“Fuck,” Jos breathed as Eden grazed her teeth along her lower lip. She knew what Jos needed, and maybe it wasn’t all rough and being the one in control like she’d thought it had to be, and it sure wasn’t all tenderness and softness, because it wasn’t enough, but it could be something in between.
Something that was a mix of both but could still be fiery and hot and tender and perfect for them because they weren’t perfect apart, but together, it felt like they got close.
Eden knew it. She knew exactly what Jos was feeling and what she needed. She rolled to the side, arranging their legs together so that she could grind against Jos with the perfect amount of friction. She did it again and Jos whimpered. Eden brought her hand between them. She was the one calling the shots, and it was good and right and wonderful to be at her mercy.
She ground against Jos as they faced each other, her breath sweet against Jos’ lips, hot and ragged. The ground together, their hips working in tandem. Eden’s fingers slowly circled Jos’ clit. So gentle. Hardly there at all. She was already so sensitive, the last orgasm far from faded. It hurt, but it was delicious. The kind of pain that made her set her teeth against it even as she welcomed the flood of it into her bloodstream.
Her body hummed and sang for Eden’s touch, and she let it. She didn’t shut down. She didn’t retreat. She marched bravely forward, letting Eden take and give.
Eden dropped her head and claimed Jos’ nipple, biting down until she moaned.
“Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” Eden moaned. “I love your taste. I love having my fingers inside you and feeling you come on them. I love the sounds you make. I love how you take me and how you make me feel. I love it when you’re hot and commanding and saying dirty things to me, and I love when you’re sweet and pliant like this. I love making you feel good.”
“Yes,” Jos practically sobbed. She was wild with it. Not the feral kind of wild like she usually felt, just a good wild. A contained wild. A beautiful wild, like Eden said.
She was beautiful. Right here, her past didn’t matter. It did, but it also didn’t, because Eden knew it and she wanted her and she wanted to show Jos, to help her believe, that she was and could be whatever she wanted. That she could get past that. That it most certainly hadn’t broken her, and she never had to go to that place again.
Eden kept going. She didn’t let up. She didn’t stop until Jos felt like she was drowning in pleasure. Until she felt like she was going to explode. She made a sound that she’d never made before, a broken, ragged sob, but it was pulled from the depths of somewhere good. And then she was coming, the pain and the pleasure bubbling over her and bursting until she was losing her mind. She was coming so fucking hard against Eden’s hand, against Eden, and then Eden’s moans joined her own and she came with her. They writhed together, spiralling out of control at just the friction of each other.
Jos’ eyes closed against the force of the pleasure. While she rode out the waves and caught her breath and gathered up the exploded pieces of her brain, she felt that the place in her chest that had been broken and shattered and ground into dust was slowly being pieced back together. The ashes were being gathered up and assembled back into pieces which then could be repaired into a living, working organ.
“Jos…” Eden stroked Jos’ hair back from her face. She was still breathing hard, and even in the dark, Jos could see the flush on her cheeks.
It was the expression on her face, the glitter in her dark eyes, that made her catch her breath. There it was, burning between them. Everything they’d said and done since they’d first met and all the things they wanted to say and do until the end of fucking time.
It didn’t make Jos panic. It made her feel partway back to being whole. It made her feel safe. Overwhelmed, but safe.
Jos slid her arms around Eden and pulled her in, cradling her body against hers as she turned them so she could wrap her up entirely with the length of her body curled around hers.
There were no words. They didn’t need words. Maybe they didn’t need words ever again. Some connections were deeper than that, than everything that needed to be said or had already been said. There was just this. The intimacy that Jos had always denied herself, knowing it could break her. Knowing that it could make her weak, put her on her knees, put her cascading down the tunnels of the past. She didn’t think she’d survive it.
But that was then.
She wasn’t back in the past. She was here in the present with Eden, and when she nuzzled her nose into the crook of her neck and Eden wriggled harder against her, she knew she was finished with that. She couldn’t shut this woman out. If it brought her to her knees, then so fucking be it. She was moving forward, and nothing mattered but that. Not her job. Not the way she thought being successful and surviving was her own unique form of a fuck you to what had been done to her, not everything she’d clung to before.
“I have something I need you to help me with,” Jos whispered against Eden’s soft, fragrant skin.
“Anything.” Eden sounded sleepy, but she turned her face into Jos, giving her better access to her neck. Her hand curled over Jos’ and she pushed it into her chest, holding it snugly.
“I have something I need to write tomorrow. It’s important. Will you help me do the research?”
“Yes.” Eden’s fingers curled around Jos’. “Yes, I will.”
Chapter 21
Eden
Even knowing what Jos was going to do, it was still shocking for Eden to be sitting on set, the lights glaring down on her, the cameras ready to roll. Their guests for the evening were in the waiting room just outside the door. She was so nervous that her hands were slick with sweat and she had to wipe them inconspicuously against the beige wide-legged pants that wardrobe had provided for her. The pumps were half a size too small, ridiculously high, and killing her feet.
It gave her a surge of joy to think that she was never going to do this again. That this would be her last night here. The real joy she felt was knowing that Jos was coming with her.
They’d woken up that morning, twined together, and Eden had never been so happy. Jos had been hurt so badly in the past that she didn’t believe she was capable or maybe even worthy of love. It wasn’t love that was the issue, Eden thought. Jos had so much love to give and she deserved so much in return. She’d trusted that the people who should have taken care of her would do it. They hadn’t. She’d trusted her ex-wife, and she’d left her. The latter wasn’t as simple as that, and relationships were hard, and Jos was shut down. Eden wasn’t laying blame. She had no idea if anyone had ever told Jos that they loved her and meant it.
If she was the first, she was going to make it count.
They’d done their research together, over cups of coffee at her apartment. Jos had written out what she was going to say, and Eden had been right there in the room with her, at a safe distance, not reading over her s
houlder, but supporting her silently.