Chapter 36: The Sister's Morning
The first thing he was aware of was warmth. A solid, breathing warmth pressed along his side. Then the scent—citrus and sleep and something faintly, intimately muskier beneath. Aidan opened his eyes to the gray dawn light filtering through the frosted glass of the penthouse bedroom. Mei hadn’t moved. Her head was still a weight on his bicep, her dark hair tickling his chin.
He was hard. A dull, insistent throb that had nothing to do with morning and everything to do with the memory of her body yielding to his. He lay perfectly still, willing it away, not wanting to wake her.
She stirred. A small sigh escaped her lips, her hips shifting minutely against his thigh. Then her hand, which had been curled near her chin, slid down. Not tentatively. With a sleep-soft directness, her fingers brushed the length of him through the silk sheet.
Aidan sucked in a breath.
Her eyes opened, meeting his. They were clear, no trace of the previous night’s pain or tears. Just a calm, bottomless curiosity. She didn’t speak. She pushed the sheet down, her small hand wrapping around him, learning the shape of him anew. Her touch was firmer this time, more certain.
“You’re already here,” she murmured, her voice scratchy with sleep.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She shifted onto her back, pulling him with her, guiding him over her. The crimson satin was cool against his knees. She looked up at him, her face pale against the dark pillow. “Last night was… teaching. This is me. I want to feel what it’s like without the slowness. All at once.”
“Mei, you’re still—”
“I know what I am.” Her hand positioned him at her entrance. She was wet, slick from sleep and wanting. “Please, Aidan. Just once. Fully.”
The permission, the demand in her whisper, shattered his caution. He braced himself on his arms, lowering his hips. He pushed.
There was no slow negotiation this time. No incremental surrender. He sheathed himself inside her in one continuous, devastating glide. The resistance was a tight, hot ring that gave way to a deep, engulfing warmth.
Mei’s back arched off the bed, a sharp, punched-out gasp tearing from her throat. Her eyes flew wide, not with pain, but with pure, stunned revelation. Her nails dug into his forearms.
“Oh god,” she breathed. “Oh, you’re in me. All of you.”
He was. Buried to the hilt, a feeling so profound it bordered on violence. He stayed there, locked, feeling her internal muscles ripple and clamp around him in startled waves. Her legs came up to wrap around his waist, heels pressing into the small of his back, pulling him deeper still.
“Move,” she begged, her head thrashing side to side on the pillow. “Please, move.”
He began to withdraw, the drag exquisitely tight, and then slid back home. Her moan was a low, broken sound. He found a rhythm, not the careful cadence of the night before, but something raw and urgent. The bed began a soft, persistent creak. The only other sounds were their skin meeting, their ragged breaths, the wet, rhythmic proof of their joining.
He watched her face. The moment her surprise melted into pure, unadulterated pleasure. Her lips parted, her brows drawn together in fierce concentration. She was chasing it, meeting his thrusts with a clumsy, eager tilt of her hips.
“Is this… is this normal?” she gasped.
“Fuck if I know,” he grunted, the words torn from him. For a moment, it was just this. Not a lesson, not a transaction. Just a man and a woman in a bed, fucking toward oblivion.
Her climax hit her suddenly. One second she was clinging to him, the next her body seized, a violent shudder that made her cry out—a short, sharp sound that echoed off the lacquered walls. She clenched around him like a vise, milking him, and that was all it took.
His own release was a tidal pull from his balls, up his spine, a white-hot eruption that left him blind and shuddering, pumping into her deep, endless pulses until he was spent and hollow.
He collapsed onto his elbows, forehead dripping sweat onto her collarbone. They were both slick with it, stuck together. He could feel his own spend leaking out around where they were still joined.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their breathing slowing.
Mei’s hand drifted up to stroke his damp hair. “Okay,” she whispered, more to herself than to him. “Okay. I understand now.”
He finally pulled out. The sight of her, thighs glistening, the crimson satin stained darker between her legs, hit him with a force stronger than the orgasm. Possession. Satisfaction. A dark, blooming pride.
Mei reached for her phone on the nightstand. She didn’t sit up. She simply lifted it, pointed the camera down her own body, and snapped the picture. The flash illuminated the mess, the proof, for a frozen second.
Her thumbs moved over the screen. Aidan saw the recipient: SUKI. The caption she typed was simple, definitive.
Second lesson complete.
She sent it. The whoosh was the loudest sound in the room.
Rolling onto her side, she curled into him again, her back to his chest, as if it were their established custom. “She’ll want to see you today,” Mei said, her voice already slurring with approaching sleep. “After the office. Don’t be late.”
Aidan stared at the ceiling, his arm around her. The warmth was back, but it was different. It wasn’t just her body heat. It was the heat of the secret they now shared, the completed circuit. He was no longer just a belonging. He was an accomplice.
And he craved the next assignment with a hunger that scared him.