Make Me (The Art of Pleasure)

by Tracy Wolff

  So many things. So many, many things that I don’t know how to articulate them all—especially since he’s the first man to ever ask me that in reference to sex. “You,” I finally pant, because it’s one syllable and it’s true. “You, you, you, you.”

  It’s a chant, a mantra, and Jaxon gives a warm, wicked chuckle as he whispers, “You’ve got me, luv. You’ve got me.”

  And then he’s sliding his hand down my stomach to where my sensible pencil skirt is rucked up to the top of my thighs. Seconds later, his fingers—his talented, talented fingers—are slipping inside my panties and my sex.

  “Fuck, Grace, you’re so good,” he murmurs as he slides one long finger inside of me. “So fucking good, baby.”

  “Please,” I gasp out, pressing my hips up as he curves his finger just enough to brush up against my G-spot. “Please, please, please. God, Jaxon. I need... I need...”

  “I know what you need,” he whispers against my lips. And then he slides another finger inside of me. Pulls them both out. Slides them in again. Pulls them out. Slides them in.

  Over and over again, he does it, all the while circling his thumb around my throbbing clit. On the fifth or sixth circle, I shoot straight over the edge, my whole body convulsing as sensation swamps me.

  I grab his face in my hands then, pull his mouth down to mine and bite hard on his lower lip. He groans, swears, his fingers thrusting harder and faster inside of me.

  Impossibly, it takes me higher and right there in the middle of one orgasm I have another one. It’s harder and deeper and it feels like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

  My body wigs out, ecstasy sliding along my every nerve ending, until all I can think about—until all that I am—is narrowed down to Jaxon and this one insane moment in time.

  I slide my hands down to his shoulders, dig my nails into his burning skin as I arch against him and try to take him deeper, deeper, deeper.

  He obliges, sliding his fingers all the way in as he growls, “Give it to me,” against my mouth.

  “I am,” I gasp out because the pleasure is insane, all-consuming, never-ending and there can’t be more than this. There just can’t be. But it’s at that moment that his fingers twist and snap against each other deep inside of me and at that moment that I feel something shatter.

  Suddenly I’m drowning in pleasure, drowning in ecstasy, drowning in Jaxon and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to—fuck.

  I can’t stop the sudden tears blooming in my eyes any more than I can stop myself from crying out his name. But Jaxon is right here with me—right here. His free hand grabs on to mine to ground me, to hold me, and he swallows my scream down even as he continues to work his fingers deep inside of me.

  I wrench my mouth from his. “No more, Jaxon. No more!”

  “There’s always more, Grace. So much more.” He moves his fingers to prove it.

  “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” Except, somehow, I am, my body cresting one more time.

  I jerk back hard as pleasure overwhelms me, my head slamming against the wall as my whole body goes tight as a bow string.

  “Jaxon!” I cry out, desperate, devestated.

  “I’ve got you, Grace. I’ve got you, luv. I’ve got you.”

  And he does, he really does. I’m a sobbing, shuddering mess when I finally come down and he’s right there through it all, kissing and stroking and murmuring sweet nothings to me in a deep, rumbling voice that soothes me as few other things could.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, because I don’t know why I’m acting like this, don’t know why I’m crying when all he did was give me pleasure.

  “Don’t ever apologize for giving yourself to me,” he whispers against my ear. He’s petting me, those long fingers of his stroking my cheek, my neck, the tops of my breast. “You’re beautiful. You’re so, so beautiful.”

  I feel beautiful, which is rare for me. But how can I not when this kind, gorgeous man is treating me so exquisitely, so perfectly?

  When it’s finally over, when my heart has stopped racing and I can finally take a breath that isn’t a sob, Jaxon lowers his forehead to mine. “Thank you,” he whispers in between reverent kisses. “Thank you, Grace.”

  Because everything about me feels too open, too vulnerable, I force a laugh. “Pretty sure I’m the one who’s supposed to be thanking you.” My voice is slow and husky, almost unrecognizable. Then again, everything about me feels slow right now, like honey has seeped into my veins and all I can do is drown in the warm sweetness of it. I definitely should be the one saying thank you.

  “No, luv. Thank you for trusting me. For giving yourself to me. It means a lot,” he says as he drops his mouth to my neck, presses a line of sweet kisses along my jaw, from my ear to my chin. As he does, I realize the perfect, anonymous English is gone and in its place is a softer, warmer Yorkshire accent with its dropped consonants and soft r’s, that wraps itself around me like a blanket. Or the sun.

  Something tells me this is the real Jaxon, this man with the soft eyes and the rolling syllables. Because I don’t know how I feel about that—even though seeing him like this makes a part of me melt all over again—I reach for his belt buckle even as I kiss my way along his neck. “I know a way to make it mean even more,” I tease him as my knuckles brush against his very hard, very long dick.

  He stops me with another kiss, his fingers tangling with mine. Then he brings our joined hands up between us, holding them to his chest in a gesture of gratitude that sets the butterflies in my stomach aflutter all over again. “You don’t have to do that,” he tells me, lifting one of my hands to his mouth and pressing a kiss against my open palm.

  I don’t have a clue how I’m supposed to answer, so in the end I go with honest confusion. “You don’t want—”

  “Oh, I want, luv. But there isn’t near enough time to do everything I want to do with you, so I’ll wait until later. When I can have everything.”

  “But what about...” I glance down at his very obvious erection.

  He laughs. “It can wait,” he repeats. “Especially since I want something else from you right now.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?”

  He glances around us at the exhibit. At his photographs on my walls. And says, “No one has ever seen me as clearly as you do.”

  A combination of shock and joy rush through me at his words. “I don’t know about that. I—”

  “I know.” He reaches between us and fixes my bra before picking up my blouse and suit jacket and sliding them up my arms, over my shoulders. He pulls the edges of my blouse together and ties them at my waist so that the shirt doesn’t completely gape, despite its missing buttons. Then he straightens my panties and my skirt.

  Only when he’s done putting me back together does he continue. “I walked through this exhibit earlier, just to get a feel for it. And, Grace, your vision nearly brought me to my knees. You see what no one else bothers to. You see the work and you see me. It’s...awe-inspiring.”

  “It’s easy to see your intentions. It’s strange, almost impossible, how you manage to let the subject stand completely on its own, how you let it speak for itself, and yet somehow loom so large that it’s impossible not to see you, too.”

  “Walk through it with me,” he says, straightening my hair.

  “What?”

  “That’s what I want right now, more than anything else,” he tells me. “For you to walk through this exhibit with me, so I can see your reaction to the exhibit...and so you can see mine.”

  I don’t know how to feel in the face of the raw honesty of his request, so I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I worked so hard on this exhibit, took so many risks with it—even against Richard’s wishes, at times. And now to find out that all those risks paid off beyond my wildest dreams...it’s a lot to process. Almost too much, especially on top of what just happened.

  And yet, Jaxon is standing here watching me with those wide-open eyes and I can’t say no. More, I don’t w
ant to say no, because I want to see his reaction as we wind through the exhibit even more—I’m sure—than he wants to see mine.

  So even though I should get changed, even though I should get ready for the caterers to arrive, even though I should fill Richard in on the schedule one more time, I do the only thing I can do right now. I check to make sure Jaxon tied my blouse tightly enough that it doesn’t show anything, then I put my hand in his outstretched one and decide half an hour more won’t hurt anything.

  Saturday: Jaxon

  I should have gone home with Grace when she asked me to.

  It’s the first thought I have when my eyes open in the morning, probably because I’ve been dreaming about her all night. Obviously, my subconscious mind is as wrapped up in her as the rest of me is.

  One more reason I should have said to hell with it and just accepted her invitation. God knows, there was a part of me that wanted to, especially after everything that had happened between us before the exhibit doors opened. But I’m never at my best after one of those things—the forced mingling, the fake compliments, the multitude of people—and I didn’t want to put my bad mood on Grace, especially when the exhibit itself left me feeling raw and exposed.

  Just thinking that pisses me off, and I push out of bed. Throw on some workout clothes. Then head out for a run because I have to move, have to sweat, have to think and I can’t do that inside the four walls of my hotel room unless I want to lose my damn mind.

  It’s funny, but twenty-four hours ago, I would have said my work was an open book. That I do what I do because I can’t do anything else—photography has called to me from the moment I first held my father’s camera when I was five years old—and that, when it comes to my work I want people to see as much or as little as they are comfortable with.

  Feel free to look at my photographs and see whatever you want to see—about the subjects, the world, me.

  But then I walked into that museum gallery and I saw what Grace had so painstakingly put together and my head nearly blew the fuck up. Because what she saw...what she saw was everything.

  Everything I think.

  Everything I feel.

  Everything I am.

  I’d be lying if I said that didn’t scare the shit out of me. That she didn’t scare the shit out of me. Being attracted to a woman, wanting to photograph her—wanting to fuck her—is one thing. Letting her inside of me is something else entirely.

  Especially when she sees so much.

  Pushing through the front door of my hotel, I start jogging down Red River, nice and easy. It’s early morning here in Austin—barely six a.m., but my body is on Brazil time. Still, I enjoy the solitude and the silence of the early morning streets, with only the occasional car to break things up.

  I make a couple turns and get to Town Lake, where the slowly rising sun has turned the sky a beautiful purple streaked with pinks and oranges. My fingers itch for my camera, but I’ve left it behind—even the small one I take everywhere with me. I’d been too bent on escaping my room, and my thoughts, this morning to grab it and suddenly I feel as naked as I did last night, when I walked into Grace’s exhibit.

  Just the memory of it has my skin crawling, and I push myself to run faster, harder. But there’s no escaping the feelings, no outrunning the vulnerability I still feel.

  Because the pieces she chose, the way she arranged them, even the snippets of interviews she compiled as part of the exhibit—every single thing in that gallery showcases the fact that a woman I don’t know, a woman I had never even met before Thursday night, somehow managed to burrow all the way inside of me. Even now, the thought fucks me up.

  Which is why I fucked everything else up.

  Instead of processing my shit, instead of taking a few minutes to breathe, I’d come out of the spiral exhibit and seen her standing there. Everything went out the window then—my control, my reticence, my judgment—and I went at her no-holds-barred.

  Like an asshole with no control. Just the thought makes me crazy and I run faster now, really pushing myself as I make the turn onto Congress. The sky’s getting lighter but the streets are still empty, so I run full-out now, pushing myself hard in a ridiculous effort to outrun my thoughts. To outrun my loss of control. To outrun what I did to Grace yesterday.

  But there isn’t enough speed—or enough pain—to drown out the look on her face when she came, or her voice pleading that it was too much. That what I was doing to her was too much.

  God, I feel like a dick.

  When I saw her standing there, looking so beautiful and so uncertain, I just had to touch her. Had to hold her. Had to have some part of me inside some part of her. I wasn’t trying to make her feel exposed, sure as hell wasn’t trying to hurt her. But I did want her to open to me, did want her to be at least partially vulnerable to me since I’m an open fucking book to her.

  Instead I was bullshit.

  I was feeling vulnerable, so I pushed her too far too fast. I bombarded her with the full force of my personality and sexuality, and in doing so, I overwhelmed her. More, I dropped her into subspace without consciously thinking about it—and I was so fucked up at the beginning that I didn’t even realize that was where we were heading.

  Yeah, I want to top her—I’ve wanted to from the moment she walked into the bar two nights ago. But that doesn’t mean I planned on doing it in the middle of her workplace when there was neither the time nor the space to take care of her afterward. At least not the way I like to take care of a bottom and definitely not the way I want to take care of Grace.

  Just the thought makes me want to kick my own ass.

  I wasn’t careful enough with her and now we both have to pay the consequences.

  It’s that thought more than any other that gets me out of my head. That has me turning back toward my hotel and has me formulating a plan. Because no matter how much I fucked up at that gallery, no matter how much I hurt her by refusing her invitation last night, I’m not going to just walk away. I can’t.

  Not when I still want to photograph her and not when I still want to fuck her.

  She sees too much, but that doesn’t matter. Not now when I have her scent in my nose, her taste in my mouth. Not now when everything I’ve fantasized about doing to her is within my reach. Not now, when I have a chance to find my way inside of her as completely as she’s found her way inside of me.

  * * *

  Two hours later, I’m climbing the stairs of her apartment building, coffee in one hand and a box of Voodoo donuts in the other. My camera bag is slung over my shoulder and tucked inside is everything I need to start making things right—for both of us.

  I texted her on my way over, so her door opens as soon as I knock on it. And fuck, she looks good. Young, with her hair tied back into a ponytail with a colorful scarf and no makeup on her face, but good. Beautiful. Real.

  After opening the door, she just stands there staring at me for several seconds, eyes wide and cheeks pink. I wait for her to invite me in, but when she doesn’t, I raise a brow and shake the donut box a little.

  “I brought breakfast, but I’m not sure how good it will taste in the middle of your hallway.”

  “Oh, right.” Her cheeks turn even pinker, but she takes a cautious step back. “Come in.”

  “Thanks.”

  I hate her sudden reticence with me, but I’m the one to blame for it so I’m going to have to live with it. For now.

  Still, I can’t resist bumping my shoulder against hers—just to see how she’ll react. She jumps a little, then shoots me a “what the fuck” look that makes me grin. She’s still in there, even if she is hiding a little under embarrassment she has no reason to feel.

  I follow her through a living room done in bold shades of red and pink against a backdrop of white. I’m immediately intrigued because this is not the apartment of the woman I met at the bar a couple nights ago, the woman with the tight bun and boring suit and awful shoes. With its overstuffed couch, fluffy pillows and blankets, and
mind-blowing art, this is the apartment of a hedonist...and an adventurer. I’m particularly intrigued by the mirror on the side wall...and the many things I want to do to her in front of it.

  My dick hardens at the thought. This is the woman I got off in the museum last night, the one who came and came and came against my fingers and kissed me like it was the end of the world. This is the woman I want to photograph.

  Not that I’m going to lead with that. My dick may be making most of the decisions when I’m around Grace, but I still have enough restraint to keep my mouth shut. For a little while, anyway.

  So instead of asking her to take her clothes off, I lift the tray of coffee and ask, “Where should I put these?” Because I really want to touch her and my hands need to be free for that.

  “Oh, I’ll take them.” She pulls the tray from my hands and puts it down on her coffee table, then heads toward a wide archway at the back of the room. “Let me just get some plates for the donuts.”

  It’s a clear-cut direction for me to stay where I am, but I ignore it. I want to see her kitchen. More I want to know why she doesn’t want me to see it.

  So I follow her through the archway and watch as she gets plates out of sleek black cabinets. I’d be lying if I said I don’t notice how hot her ass looks in her yoga pants or that I don’t have the urge to press up against her and kiss the vulnerable nape of her neck. Because I do. But I want to look at her space more, want a chance to see what it will tell me before I let myself fall back into Grace.

  Because there’s a small voice at the back of my head telling me that the real reason I don’t want to fall into her is because I’m afraid I won’t be able to climb back out, I deliberately set the donuts down on the small ice-cream parlor table in the corner of the room—also in red—and go to her.

  “Let me carry those for you,” I say, taking hold of the dishes...and making sure our fingers brush as I do.

  She looks up at me, those gray eyes of hers wide and wild.

  “You okay?” I ask, reaching a hand up to stroke her cheek.