The Ex Talk

“Let’s do it,” I tell him, aware that once we do, we can’t take it back.

* * *

—

We make it back to the hotel before eight o’clock, and in the elevator up to our floor, I make a joke about being old and having an early bedtime. Except when Dominic shuts the hotel room door behind us, he presses me against it and kisses me for a long, long time, these lazy swipes of his tongue that turn me to melted chocolate.

Every time I reach for his belt, he bats my hand away. I forgot how much he likes to tease and be teased.

“Slowly,” he warns.

My lips are swollen and I got too much sun today, and I’m altogether too dizzy and shimmery to protest.

He runs a hand up my thigh, beneath my short skirt. A moan escapes my lips as he drags a finger along my damp underwear. I cup the stiff front of his jeans, rubbing back and forth, but he wraps his fingers around my wrist to get me to stop. I let out a frustrated sound and he laughs.

“I want to ask you something.” Now he’s not laughing. His gaze pins me to the door, his eyes molten black. “Did you ever get yourself off, thinking about me?”

“Yes,” I say, not even embarrassed.

“Could you—could you show me?” he asks, his voice low. “It’s kind of been . . . a fantasy of mine.”

Somehow, I’m already breathless. “I could do that.”

A beat passes between us, and he withdraws his hand from my skirt. I swallow hard, leading him over to the bed with its perfectly made hotel sheets. With trembling hands, I take off my sandals and skirt, slide my underwear down my legs. I’ve never done this in front of someone else. Something about it has always felt so intimate—more intimate than sex.

He sits next to me on the bed, fully clothed.

“You have to give me something,” I insist, tugging at the hem of his shirt, and he obliges.

I lie down with my head on a pillow, my heart hammering. At first I’m not sure I can actually make myself come in front of him, or if he wants me to go that far. But the intensity in his gaze, the anticipation there, propels me forward. I have never been so open with my body with someone else, but with him, I want to be.

The entire time, I’m aware of his eyes on me, the way his jaw clenches, as though he’s forcing himself not to react. That somehow makes it hotter, knowing he’s holding himself back. It’s what makes me stop holding myself back.

“God, yes,” he says, wrapping a hand around my ankle as I quicken my rhythm. “You are so unbelievably sexy.”

I let out a soft moan at that. I stretch my hand toward his mouth, and he sucks on my fingers before I plant them back between my thighs. The orgasm takes me by surprise, the pleasure cascading up my spine in a hard, fast burst. I’m still riding the waves of it when his mouth crashes into mine.

“That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says, and knowing it turned him on makes me greedy for more. “I need you to see how beautiful you are when you come.” Then he’s pulling me off the bed and over to the full-length mirror, undoing his jeans and stepping out of his boxer briefs.

He stands behind me, cupping my breasts, pushing kisses into my neck. My skin is flushed and my hair is already wild.

“We look good together,” I say as his hand drifts down between my legs, and just like that, I’m ready again.

I watch in the mirror as he slides a finger along my slickness before dragg

ing it up across my abdomen, leaving a wet streak there. The teasing is torture, and I fucking love it.

“You make me wild,” he says. “I lose my mind when I’m with you like this.”

When the pressure starts building, building, building, he draws back again. I let out something like a growl. Still, he doesn’t enter me, continuing to use his fingers until I come again, my breath fogging up the mirror.

“You have amazing self-control.”

A strangled-sounding laugh. “No. I don’t. I’m dying. I just wanted to see you come at least a few times before I buried myself inside you for the rest of the night.”

At this point, my legs are gelatinous, so I’m happy to collapse back onto the bed, even happier when he rolls me on top of him. I will never not love how he feels inside me, the heat and the pressure and the silk of him. We go slow for a while, languid movements that stretch me inch by inch, his eyes never leaving mine. Deeper. Despite his fondness for teasing, we never go slow like this, not when we’re connected this way—we’re usually too hungry for each other by that point. This new rhythm we find, it’s torturous.

“Come with me, baby,” he says, and maybe it’s the command or the term of endearment or both that sends me over the edge with him.