As I pop back from my mini-hiatus to write this story to its conclusion, I need to thank everyone who was so kind and so supportive the last few weeks. For this chapter, @balfeheughlywed truly saved me from myself. She told me what I needed to hear, and I value her input so much. @notevenjokingfic, as always, makes me a better writer every time she gives me feedback, and this installment is no exception.
Claire hadn’t realized just how much she had missed the weight of another body settling over her own.
The dead weight of an arm (sated and heavy) draped over her waist.
A nosy knee clearing bony pathway between her legs.
A rasping, stubbled chin and throat becoming a perfect cave in which her face could hibernate through the night.
She had missed the gentle movement of another body at rest.
A rising and falling chest madly attempting to regulate its breathing.
A slowing heartbeat melting towards rest after gluttonous serving of a partner.
A full-bodied sigh of completion that seemed to exist from head to toe as one-by-one, muscles went utterly slack.
She had asked him to follow her up the stairs, navigated herself to his bedroom, to make good on her request that he make love to her.
And he had.
With his mouth and his hands, his words and his cock.
And now, in the aftermath, she pulled back from Jamie’s throat just enough to share his pillow. It smelled vaguely woodsy, and like the hair at the nape of his neck (the scent committed to her memory when he’d rolled away from her for protection before making love to her). For what felt like an eternity, they just stared at each other, creating mental records of how long it took their heartbeats to slow and their respiration rates to regularize. They inspected freckles and laugh lines and the shallowed-out divots where frowns allied furrowed eyebrows.
Tori