I held my breath, waiting for him to say more, trying to put my thoughts in any sort of order. My chest constricted with the sudden realization that I felt exactly the same way.
Somewhere in between multiple-orgasm tutorials and frantic couch sex and going on dates with a dozen other guys, I’d fallen in love with my roommate—so deep in love there was no hope of digging myself out. I gasped at the realization, but Jordan seemed to take it as encouragement. He settled himself back over me, his chest pressed to my back, his cock parting my legs. “Is that okay with you? Can I make love to you now, Lizzie?”
“God, yes,” I moaned, “Please.”
“What do you want first?”
I wanted out of this dress. I wanted to be truly bare before him. But more than anything, I wanted my panties, which were now sticking to the slickness between my thighs, off. And I wanted his hand in their place. “Touch me,” I managed, my voice breathy, like the next time I tried to get words out, I wouldn’t be able to remember a single one.
When he knelt over me and his hands brushed over my shoulders, I thought he may have misunderstood. I wanted his fingers inside me, slicking through the wetness at my core. I knew, somehow, that he would feel parts of me that other guys hadn’t even bothered to consider, and use them to make my whole body sing. It was all I could think about, and I opened my mouth to demand it.
But then I realized he had read my mind.
His fingers hooked into the straps of my dress and slid it down, his palms smoothing over my hips as he revealed my skin, inch by excruciating inch. By the time he tugged the satin down my calves, the coolness of the fabric making me shiver, I was desperate for him on top of me again. I craved his weight, wanted to be held down, to be claimed, needed to be tethered to one certain place in this crazy life.
“Jordan, please,” I moaned. Another night, I would have been loath to beg him. I would have wanted to be an equal player in every move we made. Something about tonight, though, had me desperate for him to prove himself to me. In what way, I couldn’t articulate. I just knew that after what happened between us tonight, I would have to make a decision about what we were. If we were anything.
Obediently, he straddled my back again, and I thrilled at the solid weight of his body sandwiching my thighs against the sheets. Instead of putting his hands where I so desperately wanted them, though, he slid his chest over my back, and stretched his legs out against mine, blanketing me completely. Between checking on me and being propositioned by me, he had taken off all of his clothes, too, aside from his boxer briefs. His hands snuck under my arms and cupped my shoulders from the front. I shivered at the proximity of his arms to my nipples - just a few inches and my scrap of a bra stood between them. Even though we were both almost completely nude, this was an embrace of reassurance, of comfort.
The dissonance between the two was driving me crazy.
He shifted to the side, lying on one arm and lifting the other to brush my hair from my face, sending his legs slotting between mine. I left my eyes closed. I was afraid of what I’d see if I looked in to his. Sadness? Pity? Or, my greatest hope—something more?
I felt the unmistakable brush of his lips over my eyelids, then their press against my forehead. The perfect mix of warmth and wetness, solid pressure and inviting openness. He moved down, ghosting half-open kisses over my cheekbone, my chin, and the opposite cheek. Another light kiss against my nose made me gasp, so desperate was I to have his lips devouring mine.
He must have read my mind again, because in the next breath, he was drinking me in, running his tongue over my bottom lip, then along the roof of my mouth, making me feel like he was everywhere all at once. I nipped at his top lip, and in that instance, all of his maddening, gentle control fell away. His free hand gripped at my ribs, then palmed my hip, fingers digging in so hard they could have left marks there. I hoped they would. Tomorrow morning, I didn’t want there to be any doubt that this had happened, that it had been as real and solid as any other part of my life.
That it would still be there in the morning.
I squeezed my eyes shut, tight. Don’t think about that now, Liz. Be here. Feel him. Figure this out.
Jordan notched his thumb into the space right over my hip bone and gripped me there, hard. In a flash, his muscled arm had flipped me to my back, and his mouth was dancing over my abdomen like it had been drawn there by a magnet. His tongue dipped into my navel and he groaned. The vibrations from his chest buzzed against my thigh, and I felt myself growing even wetter. “I want to taste you,” he growled as his fingers dragged up to my chest, practically tearing my bra off. “It’s been too long.”
I wouldn’t argue with that. I wiggled my arms like a damn octopus, all in an effort to finally get my bra off and be bare before him that much sooner. His palm cupped my breast as his fingers dug into the top of it, and I arched my back, purring at the contact.
This. This was exactly what I wanted, what I needed - for Jordan to show me that he could make me his, and that I was allowed to crave him this desperately. There was a certain comfort to this frantic push and pull between us, and I wanted to wrap myself in it.
He shifted over me again, letting his chest fall between my legs with a soft grunt. He licked at the seam where my thigh met my center, rasping his teeth against the tendons there, and I cried out. “I need you, Jordan,” I said, breathless and hungry for his mouth to taste the spot where every nerve in my body seemed to lead. He moved his lips in a circle, its diameter drawn an inch from where I really wanted him on all sides. His teeth sunk gently into the flesh of my mons, and I felt a tremor from deep inside me. Hell, he could probably make me come just like this - with his noises and vibrations and all-encompassing closeness.
It was that thought that had me nearly coming undone at the first pass of his fingers down my slit. Every cell of my core was a live wire, and he was turning each one on like a string of so many lights on a freaking Christmas tree.
“Fuck,” I hissed. He seemed to take that as a cue to spring into action—in that instant, two of his long, beautiful, expert fingers pushed into me and his mouth fell on my clit. He lapped at it insistently, his breaths coming faster in time with his hand pumping in and out, the edge of his palm smacking my ass with every pass.
My walls squeezed in syncopation, making my channel tighter as I anticipated each of his thrusts. I was slowly combusting, every process in my body an inevitable series of reactions that would completely unravel me, and I was feeling it all happen, second by second.
Then, something I didn’t expect—he flipped his hand, palm up, and curled his finger against my upper wall, pressing into the spot just inside my pubic bone. It was like a match dropped in a puddle of gasoline. A scream tore out of my throat and filled the room, the energy pouring itself out of my body and continuing in a long, satisfied moan of shocked, all-encompassing pleasure.
I whimpered as he slowly drew his fingers out of me, even as he left his mouth open and licking gently over my lips. When my breaths slowed, he slid his body up to align with mine again, then drew his hand up to his mouth, slowly pushing the two fingers he’d just had inside me between his lips. A fresh wave of desire flooded me, so intense that I couldn’t even make myself move. My answering whimper seemed to satisfy, him, though, and he moved his hand to cup my jaw and slotted his mouth over mine in a long, soft, slow kiss, filled with emotion.
I squeezed my eyes shut, knowing that if I looked into his right now I might cry, or look away, or be too scared to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do next, and ruin everything. Whatever this was, besides me being in love with my roommate, I certainly didn’t want it to stop right now because of my own senseless tears.
“Please, Jordan,” I whispered, begging him for what I’d so desperately wanted since I’d laid eyes on him tonight. I couldn’t do it anymore. My breath stilled in my throat for agonizing seconds of nothing—no answer, no contact—from Jordan. And then his hips notched over mine, and relief sank i
nto my stomach, bleeding over my entire body.
“Liz,” he said, his voice rough but somehow quiet. “Lizzie.” His knees pressed deep on either side of my thighs, trapping me there. I had no desire to escape. “Liz, look at me.”
I snapped my eyes open, powerless under his command, those words spoken in that voice. Really, I wanted to look at him. I wanted this to be honest in whatever way it could be, even if that was only through a teary gaze. He had just given me the signal I needed to be brave enough to do it.
“Oh, Liz,” he groaned. All at once, he kissed me, his tongue plunging into my mouth, my fingers fisted at his hair, and he surged straight into my dripping wet center.
We moved together in what was the most desperate, yet intensely focused, experience of my life. He plunged in and I clenched around him, welcoming his invasion, desperate for him never to leave. He pulled out and I spread wide, hungry for him to fill me again. Every moment with him was lived in pursuit of the next, because I knew it would be even better than the last.
We were chasing orgasms together, both for ourselves and each other. It seemed that any movement that sent me hurtling even further down that path elicited a proportional groan from him. It was just motivation to get him to make a louder, more interesting sound with the next rock of my hips into his.
For the first time in my life, the challenge of dancing right on the edge of orgasm was fun. Like even if it took a while or something weird happened or even if the whole chase failed miserably, I would still have thoroughly enjoyed myself, tangled up in a pile of sweaty, naked limbs with Jordan. Just being with him, so close, so intimate, struck me as a worthy activity all on its own.
Though, that didn’t matter right now, because the rock-hard, insistent stroke of him in and out of me, the way he filled me perfectly and kept my body dancing along that fine edge of just-enough and too-much, was not even close to failing. The only thing I was failing at right now was lasting longer than a few minutes of this.
That brought a little smirk to my face. Usually, it was the guy who had trouble lasting, and here I was with a boyfriend who had me completely satisfied and spent, twice, within a handful of minutes.
Except he wasn’t my boyfriend. And he couldn’t be.
Dammit.
Any emotions I might have had the chance to feel over that, though, were interrupted by Jordan sucking love bites up my neck, then worrying at my earlobe with his teeth. He hit a nerve that ended way south, and I arched up and moaned.
“Tell me what you want, Liz.”
“You. Just you.” The words fell out of my mouth before I could even think of saying it, like it was waiting on my tongue for my guard to be let down for just one second.
He stopped moving and propped up on his elbows, staring down at me. I was terrified to look back. I didn’t want to see disappointment, or stress, or, honestly, negativity of any kind. When I finally brought myself to raise my eyes to his, though, the only thing written in his expression was patience. Openness. A quiet stare that brought my heart to a stuttering stop.
Bending back down to me slowly, he pressed a firm, quiet kiss on my mouth, then dragged his lips just enough to the side to let him get the words out. “Me too. You.”
“I’m yours,” I replied, my voice trembling. “Take me.”
Jordan’s demeanor shifted then. Instead of focused and relentless, driving into me like it was the last thing he’d ever do, he settled against me, bracketing his chest to mine with arms hooked behind me, fingertips pressing firm into my shoulders. He propped his forehead against mine, gave me another slow kiss, and started to move again.
This time, he rocked steadily into me, slow and strong, like we had all the time in the world, like this was the first of thousands of times we’d have the luxury of figuring out all the different ways we could make each other come.
And oh hell, was this ever a different way. Instead of his hips snapping a maddening rhythm against my clit, they were now engaged in a slow, soft grind. The sensation of it was dragging me back to the top of a climax so steadily, yet deliciously, that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to get there or just stay in this warm, tingling, teasing suspension of almost-bliss.
His forehead remained pressed to mine, occasionally moving down to my temple when he would groan or shift, and I took advantage of that perfect full mouth hovering over mine to aim kisses at. Some instinct I’d never felt before overtook me, and I took my time licking my way past his lips, cataloguing the frequency of the hums and moans moving from his throat, swallowing them eagerly.
If we hadn’t been going so slow, or pressed so close, I never would have felt him becoming even harder inside me. But he was, and I did, and now, in addition to the pressure on my clit, there was a new something his cock was doing inside me. The hot friction against one spot on my inside upper wall scratched a barely-there point of need that I didn’t even know existed, and with every point of contact, I lost more ability to breathe, to see, to think, to remember my own name.
I’d had orgasms before, of course. I’d even had some incredible ones with Jordan. But none of them had ever felt like the one that overtook me then—like my entire body had been replaced with some ethereal substance and I had completely ceased to exist.
I didn’t even recognize the noises coming out of my own mouth.
None of my senses returned back to normal until Jordan lay on top of me, panting, his erection softening slightly between my legs. The sounds of his breathlessness mingling with mine only turned me on for another round I knew I was too exhausted to take part in. I couldn’t bring myself to care, really.
After what had been a crazy few months, I was overwhelmed with the feeling flooding me now—that I was really, truly comfortable. Finally home.
I didn’t want to let him go, but the boneless, satisfied feeling he’d given me wouldn’t let me keep my eyes open much longer, either. I pressed my face into his neck, giggling at his quick breaths slowly spacing out, and kissed him there. I didn’t know how to define what had just happened between us, but I knew for sure that I wouldn’t be able to talk about it until I’d gotten a good night’s sleep.
A few hours later, a chill skittered across my skin, and I shivered, pulling his silky sheets up over my waist. I felt his name dropping off my lips, and then heard the distant echo of his voice ricocheting in a coarse, short whisper off our walls. “I don’t fucking care, you don’t leave a girl on her own on the streets of Philly.”
He sounded so pissed and so anguished at the same time. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I felt all warm and fuzzy all over again, and drifted back off to sleep.
Chapter 21
Jordan
I woke up, once again, to bright sunlight warming my body, casting mesmerizing patterns over my crumpled sheets and, best of all, over Liz’s soft waves of golden hair currently blanketing my chest.
Fuck friends-with-benefits arrangements and internships and relationship rules. Fuck it all. Fuck everything except how perfect it felt to be snuggled up with this perfect creature.
Liz stirred then, and with her eyes still closed, pressed a kiss against my chest. That was all it took for my dick, which was already in alert mode just by virtue of it being morning, to twitch happily.
I tilted her chin up with two fingers, bringing her lips to mine for a long kiss, savoring the soft “mmm” she hummed against my mouth. I didn’t care about morning breath, not today. The knowledge that I was kissing Liz was so delicious that I barely noticed the soft ping of my phone at my bedside.
Liz tensed, under my hands, not much, but enough for me to feel it. “Need to get that?” she asked with a tentative smile. I shrugged, hoping to stretch out this moment even longer, but Liz had already done a fast ninja roll over top of me and down my other side, snatching my phone. She nuzzled her face back into my chest and pressed the phone into my hand. “Who could be calling you on a Saturday morning?” she asked.
I blinked, hard, fumbled for my glasses where I sw
ore I’d felt them next to my pillow, and shoved them on my face. I moved the phone in and out in front of my face a couple times before I could focus on the words in the text, and grunted out a laugh.
“What?” Liz asked, craning her neck up to look.
* * *
Kiera: How was Lizzie P’s date last night?
* * *
“She probably wants the scoop before Philly Illustrated gets it. Here, give it to me.”
Before I could protest, Liz yanked the phone out of my hands and hit a bunch of thumbs-up emojis, then pressed send.
Seconds later, the phone dinged again.
* * *
Kiera: ???
Kiera: Call me.
* * *
I chuckled, hoping it sounded casual enough that Liz would interpret Kiera’s message that way too. But I knew that when Kiera demanded a call from me, she meant business. Somehow, some way, I was in trouble.
I pressed a kiss to the top of Liz’s head and then slid out of bed, snagging a pair of pajama pants from the floor and stepping into them as I stood. “I’m gonna go grab some breakfast. From Joey and Hawk’s, of course.”
“And I’m gonna go back to sleep,” she murmured with a sleepy smile.
My shirt from last night was crumpled on the floor, and I snagged it in one finger before putting my hand on the doorknob. Liz was already drifting back off to sleep, her makeup-free face sweet and without worry against her pillow. The sight of her, the memory of what we’d done last night, and the lingering scent of her perfume on my skin all mingled together, hitting me hard in the chest. I staggered backward, bumping painfully into the corner of my dresser beside the door.
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