I pressed my hand into his abdomen and took a step closer. He didn’t respond to my words, but his mask softened. I saw the uncertainty beneath his strength. My stomach dropped at the negative thoughts he had regarding his own body—a body in which he used to have the utmost confidence. “People are usually scared away by them,” he admitted, forcing a feigned laugh.
“No, I don’t think they are. Taylor may have left because of them, but she’s a piece of work. Good people—the people you need to have in your life—will never turn away because of the burns. It’s why you should do the auction that Sylvia was talking about,” I proposed. I knew he wouldn’t believe me the moment I mentioned the auction, but I hoped it would later sink into his thick skull that I had a point. “Be confident in what you were given, because your beauty is in your confidence. If you’re confident in your burns, they are beautiful, too.”
He pulled me into his arms and kissed my forehead. I looked back up at him and raised my brows, waiting for him to acknowledge my idea. “I’m not doing it. I can’t do it,” he told me. “But you sound like a fortune cookie.”
I chuckled and decided not to push the topic yet. “I have stretch marks from Derrick that will never go away. Thinking like that got me through the tough times when I hated my post-partum body.”
He bent and burrowed his face in my neck, leaving sweet kisses. Each one warmed my core more than the last. “Nothing will make you less beautiful,” he told me. I pulled back and looked at him with raised brows.
“Do I even need to say it?” I asked. Would he understand that his words fit the way I felt about him, too? He bent and wrapped his arms around my thighs, lifting me to sit on the counter.
“Do you want dinner, or are you going to keep coming onto me for the rest of the night?” he asked, standing between my spread legs. I wrapped both arms around his neck and pulled his ear to my mouth.
“I don’t have anything against you having me for dinner,” I whispered, nipping on his ear.
If I thought he was tense before the words left my mouth, I was wrong. Every one of his muscles stiffened as he pulled me to the very corner of the countertop. “This is what you want?” he clarified. I tightened my legs around his waist and nodded.
He was already partially stripped, so he removed my dress, leaving only my panties and bra on my body. As he pulled away my dress, he left trails of small kisses on my skin. When he found the stretch marks I had mentioned, he spent extra time kissing each inch of exposed skin until it all had ample attention.
I arched my back as his mouth lowered, tracing the outline of where my dress had rested—from my lower stomach, down my outer thighs, and then back up my inner thigh. I gasped as his breath cooled my heated core. His black hair fell across his forehead, hovering above one eye as he peered through his lashes up at me. We kept eye contact as he slid a finger through the crease of my panties and caressed my most sensitive area.
I arched my back and pushed myself toward him. He grabbed the seam of my underwear and pulled them the rest of the way to the ground, stacking them atop the rest of my clothes.
I never came close to sleeping with him before, and it was worth the wait as he swirled his finger before plunging it into me. I moved against the finger, pressing into it and allowing his thumb to further add pleasure to the moment. I saw a hint of him peeking through his pants and I craved the rest of him.
He stood, not removing his finger from me, and unfastened his pants and belt. They fell from his waist and left his full length concealed only by a pair of boxers. Whatever I was doing was working because he was ready for me beneath the boxers. His burns caught my attention for a brief second before pleasure distracted me once again. They were as encompassing as the ones on his side, but barely peaked past his boxers.
I wrapped my legs around his back and brought him closer. His single finger turned into two as he worked me through. I rested my elbows on the island and tilted my head back, closing my eyes and relishing in the feeling of him. At once, he removed his finger and reached for my bra, unclasping it as effortlessly as I did. My breasts fell free from their cups and hung heavy on my chest. “Right here, right now,” I told him, leaning forward and lowering his boxers.
When his fullness exposed itself, I nearly gasped as I leaned myself forward. Ethan didn’t hesitate as he grabbed my hips and aligned our bodies. He trembled as he entered me, and I gasped at the spreading sensation. He completed me, and I could only breathe through the initial discomfort of him entering me. Once he was there, and I adjusted myself, he began thrusting, creating a sweet friction that drove me wild. The cool granite beneath me provided a cooler sensation as his warmth spread through my core and surrounded me. His hands clutched my hips as his thrusts grew wilder and more desperate.
My breathing intensified as we each found our pleasure, encompassed in one another. I clung to his shoulders and shouted. Together we melded into a pleasure that was so intense and so collaborative that I saw stars in the corners
