Beyond Repair (Deeper Than Desire)

by Charlotte Stein

  They could just have this.

  Oh, this, this.

  “You just have to believe in me. Believe that I won’t let you down—that I won’t walk away because you think you can’t give me something. You give me everything. You’ve given me peace and comfort and love. Just let me give the same back to you.”

  And in that moment, she really thought she could. It wasn’t hard to let him come to her, and touch her, and take off those last items of clothing. On the contrary—there was a kind of bliss in it she’d never felt before. She closed her eyes and just drifted on a wave of his careful caresses...the way he stroked the back of his hand down over the burns on her shoulder and collarbone, so soft it barely sparked that prickly feeling, so tender it made her ache right through the middle.

  But best of all...there was no curiosity in it. No lingering on her scars as though they needed prettying up and paying apologetic attention to. He touched the rest of her in the exact same way, with that same sweet deliberation and barely checked lust. His breath caught as his knuckles brushed over the smooth slope of her left breast, and there was barely any difference when he found the knotted star just left of the rich curve of her right hip.

  Everything was given the same weight.

  And that weight seemed to be dragging him down, down, down into the depths of his desire. By the time he got to her underwear he was flushed and feverish, clearly trying to be patient but getting pretty close to failing. He went to ease that scrap of cotton down her legs, and somehow wound up yanking a little instead. And when he realized what he was doing—that he was getting too hot and too eager—he cursed at himself and drew his hands back.

  It didn’t help him, however. He still didn’t seem to know how to be careful and passionate at the same time. After a second of flummoxed indecision he finally settled on tearing his jacket off, as though his jacket was the thing causing all the problems. It wasn’t her body or the situation or the fact that he was finally touching her bare. It was the suede, the goddamn suede. “I fucking hate suede,” he said.

  Though she felt pretty sure the suede had nothing to do with the way he leaned forward to press his face between her legs. That was all him, from the desperate way he reached up to cup her ass as he did it, to the sound he made once his mouth was against the light fuzz that covered her pussy. She knew that sound so well now—lost somewhere between a moan and a sigh of relief—and it thrilled her.

  But not as much as the feel of where he currently was. She’d thought she was ready for it, sure that the touches they’d shared through clothing were pretty close to the real thing. How different could they possibly be? How could she have known the answer was extremely different in every possible way?

  Because it was, oh it was. She seemed to have a thousand new nerve endings on the surface of her skin, and the slightest movement from him set them all firing. He turned his head and she nearly collapsed, and not just because of the place he was brushing. There was also the near-cutting sensation of his stubble over that tender skin. The hint of his lips, all soft and near slippery.

  And then it wasn’t a hint at all. His tongue slid over the seam between the lips of her pussy, seeking entrance—at first softly, gently, but then with an insistence that made her shiver. He wanted those lips to part for him...and they did. Slowly, slowly they did. They eased open the way a tightly clenched fist might, as someone soothes it.

  And it felt like that too. She had the sense of being stroked into calmness, of being teased and caressed until she surrendered completely. He didn’t push or force or grab—he waited until she simply had to part her legs a little more, and maybe lean toward him a little bit. Then once she had, once she was trembling and impatient...

  That was when he decided to lick a little deeper.

  Only a little, she thought, yet it felt like a lot. The tip of his tongue just barely grazed her clit, but the flood of sensation it produced was almost too much for her to take. Her legs really did give in then, though it didn’t matter much anymore. He had hold of her, he had hold of her. His hands were on her hips now, steadying her.

  He was always steadying her. Just when she thought she was going to fall, there he was. And he kept being there, no matter what she did. She wound up sort of crouched over him, breathless and shaking, one hand twisted in his hair.

  He didn’t care. He kept licking her in that good, good way—in these short, sharp shocks that made her buzz all thick and nice—and when she said his name he did it faster. He did it with more intent, as though the sound of those two syllables spurred him on. “Bernie,” she said, “Bernie,” and suddenly he was ravenous.

  She could feel him kissing at her now, rather than just the little licks. His plump lips parted and slid around all sorts of things, making everything wetter and hotter and messier. Oh she was so incredibly, undeniably messy. She could feel it all slipping and sliding beneath the stroke of his tongue and the press of his mouth, could feel it spreading outward over her thighs.

  It was probably all over his face; he was probably swallowing the taste.

  But the strange thing was—she didn’t care. If anything, the idea only excited her more. She thought of his chin all glossy with her slipperiness and felt a surge of squirming arousal, half embarrassment and half sweetness and all perfection. She was going to come if he carried on this way. She was going to come if he carried on any way. He could have clicked his fingers, if she was being honest.

  Though she was glad he decided on sliding them between her legs instead. That was a much better way of finishing things off—and it did finish them. The second she felt him just sort of easing his thumb over her tightly clenched pussy, stroking rather than pressing inward but with that hint... That hint of actually doing it...

  She went over for that hint. She imagined him there, sliding in and out of her, stroking and finding all kinds of interesting things, and everything just disappeared over the edge of pleasure. She plummeted headfirst into a shivering, insane maze of intense bursts and sudden pulses, and even that seemed like an understatement.

  It just wasn’t like anything she’d ever experienced before. She’d touched herself there, of course. She’d let her fingers slide in just a little, egged on by curiosity and something like excitement. But none of it had even remotely gotten her close to this.

  His hand on her through her nightie hadn’t gotten her close to this. That last orgasm seemed like a pale imitation compared to the full-bodied gut punch of this thing, and not just because of the sheer intensity of it. There was also the length, dear God the length, oh Jesus no why wasn’t it stopping?

  It wasn’t stopping. He’d pulled back a bit—he’d had to, because she had hold of his hair and she really wanted him away—but it was still going on. It was squeezing her and squeezing her now, like some great giant’s hand that wanted to wring every bit of pleasure out of her body. By the time it was done she was a wet rag, completely boneless and ready to accept anything that he might want to do with her.

  So it was lucky, really, that his main urge was to pick her up and spread her out over the bed. And even after he’d done that, stroking and petting her into a peaceful laxity as he went, he didn’t go straight into something else. He didn’t let his own obvious desire overwhelm him.

  He went slowly, oh so slowly. He stood at the end of the bed, watching her gradually come back to herself. Then once she was breathing a little more steadily, he started peeling off his own clothes. One at a time, like before—like he knew she wanted to look and didn’t mind obliging.

  Yeah, he obliged all right. He shimmied his jeans down his legs and lingered over the stretch that helped him take his t-shirt off, and when he went for his socks he bent in a very particular sort of way. He put on a real show, in a way that should have pleased her. Yet strangely, it didn’t seem to.

  Instead she thought of how many times he must have posed in his life. How many photo shoots he had probably done, with someone telling him how to stand and be and what to do t
o look just right. To look like Holden Stark, she thought—and that pretty much sealed it.

  She closed her eyes.

  She closed her eyes and just said his name—his real name. And once he was still and silent and probably confused, she added the rest. “I just want to hear you be the person you are,” she told him, then waited for a response. She waited and waited until she was certain he hadn’t understood, every word she’d said suddenly nonsense in her head. What kind of thing was being the person you are?

  It made zero sense.

  To everyone who wasn’t him.

  “I’m afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “That I’m not enough. That without the body and the face and the glamour and the fame I’m not enough. I’m just a puny little geek pretending to be something powerful and amazing, and I don’t know what will happen if I just be that. All the time.”

  “You know what will happen. You know or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Tell me then. Explain it to me because—”

  “I will love you for being just that. I already love you for being that. The puny geek is the man I want, the man I love—that’s why I’m closing my eyes. So I can see him, instead of the shell he’s operating. Now say something with his voice, not Holden’s. Say something to me that he would say, okay?”

  “I think my heart is coming out of my mouth.”

  “That’s good. Keep going.”

  “I almost passed out while kissing your cunt.”

  “Oh that...I don’t know if he would—”

  “He would. He wants you to look like that, when he says it. I want you to look like that when I say it. I want you to squirm because I’ve just told you that you tasted like a sweet, ripe peach. I can still taste you when I lick my lips.”

  “Really? Really? I...that...”

  “And now I’m going to make love to you,” he said.

  He wasn’t lying. He was already somehow on the bed, even though she hadn’t felt the mattress dip. She just knew he was there now—mainly because of the hands hovering close to her hips but also the sense of him, oh the sense of him. He swamped her before he’d leaned down. And after he had...

  She came close to drowning. The heat of him alone was enough to drag her down, but then there was the smell and the brush of his body and the feel of being surrounded. He was everywhere all at once but better yet—he was still saying things. He was stroking over her forehead and he was saying things.

  “I love you too, you know I love you too,” he said.

  “How could I not?” she asked. “How could I not when you sent me all those things? When you make me feel the way you do?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. It was in her expression, she knew it was. She could feel it all pouring out of her, as he did what she’d been dying for since God only knew when. Since the first time he’d almost kissed her, she thought, but it seemed like it had happened before then. She’d been waiting for years for him, and now he was here and holding her and finally, finally...the snap of rubber and the last little frantic fumble.

  Then that long, slow slide in.

  She wasn’t sure what she’d imagined. Pain, she thought, lots of pain and maybe some discomfort. They always told you to expect both, and especially when the guy was big. They probably had extra warning sections for the thing that he had, with diagrams that spelled out all the things that could go wrong.

  Yet somehow it wasn’t like that at all.

  It was closer to being stroked into bliss. She thought of the way his mouth always felt against her skin and the smooth slide of his hand over hip, and that was how it felt. Like all those things, all those sweet and tender things...only better. There was an edge to this that she couldn’t deny—a feeling of being filled, of having him spread her open with that gorgeous cock.

  And every time she thought of that fact she climbed a little higher. She got a little hotter, gasped a little louder. By the time he’d gotten around to moving she was panting his name. She was saying words like more and yes, even though she didn’t really know what that would mean.

  Not until he started rolling those hips—sort of steady at first but then less so. Soon he was practically shuddering on top of her, unable to keep any kind of real rhythm. It didn’t matter, however. His jerky, erratic thrusts were just as glorious as that glide at the beginning, only in a slightly different way. The slow back-and-forth into her body had been an awakening, there to prepare her for what was to come.

  Whereas this...this was raw and real. It didn’t patiently explain anything, or merely hint at pleasures to come. It gave it to her hard, in guttural, grunted words. Some of them he even said out loud—and that was definitely the best part. “Yeah take it, take it,” he told her, in a voice that didn’t belong to him.

  Though she hoped he had a good relationship with whoever had loaned it out. She didn’t think she’d ever stop wanting to hear him say those words, in that tone. So gruff and greedy, she thought, but then that was the way everything was getting now. He wasn’t just losing a bit of his control. He was losing a lot.

  His whole body seemed to have tensed into one bunched muscle, all hard and slick and sort of golden in the low light. And though he was clearly trying to hold back, he wasn’t quite managing it anymore. Each little thrust turned into something much firmer, until finally she had to say something.

  “Oh yeah, just like that,” she said, because seriously. Seriously, why was he trying to go slower and softer when it felt so much better to do the opposite? Every time he pounded into her that thick cock seemed to hit some amazing target. And when it did, the pleasure was pretty impossible. Low pulses seemed to thunder through her body, getting stronger and stronger with each hard stroke.

  It didn’t take long for her to start to lose it too. She was already shivery with arousal and near beside herself. Mouth all filled with filthy words and hands like claws on his shoulders. Once he really went at her it was game over. Those claws became a kind of helpless clinging to him. She had to mush her face into his throat as the pleasure took over her vocal cords.

  “God, fuck me, please fuck me,” she panted, only it sounded like something else when she did. It had this weird sobbing note of helplessness to it, as though he was driving her to a place she didn’t want to go. She was certain she didn’t want to go to it.

  Until he took her there.

  He pressed his face to the side of hers, breath coming out of him in one glorious gasp. Body practically bucking, fingers in her hair...and that was it. Her orgasm burst through her, hard enough to make her do all kinds of crazy things. Somehow her hands were trying to pull out his hair. She could feel her pussy almost sort of clenching around him—which only made everything worse.

  Now his cock seemed twice its usual size, despite already being as big as the Empire State Building. All she could feel was the thick weight of that hard length, as her body tried to shudder and spasm around it. And somehow, the more that happened the greater the intensity. The higher and brighter the pleasure, all of it building to some impossible crescendo that she just couldn’t take.

  It made her wonder what she’d been doing all these years, with just a vague little finger stroking over this and that. Everything was so much better like this—in every way conceivable. There was the feel of him inside her, and this all-consuming orgasm. But then she had his arms to contend with, as they held her so tight to his body. And the hand he touched to her face, when they were done.

  How had she ever done without that hand on her face?

  More to the point...how was she ever going to do without it?

  Chapter Eleven

  She didn’t mean to wake him. She had just wanted to have a little look at him before any of this melted away again, and somehow that had turned into weird things like touching his ears and tracing the shapes of his tattoos and now he was staring at her from underneath hooded eyelids.

  She could feel him staring before she glanced up to double check
. His gaze was practically burning a hole through her body. Or was that just the embarrassment? It sure seemed like the latter once she saw him and realized what she’d been doing. In the strange silence of three in the morning with him fast asleep, it had kind of seemed as though she was just solidifying him in her mind. She was just making sure he was real and not going anywhere.

  But now that his eyes were on her, half-amused and half something else that sort of made her shiver, it was a different story altogether. Her hand on him wasn’t something innocent and curious. She wasn’t simply memorizing parts of him. She was practically fondling him. She was fondling him.

  That seemed really bad. People definitely weren’t supposed to do that.

  Though if his reaction was anything to go by she was wrong on that score. The second he registered what she was doing his hand went into her hair. And she didn’t think it was there to push her away. It seemed encouraging, in fact. Kind of like he was leading her toward certain things—like the curve of his erect cock not five inches from her parted lips.

  She didn’t mind obliging. Even if that wasn’t what he wanted, she didn’t mind. They had passed that point completely now—the one where they were unsure what the other person might want and not quite daring enough to do things. She knew they were, and it shifted things. Suddenly she could look at him as she poked out her tongue to lick the tip of his dick.

  And he could say yes. He could tell her more. He could offer the same thing in return without asking. She felt pretty sure that this was how they wound up tangled together on the bed, licking and sucking at various parts of each other. She took his cock in her mouth and he made these glorious, long swipes over her spread pussy and nothing was weird. Nothing was wrong.

  Instead it all seemed like a delirious dream of everything sex could possibly be. She’d always wondered how frantic lust would feel, and this was it in glorious Technicolor. She wanted to bite, so she bit, she wanted to moan, so she moaned, and when really filthy words rose up in her throat she said them.