Midnight Muse

I’m not all that sure he’s going to fit, but the words of encouragement he’s whispering in my ear have me relaxing, melting at the praise. The finger he slides between our bodies to play with my clit helps distract me from the way he’s stretching me out on his cock.

And then he hits that spot, nestling up against it when I make a noise he likes. I cry out, “Right there, Knox. You feel so good.” My fingers dig into the long lines of muscle down his back, trying to hold him closer, as if we’re not touching in every way possible already.

Our hips finally meet and I cry out in joy.

“Do you know how many times I’ve thought about this?” He asks me, accentuating his words with a slow roll of his hips that makes us both groan and my nails grate against his skin. “When you were touching yourself on that side of the wall,” he pants, pulling out and fucking back into me slowly, watching my face for any signs of discomfort. “It’s all I could think about.”

My eyes fly open, gasping when he bottoms out again. “You could hear me?”

His hum is strained. “I hear everything you do over there,” he whispers against my mouth, and I shouldn’t be excited by that, but when I imagine the way that his cock stood at attention for me even then, a thrill runs through me. “You’ll have to show me how you touched yourself someday, Princess.”

I moan loudly at the thought, gripping him tighter. I like the idea of Knox sitting in his chair, charcoal poised above his sketchpad as he watches me with those piercing eyes while I touch myself to the sight of him—like how he’s touching me right now, with tight, little circles against my clit.

“I heard you with that guy,” he continues, voice darkening with jealousy. His thrusts become harsher, deeper, and I cling to him for dear life as he fucks into me with fervor. “With that fucker from the coffee house. I bet you faked it with him, all that laughing and sighing. I’m going to find out if those noises were real or not.”

I shiver at his words, but Knox couldn’t be further from the truth.

“We didn’t fuck,” I pant, bucking my hips up to meet his. Knox makes a choked sound, canting his hips and I scream at the sudden change of angle. And then, because I know it will make him come undone, I say, “All of this is just for you, Knox.”

He’s fucking me into the bed with abandon. There’s a coiling deep in my bones that’s so hot I cry out with pleasure. His cock is filling me completely, hitting spots I could never wish to find with my own fingers or toys.

“I’m going to memorize everything about this perfect body of yours, Princess,” Knox groans, thrusting deeply. I can tell that he’s on the verge of his own orgasm with the way he’s picking up his pace, the way he’s sliding his hand between us again. He groans like a dying man when his fingers find my clit and I clench around him. “We’ve got all night. Let me see you come again, Princess. Come all over my cock. Oh, fuck, Princess. That’s it, Quinn, just like that.”

My orgasm rocks through me like a tidal wave, stealing my breath away. I hold onto Knox like he’s my lifeline, trembling in the aftershocks. The white-hot pleasure coursing through my veins is incredible, and I wrench my eyes open at the sound of his shaky warning.

Knox follows me into serendipity. His mouth parts, harsh pants slipping past his lips as he comes. He kisses me and it’s messy, sharing breaths because we’re both so caught up in each other’s bliss. I hold onto him tightly, not wanting this night to end.

For the first time, I don’t care that it’s loud on this side of the wall.

Because I’m on it.

CHAPTER 24

KNOX

Quinn looks beautiful lying in my bed like that, with nothing but her bare body on display.

The evidence of last night is still marked on her skin: bruises littering her form, from her neck to her breasts, from her hip bones to the creamy inside of her thighs. I hadn’t left one inch untouched, more than eager to hear all of the different sounds she’d make for me while I traced her skin into the early hours of the morning, and after another around of raucous sex, she’d fallen asleep in the warmth of my arms.

Even with her comforting presence beside me, sleep evaded me.

I don’t want her to leave. Thanksgiving break begins later this week and now that I finally have Quinn, touched her, tasted her, fucked her, I don’t want to part from her. I can still taste her on my tongue, sweet and fresh, see the faces she made for me and hear the pretty noises that escaped her lips.

Last night must have been some sort of dream because it doesn’t seem real. How could I have taken out the girl that has been on my nerves all semester and found something that I actually liked? She showed me a side of her I haven’t seen before; the tenderness she displayed, the understanding, her acceptance of my apology I didn’t know I truly needed until I felt her tongue on mine.

She broke me down without even trying. I admitted things to Quinn that I don’t offer easily to others. Hell, Ace and Slate don’t even know the entire story of my accident, and somehow, I found myself admitting every fucking ounce of pain and frustration it brought me.

I still flinch when my friends come up to me and clap me on the shoulder in greeting. It was that exact motion my step-brother had given me right before he told my father the secret I’d been keeping. To this day, I still don’t know how Dick found out.

Quinn is a whirlwind of fresh air. She seems infatuated by the scars lining my body instead of disgusted, if the time she spent last night tracing every one of them with her tongue proved anything. She didn’t shy away. No, she had kissed them and caressed them, and until then I hadn’t realized just how much I missed the touch of someone else. Someone confident and tender like Quinn.

She means more to me than I thought she would.

I held her, long after my fingers began itching for the familiar feel of my charcoals. Wide awake, I snuck out of my bed and over to my desk, flipping through the sketchbook filled with drawings of her—the very same one that had her tearing up—to a fresh page.

I’d gotten lucky that she didn’t react poorly to what is essentially my shrine to her. Pages upon pages of drawings of her, in this single sketchbook that I normally keep hidden away on my shelf. How had I been so stupid as to leave it out? Right, because I was so fucking nervous about the exhibition that drawing was the only thing that could ease my racing mind and shaking hands.

The apartment is silent, has been all night from what I can remember. I don’t care if my roommates had heard us anyway. The amount of times I’ve overheard Slate taking a girl to “pound town” as he so aptly calls it, is astronomical with these thin walls. He’s not shy about it, either, sometimes not even making it to his room before the apartment becomes a symphony of sex drenched sounds and creaking furniture.