Chapter 273: Edrik’s Happy Ending’s

He licks again. Faster this time, more focused, circling her clit with the tip of his tongue before sucking it into his mouth. She gasps, a sharp, broken sound, and her hips stutter forward, grinding against his face. He lets her. Wants her to. Wants her to use him, take what she needs, ride his face the way she was riding his cock.

He explores. His tongue traces the folds of her cunt, learning her, mapping the terrain of her pleasure. He finds spots: spots that make her thighs clench, spots that make her breath hitch, spots that make her grip his hair tighter, and he memorizes them. Files them away. Returns to each one with deliberate attention. He sucks on her clit again, then flicks it rapidly with the tip of his tongue, and she cries out, her whole body trembling.

He keeps going. Licking, sucking, kissing. His mouth is wet with her, his chin is slick, and he doesn’t care. He could drown down here. He presses his tongue flat against her and licks upward in a long, slow stroke, then circles her clit again, then dips lower, probing the entrance of her cunt, tasting the wetness pooling there. She’s soaked. Dripping. Her arousal coats his lips, his tongue, and he drinks it down.

Her thighs are shaking. Her grip on his hair is tight enough to sting, and he loves it. Loves the pull, the pain, the proof that he’s making her feel this way. He sucks her clit into his mouth again and hums, a low vibration, and she bucks against his face.

"Edrik..." His name comes out broken, half-moan, half-sob, and the sound of it makes his cock twitch against his belly, still hard, still aching, neglected and ignored because right now, nothing matters except this. Except her. Except making her fall apart.

He finds a rhythm. Alternating between broad strokes of his tongue and focused sucking on her clit, circling and flicking, pressing and releasing. He finds the spots again, the ones that make her gasp, the ones that make her thighs clench, and he works them, relentlessly, methodically, with the kind of devotion that borders on worship.

And he does. He worships her. Every part of her. The way she tastes, the way she sounds, the way she moves above him, the way her body responds to his mouth like he’s playing an instrument only he knows how to play. He loves her. The thought isn’t conscious. It’s bone deep, something written into the architecture of him, something that lives in his hands and his mouth and the way he holds her. He loves her so completely that it sometimes feels like it could kill him.

Her hips are moving faster now, grinding against his face in erratic, desperate circles, and he can tell she’s close. The trembling in her thighs is constant, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps, her fingers pulling his hair hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. He doesn’t let up. Keeps his mouth on her, keeps his tongue working, keeps the rhythm steady and relentless.

She’s close. He can feel it in the way her body tightens, the way her cunt flutters against his tongue, the way her moans climb higher and sharper. He presses in closer, seals his mouth over her clit, and sucks, hard, rhythmic, pulsing, and she breaks.

Her orgasm crashes through her. She cries out his name, or something that was meant to be his name, mangled by pleasure, and her whole body seizes, thighs clamping around his head, hips grinding against his face in jerky, uncontrolled movements. He keeps licking, keeps sucking, gentler now, coaxing her through it, riding the waves of her pleasure with his mouth pressed to her cunt.

When she finally stills, her grip on his hair loosens. She’s still trembling against his mouth, little aftershocks rippling through her thighs, and he presses one last soft kiss to her clit before pulling back. His jaw aches. His chin is slick and he doesn’t bother wiping it off. He just looks up at her, flushed, undone, her chest heaving, her hair sticking to her damp forehead, and something in his chest squeezes so hard it almost hurts.

She shifts. Still riding the last of it, her hips rolling in slow, loose circles, chasing the final threads of the feeling before it fades completely. She’s still above him, straddling his face, and he can feel the heat radiating off her skin, feel the faint tremor that hasn’t quite left her legs yet.

"Edrik," she breathes, and it’s half laugh, half moan, wrecked and soft. "I can’t... give me a second."

"Take all the time you need," he says, voice rough, muffled against her inner thigh where he presses another kiss, lazy and indulgent. "I’m not going anywhere."

She laughs, breathless, and shifts her weight, starting to climb off him, to turn around, to settle back down the way they’d started, her thighs around his hips, that slow grind that had gotten them here in the first place. He watches her move. Watches the roll of her hips, the way her breasts sway as she repositions herself, the flush still high on her cheeks, and his cock throbs where it’s lying hard and neglected against his stomach, slick at the tip, achingly hard.

She turns. Presents her back to him for just a moment as she adjusts her position, her spine a long elegant curve, and that’s it. That’s what does it. The sight of her like that, bent slightly forward, her ass angled back toward him, still glistening between her thighs from where his mouth had just been, her shoulders flushed pink, her hair falling over one side of her neck...

"Oh," he says. His voice cracks right down the middle. "Oh. Dove."

He doesn’t even have time to reach for himself. His hand flies to his cock on instinct, one fast stroke, maybe two, and then he’s spilling over, hot and sudden, his hips jerking up off the bed as he comes across the small of her back, over the curve of her spine, white stripes landing on her skin before he can stop it, before he can even warn her.

"Oh. Shit." He’s panting, chest heaving, cock still twitching in his own hand as the last of it drips out, and Dove goes very still above him.

"Did you just..." She twists to look over her shoulder, eyes wide, and then she laughs, a startled, surprised bark of a laugh that turns into something helpless. "Edrik!"

"Sorry." He says it immediately, breathlessly, and he genuinely means it, except there’s a grin spreading across his face that ruins the apology completely. "Sorry, sorry, I just. I couldn’t help it. I’m sorry, my love."

"You couldn’t help it." She reaches a hand back, swipes two fingers through the mess on her lower back, and holds them up like evidence, raising an eyebrow at him.

"Your face," he says, and he’s laughing now too, breathless and giddy, still coming down off the high of it, his chest rising and falling fast. "The way you looked when you turned around, and your pussy was right there, still so wet from... I don’t know. I just. It happened."

"It happened." She’s trying to sound stern and failing entirely, the corner of her mouth twitching, fighting a smile.

"I was going to last," he insists, pushing himself up onto his elbows, looking thoroughly unbothered by his own ruin of a confession. "I had a plan. I was going to flip you over and do this properly. And then you just. Bent over like that, and it was like my body made a decision without talking to me."

Later, Dove lay beside him with a clean sheet over her legs and the fan turning slowly on the desk. She had wanted closeness, and she had asked for it. The choice left her feeling more like herself than another day spent pretending fear had swallowed every other part of her.

She could be scared and still want a good life. She could miss Thorne and still laugh with Edrik. Nobody got to take those things from her merely because the road was dangerous.

"When he’s back," she said, "we’re watching something stupid. I don’t want a film where everybody learns a terrible lesson."

"Something with a happy ending?"

"Something with several."

Edrik’s quiet laugh made her bury her face against his shoulder. "I meant the movie, you menace."

"Of course you did."

She slept with his hand resting over hers. In the morning, the relay operator downstairs called their agreed name up the stairwell.

Dove was out of bed before Edrik finished opening his eyes.

Thorne had left the clinic.