One Last Time: A Second Chance Romance

by Roxie Noir

  Finally I pull away. Grab his hand. He laces his fingers through mine and powerwalks through the halls of the building.

  When we get to the condo he’s already got his key out and doesn’t let me go as he unlocks it, shoulders the door open, pulls me through. Pushes me up against the wall as it clicks shut, pulling the belt from my robe so hard I’m afraid he might rip it.

  “I still haven’t come in a hot tub,” I murmur as he cover my mouth with his.

  I grab his robe, pull him into me. Push it from his shoulders and let it fall.

  “That’s your sisters’ fault, not mine,” he says, nips at my bottom lip. “Or was getting off while people talk about golf a fantasy and not a disaster scenario?”

  His hands are inside the robe, hot on my cold skin, and I shiver. He pulls at my swimsuit again, roughly this time, the muscles in his forearms cording as both breasts pop out.

  I laugh, raspy, his lips already on my throat, his fingers rolling my nipples again so hard it almost hurts. Almost.

  “Disaster,” I say, and the robe falls off, pools around my feet. “I’d much rather come along with you.”

  He chuckles, breath hot against my neck. Teeth scrape skin. A tiny, brief flash of pain, and his mouth.

  “Seth,” I murmur. “Don’t leave —”

  He doesn’t stop as he covers my mouth with a hand.

  “You think I don’t know my way around you by now, Bird?”

  I lick his palm in response, salt and chlorine. He twists his hand, brushes a thumb across my lips. Straightens, kisses the spot beneath my ear, sucks the lobe into his mouth.

  “If I leave a mark it’s because I mean to,” he says, guttural as dirt.

  I find his cock through his swim trunks, press my hand against it and the cold, wet fabric warm in seconds with his heat.

  “And why would you mean that?” I ask.

  Seth drives his hips into me, and I squeeze. Grab his shoulder from behind with my other hand, the muscle thick and hard, and I sink my teeth in.

  Not hard enough to hurt, but hard enough to get a gasp and a growl and an extra twist of the nipple he’s still pinching.

  “Because I like finding them later,” he says. His voice is a harsh whisper, and I let his cock go, tug at the laces holding his swim trunks on. “And I like thinking about you finding them and remembering what a good time you had.”

  I tug. The laces come free, velcro tears apart, the shorts fall off, his cock springs out.

  He kisses me fiercely, my hand circling him again, stroking. His length is hard and hot against my thigh, and Seth groans so loudly that I hope no one’s walking by outside.

  “Off,” he says, and pulls at my bathing suit, tugging the straps over my shoulders and down, mouth never relenting. I untangle my arms, pull them free, push at the wet fabric still covering my hips.

  “Fucking wet spandex,” I hiss, wriggling. “I swear, it’s —"

  I wriggle and it’s finally over my thighs, my knees, and then I stomp and kick and half-turn and nearly fall over because there’s never been anything less sexy than getting out of a swimsuit, and Seth grabs my arm, catches me.

  “There,” I gasp, just as he pushes me against the wall again, only this time I’m facing it and I gasp at the contact, my skin already puckered from being wet and cold, my fists clenched over my head.

  He pulls at my hips, fingers sinking into flesh, mouth on the back of my neck and cock pressed against my lower back. His hands roam, feeling me like we’ve never touched before.

  Then, he pauses. He stills his hands against my ribs, and they feel white-hot.

  “You’re freezing,” he says.

  “I’m fine,” I say, even though he’s right, every inch of my flesh goosebumped.

  He doesn’t move his hands again.

  “Um, there’s a thermostat,” I say, very much not thinking about the thermostat.

  His lips move slowly against my neck, like he’s thinking.

  Then he smacks my ass, steps away, grabs my hand.

  “C’mon,” he says, and pulls me to the bathroom.

  He pushes me against the sink. Tweaks a nipple.

  “Don’t move,” he says, and steps to the glass-walled shower, reaches in, starts the water.

  “You can’t tell me what to do,” I tease.

  He frowns, flips a knob.

  “I just did.”

  I lean back, into the counter. I prop a foot against the cabinet, my eyes glued to Seth, slide my hand down my belly, over my thigh. He turns at my sharp inhale and looks back at me, rubbing my clit with one hand.

  “I’ve never been good at following directions,” I say, the words exhaled in a rush. I’m even wetter than I realized, so sensitive that I’m already on edge.

  If Seth wasn’t feral before, he is now. He glances into the shower one more time, steam already pouring from the stall, crosses the small bathroom toward me. Takes my hand by the wrist and anchors both of them onto the counter, pressing my palms into the cool stone.

  “Congratulations,” he growls, leaning into me, pushing me backward over the counter. “You found the one time that I don’t want to watch you get yourself off.”

  He crushes his mouth against mine, invades me with his tongue. His teeth slide against my lip, send shivers down my spine even as the steam from the shower is billowing against the ceiling, floating down, winding around us.

  “You don’t?” I ask, still teasing.

  “I’d much rather do it myself.”

  His lips drop: my neck, collarbone. He doesn’t let my hands go, keeps his locked tightly around my wrists. I struggle against them for half a second but it’s just for show, and he laughs with his lips around one nipple.

  Seth bites, sucks. I moan. The bathroom heats, the water in the shower pounding down, steam curling through the air until my skin is warm and damp. Lips against my raven tattoo, dragging over my stomach, the slight hill of my lower belly.

  I part my thighs without being told, Seth on his knees in front of me. He looks up at me as his tongue finds my clit, gently, gently teases it, and I whimper.

  His hands tighten around my wrists and he teases, teases, the lightest touch on the single most sensitive point of my body until I’m fully bent backward, panting for breath, head resting against the mirror over the sink.

  “It feels better when you do it,” I say.

  Suddenly he drags his tongue over my clit, hard and slow.

  I shout, gasp, arch my back. I pull my hands against his and this time he lets me go, flicks my clit one more time, and plants my foot on his shoulder, hand gripping my ankle. I use him as leverage and push up until I’m sitting on the counter and he drags me forward, thighs spread.

  Then he grabs my hands, puts them back where they were. Holds them with his own and teases me again: flick, flick, flick, drag.

  “So much better,” I gasp out. He rewards me with another hard, slow drag of his tongue, and I roll my hips forward, seeking more, but he doesn’t give it.

  Seth teases me with quick, deliberate flicks, swirls. Twice I’m on the brink, and twice he leaves my clit and slides his tongue between my lips, teasing at my entrance until my breathing evens back out.

  The third time I nearly come, he pulls away entirely, his lips finding my inner thigh. My eyes fly open.

  “Wait, no,” I say, voice ragged. “Go back.”

  He doesn’t. Instead he lets my hands go and stands, leans over me, swipes one thumb along my wet slit as he does. I groan, quietly, and then his mouth is on mine and I lick my juices from his lips.

  “I missed that,” he says, curling his hands over my body again: belly, hips, breasts. “Who knew heaven was listening to you moan with my tongue on your clit?”

  I’m surprised to discover that I’ve got one foot in the sink, the other on a towel rack, and I move them both, sit forward. Pull him toward me, my legs on either side of his torso, looking straight into his eyes for once.

  The shower’s still going, the bath
room so filled with steam that I can barely see the opposite wall. We’re both slick with it, tiny droplets gathering and merging on skin, and I mean to answer but instead I kiss him again and slide my hands over the muscles in his shoulders, his arms, his chest. I bend my head and lick droplets from his neck, the hollow of his throat as his hands skim down my back.

  Seth pulls me off the counter so I’m standing in front of him and he’s towering over me again. My hand goes to his cock, circles it. Squeezes, and he groans. Grabs my ass, holds me against him. Ravishes my mouth with his.

  I wriggle, stroke his cock again. He doesn’t relent, still backing me against the counter.

  “Move back,” I murmur.

  “Why?”

  “I can’t get on my knees if I can’t move,” I tell him.

  “I don’t want you on your knees,” he says.

  The deepest kiss, my thumb stroking over the thick head of his cock. A growl erupting from his chest as I rub the slick drops into delicate skin. Bodies pressed together so tightly it’s hard to tell where he ends and I begin, skin slick, steam swirling with every movement.

  “I want you standing,” he says. Pulls back, takes my hips to spin me but I understand exactly what he wants and I’m already turning, my palms flat on the counter in front of me.

  Seth fits himself to my back, wraps an arm over my torso from waist to shoulder, and I kiss his hand. He lifts a finger and I lick it, suck it into my mouth, drag my tongue over his fingerprint.

  “I want you just like this,” he whispers. “Tattooed and wicked. Enthusiastic as fuck. The girl who haunts all my wet dreams.”

  His hand between my legs, and I move them apart, pitch forward slightly.

  “Only the wet dreams?” I murmur.

  His fingers find my entrance, slide inside me knuckle-deep with no hesitation. As if he knows my body as well as he knows his own.

  “You’re in other dreams, too,” he says into my ear, working his fingers inside me, his cock steel against my back. “But I figured you’d rather hear about the ones where I make you shout my name than the ones where we have breakfast together every morning.”

  I turn my head, wrap my hand around the back of his neck. Drops slide down my body, and I suck them from his neck, salty and sweet.

  “No marks,” he teases, and I laugh. Do it again.

  “I know my way around you, Seth,” I tell him. “You think I don’t have every last inch memorized?”

  He pulls his fingers out, takes my hips. I arch and bend forward, on my toes. The thick tip of his cock draws a line over my back, between my buttocks, glides between my lips, slippery and swollen.

  “Delilah,” he says, a rough whisper. “Still?”

  “Still,” I whisper back, and then he’s inside me and pushing deep, deeper, my hipbones crushing against the sink with force. It’s not gentle but I don’t need gentle. I don’t want gentle. I want the full force of him, a wave crashing over me, a howling thunderstorm after months of drought.

  I push back, bracing myself against the mirror with one forearm, the other behind me, seeking him out even now. I want more, more, I want skin and muscle and bone, to be taken so thoroughly I have handprint-shaped bruises tomorrow.

  I hear myself whisper his name, as if in gratitude: Seth, yes, and like he can read my mind he wraps an arm like a steel band around me again. Fucks me hard, slow, deep.

  “Delilah.” His voice in my ear, lips against the shell, and even though he’s bare inside me it sprinkles a shiver down my neck.

  “Tell me you’re mine.”

  I curl my fingers through his, over my shoulder. Swipe my forearm along the fogged mirror so it clears and I’m looking into those eyes: the sky, the sea, maybe both.

  “I’m yours,” I manage. “I’m yours, of course I’m yours. I’m always yours.”

  Harder, again. I gasp and he pinches a nipple, nudges my leg with his. Changes the angle and thrusts again and this time I swear I see stars.

  “There it is,” he says in my ear. “I live for the moment when I fuck you just right and you go from sex kitten to boneless and wild with my name on your lips.”

  “Seth,” I say. “Tell me.”

  “I’m yours, Delilah,” he says, instantly, his eyes on mine through the re-fogging mirror. “Of course I’m yours. I’ve always been yours.”

  I’m melting, burning, glowing with heat. I brace against the mirror and push myself back into him, the rhythm furious, frantic. He holds onto me, our skin slippery with the steam, fucks me like we can meld. There’s nothing careful, nothing tentative. Nothing but total certainty.

  I come in a wave, the orgasm swelling inside me, cresting, teasing. I gasp. I moan. I might beg, because I also come babbling nonsense: yes yes oh god oh fuck Seth yes Seth please Seth.

  I come and it crashes over me, washes everything away, and I don’t stop. I don’t slow, even when I’m trembling, not until Seth digs his fingers into my shoulder and pulls me back, down, and I clench as he jerks inside me, his shout echoing off the bathroom walls.

  I sag, forearms propped against the mirror, forehead against the cool glass. My whole body is shaking, the combined exertion of sex and skiing, and I’m breathing like I just came up for air from minutes underwater.

  He leans against me, forearms against the mirror around mine, face against my hair. Chest against my back. Breathing just as fast and hard as me. I feel like I should say something, but every time I try to think of words, my mind turns to clouds floating across a blue sky.

  After a moment, Seth flattens his hands over mine, still on the mirror. Clears his throat against the steam.

  “Every single time,” he says, slowly, “I think, that’s it. That’s the best one. It’s all downhill from here.”

  I start laughing, still pressed against the mirror, trembling and punchy and lightheaded.

  “And somehow, I have yet to be right,” he says. Kisses the back of my neck. “Jesus Christ, Bird.”

  I flex my fingers on the mirror so his fall between them, then close my hands, push back from the mirror and wrap our arms around myself. Seth shifts, comes out of me, a slight warm trickle down one thigh.

  “Jesus Christ, Seth,” I agree, in his arms, tucked under his chin. The right place. Always the right place.

  We stand there for a moment. Several moments. Then Seth kisses the side of my head and pulls his arms away.

  “I’m gonna turn the shower off,” he says.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Seth

  We’re half an hour late to dinner with her family. It’s at the fancy steakhouse next door, and when we get there, they’re already well into their appetizers.

  “Delilah! I was starting to think you weren’t coming,” Vera calls, waving us over. “Here, let me call the waiter back. Do you want something besides wine? Here, let’s get another bottle, and we’ll also…”

  Delilah gives my hand a squeeze before we sit.

  “I’m so sorry,” Delilah says when Vera takes a breath, smoothing the napkin onto her lap. “I got the time wrong, I thought this was at seven-thirty, not seven.”

  Winona, seated across from us, gives Delilah a look. Then she gives me a look. Then she gives Delilah another look, very clearly trying not to laugh.

  My hair’s wet. Delilah’s hair is still slightly damp. She’s got one sleeve pushed slightly above her elbow, the bottom of a lake barely visible, and when she catches Winona’s eye she pulls it down.

  “Didn’t you get the itinerary?” Vera asks, eyebrows raised. “I specifically asked the front desk to make sure they left it somewhere plainly visible, since I still remember the year they put it on the couch and Winona nearly missed our luncheon.”

  “I did. It was my mistake,” Delilah says. “I should have consulted it more frequently.”

  “Well, thank goodness you two are here,” Vera says, and smiles. “It’s hardly a family dinner without you! Seth, how’s your stay so far?”

  Under the white tablecloth, I put
my hand on Delilah’s thigh, just above her knee, and give her a slight squeeze. She puts her hand on mine and squeezes back.

  “Wonderful,” I say, silently thanking the powers that be that Delilah did the lying. “This place is beautiful.”

  Vera smiles, her face lighting up as she leans in.

  “We were so happy you could make it after all,” she says, and Delilah squeezes my hand again.

  There are appetizers, wine, fancy bread. Winona and I laugh about Bree’s hide-and-seek skills and her love of a television show called Dinosaur Train, which as far as Winona can tell, is pretty much about dinosaurs who ride a train. I tell her how much Bree reminds me of Rusty, and reassure her that Rusty’s the greatest.

  Olivia’s moved off of nursery colors and onto baby names. Vera is regaling Delilah with a dramatic story about a fundraiser with an unclear charity policy, and how horribly it went off the rails. Her brothers-in-law are having a detailed discussion about cars I’ll never own. Salads arrive, and I triple-check that I’m using the right fork.

  “Seth,” calls Ava, seated next to Winona, leaning in. “How was your first time skiing?”

  “Second,” corrects Delilah, pulling herself from the fundraising conversation.

  “It may as well have been my first,” I point out, and Ava laughs. “Hard, but fun.”

  “Skiing is hard,” Ava agrees. “I can’t imagine having to learn as an adult.”

  “The whole pizza, french fries thing did feel a little juvenile,” I tease Delilah, who smiles and rolls her eyes.

  “Sure, but you remembered, didn’t you?” she says.

  “It didn’t save me.”

  “I learned as a kid and last year I fell butt-over-teakettle on a run that wasn’t even hard,” Ava offers. “One of my skis came off and a ten-year-old returned it for me.”

  “They should have an area that’s just for adults trying to learn,” I say. “So no one has to watch us disgrace ourselves.”

  Ava laughs again.

  “Sure, but at a certain point you really just have to go do it,” she says. “Like, I was totally terrified of the black diamonds runs until finally Nolan just took Delilah and I down the —"