Page 77 of Good as Gold
The pace he sets is aggressive. I try to keep up at first, but he holds me still, one hand planted in the center of my back, my forehead sinking onto the sheet.
“Stay there. Good girl,” he rasps, and the praise has the strangest effect on me. I feel myself surrendering in a new way, my overstimulated breasts melting toward the mattress, my hips canted back for his pleasure.
Letting someone else take over is new for me. My life usually doesn’t work this way—the moment I stop paying attention is usually the moment everything goes wrong.
But not tonight. Something in Matteo’s firm touch tells me it’s okay to just give in. I spread my hands against the paneled wall and ride his thrusts as if they were waves on the ocean.
“Leila,” he rasps, and the sound causes my body to tighten deliciously around him. “Fuck.” He reaches around to cup the place where we’re joined, and the sudden stimulation makes me gasp and shiver.
He slows his pace, and I feeleverything. Every tremor and slide. Every breath on my neck. And then the pulse and heat as he spills inside me, cursing wickedly as he comes.
Fireworks go off behind my eyelids as I follow him to climax. He strokes me and whispers into my ear as I shimmy and buck against his unyielding body.
By the time I remember how to slow my breathing, we’re sinking together toward the sheets. He rolls me onto his chest, and I can hear the thudding of his heart beneath my ear.
We spread out this way together, the sheets thrown everywhere, our sweat cooling as we come down from the high. And I can’t say a word of what I’m really thinking.
You amaze me.
Why did we never do this before?
Even if I don’t get pregnant, you arestilljust what I needed.
None of that is anything he wants to hear, so I gently stroke his chest instead.
He sighs weightily. Eventually, he leans down and plucks the sheet off the floor and arranges it on top of us.
“Rest now,” he whispers, stroking my hair. “Gotta have you ready for round two.”
“Yessir.” I kiss his chest, and then marvel for a moment that I am allowed to do that.
His hand lands in my hair, holding my lips to his skin. “You kill me. You know that?”
I’m not sure how to answer. So I just spread my body against his, like a lazy cat.
He rolls, making himself the big spoon. And then his hand comes to rest on my tummy. “Here,” he whispers, his hand tightening on my midriff. “We’re going to put a babyrighthere. Maybe we already have.”
My heart threatens to explode.
It will be a miracle if I can fall asleep. Ever again.
CHAPTER29
MATTEO
Time passes. Summer advances. The air is warm, and the June bugs resume their yearly dance of bonking themselves against the window screens at night.
And in between jobs and family dinners and movie nights—and lustful thoughts about Leila—I’m busy planning the upcoming snowboarding season.
Usually, I look forward to it. But this year it just feels wrong.
“Monday the sixth of July will be our launch date,” Cara says into my earbuds.
“The sixth,” I repeat, scribbling it onto the notebook in my lap. I’m sitting in a rocker on Otto’s front porch, a cold soda beside me. “You’ll make a graphic? And send the link to the email list?”
“Of course,” she says. Cara does almost all of our marketing and admin. “But you still need to tell me if you want to open the calendar with half the usual capacity. Or if you’re confident that you can hire another guide during the preseason, then I’ll put up the usual number of slots.”
“Right,” I say, because I’ve been thinking about it for a few days already. “When do I have to decide?”
