He soaks me up with his eyes as he removes the last of his clothing. Something inside me shifts, because no matter how accurate Verity’s physical descriptions of him were, I wasn’t prepared for the full magnitude of his body.
We’re both standing there, naked, our breaths exaggerated.
He takes a step closer, his eyes on my face and nowhere else. His warm hands slide up my cheeks and through my hair as he brings his mouth down on mine again. He kisses me, soft and sweet, with just a tease of his tongue.
His fingers trickle down the length of my spine and I shiver.
“I don’t have a condom,” he says as he cups my ass and pulls me against him.
“I’m not on the pill.”
My words don’t prevent him from lifting me and lowering me to the bed. His lips circle my left nipple, briefly, then brush across my mouth as he hovers over me. “I’ll pull out.”
“Alright.”
The word makes him smile. He whispers, “Alright,” against my lips as he begins to push into me. We’re both so focused on connecting, we aren’t even kissing. Just breathing against each other’s mouths. I squeeze my eyes shut as he tries to fit his entire length inside me. It hurts for a few seconds, but when he starts to move, the pain is replaced by a pleasurable fullness that makes me moan.
Jeremy’s lips meet my cheek, and then my mouth again before he pulls back. When I open my eyes, I see a man who, for once, isn’t thinking about anything other than what’s right in front of him. There’s no distant look in his eyes. It’s just him and me in this moment.
“Do you have any idea how many times I’ve thought about being with you?” It’s a rhetorical question, I’m assuming, because his kiss that immediately follows prevents me from answering it. He cups my breast while he kisses me. After about a minute of this position, he pulls out of me and rolls me flat onto my stomach. He enters me from behind, lowering his mouth to my ear as he pulls out. “I’m going to take you in every position I’ve imagined us in.”
His words feel as though they settle in my stomach and catch fire. “Please,” is all I say.
With that, he places a palm against my stomach and pulls me onto my knees, pressing my back against his chest without slipping out of me.
His breath is warm against the back of my neck. I snake a hand up and grip his head, pulling his mouth against my skin. That position lasts about thirty seconds before his hands slip to my waist. He rotates me so that we’re facing each other and then slides me back onto him.
I feel weak against his strength, his arms effortlessly moving me around the bed every few minutes. I realize, in all the times I’ve read about his intimacy with his wife, she always had to have some form of control over him.
I relinquish all my control to him.
I let him take me however he wants me.
And he does, for over half an hour. Every time he seems close to release, he pulls out of me and kisses me until he takes me again, kisses me, repositions me, takes me, kisses me, repositions me. It’s a cycle I never want to end.
Eventually, we’re in what I’m assuming is one of his favorite positions, him on his back, his head on a pillow, my thighs on either side of his head. But I’m not sure if we ended up in this position because of him or because of me. I’ve yet to lower myself onto his mouth because I’m staring at the teeth marks on his headboard.
I close my eyes because I don’t want to see them.
His palms are sliding up my stomach, to my breasts. He cups my breasts in his hands, and then he begins to slowly part me with his tongue. I let my head fall back and I moan so loud, I have to cover my own mouth.
He seems to like the noise because he does the exact same thing with his tongue again, and the ecstasy that surges through me propels me forward until I’m gripping the headboard. I open my eyes, my mouth inches away from the headboard. Inches away from the bite marks Verity left behind from all the times he had her in this same position.
When Jeremy’s fingers slide down my stomach and accompany his mouth, I have nowhere for my screams to go. With the position he has me in, I’m compelled to lean forward and stifle the sounds of my climax.
I bite down on the wood in front of me.
I can feel Verity’s teeth marks beneath mine. Different. Unaligned with my own. I bite harder into the wood as I come, determined to leave deeper marks than she ever did. Determined to think only of Jeremy and me every time I look at this headboard in the future.
Verity is mostly confined to one room, but her presence looms in almost every room in this house. I no longer want to think about her when I’m in this bedroom.
After I come, I pull away from the headboard and open my eyes, seeing the fresh marks I’ve left behind. Just as I run my thumb over them to wipe away my saliva, Jeremy pushes me onto my back and I’m suddenly beneath him again. He doesn’t even need to enter me to reach his climax. He presses himself against my stomach and I feel the warmth spilling onto my skin as his mouth finds mine.
I can tell by his frantic kiss that this is going to be a long night.
Our second round happened in the shower half an hour later. Our hands were all over each other, our mouths were one, and then he was inside me again, my palms flat against the shower wall as he thrust into me beneath the spray of the water.
He pulled out and came on my back before washing me clean.
We’re in the bed again, but it’s almost three in the morning, and I know he’s going to go back to his room soon. I don’t want him to. Being with him in this way is everything I imagined it would be and, somehow, I feel okay being inside this house when I’m also wrapped in his arms. He makes me feel safe from the things he doesn’t even realize are dangerous.
He has me tucked against him, an arm wrapped around me as I lie against his chest. His fingers are tracing up and down my arm. We’ve been fighting sleep, asking each other questions. The questions have taken a more personal turn because he just asked me what my last relationship was like.
“It was shallow.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure it was even a relationship,” I say. “We defined it that way, but it only revolved around sex. We couldn’t figure out how to fit into each other’s lives outside of the bedroom.”
“How long did it last?”
“A while.” I lift up and look at him. “It was with Corey. My agent.”
Jeremy’s fingers pause on my arm. “The agent I met?”
“Yes.”
“And he’s still your agent?”
“He’s a great agent.” I lay my head back down on his chest, and Jeremy’s fingers resume their movement down my arm.
“That just made me a little jealous,” he says.
I laugh because I can feel him laughing. After it’s quiet for a beat, I ask him a question I’ve been curious about. “What was your relationship like with Verity?”
Jeremy sighs, and my head moves with his chest. Then he positions us so that I’m on the pillow and he’s on his side, making eye contact with me. “I’ll answer your question, but I don’t want you to think bad of me.”
“I won’t,” I promise, shaking my head.
“I loved her. She was my wife. But sometimes I wasn’t sure we really knew each other. We lived together, but it’s as if our worlds weren’t connected.” He reaches up and touches my lips, tracing over them with the tips of his fingers. “I was insanely attracted to her, which I’m sure you don’t want to hear, but it’s true. Our sex life was great. But the rest of it… I don’t know. I felt like there was something missing in the beginning, but I stayed and I married her and we started our family because I always believed that deeper connection was within reach. I thought I’d wake up one day and look her in the eyes and then it would click, like that mythical puzzle piece had finally snapped into place.”
It’s not lost on me that he mentioned loving her in the past tense. “Did you eventually find that connection?”
“No, not like I had hoped. But I’ve felt something close to it—a fleeting intensity that proved a deeper connection can exist.”
“When was that?”
“Several weeks ago,” he says quietly. “In a random coffee shop bathroom with a woman who wasn’t my wife.”
He kisses me as soon as that sentence escapes him, like he doesn’t want me to respond. Maybe he feels guilty for saying it. For momentarily feeling a connection with me after trying to feel that connection with his wife for so many years.
Even if he doesn’t want me to react to that admission, I feel something grow inside me, like his words sink into me and expand in my chest. He pulls me against him and I close my eyes, tucking my head against his chest. We don’t speak again before we fall asleep.
I wake up about two hours later to his voice in my ear.
“Shit.” He sits up and most of the covers go with him. “Shit.”
I rub my eyes as I roll onto my back. “What is it?”
“I didn’t mean to fall asleep.” He reaches to the floor and then begins pulling on his clothes. “I can’t be in here when Crew wakes up.” He kisses me, twice, and then walks toward the door. He unlocks it, then pulls on it.