Page 90 of Fractured Ice

He groans and his fingers begin to move, slow and deliberate, learning the rhythm that makes me clench around nothing. I move with his hand and grip his forearm with both of mine, letting him take me higher for a long minute until I'm getting close. I pull away, shaking slightly.

I drop my underwear and climb onto his bed.

He follows me, settling between my thighs, and he looks down at me with that expression. I look back at him, and neither of us says anything for a moment.

He reaches down and lines himself up, and then he pushes in slowly. I understand immediately why the boundary two nights ago had felt like the right call, because this is something I wasn't prepared for. The stretch and the fullness of him, inch by inch, makes my breath go short.

"Okay?" he asks.

"Yes," I say. "Don't stop."

He pushes deeper and I feel my body adjust to him, open around him, and when he's fully seated inside me we both stay still for a second. I'm staring at the ceiling with my hands gripping his shoulders and feeling more of him than I've ever felt of anyone.

He begins to move.

Slow at first. Deep, rolling strokes that I feel everywhere. I wrap my legs around him and pull him closer, he responds by going harder, and it builds from there. He fucks me with intention, with focus, his eyes on my face every time I make a sound, reading what I need and giving it to me without being asked. My nails find his back and I hold on. The headboard is loud but neither of us cares.

Everything builds. My whole body winds tight around him, every stroke pushing me closer, and I'm saying his name without meaning to, unable to stop. His forehead drops to mine and he's breathing hard against my mouth and I can feel him there, feel him wanting to last, holding himself back for me.

"Don't stop," I say. "Don't you dare stop."

He doesn't stop.

My orgasm hits me like something physical, a full-body wave that takes my vision at the edges, and I cry out and clench around him as he groans and lets go, coming inside me with his face in my neck and my name on his mouth. We stay wrapped together through all of it until neither of us can hold it.

He collapses over me. We breathe. Staying like that for a while.

He rolls to the side and pulls me with him, settling me against his chest, his hand moving slowly up and down my back. The party noise is still going somewhere below us and it belongs to a different world entirely.

I'm quiet for a minute. Then two.

I've never felt closer to anyone in my life. And I've never felt like I couldn't handle losing someone this much either. The idea makes me swallow hard, while tears sting my eyes.

"Is that it, then?" I say to his collarbone.

He's still a little breathless. "What?"

"Now that you've gotten me into bed." I try to say it evenly, swallowing down the lump in my throat again. "That's usually when you lose interest."

He goes still.

"I know how it works," I say. "I've watched you do this more times than I'd like to count. Whatever this was, I'd rather know now than⁠—"

"What the hell are you talking about?" He pulls back to look at me, and he looks genuinely offended, which is not what I expected. "That's not⁠—"

"Ethan—"

"The other girls didn't matter." He says it and immediately watches my expression. I watch him realize what he's said. "That's not—I don't mean it like that. I mean they didn't matter to me the way this—" He stops. Tries again. "It was just sex. It was always just sex. This is—you're not⁠—"

"I don't understand."

"I know." He drags both hands through his hair. "I know I'm not doing this right. This is exactly the problem, I can't—when I'm talking to you I can't—" He gets up, which startles me, and he goes to the desk.

I sit up and reach for the sheet on the bed. "Ethan⁠—"

"Hold on." He starts picking up the balls of crumpled paper from the floor, one after another, and comes back to the bed and starts depositing them on me. One. Three. Six. I catch them as they come and look at him, and he looks at the pile growing in my lap with an expression I've never seen on his face, something stripped down and slightly terrified.

"Open them," he says.