Page 28 of Midnight Wishes

Sarah: But you’re getting warmer.

Alex: Good.

Alex: We might have needed to end this arrangement if you’d said yes.

***

‘You’re evil,’ Sarahwhined, as Alex brought her right to the edge for a third time, then stilled his fingers.

‘I’ve told you what I want to hear.’ Alex’s smile was wicked, a demonic leer marring that otherwise angelic face.

‘Seriously? You’re not going to let me finish until I tell you?’

When they’d discussed their limits earlier in the week and she’d agreed that he could make her wait for it, she hadn’t expected him to have this level of patience.

‘I have nowhere to be this afternoon,’ he said, shuffling back on his knees. ‘And I told your flatmates I’d be out for a while, so I have no doubt they’re going back to my house for some alonetime after their appointment with the caterer.’ He dropped to the bed, his head disappearing between her thighs. One sharp nip to the sensitive skin there had her squirming. ‘Seems like a ridiculous hill to die on, but I’m happy to take all day to break you if that’s what you want.’

‘You realise that means edging yourself all day too?’ Maybe she could talk him around.

Alex scoffed. ‘Does it now?’

Only his breath touched her as he spoke, sending little sparks of pleasure through her body. She was wound so tight that he might have been able to get her there just like that.

‘Not very gentlemanly to finish first.’

‘I’ve never pretended to be a gentleman with you.’ Then he finally lowered his head enough to taste her.

After three firm strokes of his tongue, she was ready to combust. He knew it too, pulling away just as she was about to get there. It was alarming how quickly he’d learned her tells.

‘Aleksander. Please,’ she whimpered. ‘I’ll give you anything you want.’

‘All I want is an answer, Princess.’ He raised himself over her again, sapphire eyes glinting in the afternoon sunlight streaming through her window. ‘How stubborn do you want to be about this?’

Mostly they met up at night. But he’d texted her an hour earlier to ask if she was free. And suddenly she found herself wishing all their rendezvous had this same soft lighting that turned his skin and hair gold. The fairy lights in her bedroom, the lamp in his—he looked beautiful in both. But he didn’t glow like he was now.

Their midnight meetings felt borne of desperation and hunger, that base human urge not to be alone in the dark, even if they never stayed the night. But there was a strange intimacy to seeing him in daylight. It felt more intentional, somehow.

‘I’ll tell you after.’

‘It’s cute that you think I trust you. Condom?’ She handed him one, scowling. ‘You’re sure it’s not Duchamp? Because you certainly seem embarrassed to admit it.’

‘It’s like you think I wouldn’t slap you.’

‘It’s like you think I wouldn’t enjoy it.’

Sarah searched his face for any sign he was joking and came up short.Huh.

What she hadn’t anticipated was that sex with Alex, talking and all, would be…fun. She’d known it would be good. His first performance had been plenty persuasive in that regard. But their bickering—or more accurately, her bickering and his teasing in return—had segued effortlessly into the bedroom. Suddenly she found she didn’t mind talking so much.

Alex let out a strangled sound as he lifted her hips and pushed into her. ‘You always feel so fucking good.’

It didn’t hurt that he kept saying things like that.

Maybe it was the disarming sincerity in his tone. Previous partners had too often sounded like they were reciting the script of bad porn when they’d tried to talk to her in bed. But every bit of Alex’s praise felt genuine. And more than that, based on his reactions to her body, it felt earned.

When he started moving, alternating short, sharp thrusts and long, languid strokes—just uneven enough that she couldn’t sink into the rhythm—she broke.

‘Gentileschi.’ The utterance burst out of her as he aligned a particularly deep thrust with a pinch of her nipple.

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