hips thrust upward, hitting a spot that has me gasping.
“There—”
The sofa creaks. My muscles tighten. Even my toes curl so tight pain laces ecstasy.
“That’s it. Let go.”
The world narrows to friction and breath and the relentless press of him inside me.
When I shatter, there’s no graceful way to describe it. My thighs clamp against his hips, my back arches, and the sound I make is nothing I’d ever willingly produce in front of another person—sharp and raw and entirely beyond my control. His name breaks off somewhere in the middle of it. Every muscle in my body seizes and then releases in waves, pleasure so acute it tips briefly into pain before it dissolves into something I have no word for.
He follows moments later, his grip tightening, hips stuttering as he groans my name into my hair—like it’s the only word he knows, like he’s using it to anchor himself.