Even after she regained control and relaxed into the bed at her back, panting to recover breath, I could still feel her tightening around my finger. I was so reluctant to remove it. So tempted to start again and coax her to climax a second time. But more than that, I wanted to see her face and judge how satisfied she was. So I gently removed my hand, wiped my arm over my mouth and chin, and adjusted to sit over her hips. Though she had to have felt me move, her eyes were shut and she was still struggling for breath. It took a minute, but eventually she opened them to look at me, and her cheeks tinted once more.
I couldn’t believe it, to be honest. Ava was so rarely shy. “Are you blushing, Little Will-o’?” I asked.
Her lips thinned with a smile, and she threw an embarrassed hand over her face. “You want the truth?” she asked. I hummed my affirmation. “I rather expected you to be a timid lover… and you’re quite the opposite.”
I laughed at that, saying, “The first time we ever even kissed, I had my hands all over you.” I set my hands on her stomach to trace the shape of her through her dress. “And you thought I’d be timid?”
Ava giggled, pushing herself up to sit. “Well, when you say it like that…” Her face was at my chest, so as we both laughed about it, she pressed a joyful kiss between my breasts.
She didn’t wait for our laughter to die before reaching for the lace down the front of my trousers, but when she did, I fell quiet to watch her. Her focus was locked on her hands until she undid it completely, and then her head tilted up to look at me. I wanted so badly to kiss her that it didn’t cross my mind not to, and she didn’t seem to care how I tasted when my mouth met hers. She parted her lips so my tongue could caress her own, and as I kissed her, I felt her hand meet the flesh at my stomach and slide down.
It slipped past the waist of my trousers, and I was so slick with lust that she didn’t need to collect moisture before circling a finger around that sensitive point of nerves. My eyes were already closed, but they still rolled back at the pure ecstasy of it, and I hummed my approval into her mouth. In a matter of seconds, the motion made me so weak that I collapsed forward against her. She fell back on the bed, and I set my forearms next to either side of her head, holding myself up over her so I could continue to kiss her while her hand worked between my legs. And gods, it was incredible.
Like she’d done this a thousand times already, she settled so quickly into a pattern that had me breathless. I was struggling for air, panting into her lips as my hips rolled against her hand, following the stroke of her finger so earnestly it made it hard for her to be precise. She only let me do it for another minute before flipping us over, lowering the warmth of her mouth to my neck while her finger picked up pressure and speed. But I still couldn’t stop. Gods, I couldn’t stop pressing myself against her. She was giving me so overwhelmingly much, but somehow I wanted more.
And she knew it, and she dropped her hand to push two fingers into me, leaving the heel of her palm in the perfect place for me to keep moving against her. For me to grind down on her fingers while that glorious pressure rubbed higher up. It felt so unbelievably good that I moaned her name. I ran a hand back through her hair to encourage her lips against my neck, I dug my fingers into her back and I was completely lost to her. Lost to the heat of her body over mine. Lost to the way her name felt every time it was coaxed from my throat. Completely lost to how it felt having her inside me while I still had the taste of her on my lips.
I couldn’t hold it back. I tried so hard because I didn’t want this to end so fast, but I couldn’t stop it. The building tension between my hips reached a peak, and one more thrust against her hand sent me spiraling over the edge. I pulled her down to me, holding tight so I could bury my face in her shoulder, using her heated flesh to muffle the euphoric shout that came bursting from my chest. My hips rocked hard and slow and I could feel her fingers pulsing inside me to keep stroking it out, to keep me riding on the climax for as long as she possibly could. I would’ve loved for it to last forever, but not long afterward I settled into the bed, gulping air and letting out an involuntary hum as Ava’s fingers left me.
She dropped to the bed at my side, and said and did nothing for a long minute until I opened my eyes. She was just watching me, a pleased curve at one corner of her mouth and a thoughtful glimmer in her dark blue eyes.
I rolled onto my side to face her, and draped an arm over her waist to pull her into me. “What are you thinking?”
She wrapped her own arm around me to hold me even closer, and shut her eyes as she set her forehead against mine. “I’ve never seen you so without reserve,” she answered. “It’s…”
“Strange?” I supplied playfully.
She huffed with laughter, and pressed a slow kiss to my lips before saying, “Beautiful.”
What I didn’t expect was for her eyes to be full of tears when they opened again. It worried me instantly, and so much that my heart plummeted. “Is that sadness?”
“No, no,” she said, planting a series of reassuring pecks all over my face. “I promise, no.” And she did her best to sniffle the moisture away. “It’s relief.” Though my eyes narrowed with confusion, I pressed a comforting kiss to her forehead. “You’ll never know how this choice plagued me, Kiena,” she said. “We worked so hard to get here that I didn’t want to make it for nothing. But I feared if I let you leave without me, I’d lose an important piece of myself.” She hugged herself to me, burying her face against my chest. “But I know, I know beyond a doubt that I’m doing the right thing.”
I nuzzled into the top of her head, taking in a deep breath of her scent. “You won’t hear me complain,” I said, and it was nothing but the sincerest truth. We lay like that for a minute in silence, simply enjoying the feel of each other, and then my hand wandered up her back, to the ties at the rear of her dress. I’d have never been able to get them undone… “I’m right bitter about all those layers you had on.”
Ava snickered, and I could feel her shaking with laughter against me. “You worked so hard to get me out of them.”
I leaned back away from her, motioning to her still covered body. “And look at the fruits of my labor!” I glared. “Useless.”
“If I’d known where the night was taking us,” she laughed, “I would’ve worn something simpler.”
I chuckled and rolled my eyes, and not a moment later Ava pulled me back to her, returning her lips to mine. She didn’t stop for a while either. Just kissed me long and slow, her smooth fingers running up and down my back, to the front of me to trace between my hips and up my ribs. There wasn’t a single part of me that minded, not the kissing or the touching, and my own hands explored what they could of her. They traveled across her lower back, up to where the top part of her scar was exposed by the dip of her dress, around and down the front of her neck. Down her collarbone. Down her chest. Into the front of her dress…
The whole time, I could feel Ava’s lips thinning against mine with a smile, and when I actually managed to get my hand in her dress to cup her breast, she laughed. “Ah,” she said, “the ever-honorable Kiena is not so chivalrous as she’d have us all believe.”
I flicked my thumb over her nipple, enjoying the way her eyelids fluttered with pleasure. “What was that?” I asked smugly.
“Something,” she began, humming with half-hearted protest when I did it again, “about something.”
I brought my lips in close to hers, pinching the hard skin gently between my fingers. “You don’t recall, do you?”