She leans over me, breasts brushing my chest, and kisses me. It's a soft, slow kiss. And all too brief. She pulls away, kisses the corner of my mouth, teasing me with the idea of another kiss, but then pulls her lips away from mine and kisses my chest. My stomach. Her hand above mine, still moving. Kisses my stomach. She glances up at me, hesitant. And then she lets go of me.
"Don't you dare stop, Lock," she says. "You're close. I can see it. Don't stop."
I keep my hand moving, jerking slowly up and down. I watch as she kisses her way down my body. Glances up at me, now and then. Reaches the tip of my erection. Glances up at me again, eyes full of need and trouble and so many emotions I don't know the names of them all. Places her palms on my thighs. Slides them up my body, and then back down. Surrounds my erection and my sac with her hands, touching, cupping, sliding back up my belly. Kisses one hipbone. Then the other.
God. Oh, god.
I can't help the words, now. "Jesus, Niall. I'm so close. I'm right there, I'm about to come."
"Yes, Lock, come for me. Let me watch. Let me see it." She whispers this against the taut skin of my erection.
I flex my hips into my hand, which now flashes up and down hard and fast.
She touches my wrist. "Go slow. Take your time. Make it last."
I slow down, but it's impossible to go slow when I'm so close. But she's got her hand on mine, as before, feeling me as I stroke myself to release as slowly as I can. Slowly, for her.
And then, fuck, fuck, fuck, she's got me in her mouth. Just a tiny taste. I nearly lose it, but hold it back. But then I can't hold back. Not when she does it again, taking me in her mouth, so wet, so warm, so soft, so fucking incredible. I groan her name in a drawn-out moan. Fist my fingers in her hair, involuntarily. Struggling for control. Her hand still on top of mine, guiding the pace of my strokes. Her tongue flicking and licking in circles against the tip.
I arch off the bed, fighting for enough control that I don't lose it in her mouth without warning, so I don't fuck into her mouth like the wild animal I feel like right now.
"NIALL--fuck, fuck, Niall, you have to stop. I'm--god, god, oh god, you have to stop or I'm--fuck, I'm coming. Right now, I'm coming, Niall--"
I feel it, can't stop it. No control anymore. She backs off at the very last second, letting me pop free with a loud noise, and then I'm jerking my erection into my hand, into hers wrapped around me. I spasm, and come all over myself. All over my hand, all over hers, all over my stomach. But after the first spasm, she knocks away my hand and buries me in between her lips, and takes the rest in her mouth, sucks it all out of me, moaning, and gliding her soft, strong hand all over me, up and down and up and down until I swear I come a second time, or more, or something, I don't even know what it is except another powerful, ripping, spastic explosion of gutting bliss.
I gasp and go limp. "God, Niall. Holy shit."
She's using the robe to wipe me clean, and then she's tugging at the terrycloth knot and jerking it out from beneath me, wiping her hand and mine, her mouth, and tossing the robe aside.
I watch this, gasping for breath.
I shake my head, rocked to speechlessness by the vision of her. Up on her knees, breasts bared over the top of her sundress, hair coming free of the tie at the back of her head, wisping around her face in ringlets, dress wrinkled and rucked around her thighs.
Lunging up and forward, I wrap my hands around the backs of her thighs, grip, feeling the muscular strength under the soft pale skin, and then slide my palms up to cup her ass. Tug her closer, closer, and she moves on her knees to straddle me, dress stretching across her thighs and then her hips. I brush the hem up, up, until it's bunched above her hips, baring her core for me. And yeah, she's not wearing any panties. She straddles me, moving over my thighs, my hips. Letting my slack manhood slide between her thighs, grinding on me, skin hot now, and softer than silk. I lay back, pulling her closer. Confused, she moves with my guiding touch, up over my stomach, my chest. Falls forward and grips the headboard, staring down at me in consternation.
"Lock?" Her voice is tremulous.
I have no words for her now. Only my tongue and lips all over her thighs and core. She rocks, groans. Tastes so sweet, so smoky, a taste I could lap up and never get enough of. I cup her ass with one hand, encouraging her to move. Encourage her to ride me. Slide two fingers inside her, spear them in and out. And god, she's so tight two fingers is all I can fit. She moans, rocks, moves.
"Lock, oh fuck, Lock. God, this feels amazing."
She lets go of the headboard with one hand and stabs her fingers into my hair, grips a handful and pulls my face against her, taking all she wants from me. Her hips are grinding in circles, and I feel her clenching around my fingers. She's moaning and whimpering, eyes open and staring down at me in an expression of wild, uninhibited need conflicting with amazement and bliss and the ever-present confusion as to what the fuck is going on between us. But she doesn't stop, continues to ride my tongue until her movements are stuttering and fluttering and her fingers are gripped painfully tight in my hair.
"Lock, Lock...LOCK!" She loses it, then, with my name shouted from her lips, shuddering, shaking, crying out wordlessly and grinding hard as I lick and slide my fingers in and out until she's limp and collapsing down, sliding down my body to lie on top of me, involuntarily shuddering as aftershocks rip through her.
"Shit, Lock. I haven't felt anything like that in--" She shakes her head against my chest, shrugging. "Ever, maybe." She lifts up, brows scrunched, eyes wide, lip quivering. "And that scares the hell out of me."
I smooth my hand in circles on her back. "I know what you mean."
"Do you?"
I nod. "Yeah. What I feel with you, what you make me feel?" I shrug, at a loss for words. "It's like nothing I've ever felt. I don't know what it means or how to deal with how intense I feel everything with you."
"Not the same, though." She traces idle patterns on my chest with a finger. "That's not the same as what I'm saying."
"What are you saying, then?"
A long pause, and then she sniffles. Flattens her left hand on my chest--she took her rings off. The skin is whiter where the rings used to be, indented slightly. "I had something amazing, with--with...with Oliver. And it really was amazing. Really amazing. Once in a lifetime beautiful. But...this?" She digs her fingertips into the muscle of my chest, sniffling yet again. "Whatever this crazy thing is between you and me, it's...so intense. I feel things, Lock...I feel things with you that I--that I've never...that I've never felt before. Such crazy, intense things I didn't even know were possible. And that hurts, and it's confusing, but it's so addictive."
"Niall, I--"
She's not done, though. "I want to tell you to leave. I don't know how to--how to deal with the fact that you've got--that you have--" she obviously can't even say it, placing her left hand over my heart, feeling it beat like a kick drum in my chest, but she continues in a ragged whisper, "...you have his heart. You're nothing like him. I don't mean that as a bad thing. You're just totally different people. But you have his...his heart. You have my...you have Ollie's...heart." That last word is a broken sound.
I try again, even though I have no idea what's going to come out. "Shit, Niall. I'm sorry. I wish--"
"Don't!" she snaps. "Don't you fucking dare wish that. It's not going to bring him back, and I'm not going to wish you weren't alive. Because...because I'm finally feeling again, Lock. I was numb, ever since his death. All I felt was hurt and pain and anger and confusion and loss. And I couldn't keep feeling that, but I couldn't make it go away or get over it, so I just...I numbed myself. With wine, with whiskey, with work, with staying home and going to sleep however I could and going to work, and just...existing, until I was numb.
"Then you showed up--and I--I'm finally alive again, Lock. And the thing is, being alive again fucking hurts, it hurts so bad, Lock." Now she's crying, saying these words through tears. "It hurts. Feelings hurt. I don't know how to be without
Ollie. I don't know how to...how to let myself feel good things without feeling guilty, because he's not here to feel those good things with me, and it's someone else making me feel those good things. How can I let that happen? He was the love of my life, and he's gone, and I shouldn't ever feel good things again, should I? But I--I want to feel them. I fucking--god, I can't get enough of how you make me feel. And I hate myself for that, but...I can't stop wanting more.
"I masturbated thinking about you too, right before I came here. I couldn't help it. I couldn't help masturbating to you, and I couldn't help coming here, knowing we'd do this, knowing how it would make me feel, both so good and so bad. Not good-bad, but confused bad. Guilty. Sick to my stomach and dizzy with anticipation and so eager for more I don't know how to contain it. I need this, Lock. I need what you make me feel. Because it means I'm alive, but I don't want to be alive, not without Ollie, but I know I have to be. I have to live. I have to...move on. I have to let him go. But how? How, Lock? How do I do that?"
"I don't know," I whisper. "I don't know."
I have so much going on inside me. Guilt. Need. Confusion. Fear. All layered above and in and around this other feeling, a new feeling I don't have words for. I can't even wrap my head around it. It's an immense, intense emotion centered around Niall, and it's not about sex, not really. It's not about her body. It's not even about my heart, the heart in my chest. It's...something more. Something deeper. Sharper. Bigger. It cuts. It rips. It swells so my chest feels like it's cracking open. It's the feeling of dizziness, right before you fall off a cliff.
I did that once, fell off a cliff by accident. I was climbing straight up a sheer cliff face in one of those remote Chinese fishing villages where the mountains are spires spiking out of the sea. I don't remember everything, just that I was a hundred feet up, no ropes, just my hands and feet and the stone. I reached for a handhold, felt the wind snatch me right off the cliff face and toss me like a doll out into space, free-wheeling, arms flying, pinwheeling. I just barely missed being smashed on the rocks, and I hit the water like a ton of bricks, so hard I couldn't breathe. Only instinct saved me, kept me fighting for the surface, fighting for breath, even though I was in agony, wondering if maybe I'd crushed all my bones on the impact of my fall.
I feel like that now. I'm drowning. Free-wheeling, pinwheeling through space, stomach in my throat, no up, no down, no surface to hold on to, only something sharp and hard beneath, waiting to smash me to pieces.
And here she is, pouring her heart out to me. Spilling everything, braver than I could ever hope to be.
I can't speak. My tongue might as well have been ripped out of my head for all that I'm capable of speaking.
Fear is a serpent in my chest, pumping venom in my veins. I want to run. But I can't. I can't. But I also don't want to run, because she's in my arms and nothing has ever felt so good, nothing has ever felt like this, like her. God, there's never been anything like her in my life, and I've got her in my arms and I don't dare let go. Don't fucking dare.
But, god, I'm so paralyzed it's painful. I'm not even breathing.
And then she lifts up, forearm braced on my chest, hair a loose wild fall of curls on my skin, eyes the color and shape of almonds streaked with green, fingers tapping unconsciously along with the rhythm of my heartbeat, her eyes on mine. Piercing, seeing so much, too much.
"Lock?" She's searching me with those eyes. Seeing all, or seeing nothing, I don't know. "Say something."
"I--" I shake my head, as if to shake words loose. "Niall..."
What do I say? How do I put into words what I can't even put into thoughts in my own head?
All I can do is kiss her.
I roll over with her, cup her face in my hands and kiss her, trying to show through the kiss the ineffable, unfathomable feelings I can't express. Through the kiss, I hope she'll begin to understand what I sure as fuck don't.
At the risk of sounding like a fuckboy douchebag...I've kissed a lot of girls. I've had an uncountable number of hot-and-heavy makeout sessions, so I know how to kiss. I know how to turn a woman on just with kisses.
Nothing in my life, no woman, no encounter, no kiss could have ever prepared me for the next sixty seconds. I know it's exactly sixty seconds because right before I kiss her the clock on the bedside table flicks from 11:31 p.m. to 11:32 p.m. I watch the red lines forming the numeral change and then I lean in and our lips are fused, and my life is irrevocably altered.
We kiss.
Not for the first time, but it's a minute of my life that I know will always be indelibly imprinted on my mind as the most important kiss, the most important minute of my life.
And then I open my eyes just in time to see the clock change from 11:32 p.m. to 11:33 p.m.
I don't really have words for the kiss.
It's so much more than the meeting of lips. So much more than tongues tangling. It's...
See? I don't even know.
It's the feeling of my heart being ripped open, the long-fallow soil of my soul churned and tilled. It's a feeling of belonging, a sensation utterly alien to someone like me. It's a wanting to belong. Needing something I've never wanted. Something, as Niall said, I didn't even know existed. Except for her, she's talking about physical sensation, and for me this is...deeper. Something...more.
And yes, the way she makes me feel, the way everything with her feels is so much more. We're not doing anything I've never done before, nor do I think any of this is new for her. But something about the way it is between us is...different. More, for the lack of a better word. More, in the way the heat of the sun is more than the flames of a bonfire.
That one kiss, and I knew what it was I was feeling; it's an emotion I am simply unprepared to accept. Unable to accept. Incapable of comprehending. I can't even think it. This isn't denial, it's the sheer incapacity to wrap my head around a concept so unutterably, inconceivably massive and strange.
I just can't.
Cannot.
All this in the space of sixty seconds. One minute of kissing a woman, and I am a man turned inside out and spun in circles so I can't find up, can't stand on my own two feet. I'm shattered.
By a kiss.
I break away from her, roll off and slide off the bed, stagger backward, rubbing my wrist across my mouth as if to wipe away the stain of change. As if I could wipe away the effect of that kiss.
As if I could ever go back to the person I was before that kiss.
The word thuds and thunders through my mind, it sears across my soul in lightning-white letters:
L
O
V
E
The word arrives in my brain unbidden, with no context, no surrounding thoughts. It might as well be a neon sign, so brilliantly clear is this epiphany.
And how do I handle it?
I freak the fuck out.
The worst me is just a long gone memory
I'll never forget the look on his face as he lurches off the bed and stumbles away from me. It's an expression of stunned and fearful befuddlement. He doesn't know what's hit him. He doesn't know what it is, what to say, what to feel. Or how to handle it. I don't know what he's feeling, or what he's thinking, or what he's afraid of, or what's confusing him. I just know he's totally overwhelmed.
I get it. That kiss was one of the most intense kisses of my life. Maybe the most. I get it. I don't say this, because I can't help him through this. Either he's man enough to handle this, or he's not. I see it in him, the war, the fear, and the panic.
I sense what he's afraid of, and I don't dare examine it too closely myself, because I'll panic, too. Surely it can't be that. That word, that feeling, that emotion.
But what if it is?
If he were to be man enough, strong enough, brave enough to be what I need to get through the pain, it could be beautiful, between us. But it all rests on him.
And I sense he's not used to putting effort into anything. He's coasted through life. Never had anyone depend on him; never
had anyone expect anything of him. This, what's building here? It would demand a lot of him. I would expect a lot of him.
"Lock," I whisper, because I feel like a normal speaking voice could spook him. "Lock, just...breathe. It's okay."
"I don't know how to do this." He doesn't whisper, he speaks in a low rumble from across the bedroom.
Naked, and so gorgeous. All hard planes in the moonlight, thick muscles and tan skin and taut curves, grooves of definition and slabs of bulk. Thick, shaggy, wild hair loose around his shoulders, his beard a tangle. All man, masculine, rugged, sensual, sexual.
"You don't have to know," I tell him. "Not right off the bat. We can figure this out."
"I don't know what this is."
"Hell, neither do I."
I move off the bed and stand a couple of feet away from him. My dress is a mess, the top tugged down under my breasts, the hem shoved up around my hips. I stare at him, wanting him, not wanting to deal with these emotions right now. I want the physical. I want his hands, his mouth, his manhood. I want to forget all this intensity and just feel like a...woman, again. I forgot, for a while, what that means. How it feels.
It's a need.
Sultry, sensual, sexuality. Knowing myself, knowing what I want, and not being afraid to go after it.
I let out a breath, because I came here for him, wanting him, wanting something I'm not sure I should have, wanting something so bad I can taste it. It's not forbidden, but it still feels wrong, somehow. We're two consenting adults, neither of us committed to anyone else. And that's the problem, for me. I am committed to someone, but he's dead. And his heart beats inside the chest of the man I want.
Dammit, it's too confusing.
It's just easier to not think about it. It's easier to let my hormones drown out my thoughts. Easier to stare at Lock's beautiful body, easier to think about those big, talented hands on my skin, that nimble tongue slippery and firm and tasting every erogenous zone I have, and some I didn't know I had. It's easier to tell myself that later will be soon enough to think things through, later is soon enough to sort out my heart and mind and body.
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