Chapter 24: Ink

On Monday night he took me to bed as if he had never had me before.

No stairs in a hurry, no door kicked shut.

He carried a lamp up the ridge house stairs himself, set it on the nightstand, and turned it low.

The quilt was turned back.

The window was a black field of lake with a thin white moon in it.

"Come here," he said.

I came.

He undressed me with his eyes on mine, a button, a zip, the cardigan on the chair.

Kissed each place he uncovered.

When I was bare he stood back and looked, his hands loose at his sides.

"Say it," I said.

"I've said it in every room of this house."

"Say it in this one."

"You're the one I would have picked," he said, "out of every woman in the world."

"Eyes shut, nose shut, my name taken off me. I would have picked you."

My throat closed.

"You'd have found me anyway."

"I'd have found you in the dark. Let me show you."

He lay down on his side on the quilt and drew me down facing him.

We lay nose to nose with our legs tangled, in the lamplight, breathing the same air.

His hand slid up my thigh and over my hip, slowly.

I touched the silver crescent on his shoulder, and the place where my ring sat on my finger next to it.

We kissed for a long time.

It was nothing but kissing, and the slow heat building under it, and the bond turning over between us.

"I want to go slow," he said.

"Go slow."

"I want to feel every part."

He rolled my nipple under his thumb, and his mouth followed, patient and warm, and I closed my eyes.

He kissed down my stomach and back up.

Between my legs with two fingers, circling, until I was wet and trembling and whispering his name.

"Look at me," he said.

I opened my eyes.

He lifted my top leg over his hip, and guided himself against me, and slid in with a long slow breath.

We both stopped.

We were close enough that I could see my own face in his eyes.

"Hello," he said, absurdly.

"Hello."

"There she is."

Keep reading free with an account. Start Too Late, Alpha, I'm Your Pen Pal from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.