Page 54 of The Queen (Masterpiece Duet 2)
“Do you want me to apologize?”
“I want you come home,” he says, looking up. The impact of his black gaze meeting mine makes me shiver. “I’ve dreamed about you, every night that you’re not with me. I’ve wanted you for longer than is strictly legal. I need you beyond what I can endure. But that’s not why you should go.”
My voice is a whisper. “Why then?”
“Because you belong there. And if you do, I’ll spend every breath in my body protecting you, cherishing you, making sure you never need anything because you already have it.”
I have to close my eyes against the wave of desire that hits me. The promise in his voice reverberates deep in my core. “Cherishing me. That makes it sound like I’m fragile.”
“Not fragile,” he says, low and deep. “Strong.”
“Strong enough to handle what you gave me before.” In the bed and against the door. “Strong enough to want you to do it again.”
His large body jerks, as if the words are a physical blow. “Now?” he asks.
“Forever,” I tell him, and he meets me at the end of the word with his lips to mine. His body pushing me back against the bed. His erection hard against the inside of my thigh.
He kisses me as if we’ve been apart for twenty years, like we might not see each other for another twenty. He kisses me as if we have every day for eternity, slow and deep and thorough. “I’ll make it up to you,” he murmurs between nips and licks as he kisses his way across my jaw and down my neck. “I swear I will.”
“There’s nothing to make up,” I say on a gasp, arching my body upward.
“Everything,” he says, tugging the shorts to my pajama set down. “Everything, everything.”
I grasp his hair, pulling him so he’s forced to look at me. His eyes are hazy with lust. I clench my fist, the pain in his scalp enough to make him gasp. He focuses on me.
“Nothing to make up,” I repeat. “This isn’t an apology. I don’t want that. This is every day. This is you and me. This is the way you love me and the way I love you back.”
“God, yes,” he mutters, and only when I release him does he lower his head.
He presses his face between my legs, breathing in as if surfacing after a long time underwater. His mouth makes open kisses on the inside of my thigh, moving closer and closer to the center before switching to the other side. When he reaches the center, he sighs—a sound so replete I feel it vibrate in my clit. He licks long and wide through my core, a languid move that makes me buck my hips.
“I love you,” he whispers, and this time I hear him.
This time I can whisper it back. “I love you too.”
He kisses me for agonizing minutes, endless hours. Until his lips are slick and his eyes dazed. When at last he enters me, I’m so swollen it feels like he barely fits. So tight that there’s strain on his face as he pushes inside. Even with the slickness of my arousal it’s hard to accept him. He rocks against me, slow and persistent.
Until finally my flesh spreads for him. I didn’t save my virginity for him. I saved it for myself. To experience this with a man who loved me, who had the courage to prove it.
The way he thrusts inside me is both worship and possession.
A private altar at which he can pray.
He pushes inside me until I’m the one begging, incoherent, made supple by his tender assault, close enough to orgasm that it hurts. He doesn’t speed up, no matter how much I urge him or rock my hips up. It’s a steady march that he uses, bringing us both to the peak. Holding my wrists down on the bed when I want to touch him. Forcing himself inside me when it’s too much. Going on forever even when I spasm and clench and cry out, breaking apart the way I broke him, becoming something new.
Epilogue
“Play with me,” Avery begs.
Gabriel demurs for about half a second before sitting down across from her. He couldn’t deny her much before, but the larger her tummy grows, the more he anticipates her every whim. I think he’d build a castle on a cloud if she asks for it by the time we get to nine months.
A large crystal-cut chess set presides over the room, available for anyone to play. They begin their game, sparring with words as well as pieces.
The Den is still a private club in the city, but less about sex or gambling. Now it’s a place where the citizens of Tanglewood can gather to discuss sex and mathematics, to eye fuck and play chess.
