Down Shift

by K. Bromberg

  “Let me show you how sex is supposed to be. Supposed to make you feel. Let. Me. Worship. You.”

  I’m not sure who moves first, but within a beat our mouths meet in a kiss to rival all kisses. It starts out slow and sweet—parted lips, tentative tongues, contented moans—as his body moves into mine. My breasts press against the firmness of his chest and I lose myself to him. In him. The flex of his muscles beneath my hand. How he moves my head to control the angle of our kiss. The scrape of his five-o’clock shadow over my chin. The vibration of his chest as he hums in strained appreciation. The taste of him on my tongue. The strength of his body when he pulls me tighter into him. The unmistakable thickness of his erection, hard and straining against the inseam of his jeans.

  And then our patience slowly evaporates. The tenderness of the kiss turns from want to need. From tentativeness to greed. From wait-and-see to now-or-never.

  There’s a desperate hunger in his actions now. A nonverbal demand for more. While our teeth nip at each other, soft sighs intersperse the definitive moans of desire. With one hand cradling the back of my head, his other grabs my ass so he can grind himself against me.

  The ache burns bright as we dance together and push our willpower to the point of no return. And then it’s gone.

  Lost to the seduction.

  Forgotten in our mutual need.

  It’s like a switch is flipped in both of us simultaneously. Our kiss turns more possessive. Our bodies fixated on the next step, the next high, the next connection.

  My hands are on the button of his jeans. His palms cup my breasts. His tongue licks a line down the curve of my shoulder before his teeth take a playful nip there. My hands are covered by his so we can push his jeans down together. And I know I’ve seen his dick before, but hell if the feel of his erection rebounding up when it’s released from the confines of the denim doesn’t make my breath hitch.

  I don’t get much time to think about its hardness resting against my lower belly because Zander pushes me backward so that the backs of my knees hit the mattress. With his mouth on mine, derailing all other thoughts, he directs me back onto the bed. We move in unison. Our bodies responding to each other’s demands without any forethought about it.

  I’m on my back across the bed, Zander’s knees frame my hips, his hands braced on either side of my head, and he leans back to look in my eyes. With my mouth still vibrating from his kisses, a slow, crooked smile lifts up the corner of his.

  “Do you know how hard it is to do this and not take a step back to admire you naked and lying here in my bed? I know you’re scared. Know you’ve been hurt. And I know you worry about what I’m going to think of you. That I might compare you to other women. Listen to me when I say this, Getty. I’m. Not. Him. There is no history in this room. No history between us. Just here. Just now. Just you and me. And fuck yes, I want you more than I’ve wanted anyone in as long as I can remember. God, you’re sexy as sin. I’m kind of wishing you had those knee-high socks on right now.”

  The smile on my lips is instantaneous. His attempt to soothe my fears and then make me relax reminds me why I’m here with him, despite knowing this can go nowhere. I push the thought away. Focus on the here and now and how he’s making me feel. Worthy, sexy, and wanted for the first time in forever.

  How he’s worshipping me with his slow, sweet seduction.

  I let out a laugh as I think about his fixation on the socks. And then it turns into a desperate moan when one of his hands slides between my thighs as he shifts on his knees to push my legs apart.

  With featherlight touches he runs his fingertips up one thigh, over my lower belly, and then down the other. After doing that a few times, he trails them up the insides of my parted thighs so just a whisper of a touch is felt along the outside of my sex. Each time he traces the same path, his touch becomes a little firmer, his fingers more intent.

  He sits on his knees, face angled down, watching my body tense in anticipation of his touch. When he lifts his eyes, a shadow blankets one side of his face, but the intensity of his gaze blazes through the moonlit darkness.

  “There are so many things I want to do to you, Getty. We’ll get to all of them. I want to dip my mouth down and taste you. Spread your pussy, use my hands and my tongue to work you into a frenzy until you come. I want the lights on. So I can look into your eyes and see your face when you lose yourself to the things I do to you. So you can’t hide from me. Or from you. I want to look down as you wrap your lips around my dick and look up with your mouth full of me. I want you on top. So I can have your tits in my mouth and my fingers on your clit while you move however you need to so you can come. I want you bent over on your knees so I can grab your ass as I work you from behind.” His eyes burn bright as he leans forward to make sure I can see him.

  And I can see him all right. Dark hair, clear eyes, and teeth biting into his bottom lip, he’s a damn Adonis leaning over me, stealing my thoughts and awakening every part of me that has been dead for so very long.

  “I want you on the kitchen counter, the patio, in your bed, in the woods. I’ll take you anywhere you’ll have me, Getty, because you make me want you that bad, and I’m not a man who wants much at all. So when you doubt whatever it is you’ll doubt when we’re finished here, I want you to remember this. All of it. Because I will deliver on that promise. I’m here to prove I’m a man of my word and with you is no different.”

  His words are as suggestive as his touch. I never knew you could be seduced by words alone and yet I’m seduced. Dragged under the spell of explicit promises that don’t feel cheap or false. I’m ready. Willing. Desperate. For him to put any of those plans into action.

  “But first this.” He leans down and kisses me with reverence before pulling back. “First, we take it slow.”

  His hands run down my torso, thumbs brushing over the undersides of my breasts. His tongue traces a circle over my nipple. Then he closes his mouth over it and sucks. My hands grab at the sheets beneath me while I gasp.

  “We take our time.”

  The tip of his tongue slides down the midline of my abdomen. An openmouthed kiss. Another tempting pass of his tongue as he licks a circle around my belly button. My shaky inhalation fills the room.

  “I want to show you that sex isn’t about being good or bad at it but about finding the right rhythm. The right pace.”

  He runs the tip of his nose back up my stomach between my breasts as his fingers find their way to my inner thighs and slide between the lips of my sex to the wetness at its core. Our sounds grow loud enough to fill the room—his guttural groan and my gasping moans—as a rush of warmth overwhelms every part of me from his lips teasing the underside of my jawline and his fingers gently adding friction over my clit.

  “It’s about having patience.”

  He murmurs against the sensitive skin of my neck as my hips shift and lift. And beg for more. My breath grows fainter. My concentration is on the sensations his fingers are evoking rather than remembering how to breathe. Because doing both is a struggle when he tucks his fingers into me and begins to move them in a slow rhythm that matches the kisses he laces over my skin.

  “It’s about being selfless. Wanting your partner to get off just as badly as you want to. Knowing satisfaction comes in more ways than just the endgame.”

  His warm mouth on my earlobe. His adept fingers inside me. The perfect amount of pressure and friction. My head falls back. My legs tense up. My lips part. My mind abandons any thought but him. Zander. And what he’s doing to me. Indescribable.

  Mind distracted from the doubt. Body brought to that brink of free fall from his erotic and intimate mix of words and actions.

  “It’s about letting yourself go because you trust the other person to take you there.”

  His breath begins to labor against my cheek as his hand moves faster. The one rubbing against my clit. A pleasurable heat begins
to burn hotter within me. Sears my core. Robs my inhibitions. Ignites my libido. Pushes me over the edge.

  My hands hold on to his shoulders. Fingernails score into his flesh. My legs tense against his knees between my thighs. His name falls from my mouth. His teeth nip that sensitive curve between my neck and shoulder as my muscles pulse around his fingers.

  “Let go, Getty,” he encourages, voice thick with desire.

  I struggle for coherency as that white-hot rush of heat flashes through me. The release is all I can focus on. I think he says my name. Encourages me as his fingers milk my orgasm without giving me any reprieve to gain some sense. And I think that’s what he wants, because his soft chuckle vibrates against my chest, where his lips are still kissing softly.

  With my body floating high on the orgasmic haze, he allows me only a second to catch my breath before he withdraws his fingers from within me. My soft moan of protest is smothered as his mouth meets mine again in a kiss chock-full of desperate desire. It’s like I’m trying to come up for air and he’s trying to pass me his.

  “Goddamn,” he murmurs against my lips. His hands roam and mouth claims. The urgency between us increases and I want the greediness I can sense in his touch. So I welcome the telltale rip of foil after I hear the nightstand open as his pushes himself back onto his knees and protects himself.

  He takes my legs in his hands and pulls me closer to him so that the backs of my thighs rest over his hips. I don’t know if I should hate or love the flutter in my belly at the feeling of the crest of his dick positioned at my entrance. If I should give in to the criticism embedded in my psyche over my lack of sexual prowess or let it go and just enjoy the man in front of me.

  With his cock in his hand, he rubs up and down the line of my sex, and as much as the anticipation of him entering me makes me want to move things forward, I can’t resist the urge to look up and meet his eyes. And with a slash of moonlight across his face highlighting the slow lick of his tongue over his bottom lip and the unfettered desire burning in his eyes, I know the fluttery feeling is one I’ll hold on to.

  “This is mine now, Getty,” he murmurs into the silent room, eyes locked onto mine, and slowly pushes his way into me. Inch by achingly sweet inch. My body burns in the most pleasurable of burns as he fills me in every way possible.

  When he’s sheathed root to tip, the muscles in his neck and shoulders visibly demonstrating the restraint he’s holding on to by a thin thread, he leans forward so there is no mistaking what he’s about to say. “Not his.” He grinds his hips in a slow circle that has us both moaning at the litany of sensations he’s creating for both of us. “Mine.” Hands keeping the insides of my thighs apart in a possessive hold, he slowly withdraws so that just the head of his dick is inside me. He wraps one of his hands around his shaft so that he can tease and taunt me before resuming the slow, all-consuming slide back in.

  And when he bottoms out, the word he enunciates in a pained groan is the sexiest one I’ve heard from him yet. “Yours.” A grind of hips. “Mine.” Then a shift of my legs upward as he pushes into me as deep as possible. “Ours.”

  With our bodies connected, he leans forward on the last word and kisses me softly. And I love that although he’s inside me, he still treats the kiss as if it’s the most intimate of actions between us. When he pulls back, those blue eyes heavy with want meet mine. “Understood?”

  “Yes.”

  Our lips meet once more before he shifts back up onto his knees and begins to take what I’m offering. My trust. My body. And I’d be lying to myself if I didn’t say a little bit more of my heart.

  His hips begin to move faster with each thrust. The crest of his dick keeps perfectly hitting on that hub of nerves within me that I never really knew existed before. It’s a different kind of sensation from when his fingers worked my clit. A pressure that intensifies as he picks up the pace.

  Time passes in pure sensations. The bite of his fingers into my thighs. The mist of sweat on my skin. The groan he emits as he slowly comes undone. The tingle of ecstasy throughout my body. Then all the pleasure surges and crashes after his cock slides expertly over the coveted spot within me. Incoherency reins as he swells bigger, harder, and he continues his unforgiving rhythm.

  “Getty.”

  It’s the broken groan of my name that drags me from the onslaught of sensations he’s created. I focus on him just in time to see him in all his glory: head thrown back, muscles taut, hips thrusting relentlessly as his orgasm shudders through him. I stare at him with a mixture of awe and embarrassment: awe over how incredibly hot he looks and embarrassment that I don’t want to be caught staring.

  But I can’t help it. The expression on his face as he lowers his head and looks down at me—satisfaction, desire, exhaustion—is so overwhelming to me because I put those there. Me. Getty Caster.

  And I don’t have much more time to think about it before a smug smile slowly curls his magnificent mouth as he leans forward to press a thorough and lingering kiss to my lips, which causes everything to stir once again in my lower belly.

  Zander carefully pulls out of me and rises from the bed to clean up. The panicked feeling I expected of What next? doesn’t come. Maybe it’s because I’m almost twenty-six years old and for the first time ever I’ve been properly sexed.

  And properly doesn’t even begin to describe what Zander just did to me. I’m exhausted, and exhilarated, and can see why sexual intimacy is so important to a relationship. To cementing the connection between two people. Especially when that person has the skills of Zander Donavan.

  Lost in my scattered thoughts, I emit a content sigh when Zander slides back into the bed and pulls my body against him, my back to his front. He presses a kiss to my shoulder and tears unexpectedly sting in my eyes, the emotion of the evening overwhelming me.

  “You okay?” he asks, his mouth moving against my skin.

  “Yeah.” I nod and slide my hands over his arms, wrapped around my waist. “Yes. Thank you.” Those words aren’t even close to adequate to thank him for the tenderness and sense of security he just gave me. Or the little slice of confidence that Ethan just might be wrong about me.

  “You don’t have to thank me,” he laughs. “It’s not like you’re the only one who benefited.” The sleep-drugged sound of his voice tugs on my ego and I let the smile he can’t see spread unabashedly over my lips. “And next time, it’s okay for you to speak up and tell me what you want. What you need. I can handle being told what to do.” He chuckles softly again, the reverberation rumbling against my back.

  Don’t talk, Gertrude. Your voice distracts me. Reminds me that it’s you I’m fucking. Next time you talk, you know what happens. . . .

  I shove the horrible memory from my thoughts. My ex-husband’s decrees had previously ruled my sexual experience. But I don’t want them to invade this moment with Zander. Ruin this taste of normalcy that I now know I’m entitled to. I will myself to hear the words Zander said instead—next time—and hold on to the knowledge that he wants there to be a next time. That he actually wants there to be more. With me.

  “Okay?” he prompts when I don’t respond.

  “Okay.”

  “Uh-uh,” he says as he pulls me tighter. “You don’t get to fade away into your doubts again. I’m not going to let you. Today was . . .” He blows a breath. “A lot happened today, but I need you to hear me when I say this wasn’t a mistake. Every time I touched you, everything we did, was because I wanted to. Not because I felt sorry for you or because of your past. But because I. Wanted. To.”

  “You don’t have to do . . .” Inhale confidence, Getty. Exhale doubt. I squeeze my eyes shut and repeat the mantra silently. Allow myself to really accept his words. Let them sink in. Tell myself that the feeling of his body warm and firm against mine isn’t a fluke. Somehow its fate’s fickle way of proving me wrong. That I’m capable of everything I was told I was
n’t. I work a swallow over the lump in my throat and correct myself. “What were you saying?”

  And of course it’s made that much easier when I feel his mouth still pressed against my shoulder spread into a smile, because he understands me enough by now to know I’m trying to be the Getty Caster he’s encouraging me to be.

  “Confidence is sexy, Socks, so you better be careful with it or we might not ever leave this bedroom.”

  Chapter 19

  ZANDER

  “Goddamnmotherfuckingshit!” I drop the hammer and suck on my thumb. It hurts like a bitch, but that’s what I get for trying to replace roof shingles when my mind’s elsewhere.

  Like back in the damn bed, cozied up against Getty and her warm, tempting, sexy-as-fuck body.

  I groan. And not because of the pain in my thumb. But rather because images of last night flicker through my mind. The same damn ones that distracted me and are most likely going to give me the purple badge of honor under my thumbnail.

  But hell if that badge wasn’t worth the pain.

  I’m standing on the roof in the cool morning air, with the view of the harbor spread out in front of me, but all I see is her: lips swollen, thighs spread, pussy wet, nipples pink. Down, boy. And yet it’s the look in her eyes that keeps coming back to me. A combination of wounded trust and hopeful desire. Plus shy vixen. The last one she doesn’t quite see yet, but I sure as fuck can.

  But it’s her eyes that I woke up remembering. As I lay there with our bodies tangled together, I kept thinking about everything she’d told me about her past—the half of which I’m sure wasn’t confessed. And what kept repeating over and over in my head was how much trust she gave me last night.

  I grab the hammer and a nail. Pound it with vigor over the frustration I can’t shake.

  The frustration that made me shove out of bed. Away from her warm body and hot curves and pillow creases in her cheeks. Because I needed distance. Space. I got what I wanted—Getty naked and beneath me—but I think I also got a few things I didn’t want. That I can’t have. That I don’t deserve.