Page 15 of Gilded Shackles
He positions himself between my legs. Brushes his thumb across my bottom lip.
"Still not scared?"
"Terrified," I grin. "But in a good way."
He laughs, dark and quiet. Then he leans down, mouth at my ear:
"Since this is your first time, I'm going to make sure you remember it."
He enters me slowly. Inch by inch. There's pain, sharp and bright, and I bite down on it, breathe through it, grab onto his shoulders and hold on.
He pauses when he feels how tight I am. "Breathe," he whispers, lips brushing mine, and pushes past the resistance in one smooth stroke.
I gasp. Tears prick the corners of my eyes. He stills, buried inside me, and presses kisses to my temple, my cheekbone, the corner of my mouth. Patient. Present. Not rushing.
"You okay?" he asks.
"This is better than I ever imagined," I manage, clenching around him, and the raw truth of it makes his jaw flex.
He moves in shallow, careful thrusts. My body bends and curves beneath his, and slowly, ache becomes warmth. Warmth becomes heat. Heat becomes a hunger that surprises me.
"More," I whisper.
He drives deeper. Finds an angle that hits something I didn't know existed, and the sound I make is so filthy it should come with a parental advisory.
He groans. "There it is."
He picks up the rhythm. Steady, then harder. The bed protests. The air burns. His eyes are on mine the entire time, watching my face like I'm the only thing in the world that matters, and something about that gaze, those blue eyes pinning me while he moves inside me, makes the pleasure build faster than I thought possible.
I rake my nails down his back. He hisses through his teeth and drives harder, grip tightening on my hips, and we're not slow anymore. We're not careful. We're chasing something, both of us, and the room narrows to the sound of our breathing and the slick, relentless rhythm of his body against mine.
"Touch yourself," he commands, voice strained. "I want to feel you come while I'm inside you."
I slip my hand between us. My fingers find my clit and the added pressure on top of him is almost more than I can take. Almost.
"That's it." His rhythm falters as I tighten around him. "Fuck, Elle. Come for me."
The second orgasm tears through me like a summer storm. I cry out his name, my body clenching, and it's the sensation of falling and flying at the same time, and somewhere in the middle of it I hear him groan, deep and ragged, and then he's coming too, buried deep, his forehead dropping to mine as we both shatter apart.
For a long time after, the only sound is breathing.
His. Mine. Uneven and wrecked.
He pulls out carefully, and the loss of him makes me wince. But he doesn't leave. He collapses beside me, one arm still wrapped around my waist, and pulls me into the curve of his body like it's the most natural thing in the world.
I press my face into his shoulder and breathe him in. Cedar. Smoke. Sweat. Him.
My brain starts rebooting in fragments. I just had sex. I just lost my virginity. In a hotel room. With a stranger named Nik. On my birthday.
Happy birthday to me.
His thumb traces a lazy circle on my hip. The silence isn't awkward. It's warm. Heavy. The kind that comes after something you can't take back and don't want to.
I close my eyes and let myself have this. Just this. The weight of his arm, the heat of his skin, the slow thud of his heart against my shoulder blade.
Tomorrow I'll go back to the tower. Tomorrow I'll be Elle Donovan again, locked up and looked after and slowly losing her mind.
But tonight I'm just a girl who finally, finally, felt alive.
