I pushed her thighs open, and she tried to close them. “Stop,” she said.
She was embarrassed. I planned to inspect every part of her, but I understood if she had a long way to go until she was comfortable with me. “Have you ever looked at yourself?” I asked.
“No.”
I thumbed her folds apart and found her pink as candy. I licked my lips as she tried to shove my head away. “Manning.”
“It’s your first time?”
“Yes.”
“Mine too.” That was a lie, but as far as Lake was concerned, it was true. She didn’t look placated. Maybe she didn’t realize what a big deal that was. Eating a girl out was as intimate as kissing her. I’d never cared too much for it. I did it to be fair. But with Lake, I needed it, and bad, and in that sense, it was a first for me.
“Maybe we should wait,” she said. “I haven’t showered since before the show.”
“I need you like this,” I said. “Not perfect and clean and shiny. I want to eat you when you’ve been out all day, after you’ve been fucked and filled by me.” I passed just the tip of my tongue over her clit so I wouldn’t scare her. “Don’t make me wait, Lake.”
She didn’t answer, but she stopped trying to push me away. Still holding her open, I tasted her. She responded so quickly, squirming under me, that I had to slide my hands around her thighs and hold her in place as I gorged on her. Her tightening grip in my hair and the moans echoing through the room told me it was working. When her pussy was nice and slick, when it got more pliant and metallic-tasting, I pulled my mouth up and continued on my way, kissing down her thigh until she was forced to release my head.
“Why’d you stop?” she asked.
“The first few times I make you come, I want it to happen on my dick. After that, you can come any place you like.”
“These aren’t the first few times you’ve made me come,” she said. “I’ve lain in my bed at my parents’ house and orgasmed just touching myself while I thought about you.”
I groaned with my mouth on the inside of her knee, noting with interest that the closer she was to orgasm, the bolder she grew. I still had plenty of skin to cover—toes, ankles, calves, and more—but my erection was getting painful. Holding the underside of her knee, I stood and hooked her ankle over my shoulder. I ran my hand up one of her legs, along her thigh and then right into heaven itself, pumping two fingers inside her.
I flashed back to my time in solitary confinement when I used to lie on the floor, overcome with guilt and remorse when I couldn’t force away the fantasies any longer. Lake on her back for me . . . welcoming me inside . . . begging for me, only me. Young and tight and willing. My heart pounded as I wet my thumb with her own juices and massaged it over her clit. “You have no idea how good this feels for me,” I said.
“For you?” she asked. Her cheeks and chest were bright red. “Oh, oh. Oh, God.”
I watched my knuckles disappear inside her. “There’s nothing in this world like your pink pussy, Lake.”
With a shocked gasp, she turned her face into the comforter, her expression contorted like she couldn’t bear it. “You can’t say that.”
“I just did, and I don’t want you to ever forget that it’s true.” I rubbed her, bringing her climax on slowly but surely. Just like when I’d made love to her earlier, it was clear that words and memories helped send her over the edge; I could practically see her aching from what I’d said. Once I got inside her, I wouldn’t last long, so I needed her ready before I fucked her. “Nothing will ever feel this good. Understand me? You and I . . . we’re going to do this for the rest of our lives and I can tell you, there’s nothing better out there.”
Her folds fluttered around me, and she trembled with the quakes. Her hair made intricate art, strands of blonde branching and entwining over the white comforter. I kept her leg pressed to my neck with one hand and angled my sheathed cock against her with the other. When I’d gotten my head in, I flexed my hand over her chest. My fingers, wet from her, left damp spots on her skin. I wanted to cover her, box her in so she felt completely mine. Once I had her back pinned to the mattress and her calf to my neck, I plunged into her.
She cried out, grabbing onto my forearm. I wondered if it still hurt. For all the times I’d kept my hands to myself, I wanted to go fast, hard, have my fill of her and then some. I angled even deeper so she’d feel every ridge, every vein, from her toes to her fingers and know she belonged to this, to me, to us. “I love you, Lake,” I said, pounding her. “And I want you to fucking come.”
Her chin trembled as she looked up at me. Maybe I was hurting her. Maybe she was scared. Before I could slow down, she said, “I never thought about sex until I met you.”
“Yeah? When was that?”
She arched her back, squeezing her eyes shut. “Before the fair, I think?”
“That early on?” The thought of young Lake lusting after me had me thrusting harder into her. I couldn’t hold back any longer, but I kept my eyes on hers as my control slipped. “What’d I do to you in your fantasies?”
“You were just so big. You eclipsed everything else. We’d be alone, finally, and that was all it took to . . .”
“But I must’ve touched you.”
“It would be in the truck or on the kitchen counter at your old apartment or at my parents’ house. That was the only way I knew how to fantasize—to have you finish what you started.”
“I’m going to start and finish every time,” I promised her. I wished I had three, four, five hands. I wanted to touch her everywhere. I released her leg, but she kept it where it was as I put fast pressure on her clit. She didn’t have to tell me when she was coming. Her pussy suctioned me deeper and that was all I needed. For fuck’s sake, I’d been ready to come since I’d last blown my load, so I went hard and climaxed with her, tearing through nirvana for the second time in hours.
My heart pounded, my hairline was damp, but I didn’t have time to recover. Lake started to cry. I eased her leg off my shoulder. The heavy, wet way my half-hard cock fell out of her made me feel a little sick. As I peeled and tossed aside the condom, I scanned for blood or any sign I’d hurt her.
“What is it?” I asked. I fell to my knees and tugged her into a sitting position so we were face to face.
Her bottom lip trembled, her eyes crystal blue with tears as her shoulders curled inward. She put her arms around me and burrowed into the crook of my neck. “I . . .” she whispered. “Nothing. Nothing.”
She wasn’t hurt, just overwhelmed. I pulled her naked torso against mine, comforted by the skin on skin contact, but it wasn’t enough. With one arm firmly around her, I looked her in the face. “Shh,” I said. “You know what?”
She shook her head.
“I’ve loved you for a very long time. I have thought of you in every capacity possible. I thought I’d never have you, Lake, you have to understand that. I thought there was no chance. That people like me didn’t get a life like this.”
“Why shouldn’t you?”
“Why should I? What have I done to deserve any of it?”
She kept crying, touching my face, seemingly memorizing the parts of it with her hands like she’d be blind by the end of it. “If you don’t deserve to be happy, then I don’t, either.”
“You deserve everything.”
“You are, and always have been, my everything,” she said. “If you think I deserve that, why did you take it away?”
I had no simple answer for that, not that I needed one. She knew all of it. I pressed my face to hers. Her wet cheeks cooled the heat in mine. I kissed her slowly, thoroughly, until we were crawling back toward the headboard. I got behind her, pulling her against me. Her smallness sank right into the crook of my body, completely sheltered by me. I pulled a blanket over myself and tented her. I could be her shelter, her shield, her home. Her body nestled into mine like a butterfly in its cocoon. I would happily be an ugly, mottled shell to protect her beauty. Her innocence, on the other h
and, I had kept intact long enough. I would strip that from her in its entirety. It couldn’t be any other way. If she was finally mine, then I’d need to have her in all ways possible—physically, mentally, and emotionally.
I kissed her all over, drinking salty tears off her face and making up for all the times I’d wanted to feel her skin against mine but couldn’t. My dick hardened against the softness of her thigh, but I reached between us and shifted it out of the way. I wanted to go again, but it wasn’t the time. I raked her hair away from her face to take her in. Did she believe me when I said I loved her? I only had myself to blame if not. I would have to prove it. Over and over. Day in and day out. Having spent all night vigilant at her door, my eyelids threatened to close, but I forced them to stay open until she’d drifted off. And finally, I got everything I’d ever wanted . . . to have Lake, to feel her from the inside out, to sleep with her in my arms.
9
Lake
I woke up to the moon coming through the window, lighting my otherwise dark bedroom. The first thing I felt was Manning pressed against my back. The second was a chill on any body part that wasn’t tangled with his. I did my best to turn and face him, but I had to go slowly, partly so I wouldn’t wake him but mostly because his arm was heavy on top of me, and I had to lift it with both hands in order to move. Once I’d turned over, I burrowed into him, pressing my chest and stomach and crotch to his body. I pushed one of my legs between his, lengthening the other against him. He was hot, and big, and with a little maneuvering, I could almost get every one of my body parts against him. Last was my face, which I rubbed against his neck.
“What’re you doing?” he asked, his voice heavy with sleep.
“Getting warm.”
“The tip of your nose is cold.”
I smiled against his throat. “Any part of me not touching you is cold.”
He answered by sliding a big hand down my spine. “What about this?” he asked, pulling me even closer by my rear end. “It’s not touching me.”
“It got you all day. It’s nighttime now.”
“Mmm, is it?” He twitched against my stomach.
Nerves and excitement buzzed in me. Sex with Manning was unlike anything I could’ve ever dreamed up. I was thankful for the few times I’d fooled around with Corbin and had dreaded sex enough to stop. I could see now that while I trusted Corbin, my friend, in every sense of the word, I wasn’t able to completely bare myself to him. There were times I’d told myself to just get it over with, and Corbin would’ve been happy to take my virginity, but I was glad I’d trusted my instincts. I’d saved everything for Manning, and he was worth the wait.
“I’ll do my best to warm you.” Manning rubbed my back, slipping his hand a little down the length of my thigh until the point where my leg was clamped between both of his. “If any part starts to get cold, tell me and I’ll put my hand there.”
“I can think of a place.”
He chuckled in my ear. “That is definitely not cold.”
“What’s it like?”
“Imagine the warmest, silkiest, tightest place you can be. It is, without a doubt, the best spot in the world.”
I held in a giggle. Warm and silky sounded nice, but I wasn’t sure about tight. Must’ve been a guy thing.
“Lake?”
“Hmm?”
“What’s that noise?”
I listened. Through the thin walls, my neighbors watched TV. Downstairs, city dwellers headed to and from dinner. There was the occasional siren. And then I heard it, the tiny and unfortunately familiar squeaking coming from inside the apartment. I shivered. “A mouse.”
“For fuck’s sake.” He sighed, and now what I focused on was the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. “Guess I’ll have to add that to my to-do list.”
“There’s nothing you can do. We get them now and then. Val and I just try to be vigilant about leaving out food and keeping the lid on the trash.”
“I’ll pick up some mousetraps.”
“To kill them?” I sat up, leaning my elbow on his chest. “I don’t want that.”
“These aren’t strays we’re talking about.” He yawned. “You got off easy with the scar that feral kitten gave you. Mice carry disease.”
“Do you know what happens if you trap them? They starve to death—they’re poisoned. Sometimes they chew off their own legs to get free.”
“Then I’ll get a top-of-the-line trap,” he said. “Death,” he sliced his hand across his throat, “in a snap.”
“That’s murder,” I screamed.
He laughed. “Murder? I love that you’re sensitive and humane, but it’s a fucking rodent, Lake. Where there’s one, there’re others.”
I stuck out my bottom lip. “But—”
“Gotta wipe ’em out, Birdy.”
I exhaled, tracing a circle over his chest with my fingertip. “If you do, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t want to see or hear about it. I’ll cry, I really will.”
“Say no more.” He moved some of my hair behind my ear. “What time did you say it was?”
“Late. We slept all day.” I checked the nightstand. “After seven.”
“I missed a meeting.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll have to reschedule it for tomorrow.”
My spirits fell a little. Nothing sounded more perfect than spending every minute of Manning’s trip right here in my bed, basking in six years’ worth of afterglow. I was supposed to work at the diner tomorrow afternoon, but it was a short shift. I put my face back in the crook of his neck. “Do you have to?”
“I’d skip it, but if I’m leaving my job soon, I need to make as much commission as possible before I go.”
Sleepy Manning had turned into Serious Manning, the version of him I was probably most familiar with. I caught the tension in his voice and wondered if money worried him. It didn’t need to. I had two jobs and had been taking care of myself for a while, and by the looks of his suit and cell phone and long-distance taxi rides, he did all right for himself.
“But after my meetings, I thought you could show me your New York. Give me something to look forward to. I’m moving from the glorious beach after all.”
All my warm and fuzzies returned. I tried to wiggle even closer, but every inch of me was already pressed to him. “My New York?” I asked.
“All I’m getting is that there’s a lot of garbage and pushy people. Questionable smells. But if you tell me it’s great, then I want to see it through your eyes. Can you show me tomorrow?”
I tried to think of what Manning might like about the city, but I came up short. There were buildings he’d surely appreciate with his eye for structure and carpentry, but was that enough? I loved the energy that coursed through the streets, especially around the theater district and Times Square, but I had to admit I wasn’t sure he’d feel the same.
“Lake?” he asked when I didn’t answer.
Was it fair to ask him to move here, a place that surely didn’t fit him? Wasn’t that what was bothering me about his suit and tie, his golf game, the cell phone . . . the fact that Tiffany and my dad were trying to force him in a box? I angled my face from his neck to look up at him, and instantly my skin cooled.
“Nose,” I said.
He stopped massaging my back and put his hand over my nose, but his palm was so big that it engulfed my entire face.
I laughed. “I can’t see.”
“Tell me what’s the matter.”
“How can I ask you to move? I can’t picture you here, but I don’t know what the answer is. I want to do stage acting, and Broadway is here, so I need to be.” I blinked a few times, and my lashes fluttered against his fingers. “If I hadn’t just spent four years taking out loans and working overtime trying to graduate, maybe we could talk about somewhere else, but not right now.”
He spread his fingers, creating slats so we could see each other. “None of that matters. Isn’t that what you tried to tell me that night on the beach?”
I fla
shed back to standing in front of Manning, pouring my heart out while my friends partied around the bonfire yards away. “They’re just dumb details,” I’d told him, to which he’d responded, “They’re life, Lake. Relationships, marriage, they don’t run on love alone.”
I hadn’t understood back then—I hadn’t wanted to. That was because I’d never had the real, pressing worry I’d be unable to pay a bill. I’d never sustained myself on dollar noodles four nights in a row or reused takeout cartons as dishes to save money or spent an entire winter day outside waiting for a five-minute audition. After a while of living without familial or financial support, I understood that those details didn’t just take care of themselves.
“I don’t want to send you back to her,” I said, “but I wouldn’t feel right making you come here. What if you get home, and . . .” It was too painful to form the words. Even thinking Tiffany’s name made my gut smart—both because of all the things he’d shared with her, but also because of how I was about to ruin her life, probably beyond repair. I pushed her out of my thoughts. “Never mind.”
He ran his hand down my face to pinch my chin, keeping my eyes tilted to him. “And what?”
“We’re having an affair, Manning.”
“I’m aware of that,” he said, “but I’m a little worried you aren’t.”
“I am.” I looked at his chest. “It’s just too hard to think about.”
“Do you think I’ll get home and want to stay? That I won’t come back? Because once I get on that plane Friday, I’ll be facing a shitstorm, and so will you. I need to know you trust me.”
I trusted him—didn’t I? I had the first day I’d met him, when I’d turned around and found my gold bracelet pooled in his palm. I’d given and given to him, even when he’d turned me away. Pushed me away. Forced me away. I supposed, though, my trust in him wasn’t complete. Not after what we’d been through.
Something in the Way: A Forbidden Love Saga: The Complete Collection Page 63
