He was getting overwhelmed. Again. It kept happening, but it was different, now, with her.
He closed his eyes, and pressed his nose into her temple, breathing a moment, flushing hot when he realized he was rutting against her back. He stilled, and tried to get himself under control so he didn’t come in his pants like a teenager.
“Carter,” she said. “Honey. You get your clothes and I’ll get mine, huh?”
She knew. She knew that he was swamped with – everything – and she knew just how to drag him out of it.
He swallowed, throat suddenly tight. “Yeah. Sounds good.”
He hated stepping away from her, but then he got to watch her bend at the waist, limber as a gymnast – one with her jeans bunched around her thighs – to unlace her boots.
He tore at his own clothes: cut, and shirt, and boots, and jeans going in an unceremonious heap. He was still tugging off his socks as he went around the bed to the nightstand and grabbed a condom from the top drawer.
When he looked up, she was kneeling in the center of the bed, back arched provocatively, not a trace of self-consciousness in sight. “How do you want me?” she asked, breathless, her flush spreading down her throat and across her chest.
Christ.
“Hands and knees. Face the mirror.”
She turned and complied, arched even more dramatically, and for a second, he thought he wasn’t going to have the coordination he needed to get the condom on.
But he managed, and then he knelt up on the bed behind her, and got to touch her again. It was easier, like that: touching. He stroked her back, and hips, her thighs; smoothed his palms over the curves of her ass and felt her twitch; let out a sharp breath through his nostrils when she pushed back toward her, thighs spreading a little wider on the mattress.
When he stroked her sex again, she was dripping.
She was ready, beyond ready, and he was so hard it hurt, but when he’d shuffled into position, he paused with his cock just touching her entrance, slapped suddenly with the memory of his last night with Jasmine – and Chanel, and Stephanie.
He glanced up at their reflection again. It was Leah in front of him now; Leah’s dark eyes, and silky black hair draped over her shoulder; Leah’s small, sweetly-curved breasts hanging. Her elbows and knees braced on the mattress.
Her voice, saying, “Carter.”
He gripped her hip, and pressed inside on a slow, smooth stroke. Felt her stretch and give around him. Heard her shaky, pleasure-drunk murmur. Felt her press back again, taking more of him, all of him.
And it wasn’t at all like it had been that night with Chanel.
It was perfect. Because with Leah, it was okay to respect and adore her, and to feel a thrill at the hedonistic pleasure of it, too. He could have both at the same time. Affection for the little constellation of freckles on her left shoulder blade, and delight in the flex and heave of his own sweaty chest, the sight of his cock breaching her body again, and again, and again.
He rode her hard, and she took it, met him thrust for thrust. Cried out when she came, mouth open, glorying in it. Said, “God, yes,” when he pulled out at the last, stripped off the condom, and came all over her back.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
It was easy as anything to collapse down on the bed beside her, after, and pull her into his arms, sweaty skin gluing together.
Quiet sex sounds filtered through the walls, and this was his world, and Leah was in it.
He’d been wrestling with it ever since she got back to town. Ever since he felt the first jolt when Mercy said he was stepping up, but it had taken him until right this moment to label the sensation that had been dogging him for weeks: that of things finally falling into place.
~*~
Reese woke slowly, to the glow of a lamp left on, and a sense of cold and loss along his right side. He turned his head and found Tenny sitting up on the side of the bed, back bowed, his face in his hands. He was all muscle and sinew, but in this light, he looked too-thin. The knobs of his spine stood out prominent. Vulnerable.
He didn’t speak, but Tenny had sensed that he was awake. Had heard the rustle of his hair on the pillow; the change in his breathing. Tenny’s head lifted, and his hands fell limp in his lap. In a very small and uncharacteristic voice, he said, “I can go.”
Reese said, “Stay.”
After a moment, Tenny nodded, and leaned over to click off the lamp. He stretched back out, on his side, facing Reese. Reese saw a fast glimmer of eyes in the dark, and then the weight of Tenny’s head landed on his shoulder.
