Remission by Ofelia Martinez
Chapter 27
Morning After
The house was quiet, but the sun rays flooding through the window warmed my skin. I felt a tickle at my nose, and my eyes fluttered open. I had fallen asleep on his chest, and his thick chest hair tickled my face awake. I smiled when I realized his chest hair matched the salt and pepper hues of his thick mane.
I slept like the dead, though I didn’t imagine he could have been very comfortable. I had his arm pinned under me, and nearly half of me was on top of him, my legs wrapped around his right leg.
As I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, he shifted under me. “You awake?” His voice didn’t sound hoarse or groggy.
“Yeah. How long have you been awake?”
He caressed my shoulder. “An hour,” he admitted.
I pushed myself away from him, horrified. “I’m so sorry, Hector. You should have woken me so I could move. You must have been so uncomfortable.”
Hector only tightened his grip, pressing me to his naked body. “Come here. I wasn’t uncomfortable. Actually, it was heavenly. You looked so at peace, I didn’t want to wake you.”
“Well, thank you,” I said with doubt.
“Not that I could wake you up if I wanted to.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, my love, that you sleep like a log. I don’t think a freight train could wake you up. And don’t let me get started on that cute little snore of yours—”
“I do not snore!” I tried wiggling out of his grip, but who was I kidding? It was only a threat. I wasn’t going to willingly separate my skin from his. I settled back into the warm nook of his body, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that safe—or if I ever had.
I covered my mouth for a yawn, preoccupied with my morning breath. “That was a yummy sleep,” I admitted and brought my hand back to his chest. I gathered some of his chest hair between my fingers and started twirling the locks around. This man was mine, and I couldn’t believe it. As I played with the curls, something caught a ray of sunlight from within the chest hair and glimmered. I pulled my hand to my face and realized it was on my finger.
I shot up into a sitting position and grabbed the bed sheet to cover my breasts. Hector remained calmly lying down and drew circles on my naked back with the pad of his finger.
“Hector, wha-wha-what is this?” I held my left hand to my face and pushed aside the strands of hair obscuring my view. I was sure my locks were suffering from a severe case of sex hair, but I couldn’t worry about that right now. On my hand, staring back at me, was a classically cut round diamond on a sleek and simple platinum band.
“That’s your engagement ring, love. Guess I’m lucky you sleep like you do, or I would have never managed to get it on you without waking you.”
Love? He had gone from baby to love in one night. “How did you get—”
“I’ve had it for a while now,” Hector said.
“How long is a while?” I asked, looking at him now.
“That ring has been here, in this house, for eight years.”
“What?” My eyes bulged to saucers. It was possible I was dreaming or still so groggy I hadn’t heard him right.
“I was only renting at first, but when you came over, you mentioned you liked the house, so I bought it.”
“You bought a house because I mentioned I liked it?”
“Yes.” Hector sat up in the bed and scooted me back toward him so we could both rest our backs on the headboard. He took my left hand in his and kissed it. “I bought it for you—for us. I told you, love. I fell in love with you back then, and I was ready to propose, but you were so damned mad at me, and well, you know what happened after that.”
“And it has been here this entire time?” I stared at the ring again. It was sizable and looked expensive, but it wasn’t too much. It felt elegant and classic on my hand, even to my untrained eye.
“Waiting for you. That ring was going to be on your finger one day, or it would never get to feel the skin of another human. The poor thing,” he teased.
“Would have been such a waste,” I teased back.
“The worst,” Hector said.
“And you kept the house empty? All this time?”
Hector nodded. “I couldn’t bear to sell it. Doing so would have been like admitting I was giving up on us, and I never did. Not even when I tried to convince myself it was over. In the back of my mind, I always knew that I’d come back once your career was established, once I could be in your life without simultaneously destroying it.”
He had been right last night when he’d asked whether I wouldn’t have done the same thing he had. I was starting to understand the sacrifice of his restraint. He waited seven years for me to make a name for myself and risked me moving on with someone else. It would have killed me, but I couldn’t lie to myself; I would have done the same thing if I’d thought I was ruining everything he had ever worked for.
It wasn’t like he stayed away so I could keep a job. He loved medicine as much as I did and understood that losing a love like that would have all but killed me. Because he was right. I would have chosen him at the risk of my career, and if I had lost the ability to conduct research, it would have slowly killed me and taken its own particular toll on our relationship.
I dropped the sheets from my body and pulled them away from both of us. The contrast of his tanned skin on the white linens was astounding in the morning light, and I couldn’t stop myself from fucking him with my eyes as I raked my gaze up and down his body.
So much had been missing last night in the dark. He had fucked me hard, with hunger and desire and longing, but it was all touch and sounds. The glory of his body was missing from the limited senses lacking vision in the night.
I smirked when his erection made its presence known, but then my pussy contracted. I was sore and swollen from what we had done not too many hours ago. He looked bigger in the clarity of daylight, and I winced.
“As much as I love you devouring me with your eyes,” Hector said, “I was hoping you’d actually touch me.”
“We have the rest of our lives. What’s the rush?” I threw his words at him and bent over his body.
I gripped the shaft of his cock and moved to make him think I was going to have him in my mouth. But this was payback for all the teasing from earlier. He would pay.
I leaned to kiss his inner thigh and dragged my tongue from his knee to his thigh on one leg, then the other, stopping each time before reaching the spot where he wanted me.
“I shouldn’t have teased you last night, should I?” Hector asked.
“No, darling. You really shouldn’t have.” I was mainly teasing him as he had done, but I was also exploring his body again, this time with my eyes. I scooted up, and my tongue trailed the thin strip of hair that led to his bellybutton, and I nipped at the skin of his stomach.
“Damn it, Carolina,” Hector said, his voice hoarse. “I swear I’ll never tease you again if you stop.”
I withdrew from him and studied his expression as I licked my lips. “You want me to stop?”
“No! Agh! That’s not what I meant. Please stop teasing me.”
I understood now why he had done it. Him begging, saying my name, pleading drawn-out pleases, was like a prayer for me. It was so goddamned empowering and so fucking hot.
Rewarding the prayer offering, I bent again and gripped his shaft, pumping once, then twice. Still, I wanted to savor him, so I only licked, first along his shaft from root to head. I let my tongue linger there and circle the head, finding the saltiness of us from the night before.
Hector was still half-sitting up against the headboard, and he gathered my hair in his hand so he could watch me—I wanted him to see what I was doing to him. I drew the tip of his cock into my mouth and sucked only there, at the very edge, and he bucked his hips, trying to go deeper, but I was in control now.
“Tsk, tsk,” I said as I let him out of my mouth. “This is my show now.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Please get back here.”
“Are you going to be good?” I sat up, giving him a full view of my body, and circled my nipple with my finger. I drew my hand down, tracing a zig-zag pattern from my breast down to my clit.
“Yes, I’ll stay still, just please—”He tried reaching for me, but I was just out of grasp. I moaned as I toyed with my clit, high on the look in his eyes as he watched.
“Please, Carolina. You’ve made your point. This is cruel.”
I bent over him again and kept my balance on one hand so I could keep playing with myself with the other while I sucked him. I took him deeper into my mouth the second time, and he growled—he actually growled—and I etched the sound in my mind so I could take it with me for the rest of my days.
“Stop, Carolina,” he ordered, and I couldn’t stop myself from obeying, his power over me from last night lingering somewhere in the recesses of my brain.
I crawled up toward him and found his mouth, letting him taste what had been on my tongue, morning breath be damned, because this was so hot. I used his shoulders for support as I came up over him and slid down over his cock slowly—so slowly.
The girth of him sent a stretch of pain to my core as I slid down around his length. My mouth parted from his. I gulped some air to ebb the pain away, but he noticed my wince.
“Are you in pain, baby? We don’t have to, we can stop if you are too sore.” His body stilled like he wouldn’t dare move a muscle lest he hurt me.
I shook my head.
The thing was, there was a pain where we joined, but also so much pleasure, and there was no way I was stopping now. I circled my hips gently as I took the rest of him in, and he groaned.
“I’m okay,” I promised. “A little sore, but nothing I can’t handle.” I slid down further until there was nothing more to take in and rode him for all that I was worth.
Hector grabbed onto my hip bones, encouraging my rhythm. He helped me up his shaft and brought me down forcefully. His fingers dug into my skin, but the pain was masked under the pleasure of his fullness inside me. The way it felt to be with him had never been close to this with anyone, not even remotely.
He sat up fully and took my mouth in his. I moaned into his tongue, and he rewarded me by pushing me until I fell on my back. He rolled up over me in an instant, never once disconnecting from my body. Grabbing my right leg, he placed it over his shoulder, and the stretch felt divine.
“Oh,” I moaned with the surprise of this new position. I tried bucking my hips, but too much of his weight was on me, and I was powerless. “Hector,” I moaned.
“I’m here, baby,” he said, claiming my lips once again.
He picked up speed as he drove into me over and over, and when I couldn’t take it any longer, I clenched around him as I found my release. My center convulsed around him, and his body stilled. The morning light splayed across his forehead, and I could see a vein making itself known over his taut skin as he came inside me.
After we both came undone, he rolled off me. We lay next to each other for a long moment, panting. The sweat from the heat of us started to cool over my body, and I curled to his side, seeking his warmth.
We both lay there for a moment as we brought down our heart rates and our breaths. After a long moment of coming back to, Hector broke the silence.
“So I take it that was a yes?”