Chapter 233: Cream With Your Coffee?

He dips his head. Presses his nose into the hollow of her collarbone. He breathes in. Deep. A long, shuddering inhale that she can feel through every point of contact between them. His chest rises. Falls. His breath is hot against her skin when he exhales.

"Ahh... ah, fuck. Dove." Her name in his mouth sounds like a prayer. Like a curse. Like something that hurts him to say. "I need to fuck you."

"Please." The word is barely a whisper. She doesn’t recognize her own voice. It’s thin, wrecked, desperate. She doesn’t care. "Please."

He reaches between them. Positions himself. She feels the blunt head of him against her entrance and her body clenches in anticipation. He pushes in. One slow, relentless thrust.

He stills. His jaw locks. She watches him bite his lip, hard, and she sees the skin split. A bead of blood wells on his lower lip. His nostrils flare. His whole body is rigid, trembling, held together by sheer will.

Then he moves.

He pulls back and thrusts in again. And again. Relentless. Each stroke deep and hard and precise. His hips snap forward and she takes all of him, her body stretching around him, and the fullness of it steals whatever breath she had left. He doesn’t stop. Doesn’t slow. He drives into her with a rhythm that leaves no room for thought.

Her legs wrap around him. She locks her ankles behind his back, behind the fabric of his shirt, the rough cotton dragging against her calves, and she pulls him in. Deeper. She wants more. Wants all of him. Her heels dig into his lower back and she pushes and he sinks in to the hilt and they both make a sound at the same time. Something broken. Something honest.

His mouth finds her shoulder. He bites down. Not gently. She feels the imprint of his teeth and it sends a jolt straight through her. Her nails rake down his back, and she can feel the shirt bunching beneath her fingers, the heat of his body bleeding through the cotton. He’s still dressed. Still fully clothed. And she’s naked beneath him, spread open, taking everything he gives her.

He thrusts harder. His breathing is ragged, broken. She can hear the effort it’s costing him, the control he’s fighting to maintain. Blood still glistens on his lip. He catches her eyes and holds them. His gaze is dark. Unblinking. Feral.

"Spread those legs," he snarled, voice low and filthy, his hips snapped, pounding deep, balls slapping her ass with every drive.

"Fuck, take it," he grunted, voice shredded. "This pussy’s mine now. Squeeze me tighter—yeah, just like that. You love getting railed, dont you? Gonna come on my dick? Do it. Cream all over me while I wreck this hole."

She tightens around him. Squeezes. His rhythm falters, just for a second, and a sound rips from his chest that’s almost pained. He grabs her hip with one hand, gripping hard enough to bruise, and drives into her with renewed ferocity.

The sound of their bodies is obscene. Wet. Desperate. She can feel the tension building again, already, impossibly, coiling low in her belly. Her hands clutch his shirt. She twists the fabric. She needs something to hold onto. Something to anchor her. She feels like she might fly apart.

"Edrik." His name breaks in half on her lips.

His mouth crashes into hers. She tastes the blood on his lip. Metallic. Warm. He swallows the sound she makes. His tongue slides against hers and his hips piston forward and he’s hitting something deep inside her, something that makes her vision blur.

She comes again. Or maybe she never stopped. The orgasm rolls through her like a wave, then another, then another. Her body clenches around him in pulsing waves and he groans into her mouth, long and guttural and broken.

He follows her over. She feels it in the way his rhythm loses its precision, the way his hips stutter, the way his whole body goes rigid above her. He buries himself deep. She feels the pulse of him inside her, the heat of it, and he collapses, not fully, not his full weight, but enough. Enough that she feels him. Every inch. Every breath.

His face stays buried in her collarbone. His breath comes in harsh, uneven bursts against her skin. She can feel his heart pounding through his shirt. Through his chest. Against her own.

Her legs are still locked around him. She doesn’t let go. She holds him there, holds him inside her, and her fingers find the back of his head. She threads through his hair. Holds him against her.

Dove folded the table away from the bed before settling beside them. Edrik rescued the last card from beneath her foot and placed it face down on the shelf, a ridiculous little reminder of the game she intended to win properly next time. Thorne smiled when she announced that intention. Neither man believed her about the properly part.

Later in the evening, the cards lay in a crooked stack on the shelf above the folded table. Dove rested between them, no longer trying to prove she could win anything. Edrik brushed a loose strand away from her mouth and made a small joke about her cheating that earned him a pinch.

Thorne was smiling, but his thumb kept moving over her hand. She noticed the repetition before he spoke.

"Tomorrow," he said. "Will you stay with me when I see him?"

She turned toward him. "Of course."

"I know you would. I just needed to ask."

The honesty of that made her set the joke she might have made gently aside.

"You don’t have to do it by yourself," she said.

He nodded, looking at their joined hands. Dove held on until he looked back at her, then kissed his forehead and let him be quiet.

By morning, he was dressed before she had finished her coffee. She found him beside the pickup with the address open in both hands, reading the same few lines again.

Dove put her mug down and reached for his fingers. "We’re going to be late if you keep trying to wear the ink off."

He folded the paper, but did not open the door. "Stay close today."

She took the key from his hand and opened it for him. "Try getting rid of me."

She handed the key back when he climbed in, then hurried around to her own seat before he could change his mind. They finally had somewhere to look. Now she needed his father to be there.