“Yes,” she whispered.
His finger met his thumb at her nipple and gently rolled.
“Yes,” she gasped. Her hips started rocking to meet his lunges and she found it more difficult to focus on him. “More, baby.”
He gave her more, bending his head to take her mouth.
But that was it.
She took it, kissing him, tangling her tongue with his, reveling in the taste of him, tightening her hold on him with her legs, using him as leverage to lift up and meet his drives.
His fingers at her nipple ceased their gentle torture, his hand moved down over her midriff, her belly, between her legs, and his thumb slid in and hit her clit.
She gasped against his tongue and jolted in his hold.
He broke the kiss, moving faster, his lips brushing hers, his labored breaths skimming against her lips.
“More, Branch,” she pushed out breathlessly.
“Of which, baby?” he asked tormentingly.
“Anything,” she begged.
He gave it all to her, went faster, his thumb pressing harder, and God.
It was vanilla. Almost as vanilla as you could get in missionary position (except with her hands held down).
But it was divine.
“God,” she breathed, her pussy tightening around him.
“Fuck, feel that,” he grunted, going even faster, harder, his fingers at her wrists biting in, nearly causing pain.
Yes.
Her back bowed, she did her best to move her hips to meet his thrusts, gasping against his lips.
“Fuck, feel that,” he growled, now pressing her wrists fiercely in the pillows, seeking his own leverage to slam into her, his drives pounding against her clit adding delicious vibrations to the work of his thumb, and Evangeline was done.
Curling her fingers into fists, her body tightened under him, all around him, and she cried out against his lips as the slow, lazy orgasm swept her away. She almost didn’t feel his mouth take hers so her noises filled it as his grunts filled hers, forcing her climax to linger, headily suspended in its grip, perfectly happy with the thought it might never let her go.
It was then his thumb went from between them but that hand went back to her breast, fingers squeezing and pulling her nipple so she moaned into his mouth, still cascading through her climax as his fingers bit brutally in her wrists and his grunted groans forced themselves down her throat.
He rode her through his climax and he rode her after it, gentling his touch everywhere, his tongue coming out to taste hers lightly before his lips slid away.
She lay under him, body liquefied, her breaths still coming shallowly, her legs still wrapped around him in the only embrace he’d allow.
Evangeline liked sex. She had her kink and she got off on it. But she liked it any way it came if who she was sharing it with was someone who could do it well and better, if they meant something to her.
But getting vanilla from Branch was a far sight better than simply liking it.
She was able to let loose. She did not have any hang-ups. Therefore she could get into sex, enjoy it, and had come in a variety of ways that didn’t have to do with playing the Domme.
But she’d never climaxed that dreamily, that lazily, that amazingly during conventional sex.
God.
Branch.
And if that wasn’t enough, she felt his lips skate along the shell of her ear before he whispered in it, “Okay?”
God.
Branch.
She turned her head so she had his ear. “Okay, baby.”
He twisted his neck and looked in her eyes.
Before the languid beauty resting in the depths of the ice of his could fully penetrate, he let her wrists go and kissed her.
Finally free to do so, she circled him with her arms and kissed him back.
When he ended the kiss, he did it rolling them both to their sides, disengaging with his cock, but the rest of them he entwined.
“To make sure that’s straight,” he said quietly. “You take me, your game, your rules. I take you, both are mine.”
“That’s a deal,” she replied immediately.
His expression changed, oddly growing soft even as it grew uneasy.
And then she lost it when he lifted his head and again put his lips to her ear.
“Fucks me to have to say it right now but I gotta keep you sharp, Angie. There’s still a lot of this match to play and I’m thinkin’ you don’t get I’m conditioned to withstand pretty much anything.”
“Wasn’t me who just made love to you,” she returned.
He settled back with his head on the pillow and his gaze on hers before he replied.
“Yes, it was.”
She felt that like a blow to the stomach. It felt beautiful at the same time troubling.
But she didn’t let it show.
“Just sayin’, be careful, baby,” he whispered.
She didn’t feel like being careful.
“I will,” she whispered her lie right back.
He looked like he didn’t believe her.
But even so, he didn’t caution her again.
He just rolled them both out of bed, led them to the bathroom, was hands-on with cleanup in a way that was so Branch (which meant in a way she very much liked), and then he led them back to bed.
Evangeline slept in his arms.
And she knew she’d won that game when, hours later, she woke up just the same.
sixteen
If It Was from You
EVANGELINE
Four days later, it was Sunday afternoon and Evangeline was in her Arizona room watering her plants, a task that took some time considering she had a ton of them, when she heard the kitchen door open.
She was in a bad mood.
It had been four days of life with Branch in it.
Though that was absolutely not what had put her in a mood.
During those days he worked.
She worked.
Twice, he had jobs that kept him away until late.
But one of those nights, while she was sleeping, he’d come to her bed, and when she’d woken in the morning, she’d left him there asleep.
Once she’d had to work late and she’d come home to his cooking, some TV and time to mellow out, and they’d gone to bed together, had sex, not missionary but still vanilla (and still fabulous).
And once she’d cooked for him, he’d come home at a decent hour, she’d planned to play, but he’d gotten a phone call that took him away before she could instigate it.
That was the only night when he hadn’t joined her in bed and that had begun his time of late jobs where all she got was a drowsy wake-up when he joined her before she slid right back to sleep.
In that time there had been nothing intense. No heavy discussions. No games played.
Which meant no games won.
Just life. Food. Work. TV. Sex.
But they did it together with no sign Branch was retreating.
She hadn’t earned a smile, or better, a laugh.
But that didn’t mean she hadn’t scaled a mountain.
He came to her home every night and he made himself at home when he did.
No more sitting on the edge of his seat, shoveling food in his mouth. No more holding himself awkward in the kitchen, staring out her back window.
If he was awake with her in the morning, he went down and made coffee for her (something she never requested, but she loved that he did).
When they watched TV, he rested back in the couch, his feet on the coffee table, her head on his thigh, his hand tangled in her hair.
And when she arrived back home after a day when she’d left him sleeping in bed, she’d come up to her room, finding he’d made her bed (not decoratively, the man could not arrange a toss pillow to save his life, and she had a lot of those, but he still made a mean bed, all straight covers, fluffed, precisely placed pillows and tightly tucked sheets—him knowing how to do this a curiosity she was dying to assuage).
And last, when he cooked for her, he moved around freely, knowing her kitchen, sharing an intimacy with her that she knew he didn’t know he was sharing.
He hadn’t left a toothbrush in her bathroom (though he didn’t need to since he’d confiscated one of her toothbrush heads). And she hadn’t cleared a drawer for him and told him to leave some boxers (mostly because, if they were normal, it was far too early for that, but it was especially since Branch was where Branch was in his head).
But progress had been made without her pushing it.