Page 20 of Kiln Me Softly

Juniper had never felt anything like it, like him, before.

He might have been desperate to keep her talking, but she didn’t have to guide him.

He already knew exactly how to make her feel toe-curlingly, stomach-clenchingly good, and it was only intensified by the blindfold, drowning out everything but his touch.

She gripped his arms just for something to hold onto when he asked if she was ready, afraid her grip on anything but the pleasure she felt was slipping. She could end up on the floor and she wouldn’t know it as long as he was with her.

‘I’m ready.’ She peeled up her hips to show him, no longer in control of her need.

His breath tickled her neck, something she hadn’t been expecting in her anticipation. It made her throb just as fiercely as his fingers inside her had. Not knowing where he was, where she might feel him next, set her skin alight.

The kiss he placed on her collarbone was another surprise. A more jarring one. Not because it was rough, heavy, like the way they’d been kissing just a few moments ago, but because it was feather-light. Delicate. Too delicate for what they were about to do.

Delicate enough to make her worry that this went beyond sex. Beyond anything she’d experienced before.

But it couldn’t. It wouldn’t. No matter what they did now, he was still him, and she still hated—

‘Oh, fuck. Aiden.’ She gasped when he sheathed himself inside her, his length spreading her thighs even further apart. She grappled for his shoulders to keep herself steady, hooking a thigh around his hip.

She heard him loose a strained breath and knew he was trying to go slow. For her sake or his, she wasn’t sure.

‘Is this okay?’ he asked, voice vibrating against the shell of her ear.

She rolled, taking him deeper to show just how okay it was.

He uttered her name like a curse, like a prayer, like something in between the two.

‘It’s perfect,’ she said when he still didn’t move, unable to take the stillness much longer.

His stubble scraped against her cheek as he tugged her close, like he wanted their stomachs, chests, bodies, to meld into one.

And then he started thrusting, and she wanted it, too.

Her lashes caught on the blindfold as her lids fluttered, a tight coil of bliss curling around her from the crown of her head to the tip of her toes.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this connected to her own body, so often caught floating around somewhere above it in the tangle of racing thoughts.

Her nails dragged over his skin, eliciting another guttural moan from him. ‘You feel so good,’ he whispered. ‘So good for me, Juni.’

So vulnerable , she realised. She was in the dark, blindfolded: he could have done anything to her, with her.

She’d never trusted much before, afraid people were laughing at her when her back was turned.

He was the last person on earth she should have given her body to, and yet his lips roved her face, her nose, her forehead, and she’d never felt safer.

‘Touch me again,’ she begged, and he did, rolling her clit between trembling fingers, then creeping down to the place where their bodies met. She imagined the things she couldn’t see, imagined watching him move in and out of her, and she gripped him harder.

She curled her fingers into his hair as her thighs began to quiver.

Tugged just a little harder than would have been comfortable if she was with someone else, at least for the first time.

But she was already getting to know what he liked: her, even in her fiercest moments.

Even when she pushed him too hard, hated him more than was probably fair.

And like she’d hoped, it left him growling with insatiable hunger.

He filled her faster, harder, her glutes stinging against the uncomfortable wooden surface now, but she liked the way the pain mingled with the pleasure.

Liked that, for once, it wasn’t too much for her to handle.

She wasn’t overwhelmed or afraid. It was just the two of them, tucked away somewhere where the rest of the world couldn’t touch them, and she could control it if she wanted – only she didn’t.

She almost didn’t want it to end, but the promise of climax soared through her belly with this new pressure. ‘I’m close.’

‘Me, too.’ His voice was sharpened by clenched teeth. ‘Let me feel you come first, sweetheart. Please.’ He returned to her clit, no longer so delicate.

She keened as her body shook with an orgasm that seemed endless, chasing every lick of it with reckless abandon.

‘Just like that. So good, Juni,’ he was saying, and then another gruff noise left his throat as he spilled into her. The warmth of his seed was almost enough to take him again, just to feel him, hear him, so wrapped up in this shared pleasure.

Instead, she leaned back on her elbows breathlessly, feeling spent and boneless. He pulled out at an agonisingly reluctant pace, and then the cold damp of a cloth sent another jolt through her body as he cleaned the stickiness from her skin.

She wasn’t sure what to do now. She was in a fog she didn’t want to emerge from, still tingling from what might have been the best orgasm of her life.

His knuckle mapped over the inside of her elbow, then over to her stomach, her cheek, before settling on the edge of her blindfold. ‘Can I see you properly now?’

She nodded, though secretly she found it easier this way. If she couldn’t see him, she didn’t have to wonder why she wanted him, or why he wanted her.

The blindfold was lifted, and facing him didn’t feel so terrifying when she saw the sweat glistening above his brow, his lips plump and swollen.

His eyes were soft as honey as he took her in, and she had to look away when it left something in her sore.

With what, she didn’t know. Or, at least, didn’t want to know.

He dipped to kiss her again, just once, lingering until she wished he would wrap his arms around her, keep her stable like he had before.

But that wasn’t what they were doing here, so she didn’t ask.

Instead, she averted her gaze to the clay abandoned on the throwing wheel.

She’d made an almost perfect cylinder, smooth clay gleaming tall and steady.

‘Quite the teacher, aren’t you, Whittaker?

Do all your mentees get special treatment? ’

He grinned, forehead knocking against hers. ‘Just you, Hodge. Seems you have a habit of distracting me.’

And, surprisingly, she was quite okay with that – because he’d distracted her, too. From the phone call, from work, from all of her insecurities and doubts.

He didn’t have to know it, but his lesson had worked. She had surrendered: to the clay and to him.

It was almost impossible for Juniper to keep the huge smile from her face that Friday. She had never carried anything as carefully as the jewellery holder on her return trip from the kiln. It had survived the firing process with only a tiny crack, one that would easily be fixable with a glaze.

The icky self-doubt from the last couple of days had been chased away. She’d done it. What’s more, her vase was ready and waiting to go in, too, which would leave her with two – two ! – fired pottery pieces to her name.

As she reached the workshop, she winced, wondering how she was going to push open the door without any free hands. She turned around, trying to use her curves to her advantage, but the door didn’t budge. The classroom was locked.

Before she could ponder why that might be, Christopher appeared down the corridor, his ginger hair a messy, wind-swept tuft on top of his head and his glasses slightly wonky. Juniper had soon learned that he wasn’t a morning person, though nobody held it against him the way he did her.

When he saw her, he stopped short in the hallway, checking his wristwatch with a mystified expression. ‘Is it the apocalypse? Is the world finally ending?’

‘It’s been ending for a while now, just very slowly,’ she replied. ‘Why is the workshop locked?’

He blinked. ‘Because it’s ten-to-nine, Jupiter. You’re… early.’

Was she? She hadn’t really looked at the time on her way out this morning, eager to see how Yggdrasil had fared in the kiln.

She would like to think her new enthusiasm came more from her own skills than the ones Aiden had taught her the other night, but she couldn’t pretend as though his unique methods – and the part that had come after, literally – hadn’t played a part.

He’d been right about surrendering. Clay must have sensed her fear; when she let go, her hands moved with ease, the usually raucous world quietening to a hush.

This new comfort in her own abilities had changed something in her.

And something in them. They’d already planned their research paper and began sketching ideas for their final exhibition.

After the museum visit on Sunday, Juniper hoped they’d have everything they needed to make headway with this project.

She’d fallen asleep with her nose stuck in a book about Ancient Greek ceramics last night, phone slipped between the pages midway through texting Aiden about her findings.

And they’d already began their first piece, an amphora.

While Aiden threw the perfect shape, she’d began sculpting her creatures.

Somehow, they actually did work well together. The knowledge she lacked, he made up for, and vice versa.

‘Oh my lord.’ Christopher covered his eyes suddenly. ‘There’s something on your face.’

‘What?’ Juniper frowned, almost dropping her piece at the worry that she’d left the stale chocolate croissant nabbed from work’s leftovers on her chin. ‘What is it?’

‘It’s…’ Christopher peeked through his arm and exclaimed, ‘A smile!’