Body and Soul

by Lucy Lennox

  “Gonna be a rough ride, baby. You ready for that?” I asked as I shoved deeper into him.

  “Ungh,” was all he managed to get out.

  I fucked him hard and fast, taking him to the edge repeatedly, but never letting him go over it. He was begging me by the time my own orgasm hovered just below the surface of my skin.

  “Grab your cock,” I demanded.

  “Please,” he whimpered. I could tell I was losing him to his impending orgasm. His body was turning to jelly and his legs were barely holding him up. “I… I can’t…”

  “Cock, baby. Get yourself off. Do it now.”

  “But…”

  I slammed into him hard, using one hand on his shoulder to hold him in place. The other I curled around his hip to offer some leverage for the brutal pounding I was giving him. We were both dripping with sweat and our panting had long ago fogged up the edges of the mirror.

  “Open your eyes, Oz,” I said, reaching up to grab his chin and lift his face to the mirror.

  “Jake,” he whimpered.

  “Look at us together–watch what you do to me. Just like that,” I bit out as I draped my body over his, forcing him flush against the vanity. I curled my arms around him and pounded him hard. I bit down on the sensitive shell of his ear. “Come for me, baby,” I said. “Wanna feel your tight ass wrapped around my dick so good that it’s like you’re never gonna let me go.”

  Oz let out a little cry as his fingers curled around the forearm I had wrapped around his collarbone. He screamed when he came, then bit down on my arm. I buried my nose against the back of his neck as his body clamped down on mine.

  “Jesusfuckingchrist,” I muttered. One of my hands was resting on his belly, so I felt his cum hit the back of it when he came.

  And came.

  And came.

  He was still spasming around me when I couldn’t hold back anymore and gave into my need to let go. I surged into him over and over as my release filled the condom. Seconds or minutes passed, I wasn’t sure. But when I collapsed onto his back, Oz was practically dead weight beneath me. I had a feeling I was the only thing keeping him upright.

  “You okay?” I asked when I managed to find my voice.

  “Nrngh.”

  “I’m going to take that as a yes,” I said. “But if it isn’t, feel free to bite me even harder.”

  I felt a rumble of laughter go through Oz as he carefully removed his teeth from my arm. “Sorry,” he muttered.

  “You better not be,” I said as I eased my hold on him just a little. “That was hot as fuck.”

  “Good, because I’m not actually sorry,” he murmured, then turned his head just enough that I knew what he wanted. I kissed him as best I could, considering our positions, then carefully withdrew my spent cock from his body. He let out a little grunt but didn’t move when I straightened and disposed of the condom. I took the opportunity to get the shower started, then helped him to stand before turning him to face me. I was surprised when he pushed into my arms and buried his face against my neck. I was startled to feel something hot and wet against my skin a second later.

  “Hey, what’s this?” I asked as I forced his head up. And it was exactly as I’d feared.

  He was crying.

  “Sorry,” he said as he dashed at his tears.

  “Talk to me. Did I hurt you?”

  “No,” he said before I could even finish the question. “No, I just…”

  “Just what?” I asked as I rubbed my hand up and down his back.

  “How am I supposed to let you go after all this?” he asked as he dropped his eyes.

  My stomach dropped out at his words. I hadn’t even considered that I might not be the only one struggling with what the future held. I dropped a kiss to his head as I pulled him back against me. We were quiet for a long time. My stomach was in knots as I considered what to do.

  Staying was stupid and dangerous.

  But only to my heart.

  Because there was absolutely no reason to think that my presence in Haven was putting anyone in immediate danger. I’d worked long and hard to get lost and I’d done an admirable job. A couple more months wouldn’t change that, right?

  “Oz, baby, look at me,” I said as I leaned back enough so I could force his head up. I waited until our eyes met. “You’re leaving in February, correct? You’ve got your thing back in New York then, don’t you?”

  He nodded morosely. “Fashion Week.”

  I took in a deep breath. “Okay, so here’s the deal… if you want it, I mean. I leave when you do.”

  “Wh–what?” he asked in surprise.

  “The second you drive out of Haven, I do too. Until then, it can be as much or as little of this” –I motioned between us– “as you want.”

  “Really?”

  “Really. But it’s temporary, Oz. I can’t… I can’t change the way things are and I need you to not ask me why. This is as much as I can give you,” I said, hating the words even as I spoke them. What I wouldn’t give to be able to offer him more… to give him what he deserved. “If that’s what you want—”

  He kissed me to silence me. “It is,” he said. “I want it, Jake. More than you know.”

  Another kiss and then he was wrapping his arms around me.

  Uncertainty and relief warred deep inside of me. Had I just made things worse by prolonging the inevitable? And worse for who?

  Oz?

  Or me?

  I had a sneaking suspicion the answer was both.

  Chapter 15

  Oz

  After a big breakfast that included another truckload of fat-laden but delicious food from Jake’s cabin, I found my guy dozing face-first on the sofa by the roaring fire with Boo curled up like a queen on his lower back.

  The storm had finally passed, leaving nearly a foot of soft snow piled up everywhere outside. It was certainly gorgeous, but according to Jake, it meant we were stuck on the mountain for a few days until the plows could get to us.

  As I stared at the rounded curve of Jake’s ass in flannel pajama bottoms, I could think of worse situations to be stuck in.

  I was way too hyper to sleep anymore, so I cleared off the breakfast table and laid out the supplies I needed to start cutting fabric for my first pattern. I had a makeshift dress form I pulled out of a storage closet behind the kitchen and began carefully draping cheap muslin fabric on it so I could make mistakes in the draping without damaging the fancy fabric that would actually be used in the gown.

  While I pinned and tucked and draped, I thought about my goals for this collection.

  Before leaving New York, I’d submitted my application to show at Fashion Week and had made sure my contacts at the fashion council knew to look out for it. There was a smaller group of indie designers hosting a more toned-down show during Fashion Week in a large gallery space. They’d offered me a chance to participate in their show if I wasn’t accepted into the big show. It would only be a week or so more until I heard back about whether or not I had a spot in the larger show, but several of my contacts in the industry had implied they’d be crazy not to use the allure of my name to attract attention and attendance to the show.

  As I began to see the shape of the skirt come together, I felt nerves come alive in my stomach. The collection would be presented by me as a regular guy, but everyone would consider it “Laird’s” collection nonetheless. My agent, Aiden Vale, and I had discussed the issue at length. He’d tried to make the point that showing under my supermodel name would bring fantastic press and exposure to the new endeavor, but something about going into the design world under my model name made me feel very uncomfortable.

  “Why are you frowning?”

  I looked up to see Jake watching me from his sprawl on the couch. I hadn’t realized time had passed, but there was significantly less light in the room than there had been, and the fire had died down.

  “Oh. Just thinking about what name to show this collection under. Any ideas?” I said, putting a f
inal pin in the form and watching the whole thing fall to the ground and break into four pieces. “What the fuck?”

  Jake urged Boo off his back and jumped up to come help me pick it up, but we realized pretty quickly it was broken.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Jake asked.

  I blew out a frustrated breath. “Well, it got banged up in the move, and I’ve just been trying to make it work as best I can. I think part of the problem is the weight of the fabric in a full gown. I was able to drape a silk chiffon design on it just fine because the fabric was gauzy and light, but this gown is going to be made from suiting. The damned dress form can’t even handle the muslin.”

  Bless his heart, Jake looked at me like I’d just spoken Mandarin Chinese.

  “It done got broke,” I said with a wink.

  His confusion turned to a smirk. “Now that, I understand. Let me see what I can do.”

  I pulled off all the fabric I’d spent so much time draping and pinning. Luckily, I’d snapped a few photos of it on my phone to text to Zoey during the process, so I’d be able to recreate it when the form was back together.

  Once I removed the pins and muslin, Jake sat on the floor with the pieces. “Hm, is this how it goes? Like a mannequin without… a head or limbs?”

  I nodded. “The way I design gowns, I have to have something like a dress form, but I swear to god I haven’t been able to find one that can take the beatings I seem to dish out.”

  Jake seemed to think of a way to rig it back together because he looked up at me with victory in his eyes. “I’ve got the best tool ever over at my place. Be right back.”

  After shoving on his parka and stepping into his boots, he reached for the door. I turned back to my worktable to organize my pin stash again when I heard Jake murmur to my dog, “Come on, Princess Cujo. Out we go. We’re going on a search and rescue mission.”

  Boo sauntered out of the place with her head held high while Jake held the door for her. My heart squeezed tightly as I witnessed him through the window talking to her the whole way across the yard. What a fucking sheep in wolf’s clothing. He tried so hard to keep people at arm’s length, but then he went and sweet-talked my baby girl.

  The scene reminded me of how I got Boo in the first place, and I thought about how different my life was already than it had been two years ago. Even though I’d only been in Haven for a little less than a month, I already felt more like myself. Being away from the cutthroat environment of the modeling world was so freeing. And the people I’d met were genuine and kind.

  Once I’d finished with pins, I went into the kitchen and started a fresh pot of coffee. I didn’t have any packaged cookies left and it drove me crazy to serve coffee without them. So I quickly scrounged for the frozen tube of ready-made cookie dough I’d bought in a moment of self-pity at the store. It wasn’t much, but I could now cut and bake with the best of them, and just that simple act steadied me.

  By the time they were ready to put in the oven, Jake had come back and was making noise in the main room as he worked on resurrecting my dress form. I heard the clickclick of Boo’s toenails on the floor as she rushed over to her bed by the fire to get warm. I left them to it while I waited for the cookies to be ready and scrounged in the fridge for some dinner ideas. I had plenty of chicken in the freezer but was getting low on fresh vegetables. Since food delivery wasn’t even an option on the mountain, I’d had to become adept at cooking pretty quickly. Though adept was probably stretching it a bit. But I was finding I liked the challenge of having to buy actual food at a grocery store and make it into something edible.

  “You have any veggies at your place?” I called out.

  “Yes. I wish you’d asked me that before I braved the cold for my tools, though,” he teased back. “I could have grabbed my sprouts.”

  I couldn’t hold back a laugh. I wandered over to where he sat on the floor with his toolbox and wrapped my arms around his neck, leaning down to put my mouth next to the back of his ear.

  “I can grab your sprouts if you want,” I suggested in a purr. “Just say the word.”

  His entire body shuddered and I heard a violent ripping sound.

  “What the hell was that?” I asked, looking over his shoulder to see where the sound came from. The entire dress form was put back together and wrapped a million times over with duct tape. “Oh. I see. Duct tape for the win, huh?”

  I bit my lip to keep from laughing as Jake turned to me with a giant, proud grin. “One of the most crucial items every backpacker carries with them. Fixes anything.”

  He stood the form back up on the stand again. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that my model ceased being an industry size two about fifteen layers of tape earlier.

  “Thank you,” I said through the giggles that finally burst forth. “I think I might try my hand at designing for the plus-sized model now, just for fun.”

  Jake’s face fell as he turned back to his masterpiece.

  “Shit, Oz. I’m sorry. I ruined it.”

  I walked around and lowered myself until I was straddling his lap on the floor. “The laugh made it worthwhile. And believe me, that bitch was broken before you arrived. It’s okay.”

  As I spoke, Jake’s eyes traveled from my eyes to my lips and back again, turning hungrier and hungrier by the minute. His pink tongue came out to lick his lips and I discovered they looked like plump cherries from close up.

  “Plus, I have an idea for how you can pay me back,” I whispered before leaning in to take a bite.

  Chapter 16

  Jake

  The next time Oz mentioned payback, I needed to remember not to assume it included sexy times. Shortly after the sexiest make-out session in the world, he stood up and told me what the payback really was.

  And that’s how I ended up standing in his living room wearing half of a couture evening gown four hours later.

  “I don’t think I’m the ideal candidate to wear this,” I grumbled.

  Oz’s blue eyes were shining with mirth. I narrowed mine at him, even though he was goddamned adorable.

  “But you look divine, darling,” he gushed dramatically. “All the rage. This season we’re going for a very masc look with our models.”

  “What does ‘couture’ even mean?” I asked. “Is that just another word for fancy and expensive?”

  “Handcrafted and very high-end. They are pieces almost exclusively made for the runway rather than ready-to-wear commercial sales. It’s a great way to go into exquisite detail on a show piece especially. It means tons of detail work done by hand and custom fitting,” Oz explained. “If you were to have the design manufactured, you’d have to change the specs and downgrade it, so to speak.”

  I ran my hands across the smooth fabric of the skirt folds. It wasn’t closed in the back, rather, it was held together with a scrap of fabric tied around my waist. Once he’d begun draping on the duct-taped form, he’d quickly assessed it was truly bigger than I was around the waist and hips. That’s all it had taken for him to put me to work as his stand-in dress form.

  I twisted a little to watch the fabric move. “I like this fabric. It’s funky. Not what I would have guessed for an evening gown,” I said, unable to keep my fingers off it.

  Oz knelt in front of me while he adjusted one of the folds with a pin taken from between his lips. “Suiting fabric. Not something a gown is typically made with, but it’s Armani. That’s why it feels so good to the touch. That’s called a fabric with a ‘good hand.’ I should hope it feels good, anyway. At almost forty bucks a yard, it better.”

  He brushed non-existent lint off the skirt, deliberately brushing my hungry cock with the move.

  I growled at him. “I got a good hand right here. Let me show you.”

  Oz’s eyes twinkled as he leaned forward and snaked his slender fingers under the skirt to my bare legs below. His warm, smooth touch ran up the backs of my legs, and his face leaned farther in to nuzzle the tent in the front of the skirt.

  “I
s it wrong that you in a gown is doing all kinds of things to my dick?” he mumbled into the expensive fabric.

  “Sweetheart, if you want to keep this fabric from being covered in special sauce, you’d better get it off me right now,” I warned, getting even harder at the sound of my own desperation. My heart was thundering in my chest at the sight of Oz on his knees with his face in my crotch.

  His arms came around my waist to undo the fabric ties and he pulled the contraption off, laying it carefully on a nearby chair before coming back to wrap his arms around my waist again. I leaned down to take his lips with mine.

  “Mm, better,” I breathed into the kiss.

  We toyed with each other’s mouths and tongues until both of us were having trouble dragging in enough air. Oz was rocking his hips into me, and I held on tightly to the firm globes of his delicious ass.

  “Tell me what you want,” I whispered before moving to kiss below his ear. He shivered and moaned a little before answering.

  “Um… oh fuck.” He took in a shaky breath before trying again. “I, well, I… god, that feels amazing…”

  “Say it, Oz. Tell me, what would make you come so hard you pass out?”

  I walked him backward until he hit the wall and ground against him.

  “Tell me,” I repeated with an edge to my voice. I fucking loved seeing his eyes roll back when I got bossy with him like this.

  “Want to get on my hands and knees for you. Want you to fuck me hard and fast like that,” he said through the breaths sawing in and out of him. “Don’t be gentle with me. I want it so much, Jake.”

  His pleas turned breathy at the end, as if he was losing the ability to make actual words. I leaned over and scooped him up into a fireman’s carry and strode quickly into the bedroom before tossing him down.

  “Naked. Hands and knees,” I growled. “You have no idea how badly I want to fuck you like that right now, Oz.”

  I stripped out of the only thing I was wearing, a simple pair of boxer-briefs, and stepped to the side table for the supplies. By the time I grabbed them, Oz was resting on his front with his ass in the air and his face on the mattress, looking at me with those amazing blue eyes.