Chapter 97: Unwrapping the Present
The fire popped, sending a shower of orange sparks dancing up the chimney. The sound was sharp, sudden, a counterpoint to the slow, hot ache building between Rupert’s legs. Libby’s mouth on him was an experiment in warmth and wetness, her lips tentative at first, then growing bolder.
She looked up at him, her eyes wide above his freed shaft. “It’s been… a while,” she whispered, her breath a humid cloud against his skin. “But I remember the important bits.” A soft, self-conscious laugh escaped her. “Do you like that?”
He could only nod, his throat tight. The sensation was overwhelming, a focused attention so alien after months of enforced neglect. Her tongue circled the head, a slow, practiced motion that made his thighs tremble. She took him deeper, her hands gripping his hips to steady herself. The world narrowed to this: the crackle of the fire, the faint jingle of a distant sleigh bell ornament, the sinful, slick sounds of her mouth, and the sight of her silver hair swaying with her rhythm.
She pulled back, breathing heavily, a string of saliva connecting her lower lip to his glistening skin. “Hands,” she panted, her cheeks flushed. “I want your hands on me.” She scrambled off her knees, her robe falling completely open. She fetched the small key from the bedside table, her movements urgent now. Finding the lock on the cuffs, she fumbled for a second before it clicked.
The release of his wrists was a different kind of liberation. Blood rushed back into his hands with a prickling heat. He brought them around, rubbing the pale marks on his skin.
“Come here,” Libby murmured, pulling him by the shoulders until he knelt on the rug with her. She captured his hands and placed them firmly on her breasts. They were heavy and soft, her nipples tight peaks against his palms. “Touch me, Rupert. Please.”
He obeyed, his accountant’s fingers learning a new currency of curves and warmth. He bent his head and took a nipple into his mouth, tasting clean skin and jasmine. She cried out, a short, sharp sound, and her hands buried themselves in his hair, holding him to her. Her hips began to circle against nothing, a slow, desperate grind.
“Now,” she gasped, guiding his head down, past the soft swell of her stomach, through the neat, bare triangle of skin. “Here. Taste what you’ve done. What you’ve made me.”
The air here was musky, rich, utterly female. He could see her, glistening and pink, swollen with anticipation. He hesitated, a lifetime of quiet propriety clashing with the raw, perfumed reality before him. But her fingers were in his hair again, not forcing, but pleading. He leaned in.
The taste was complex, salty and deep. She gasped as his tongue found her, a full-body shudder rippling through her. He licked tentatively, then, feeling her buck against his mouth, more firmly. Her moans were unfiltered, loud in the cozy room. “Yes, there, oh God, right there,” she chanted, her voice breaking. She ground against his face, her hands clutching at the rug, at his shoulders. Her thighs tensed, framing his ears. The scent of her, the taste, the sounds she made, coalesced into a single, driving certainty. He was making this happen. This noise, this trembling, was because of him.
Her climax hit suddenly, a violent, shaking wave. She screamed, a raw, unprotected sound that echoed off the festive walls, her back arching clear off the floor. He held on, gentling his touch as the contractions subsided into aftershocks, until she gently pushed his head away, breathing in ragged, shuddering gulps.
For a long moment, she just lay there on the rug, bathed in firelight, utterly spent and exposed. Then she opened her eyes and looked at him, her expression dazed, grateful, and fiercely hungry again.
She reached for him, her hand closing around his shaft, which was painfully hard, throbbing with every heartbeat. “My turn,” she breathed, her voice ragged. She pulled herself up, moving with a newfound fluidity, and led him onto the vast bed. The red and gold duvet swallowed them as she lay back against the pillows, drawing him over her.
Her legs wrapped around his hips, her ankles locking at the small of his back. She was strong. She guided him, the head of his cock nudging against her soaked heat. She looked directly into his eyes, all her earlier nervousness burned away in the fire of her first release.
“I’ve been counting down the days to feel this inside me,” she whispered, and it was no longer a flirtation or a calendar joke. It was a solemn, aching truth.
She pulled him down.
He slid into her with a seamless, shocking ease. She was hotter than her mouth, a tight, velvet clutch that made him see white behind his eyes. He cried out, a choked gasp he didn’t recognize as his own.
“Oh, yes,” Libby sighed, her head rolling back. “That’s it. That’s the one.” Her hips rose to meet his first, tentative thrust. “Don’t you dare be gentle with me now, Rupert. Not after the wait I’ve had.”
He needed no further invitation. The months of frustration, the surreal humiliation of the cage, the public displays, the blindfolded car ride—it all transformed into a piston-like drive in his hips. He fucked her in deep, measured strokes, the bedframe beginning a soft, rhythmic knock against the wall.
Libby met every drive with a thrust of her own, her body slapping against his. She was vocal, wonderfully, unabashedly loud. “Harder!” she demanded, her nails digging into his shoulders. “Yes! Just like that! Give it to me, give me all of it!”
He lost himself in the physicality of it, in the sheer, primal correctness of the act. His world was the smell of their sweat mingling with cinnamon, the sight of her breasts swaying, the feel of her inner muscles gripping him with shocking force. He was a tool for her pleasure, and in being so, he found a brutal, pure form of his own.
Her second peak built more slowly, a rising tension that tightened every muscle in her body. Her cries became higher, sharper. “I’m gonna… Rupert, I’m gonna… don’t stop!” She clenched around him, a vise of pulsating heat, and her scream this time was long and sustained, echoing around the twinkling fairy lights.
It tore the climax from him. It was less a release than a total surrender, a wave of sensation that ripped through his core and spilled into her with a force that left him dizzy, collapsed upon her, spent and shaking.
Silence settled, broken only by the frantic hammering of their hearts and the relentless cheer of the fire. He slowly, carefully, slid out of her and rolled to the side. They lay side by side on the grand bed, not touching, staring up at the red fabric canopy.
After a long while, Libby turned her head on the pillow. A single tear traced a path through the sweat on her temple. “Thank you,” she said, simply.
He turned to look at her. The mischievous December calendar girl was gone. In her place was a real, older woman, soft and vulnerable and beautifully ravaged. He felt a surge of something that wasn’t quite affection, but a profound, humbling gratitude.
“No,” he said, his voice rough. “Thank you.”
She reached over and took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. They lay in peaceful silence for several minutes, the sweat cooling on their skin.