When my hand closes around his hard cock, I understand immediately why every part of my body has been operating at this frequency all night.
I stroke him slowly as he makes a sound low in his throat. My fingers smear the pre-cum off his tip, as his hips press forward into my hand. His eyes are locked on mine.
His hands grip my hips as he brings me to the very edge of the table. He steps between my thighs, and pulls me toward him. He kisses me harder, as he brings the tip of his cock to my entrance. He pauses there for one breath, both of us completely still. His forehead drops to mine, and we breathe the same air beneath the gold kitchen lights.
He pushes inside me. The fullness of his thick cock moves and stretches through me completely. I hear myself, loud and unguarded, and I don’t care. His groan against my throat is low and rough. His hands grip my hips as he holds himself still, buried entirely, both of us adjusting to the feel of each other. I tighten my legs around him, press my forehead to his jaw, and breathe.
His thrusts are slow at first, long, rolling, deliberate. I match the rhythm with my hips, grip his shoulders, and lose the ability to think in anything but sensation. His hands move from myhips to my lower back, pulling me closer into each stroke, and his mouth works along my throat.
Neither of us is thinking about Paris. Neither of us is thinking about anything beyond the wet, intimate sound of our bodies slapping against one another.
The pace shifts gradually as the careful rhythm gives way to something harder and less controlled. His breathing changes against my skin. Mine breaks against his jaw. The sounds we make together in this kitchen are the most honest conversation we’ve had since we met.
I hold on to him with everything I have. The sensation builds from somewhere deep and undeniable, and when I press my mouth to his shoulder, he responds to that too, gripping me tighter, driving deeper, taking the last of my composure with every thrust. I stop trying to be quiet. I stop trying to be anything except his in this moment, open beneath his hands, wrapped around his body, taking everything he gives me.
My orgasm is complete and unguarded. Every nerve, every muscle, every part of me that has been holding anything back releases at once. I tighten around him, shaking through it, and he follows moments later as he grips my flesh.
He stills himself and I feel him pulse deep inside me–his cum filling my pussy to the brim. I feel the weight of what passes between us, and I hold his shoulders without moving.
We stay exactly as we are. The kitchen is quiet again. The pass lights are still on. After a long moment, Damien lifts his head and looks at me fully, without anything left to hide, and I look back at him the same way because I’ve stopped trying to fight against it. Neither of us says anything. There is nothing to say that the last hour hasn’t already said more accurately.
I reach up and touch his jaw. He turns his face slightly into my hand, a small, quiet motion that feels more unguarded than anything else he has done tonight.
Outside of the high windows, Paris continues beyond the rooftops, indifferent and beautiful, holding its shape around whatever happens inside it. The city doesn’t care about any of this. We are the only two people who do.
I don’t think I'm going to recover from tonight—from him. But then again, I don’t particularly want to.
Chapter One
Serena
ROME
Rome smells like espresso, sun-baked stone, and heat held too long inside narrow streets.
By the time my taxi pulls away from Fiumicino, the late afternoon sun is low enough to turn the city gold but not low enough to soften anything. The air slips through the cracked window thick and warm, carrying exhaust, basil, dust, and the faint sweetness of something frying in olive oil somewhere I cannot see. Scooters cut between lanes like they are exempt from both physics and consequence. A man in a linen shirt argues into his phone at a crosswalk with one hand lifted toward heaven, as if God might personally settle whatever grievance he has with the person on the other end.
The taxi driver catches my eye in the rearview mirror.
“First time in Roma?” he asks.
“No,” I say.
His gaze flicks to my carry-on, then to the leather notebook on my lap.
“Business?”
“Yes.”
“What business?”
“Food.”
He smiles like I have given him something useful.
“Then Roma is good business.”
“It usually is,” I say.