by Lucy Snow
I don’t know how long we stayed like that, but it wasn’t long enough, and then we were on the bed. Eames climbed on after me, never letting us go more than a few seconds without our lips locking together. His hands stayed somewhere on me the entire time, teasing, touching, pulling aside my nightgown to get at my skin.
I started to lift up his shirt and pull it off him, but he shook his head at first, and I pouted, until he smiled and pulled the shirt off himself, tossing it over my face. I giggled and breathed in deep, taking in his vanilla and sandalwood scent before pulling it off my face and throwing it on the floor.
His shirt was nice and I could breath in that sexy scent for hours, if not days, but right now I had the real, live, man in bed with me so there was no time to waste on articles of clothing.
I eyed his pants next, just as thin and tight against his skin, gasping at the outline of his hardness against the old fabric, but as soon as Eames followed my gaze back onto this body, he smiled and shook his head at me. That look, that smile, each drove me wild in ways I couldn’t quite comprehend. There was experience and knowledge behind those eyes, an edge to that jaw, that told me without any words that this was a man to be reckoned with.
The man who looked at me like he was about to conquer me; a man I submitted to willingly.
My dress was the next thing to go, and Eames roughly pulled it from me. I moaned as the cold air from the room hit my suddenly-bare skin, and I flashed back to the gusts of wind and snow that had buffeted us on the way to the inn. As if sensing my thoughts, Eames finished pulling the dress off me and pulled me into his arms, setting my skin on fire when the heat of his body enveloped mine.
I felt the steam of his breath on my neck, pushing the goosebumps down and searing me with his heat. And then I was falling, falling as if weightless, back onto the bed, Eames’ body pushing me down even further into the pile of blankets still warm from when I’d laid in them minutes before.
Eames covered me in kisses from head to toe, discovering points of pleasure on my body that I didn’t know existed like an explorer charting a new continent. I watched him through barely open eyes as bolts of pleasure coursed through me, forcing me to clench my eyes closed each time.
And then Eames stopped, his mouth just above my clit, and our eyes locked before he slid his tongue out and tasted me for the first time. I almost came right there, it was so hot, but Eames didn’t give me the opportunity to relax - no, he kept going, showing me just how much skill he had in his fingers and mouth, pulling me toward the edge of an orgasm I couldn’t even begin to feel the shape of.
Eames stopped again, and I must have given him a look of pure question, because he smiled and moved back up my body, trailing my skin with kisses all the way till our lips met at the top and he held himself above me, our tongues dancing together. I found the sudden strength to lift up my hands and trace lines across Eames’ hard body with my fingers, running over his tattoos and following them up and down as they snaked across this beautiful man.
Eames’ breath hitched in his throat as we kissed, and then he broke off and moved his head down above my breasts, taking each one of them in turn into his mouth at the nipple, teasing and twisting them with his teeth and tongue in a deliciously naughty way that just bordered on the right side of pain, making me squeal. I almost called out to him, begging Eames to stop tormenting me and fuck me already, but I didn’t dare open my mouth - it was too hot to do all of this without words.
Instead, I spread my legs, bending until Eames was in between them, and I heard him grunt as he got my drift, because the next thing I knew, I felt his hard cock pressing into my entrance, and I breathed in hard as Eames slowly pushed himself into me. I moaned long and low as he filled me up slowly, inch by inch until I had all of him inside me. Only then did I open my eyes again see Eames’ steady face as he began to slowly pull himself out of me until we could develop a rhythm.
And what a rhythm it was. The only thing I could hear was the sound of the gusts of wind against the glass of the window in my room.
I adjusted to his length and girth, and the light sparks of pain quickly gave way to the most exquisite of pleasures. Eames balanced on one arm as he moved in and out of me, teasing me by holding back on each thrust until he could clearly see the need and desire to be filled up again quickly on my eyes. He’d wait an extra moment before giving me what I needed, and I loved that extra moment of hesitation and teasing even more than it drove me nuts.
With his free hand, Eames roamed over my body, finding just the right places to touch me, at the end of his thrust when his cock was deepest inside me, to make me gasp a little bit more each time. Waves of light and emotion flowed across me freely, and I gave in to those waves and let Eames drag me wherever he wanted.
It didn’t take long before I was out of breath and panting, and I could see the resolve on Eames’ face as he pushed into me. I came with reckless abandon, losing all control of my hands and moaning long and low as I saw stars in my eyes and didn’t know where I ended and the pleasure began.
Eames was just a few seconds after me, a low bellow emerging from his mouth as I felt him convulse inside of me. He shuddered and lay down on top of me, resting his chest against my breasts as we rode the rails of our passion as far as they could take us.
Neither of us had spoken, and neither of us felt the need to.
We’d shared a perfect moment, and as I settled into the crook of Eames’ arm to sleep, I couldn’t have asked for anything more. This was all there was.
CHAPTER 16 - EAMES
The sound, the fury, the rush of the storm.
All of it, all at once.
And then…silence.
No, not quite silence. Something better than that. The sound of all’s well, the sound of peace.
The sound of someone sleeping next to you, of blankets rustling as they found the next most comfortable spot.
The sound of snow at the window, but not in here where it was safe.
And then the light to go with the sound. I opened my eyes and focused on the unfamiliar ceiling. It looked like the ceiling in my room, but there were different edges here, different knots in the wood. Different colors.
Similar, but different.
I breathed in deep and turned my head in one motion toward the center of the bed. All I saw was a mass of blankets heaped in a mound on the other side of the bed.
I couldn’t help but smile at how different we were. Here I slept like a corpse comfortable in a coffin and Avery had built herself a cave out of most of the blankets in the entire state.
I felt myself getting hard at the thought of her next to me, as the memories of what we’d done the night before came flooding back, sending bolts of pleasure all throughout my body. I reached down and stroked myself, getting even harder, and everything else in my mind faded down to a single point as I contemplated the hot morning sex Avery and I could be having right this second.
And then the single point asserted itself, and expanded back into a whole hell of a lot more than that.
I turned back toward the ceiling. I knew I wanted to go again. Feeling my hard cock down there told me that much.
But at the same time…I knew we shouldn’t.
All of this, everything that had happened between us, it was all a dream. It was a nice dream, to be sure, but even it had been real, even if it had really happened, it was better for both of us in the long run if we acted like it was a dream.
If we got up from this bed and walked away from each other when the storm cleared and the path back to the real world was open.
Because the storm would eventually tire itself out and end, and then the real world would come calling for each of us in turn. I’d have to go back to Meridian and hash things out with my father.
Avery would have to go back to her family and figure out how to get them on the same page about what she wanted to do with her life.
I had realized at some point in the last couple days that running away from my
problems wasn’t the answer. I couldn’t be the kind of man I wanted to be and shirk my family responsibilities at the same time - I was a Beckett, and the two things went hand in hand together — neither could be pulled apart from the rest.
That’s not how this worked. Not for me.
But then there was the girl lying next to me, sleeping through this blissfully. I turned back to watch her mound, figuring out from its general shape where her head was. I imagined how gorgeous she must look while asleep under all those blankets. Unaware of anything going on around her.
I wished I could have just a small piece of that kind of freedom, that kind of clarity.
I knew, though that that kind of freedom and clarity was somewhere for me. It just wasn’t…here. I knew it was back in Meridian - I couldn’t run away from it any longer.
I needed to figure out how to become a Beckett, how to live with the mantle of my family, before I could figure out what it meant to be Eames Beckett.
And I needed to square that with my need to find out who I was. I’d searched all around the world and hadn’t found the answer to that fundamental question yet. It tore at me, haunted me, but I still didn’t feel much closer to the answer than I had when I’d started this journey.
Maybe…the answer lay back in Meridian? Maybe wandering around the world searching for myself had been just a way to avoid the truth…that maybe I really was my father’s son, and that the family business and family responsibilities were what I needed?
I’d spent years never thinking that could be the case, but what if that was just teenage and 20-something angst and desire for rebellion?
Maybe I’d just been running away from a bigger truth by wandering around the world. I’d helped others thinking it would help myself, but…I knew in my heart that I hadn’t yet found the peace that I’d been looking for this entire time.
Where was it?
Avery stirred and pulled the blankets back, uncovering her head while she dozed, and I marveled at how someone so peaceful could be so strong facing what she had.
I couldn’t imagine going through the passing of a sibling, and not only that, the effects it would have on my family that would never go away. And yet, Avery still fought against them for the right to make her own way in the world - I couldn’t believe her strength.
She pulled the blankets back over her head and I smiled before turning to look back at the window. The snow was still coming down, and for a few minutes it felt like the storm would never end, and Avery and Marty and Clara and I would spend the rest of our lives in this place.
I knew, of course, that that wasn’t true, but it kinda felt like it.
It would be a few more days at most. And then I’d go back to Meridian and hash things out with my father. Maybe I’d join the family business and carry on the name — the idea didn’t seem so foreign to me as it once did.
Or maybe, I had just realized that sometimes the answers to our questions weren’t exactly where we expected them to be.
That left Avery on my mind. She’d pulled me to such high highs and such low lows over the short time I’d known her, and I had opened up to her, in my perhaps limited way, more than I had to anyone before.
It wouldn’t last, of course — we were too different for that to be a practical reality.
But for a few days more, it could. We could keep playing house like we were until the storm went away.
And that would have to be enough for me.
It took a little while, but I managed to fall back asleep.
CHAPTER 17 - AVERY
The next couple days were a haze of snow and sex.
That was not, at all, a bad thing.
The snow I didn’t have any control over, but the sex part, well, I might have been a little guilty in making that happen. OK, a lot guilty. But in my defense, there wasn’t really much to do around the inn except read books and play old board games.
When it came down to books, board games, or having sex with a ridiculously sexy guy, well, I was more than secure enough to admit that that decision was pretty damn easy.
His room, my room, and more than once in the living room once we were sure that Marty and Clara had gone to bed…you name it, we found a place to get at least sort of naked there and fool around.
They were two of the best days of my life so far, and more than once I wished it wouldn’t end. Each time I looked out the window, though, at the road outside covered in snow, I remembered all over again that this wasn’t a dream, that this was real life, and that soon this phase of it would be over.
“Penny for your thoughts,” I said the third morning after we’d started spending our nights together, while we lay in bed. I was resting my head on Eames’ shoulder with his hand wrapped around me. It felt wonderful to be this close to him.
“Huh?” Eames said, sounding like he was barely awake. “You say something?” He reached over with his free hand and cupped one of my boobs, squeezing lightly and running his finger over my nipple.
“Mmmmm,” I moaned as I turned into him wanting to feel his hands over more of me. “I was just wondering what you were thinking.”
He smiled. “I was just thinking if we can go again before Marty and Clara send up a search party to find us and drag us down to breakfast.”
I playfully punched him on the shoulder. “Luckily besides the two of them there’s no one else here, so that’s gonna be a thin search party.”
“True, but they’re a crafty couple, I don’t doubt they could rig some sort of steam machine to come look for us.”
“Perhaps,” I said, then blushed. “I also don’t think they think we’re missing. I have a feeling they know just what we’re doing.”
Eames turned to face me. “You’re right, you do make a lot of noise.”
“Shut up!” I said, feeling myself turn even more red. “That’s not what I meant!”
“Yeah, but it’s true. You do make a lot of noise,” Eames repeated, but this time he tweaked my nipple as he said so, pulling another moan out of me.
His hand reached down and after feeling how wet I was, he slid a finger inside me — my eyes almost rolled back up in my head it felt so good. “Please,” I gasped, “don’t tease me like that.”
“Oh, I have no intention of just teasing you, Princess,” Eames whispered as he rolled over, pulling his finger out to place it on the bed as he climbed on top of me and I spread my legs. I was beginning to get used to having his thick cock inside me, but even so, the first time he pushed himself inside me each time was slow and a tiny bit uncomfortable before it gave way to the pleasure that I was quickly becoming addicted to.
Eames leaned down and we shared a deep kiss that ended as he trailed his lips down my check to my neck and shoulders. I lay back in the bed and let him tease me with his tongue, my hands pressing against his back, pulling him in and pushing him out as he guided his cock inside me.
I was getting closer and closer to yet another orgasm when Eames stopped, staying inside me but hovering above in place, a calm look across his face.
“What?” I asked, surprised that he had stopped. “Do you want to change positions?”
“This is perfect,” he breathed. “I just like looking at you.”
I felt a little self-conscious about that until I stared into his dark eyes and saw how genuine his smile was. “This is perfect, you’re right.”
“Yeah.” He paused. “What were you asking me about before?”
“What you were thinking. You said it was whether we could have sex again without getting caught.”
“Right. That’s not what I was actually thinking about.”
He shifted around inside me and for a moment I lost the ability to speak. Eames laughed and leaned down, licking around my breasts in concentric circles till he got to my nipples before he kneaded each one in turn in between his teeth, setting fire to my entire body. I was sweating already.
“I was saying,” Eames continued when I’d opened my eyes again and my mouth worke
d. “That I was thinking about Meridian.”
“Yeah? What about it?”
“What it’s like being from there.”
“How so?”
Eames laughed. “Think we should have this conversation while we’re having sex?”
I shrugged. “Sure, why not?”
“I mean, I’m from there, and I grew up there, but it seems like such a foreign place to me now.”
“Because you haven’t lived there in almost a decade.”
“Exactly. And it got me thinking about what it meant to have a hometown.”
“That’s a pretty deep subject for a random morning in bed.”
Eames smiled, and my heart fluttered involuntarily. His face was a map of a man who’d seen so much. “Yeah, it is, but at the same time, when you’ve got a storm like that going on outside, thinking is definitely something you’ve got time for.”
“Well, I can tell you right now, you’re in the middle of something else you’ve been making time for lately.”
Eames laughed and lowered his head; I lifted my own to meet his in another long kiss. We stopped talking for a bit as Eames lazily and relaxedly pushed and pulled himself in and out of me. It was the kind of sex without any urgency; sex between two people who had gotten comfortable with each other and just wanted to feel good. It didn’t take much concentration.
It was perfect.
After we were done, we both lay intertwined in bed, feeling the slow come down after exerting ourselves. Eames fell back asleep almost immediately, and I lay there watching him, the curve of his thick and corded muscles, built from working all over the world, contrasted with the innocence and experience of his face.
He was a mass of contradictions to me - I couldn’t square what he’d done with how he looked, and the man I’d met a few days ago in the snow was so different from the man who’s bed I now shared that if they didn’t look identical I wouldn’t have believed they were the same person.
