One Last Time: A Second Chance Romance

by Roxie Noir

  Delilah reaches back, grabs her skirt again. Pulls it up and over her hips yet again, like a pink curtain revealing the canvas of her thighs: the red bows on the backs of the garters, a shooting star, roots of a tree. One ass cheek has a tiny, delicate crescent moon on it, a tattoo she told me she got as a joke from a fellow tattoo artist.

  And she’s wet. God, she’s wet, so wet that it soaks through my boxers instantly as I press the tip of my cock against her opening before sliding myself down, teasing her clit. She arches, pushes back again, draws a circle with her hips.

  I unbutton one tiny, pink button, then another. A third. Delilah stops, looks over her shoulder.

  “Just rip them,” she says.

  I undo another, another.

  “I don’t want to ruin the craftsmanship,” I tell her.

  “It’s a bridesmaid dress,” she says, her voice husky, like she’s forgotten how to talk. “I’m never going to wear it again.”

  “Still, I hate to ruin it,” I murmur, just to tease her, still unbuttoning.

  The truth is that these tiny buttons are the purest form of torture, a test of self-control. If I can get to the end of them without tearing one off I can do anything in the world, and when the last one comes undone I pull her up and push the lace over her colorful shoulders, and then Delilah is standing and shoving the dress off but she’s still wearing some kind of bra that covers most of her torso as she leans back against me, head against my shoulder.

  “Are you fucking kidding me with this?” I growl, and she laughs as I take her breasts in both hands, let her soft skin push through my fingers. She wiggles against my cock, and I find the edge of the bra, pull down.

  “Better,” I say, and pinch both her nipples at once.

  Delilah gasps, arches, her hands fluttering to cover mine, alighting there like hummingbirds. I pinch harder and that gets a moan, another rock back against my aching erection. She leans her head back, stands on her toes.

  I capture her mouth with mine, lips and tongues and teeth at this angle as she reaches behind herself, does something, and then all at once the bra is gone and it’s just Delilah in her full glory.

  “Really?” she says, turning. “Bras are what gets you?”

  I push her onto the couch and she sprawls, one arm over her head, legs askew, gazing up at me from under those eyelashes practically made for fuck-me looks.

  “That wasn’t a bra,” I say, planting a knee between her legs. “That was a defense system.”

  She drapes one arm over my shoulder as I kneel on the couch.

  “Clearly, it was no such thing,” she says.

  I reach for her, run one thumb under her lips as she watches me, cocks her head slightly. I skim my hand down her jaw, along the jugular vein beating double time, over her naked, freckled collarbone, to where the blankness ends and the tattoos curl in from each shoulder. Over her chest they disappear into a cloud of flat tan, the makeup she still has over her newest tattoo, but lower down they wander onto her breasts.

  A tentacle spirals around one nipple, a vine around the other, and before I know it I’m tracing them with my fingers, brushing them over the hard points. Delilah stiffens, inhales. Below her breasts, over her sternum is a stained-glass raven with its wings spread, a million shades of gray and blue and purple and black, almost but not quite at odds with her pale skin.

  They’re her, living and breathing and just as much her as her freckles or her lips or the birthmark on the back of her knee.

  I bend my head, suck one nipple into my mouth and Delilah gasps and moans and pushes her hand through my hair. She’s hiked against my thigh and I hike her harder. I bite, hear the way her breath hisses between her teeth. I suck until her breathing is ragged and her nipple is puffy in my mouth, and then I do the same to the other one.

  Somehow, we shift on the couch until she’s under me. Somehow, my hand’s found its way between her legs again and I’m stroking her wetness, dragging my fingertips between her slippery, swollen lips before plunging inside her up to my knuckles.

  Delilah groans. I find her clit with my thumb, stroke it as I crook my fingers inside her against the spot that makes her hips rise off the couch. She squeezes me back, pussy like a vise around my fingers, the sound coming from her like it’s being ripped from her chest.

  Dear God, this is what I have wet dreams about.

  “You gonna make me come again before you fuck me?” she gasps.

  I crook my fingers again, thumb firm on her clit.

  “You tell me,” I say. “Fingers or cock, Bird?”

  I push my fingers deeper and move them again and whatever answer she might have given me gets lost in a desperate gasp, both her arms over her head as she grabs the arm of the couch, eyes closed.

  “Cock,” she finally whispers.

  I pull my fingers from her though I keep my thumb on her clit for another moment and she bucks her hips against me as I pull away.

  At last, I take my pants off. Delilah sits up, tugs at my boxers, wraps her hand around my shaft the moment it’s freed, strokes me as one leg curls around my hip, drawing me in.

  “You still good?” I ask, voice rough as anything.

  “Still good,” she says, strokes me again. “You?”

  I bite my lip, brace one hand on the couch arm, next to her head.

  “Good,” I manage to get out, and then I’m bare at her entrance, slippery and tight and warm and she’s half sitting up with her elbows beneath her and one leg wrapped around my hips, breath coming in gasps, tattoos and breasts moving with every inhale.

  I sink into her with one hard, deep stroke, all the way to the hilt. We both make an animal noise, both clench the leather of the couch tighter in fists. Every muscle in my body tenses and Delilah does the same, arching under me, rocking slightly.

  I pause, just for a moment, so I can bookmark this, come back to it later. I pause because I know it’s impossible to go slow with Delilah, not when she’s always felt like her pussy fits me like a glove, not when she moans while she takes every inch of me on the first stroke, not when her nails rake down my back and her legs wrap around me and I’m completely, utterly under her spell.

  “Jesus, you feel even better than I remember,” I whisper.

  I slide my hands up her torso and let her breasts fill my hands, nipples between my fingers and she lifts her leg, drapes her knee over my shoulder and I’m fucking her again. Harder this time, millimeters deeper, and this time she moans louder, braces one arm against the couch, arches into me.

  “Hard,” she murmurs. “Please?”

  As if I could deny her. As if I could do anything but drive into her again and again, each stroke better than the last as she gasps, whimpers, moans. We fuck hard and fast, tangled together, impossible to tell where I end and she begins.

  Delilah comes hard. She come shouting oh fuck yes, one leg still over my shoulder and the other locked around me. She shudders and she shakes and I follow her by milliseconds, the world filled with white light and heat and nothing else as I come inside her.

  The comedown is slow. I keep rocking against her long after I’m finished, my head in the crook of her neck, both of us slick with sweat. Her fingers are in my hair again, this time gentler as I lift my head and kiss her, both of us panting for breath.

  I kiss her lips, still inside her. I kiss her jaw, her neck. Delilah is intoxicating. Enchanting. Being with her feels like standing in full sunlight: I know how easy it is to get burned, but the way the warmth feels on my skin is worth it.

  My lips find the Kraken on one shoulder, red and purple and orange, tentacles intricate and delicate and I find myself following them, powerless to stop.

  When my mouth reaches a nipple again, she gasps. I flatten my hand against the raven on her sternum, damp with our sweat, flick my tongue over her nipple again.

  “Seth,” she murmurs.

  “Hmm?” I ask, nipple between my teeth as I look up at her.

  She inhales again, the sound sharp an
d delicate.

  “Nothing,” she says. “I just wanted you to look at me.”

  I slide my hand downward, away from the raven. I slide it across the blank softness of her belly, over the hill and valley of her hips, over the velvet of her inner thigh. Finding Delilah’s clit is second nature and she sighs as I slide two fingers around it, one on either side, pinching it gently.

  She groans softly, shifts her hips.

  “Again?” she says, her voice slightly rough.

  “You’re not tired, are you?” I ask.

  I’m already on my knees on the floor, lips pressed to one inner thigh.

  “Not yet,” she says, her fingers winding through my hair again.

  “Good,” I say, and suck her clit into my mouth.

  Her whole body jerks. Her hand in my hair tightens and she pulls me against her, hips bucking against my face she makes a noise somewhere between a groan and a grunt.

  I stroke my tongue across her, feel the vibration that runs through her. I push her thighs apart, let her grab my hair as roughly as she wants. Delilah fills my senses: the scent of her arousal, mingled with sweat and my own scent. Her taste. The sounds she makes, breathy and gasping. The feel of her thighs on my hands, her fingers in my hair. The sight of her from this angle, nothing but plush curves with her head thrown back.

  She comes fast, without saying a word, only noises. Her hips buck against me but I don’t relent. I lick her harder, faster, slide my fingers into her and stroke her from the inside, even wetter than before, her juices and mine mingling, dripping out onto my hand and the couch.

  This time she gasps my name just before it slams into her, one quick breath — Seth — and then she’s trembling, both legs shaking, and when she finishes I rest my forehead against the inside of one thigh, my hand on the other.

  I’m still drunk, sex-addled, half-exhausted, and I think: what if I didn’t have to give this up?

  Chapter Twenty

  Delilah

  Between my legs, Seth takes a deep breath, his forehead still pressed into my thigh, just above the tattooed lace garter. He’s got one hand on my calf, the other, stickier hand draped over my thigh, half on my hip.

  Before I can ask if he’s all right, he pulls back and practically drapes himself on the floor, one arm curled over his head, the other by his side on the smooth hardwood.

  “You okay?” I ask, half rolling over, propping myself on one elbow.

  He gives me a thumbs up from the floor, looking over at me, blue eyes half-closed. I flop over onto my belly, half off the couch, and reach a hand toward him.

  Then I lift my head and actually look around for a moment.

  “Wasn’t the couch over there?” I ask, nodding at an area rug that’s at least three feet away.

  Seth glances from the rug to the couch, then at me.

  “Yeah,” he says, a grin sneaking onto his face. “It also used to have more cushions.”

  I look over my shoulder, and he’s right: throw pillows and cushions are liberally scattered at the other end of the couch.

  “Oops,” I say, and absolutely don’t mean it.

  “You’re an animal,” he tells me, closing his eyes, grin intact.

  “I’m not the one on the floor.”

  “You pushed me off the couch.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  He doesn’t answer right away, so I just lie there and let myself look at him in the half-light and the flickering of the fire. It’s a luxury, looking at him like this: stark naked and half-asleep. Relaxed. Defenseless and oddly sweet.

  And beautiful. Just so fucking beautiful.

  You’re not alone in that opinion, I think.

  How many other women have laid like this, thinking the exact same —

  I half-roll, half-stand from the couch before I can finish that thought, manage to get my feet under myself before I fall over completely, even though I feel like my bones are made of rubber. Seth just casts me a skeptical glance from the floor.

  “Be right back,” I say, and head for the bathroom.

  Twenty minutes later, I’m carefully removing my eyelashes when he knocks on the bathroom door.

  “Come in, I’m just — ow.”

  I accidentally yank on my own eyelash. How do people wear these all the time? They’re hell.

  “Just making sure you hadn’t fallen in,” he says, stepping through the door. He’s wearing a very fluffy, very white robe, a second one dangling from his hands.

  “Still undoing my face,” I say, leaning on the counter. I’m still fully naked, and in the mirror I can see the slow path his eyes take down my body, not that he makes any effort to hide it. “You’re not supposed to see this part.”

  “Which?” he asks, blatantly not making eye contact.

  I’m still watching him look at me in the mirror.

  “The part where I either put on or remove makeup,” I say. “Really, if I were any good at being ladylike, you’d never see me without my face on.”

  “You can’t possibly be worried about whether or not I think you’re ladylike,” he teases, finally looking at my face again.

  “Don’t tell me what I can’t worry about,” I tease back, finally pulling the final eyelash from my right eye and flicking it onto the counter, then blinking a dozen times in a row.

  “Brought you one in case you were cold,” he says, holding up the fluffy, white robe.

  I take it from him, pull it on, knot the belt, reach into my hair and start searching out bobby pins.

  “I’ll be out in a few,” I tell him, pulling one out. “I’m sure there are several issues of Fancy Horses or Overpriced Trinkets or Spend All Your Money magazine out there.”

  “I’ve already got too many fancy horses,” he says, stepping into the bathroom until he’s right behind me, looking at me over my head, in the mirror.

  Then, lightly, gently, he runs his fingers over my hair and deftly pulls out a bobby pin, puts it on the counter. He pulls out another, and I let my eyes close.

  God, everything he does feels good.

  “You worried about Ava?” he asks, after a moment.

  I sigh, fingertips rooted on the cold countertop.

  “Of course,” I admit. “She’s my baby sister. She’s known this man, what, a year? It’s — “

  I stop myself before I can say even less time than I knew Nolan, because we’re not fighting tonight. By God, not tonight.

  “ — Not long enough,” I say.

  He pulls another pin out, gently probes my hair with his fingers, searching for the next one.

  “No,” he says, quietly.

  Pull, probe. My head nods with the gentle rhythm.

  “Speaking of idiot younger siblings, Caleb just gave up his academic career over a twenty-two-year-old,” he says, and my eyes fly open.

  “What?” I ask, cautious. I know what it sounds like, but I can’t possibly be right.

  “He got caught fucking his student,” he says. “Took all the blame, and now he doesn’t have a job and probably can’t ever teach again.”

  My mouth falls open.

  “They’re sleeping on my sofa bed right now,” he says dryly. Probe, pull. “Hopefully they’re sleeping. It’s not the sturdiest bed.”

  “Caleb fucked his student?” I say, still very stuck on that part of the statement.

  “He did,” Seth says, pulling out another bobby pin. “I gotta say, it’s nice not being the worst brother for a while.”

  “Why are you the worst?” I ask, without thinking.

  Seth just meets my eyes briefly in the mirror, then goes back to my hair.

  “You know,” he says.

  Right.

  “I think I got ‘em all,” he says. My hair’s come out of the low knot that the bobby pins held it in, though it’s still full of mousse and hairspray and several other kinds of goop. I push my fingers into it, shake the rest free as best I can. Scrunching. Combing.

  It is… not my best look.

  “T
hanks,” I tell him, but he’s already halfway across the bathroom, pulling a washcloth from a towel rack, running it under the water.

  “Here,” he says, and rubs it over my chest.

  I’d totally forgotten my heart tattoo is still covered up, and for a moment, I’m tempted to leave it that way. Let it stay secret. Let him wonder what it really looks like, because I’m afraid that he’ll take one look at it and my entire soul will be laid bare: the heartbreak and the crying and the slow getting over him, the lacing myself back together with yoga and painting and karaoke with friends and reading late into the night.

  I don’t want him to know all that. I want him to think that we fuck and then we fight and I stop thinking about it. I want to be the heartless witch he thinks I am, but I might have ruined that by getting a prominent tattoo of a literal heart.

  After a moment, Seth frowns, then looks down at the washcloth, which has done almost nothing to budge the concealer.

  “That’s gonna need the big guns,” I tell him.

  He raises his eyebrows, looks from my tattoo to my face and back.

  “I don’t know what that means,” he finally says.

  He already knows about the tattoo. What’s the point of hiding it, really?

  “Here,” I say, and grab a package of makeup removal wipes, then hand it to him.

  “These are the big guns?” he asks, pulling one out. It’s decidedly smaller and flimsier than the washcloth, and I can’t blame him for being skeptical.

  “It’ll work,” I say, and he shrugs.

  I lean back against the bathroom counter, hands against the edge, and he works in slow circles, taking the thick, sticky concealer off. It takes five wipes and several minutes, and if he thinks anything about the tattoo he’s revealing, he doesn’t say it.

  The bathrobe opens as he works, and when the whole thing is revealed, so are the edges of both nipples.

  For once, that’s not what he’s looking at. He’s looking at the tattoo, the heart with gears and levers, the heart that’s riveted together and indestructible.

  Neither of us says a word. We both know when I got this and if he doesn’t know exactly why, he’s certainly smart enough to guess.