Page 51 of Iron Debt
He was warm. That was the thing about Ewan – the overwhelming, defining physical fact of him. Where Al was solid and Lachlan was precise, Ewan was warm. His hands were warm on my skin, his mouth was warm on my neck, his body was warm against mine, and the warmth was not just temperature, it was attention – the focused, verbal, endlessly present attention of a man who talked all theway through and made the talking the most intimate thing.
“Here?” His hand on the button of my jeans. “Or here first?” His mouth at the hollow of my throat. “Tell me. I want to know what you want.”
“Everything.”
“Helpful. Very specific. I admire the precision.”
“Shut up and touch me.”
“See, that’s more like it.”
He undressed me slowly. Not with Al’s reverent care or Lachlan’s controlled authority but with warm, unhurried ease – enjoying every stage of the process and wanting me to know it. He narrated. Not crudely – with affectionate commentary, the way someone who had spent enough time observing human behaviour found every detail worth mentioning.
“You have a freckle here,” he said, his thumb on my hip. “Right here. Has anyone ever told you about this freckle?”
“No.”
“Tragic. It’s an excellent freckle.”
I laughed against his mouth. The laughter and the desire coexisted – that was Ewan’s gift, the thing he brought that the others didn’t. With Al, intimacy was sacred. With Lachlan, it was controlled. With Ewan, it was human. Messy and warm and full of banter and the gorgeous absurdity of two people who liked each other enormously discovering what their bodies could do together.
He was attentive. He was thorough. He was, true to form, verbally present throughout.
His mouth moved down my body with the warm, unhurried confidence of a man who had decided to learn every inch and had cleared his schedule. He kissed the hollow of my throat, the line of my collarbone, the space between my breasts. His hand slid down my stomach – warm, certain, the fingers clever and unhesitating – and when he reached between my legs the first touch was light and precise and exactly right, and I made a sound that was not quite his name and not quite anything else.
“There?” he said against my ribs.
“Yes.”
“And here?” His fingers shifted. The adjustment was small and devastating.
“Yes.”
“Interesting.” He looked up at me. His eyes were warm and focused and entirely serious beneath the lightness of his voice. “You have opinions. I admire opinions.”
“Ewan. Shut up and –”
“I know.” He kissed my hip. “I know. But I want you to hear this first: you are extraordinary, and I am not going to rush this, and if you tell me to shut up one more time I will take it as encouragement.” His mouth replaced his fingers and the warmth of his tongue was thorough and attentive and narrated in the small, responsive sounds he made against my skin – sounds that told me he was enjoying this, that the giving was not a precursor to the taking but its own complete event, and the completeness of it built me steadily until I was close and he knew I was close because he listened with his whole body.
He pulled back. He kissed the inside of my thigh. “Tell me what you want.”
“You. Inside me. Now.”
“See? Specific. Precise. I’m having a positive influence on you.”
He moved over me. His body settled against mine – warm, lean, the weight of him different from Al’s density, lighter but entirely present. He entered me slowly and his face changed – the grin dissolved, the charm dissolved, and what was underneath was open and serious and young. He held himself still for a moment. His forehead against mine. His breathing careful.
“All right?” he said. The word was different now – not banter, not performance. The real question.
“More than all right.”
He moved. His rhythm was fluid and intuitive – not the measured patience of Al or the precise intensity of Lachlan, but something that felt like conversation, a call and response between his body and mine. He talked through it – not crudely, not constantly, but in fragments that arrived between breaths.
“You feel –” He exhaled. “Christ. You feel –”
“Tell me.”
“Like the answer to something I didn’t know I was asking.” He kissed me mid-thrust and the kiss was messy and warm and his hand found my hip and tilted it and the angle changed and I gasped against his mouth and he said, “There. Right there. I can feel you –” and his voice broke on the last word and the breaking was Ewan without the performance and the without was devastating.
