Chapter 84: Thorne Learns his Abc’s

The first thing Dove notices is the warmth of him, a solid wall of heat pressed against her stomach, and the second thing she notices is the way that warmth is changing shape.

She’s tucked into the curve of Thorne’s body, his arm heavy and possessive across her back, his breath slow and even against the top of her head like he’s drifting toward sleep. The room is dark except for the thin silver line of moonlight bleeding through the gap in the curtains, faintly, through the wall, the sound of Edrik shifting in his own bed.

Then she feels it. The hard length of him twitching against the front of her thigh, growing bigger and bigger, insistent in a way that has nothing to do with sleep.

She goes still. Not out of surprise she’s felt this before, more times than she can count but out of something closer to anticipation, a slow curl of heat low in her belly that she tries, briefly, to ignore. She fails.

She raises an eyebrow in the dark.

Ok. Ok, I see. I see.

She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t move for a long moment, just lies there feeling him harden against her, feeling the way his breathing has changed too, gone a little rougher, a little less convincing in its pretense of sleep.

Typical. He always tries to play innocent, like his body isn’t a traitor, like he isn’t fully aware of what he’s doing pressed up against her like that.

She thinks of Edrik on the other side of the wall. Thinks about how close the rooms are, how thin the old wood is, how sound travels in this place like it’s been built specifically to tease Edrik. She should care more than she does.

"Mm," she murmurs, voice pitched low, barely more than breath. "Sensitive there, aren’t we?"

His eyes open. She catches the gleam of them in the dark, startled, caught.

She doesn’t give him time to recover. Her hand trails down the broad plane of his chest, fingers tracing the hard ridges of muscle, and when she reaches his nipple she pinches it — not hard, just enough to make him suck in a breath through his teeth, enough to make the muscle in his stomach jump.

"Dove—"

"Shh." She presses a finger to his lips, feels the hot exhale of his breath against it. "Quiet. You know he can hear everything."

He makes a sound that’s half-laugh, half-groan, like he wants to argue but doesn’t quite have the breath for it. She likes that. Likes having that kind of power over someone built like him, someone who could probably break her in half without trying and yet lies there letting her do whatever she wants with him, pliant as melted wax.

Her hand slides lower, past his navel, past the waistband of whatever he’s wearing not much, as usual until she finds him, hard and full and hot against her palm. She pulls him free, feels the weight of him, and begins to stroke, slow and deliberate, watching his face the entire time.

His jaw tightens. His eyes squeeze shut. A muscle feathers at his temple.

"There it is," she whispers, delighted, cruel in the particular way she only lets herself be with him. "Look at you."

She strokes him slower than he wants, she can tell, because his hips twitch, just slightly, chasing more pressure, more friction, and she tightens her grip in warning until he stills again.

"Behave," she breathes against his throat, and feels him shudder.

She likes the way his huge frame goes tense and then loose under her hands, like he’s fighting some private battle with himself and losing beautifully. She likes the way his breath hitches when she thumbs over the head of him, slick now, and the small broken sound he makes when she squeezes just right.

She’s wet. She’s been wet since she felt him harden against her thigh, since she turned to find him trying so hard to be still, to be good, and failing.

Dove pushes herself up, swings a leg over his hip, straddles him with the kind of unhurried confidence that makes his hands twitch at his sides like he wants to grab her and doesn’t dare.

"Are you sure you can make me feel good?" she asks, voice sweet and low and mocking, as she positions herself over him, feels the blunt head of him notch against her pussy.

He opens his mouth to answer, to protest, to say something and she sinks down just enough to take the tip of him, no more, and whatever he was going to say dissolves into a strangled groan that he has to bite back, has to swallow whole.

"Shh," she reminds him, breathless now herself, feeling the stretch of him even in that small amount. "Edrik."

"I don’t-ah" His voice is wrecked already, low and gravelly. "I don’t care about Edrik right now."

"I know." She smiles in the dark, feels it curl her lips. "That’s the problem."

She lifts, drags herself back up until just the head of him remains inside her, feels him twitch at the loss, hears the hitch of his breath, and then she slams herself down, fully, completely, taking all of him in one slick stroke that punches a sound out of both of them hers muffled against her own fist, his swallowed down hard enough that she can see his throat work with the effort.

"Fuck!" he breathes, hips jerking up to meet her, instinctive, uncontrollable.

She pinches his nipple again, harder this time, in immediate punishment. "I didn’t say you could move."

He groans, low and pained, and forces himself still beneath her, big hands fisting in the sheets at his sides instead of grabbing her hips the way she can tell he wants to.

She starts to move again agonizingly slow, torturously slow, rising and falling in a rhythm entirely of her own design, one that gives him no room to rush her, no room to take control. She can feel every inch of him this way, the slow drag and glide of him inside her, and judging by the tortured expression on his face, he can feel every second of her deliberate pace too.

"You like this," Dove whispers, leaning down to drag her lips along his jaw, his throat. "Being good for me."

"Dove." Her name comes out strangled, desperate.

"What?" She rolls her hips, slow, grinding down just to feel him twitch inside her. "Use your words."