The comfort that physically held me together was his strong arms around me. He wouldn’t let me go.
His shallow breaths hit my shoulder, slowly losing their speed.
I exhaled shakily and swallowed against the sudden dryness in my throat. “This is where we move over to the other bed, get under the covers, and cuddle the fuck out of each other.”
He nodded against my shoulder but made no move to release me yet.
Maybe a few more moments here.
I woke up the next morning feeling sore pretty much everywhere.
There was also a wet mouth on my cock.
Under the duvet.
“God…” I stretched out and groaned sleepily. I kept my eyes closed and slipped my hands under the duvet, wanting to feel him. “That feels so good.”
Every humming sound sent tiny vibrations up my cock, and I couldn’t get over how fucking amazing he was at it. I drew my fingers through his trimmed beard and scratched him a little.
“Mmm…” I couldn’t help but squirm. I still felt sensitive from last night. “Are you having fun under there?”
He released me from his mouth and stroked me with his hand for a few beats. “It’s rude to interrupt Daddy in the middle of his breakfast.”
My eyes flashed open.
I flushed all over.
Never before had my orgasms been triggered so hard by mere speaking, but that pushed me to the edge right away.
I lost my composure again.
I begged and pleaded for his mouth, and he was quick to comply, engulfing me in wet, tight heat. I started moaning uncontrollably and held his head in place, and moments later, I gasped a warning that I was coming.
He gripped the base of my cock tightly, jerking me fast, and let me come in spurts along his tongue and the roof of his mouth. His lips never stopped working me, and he licked me up and down until I’d stopped shaking.
“Christ on a fucking candy cane!” I didn’t even know where that came from.
Shan chuckled huskily and sucked me clean before kissing his way up my body.
“Gah—fuck, tickles.”
To be a dick, he rubbed the scruffiest part of his chin over my nipples.
Then he emerged from under the duvet with a soft kiss to my neck. “Good morning.”
“I’ll fucking say.” I shuddered. “Kiss me, please.”
He smiled and gave me his lips. “I didn’t traumatize you last night?”
“If by traumatize you mean you made my wildest dreams come true, then yeah, you traumatized me.” I pulled him down on me, needing his body heat. “Lemme taste my come on you, you dirty fuck.”
He rumbled a laugh and rubbed our noses together. It was so sweet I thought I was going to get a toothache. And then he gave me what I wanted, a slow, deep, morning make-out session in bed.
“Seriously,” I mumbled against his lips. “You can’t pretend you’re some virgin saint after that dirty talk.”
He chuckled through his nose. “I’m discovering that when I’m up against you, I might as well forfeit and embrace the inappropriateness.”
Smartest thing he’d said all year.
Shan still didn’t wanna talk at length about what was going on and what he’d gone through before he’d caved to my…charm. And frankly, I was good with that. It was always best to let him process at his own speed, and in the meantime, he expressed himself in other ways.
Sexier ways.
I wasn’t too worried anymore. If he somehow talked himself into us being temporary or…fuck if I know, if it was just part of his “unhealthy obsession,” I’d give him an unfiltered piece of my mind. As long as he didn’t figure out I was the stranger he’d met up with, I believed this was something that could lead to more in the future.
I had patience in spades for that, and I knew what he was going through in other aspects of his life. Being with me wasn’t going to be a priority. Grief didn’t work that way, nor should it.
In Marseille, it struck me as a little odd that he didn’t wanna exchange our two queen beds for a king—until he told me, “It’s nice to have one bed we can destroy. And we don’t need a bigger bed for sleeping. I want you close to me.”
Screwing me was clearly turning him into a genius.
But something started happening at the end of our first week in France. I noticed it right after dinner, this little place outside Marseille we’d come to three nights in a row because the seafood was so incredible. He was losing steam. Either something had triggered a low point, or he’d just had too much going on after months of nothing, but I saw it at the first forced smile.
He couldn’t hide that shit from me, no matter how hard he tried.
I made it easy for him and said I was too beat to do anything but sleep back at the hotel, and he passed out within five minutes, muttering that he’d pack before we hit the road tomorrow instead. Then I stepped out onto our balcony and called two friends in the area. A pair of batshit-crazy brothers from Paris—they lived in Monaco, not too far from here, and ran both a security business and a luxury car service for the filthy rich coming to gamble in Monte Carlo.