Contents ( 62)
- Praise for Ali Hazelwood
- Also by Ali Hazelwood
- Anthologies
- Novellas
- Young Adult Novels
- Contents
- Prologue
- 7 days before the wedding
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
- Chapter 7
- Chapter 8
- Chapter 9
- Chapter 10
- Chapter 11
- 6 days before the wedding
- Chapter 12
- Chapter 13
- Chapter 14
- Chapter 15
- Chapter 16
- 5 days before the wedding
- Chapter 17
- Chapter 18
- Chapter 19
- Chapter 20
- Chapter 21
- 4 days before the wedding
- Chapter 22
- Chapter 23
- Chapter 24
- Chapter 25
- Chapter 26
- Chapter 27
- 3 days before the wedding
- Chapter 28
- Chapter 29
- Chapter 30
- Chapter 31
- Chapter 32
- Chapter 33
- Chapter 34
- Chapter 35
- 2 days before the wedding
- Chapter 36
- Chapter 37
- 2 days before the wedding
- Chapter 38
- Chapter 39
- Chapter 40
- Chapter 41
- After the wedding
- Chapter 42
- Chapter 43
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgments
- Visit Ali Hazelwood Online
- What’s next on your reading list?
I can barely think. “Show m-me. Please.”
He does. Like I did before, up and down, empty and full. Except that I was using his size to stimulate every part of me, and he knows exactly how to—
“Oh my god,” I say, coming again. This orgasm is shallow, wet. Erratic. No less good.
Conor studies me as I relearn how to breathe. Says: “This might be the only decent thing I’ve done in my whole life. The one thing I’m good for.”
“W-what is?”
“Making you come.” Another angle, this time me leaning backward, leaving room between our upper bodies. I can almost see him move inside me, rocking back and forth under the skin of my abdomen. Conor lets out a grunt, but then his hand presses down on my bellybutton. All at once, the space he’s carved inside me shrinks, disappears, and I’m coming again, so hard that I space out for a second.
I stir back to find my cheek on his shoulders. He inhales deeply, filling his lungs with the scent of me and sex and salt air. Shivers with pent-up restraint.
“What would you do?” I ask in his ear. “If you weren’t afraid to lose control?”
He shakes his head. Like he can’t imagine such a scenario. But then says, “I would want you under me. I would pin you down. I would lock you in a room and not let anyone look at you, ever. I would…”
I wait. But he doesn’t continue until I say, “Whatever it is, it won’t shock me.”
“It will.” His fingers slide down. Draw messy circles around my clit.
“T-try me.”
His exhale sounds like a snarl. “It’ll terrify you.”
“It won’t.” I grind against the heel of his hand, feeling like I’m contained by him this way, not a person but a beam of raw nerve endings, reduced to the places where he strums me and fills me.
“I would put a baby in you.”
I’m coming, again. Dropping from a great height. I arch my back as the pleasure quivers through me, Conor’s teeth grazing the side of my breast. As I ease down, he allows himself to suck on my left nipple, hard. It’s a small, short-lived indulgence.
“You’re not going to let yourself come, are you?” I breathe out, words tangled between gasps.
He’s trembling. An exposed wire, pulled taut. Still, he shakes his head.
When I climb off him, his cock looks to be in pain, but I’m too angry to care about it. I limp to the bathroom, desperately trying to walk straight and pretend like what happened didn’t knock me over. The ceiling light is white, suddenly harsh, and the second the door closes behind me I stagger forward, elbows on the marble counter.
I just came more times than I could reliably say. I took and took and took—and yet I feel empty. More hollow than a drum. Like something cracked, and my insides spilled out.
I start cleaning up. My underwear is too drenched to put back on, so I leave it by the sink, next to a transparent case. There is a razor inside, not electric, not even a safety one—an old-school, straight razor. A blade. Like he just time-traveled into this century to bring penicillin back to his era. “Get the fuck over yourself, Conor,” I grit out, rolling my eyes. But in the case there’s something else, too. A vaguely familiar pattern, a shape that nags at me.