by Piper Lennox
In response, I smirk and reach down between us with my other hand to cup his balls, bringing them close to his body. He curses a blue streak and pulls away. The look he gives me is a face you’d give a supervillain who just bested you, but you’re more impressed than you are mad.
“Before I put this on,” he says, grabbing a condom from the laptop stand, “can I make a request?”
“Of course.”
Theo positions himself beside the couch, reaching down to trail his fingers underneath my chin. His thumb runs back and forth across my bottom lip, until the sweet and feral scent of myself gets embedded in it.
“Give me head, Ruby. Even if it’s only for a few seconds, I need to feel what it’s like having these lips wrapped around me...”
Slowly, smoothly, he guides his hand to my neck, applying the tiniest bit of pressure until he can feel my jackhammer heart, begging him to be inside me.
“...and this throat pulsing around my cock.”
All at once, my heart goes from a tapping, featherlight rush, to the pounding pulse of bass drums.
I pull away from his touch. Away from his cock and the bead of pre-ejaculate reforming at the head that, for all my reactions, I do want to lick away, to savor, more than he could ever imagine. More than I can ever explain.
His brow furrows. “You all right?”
Distractedly, I realize my hand is over my heart. It feels like the only thing that will keep it from beating out of my chest.
I sit up; he helps me.
My brain isn’t working right. Instead of rationalizing why it’s perfectly fine—desired, in fact—that I give Theo oral, it replays the same scene, over and over.
The massive size of him, clogging my throat in a dirty, instant addiction. The luxuriousness of those plush white carpets on my knees. His fingers weaving themselves into my hair and the way his stomach tightened right before…
Before the door banged open.
Before bodies flooded the room.
Before dozens of cameras, including his own, caught the moment his release hit my face.
“I—I don’t want to,” I say softly. It suddenly feels like I might cry. Or scream.
Theo steps back. This is it: the moment the plan is ruined, all my revenge fizzling out to nothing.
I’m actually a little relieved.
“Hey, hey, look at me.” Theo couches in front of the couch.
He smiles.
“It’s fine.” His fingers whisper over my inner thigh, taming the chill bumps there. This soaked blanket is now feeling like a sheet of ice. “Don’t feel pressured. We don’t have to do anything you aren’t comfortable with.”
For all my emotions, the physical side of me is still keyed impossibly high. I still want him inside me.
Just not, apparently, in my mouth.
“I just....” Finally: some useful input from my brain. “It’s more intimate to me than sex, I guess. I don’t know why.”
The lie tumbles out, flawless and effortless...but maybe that’s because I’m not so sure I’m really lying. Going down on a guy never used to feel more significant than sex. But doing it to him does.
Giving it to someone else requires privacy and the willingness of my body, and nothing else.
Giving it to him requires trust.
And when, without a single protest or scowl, he simply nods and grabs the condom to roll it on...I wonder if I’ll ever be able to trust him.
I wonder why on earth I suddenly want to.
Ruby shudders as I push the first few inches inside.
“You feel so damn good.” And hot. And wet as hell. I’ve never had a girl’s body seem so completely ready for mine, as though she needs me.
“You, too.” She shuts her eyes until I’m all the way inside her. When she looks at me again, they’re almost glassy. “And I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“For not....” Almost imperceptibly, her bottom lip shakes. I steady it with a nice, deep bite until those beautiful brown eyes flutter shut again.
Then, for good measure, I rock my hips just once—a graceful but hard thrust that elicits the cutest fucking cry of pleasure I’ve ever heard.
“Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Bullshit. You totally did.”
I laugh and reward her deduction skills with some kisses up and down her jawline. “Fine, I did. But I’ll stop. Continue.”
“I feel bad for not giving you oral. I shouldn’t have let you do it to me, when I knew I wasn’t going to do it back.”
“Ruby, look at me. It’s fine.” I push her hair off her forehead and cross my heart in an X. “I didn’t eat you out because I expected repayment. I ate you out because I wanted to taste your pussy and make you come so hard you begged me to stop.”
Leaning close again, I drag my lips over hers, knowing she can taste herself. “Mission accomplished.”
“But what about you?”
“Did you miss the part where I’m buried balls deep inside you?” To underscore it, I thrust again. Both of us gasp, although mine rolls straight into a laugh. “Trust me, I’m perfectly happy where I’m at.”
One muscle group at a time, she relaxes.
I find a rhythm we both enjoy, though I’m pretty sure we’d enjoy them all. She lifts her shoulders from the sofa, that smooth neck extended to me like an offering, and I can’t help but sink my teeth into it.
“No hickeys,” she pants.
“No problem.” Instead of biting and sucking, I start licking: dragging my tongue up and down, tracing the shape of her windpipe until she’s gripping my head in both hands.
“Theo,” she chokes out, “oh, God...you’ve got me so close again.”
She tightens. Her thighs twitch and jerk beside my hips. I stare at her face and memorize the ecstasy etched there. It’s a memory that’s going to serve me well for plenty of sleepless nights ahead.
I duck my head and press my mouth against the velvet of her ear. God, I could bite into the cartilage forever. It was made for my mouth.
“Tell me to put you over the edge, Ruby.” I trace every ridge with my tongue, twice, before letting my teeth graze. “Beg me to reach between us and rub your clit.”
“Please,” she moans, without missing a beat, “make me come, Theo—rub my clit until I come.” Her hands weaken, releasing my hair and going limp by her head. “I need it so bad....”
“Whoa, now.” I smirk, knowing she can feel it against her ear. “I knew you wanted it, but I had no idea you needed it.”
In any other state of mind, she’d give me a withering look and, maybe, an elbow to the ribs. But riding this high, all she can do is admit the truth. “Yes, yes, I need it...I need you to make me come. Please, Theo.”
Look at that. Good manners and everything.
I reach between us and touch her.
I’ve never had a simultaneous orgasm with someone. Lots of close calls, but never a time where my eyes met theirs, our heartbeats blurred, and the highs brought us up together.
Everything that happens, right now, when Ruby opens her eyes and stares at me.
“Coming,” she breathes.
I nod and swallow so hard it hurts. “Me, too.”
My voice breaks, but I don’t care. It’s not embarrassing. Just more proof she’s got me wrapped around her finger, where I plan on staying for the foreseeable future.
She recovers first. While she works her muscles to pump the last throes of my orgasm out of me, I lavish her ear with more attention, gently flicking her sensitive clit to remind her we’re not quite done.
“Four down,” I whisper.
“You can stop,” I tell Theo, motioning to his softening length as he wedges himself between my back and the couch, rolling me onto my side so that I face the movie screen. “Lonely Boy” is playing. I shut my eyes against the video, while Theo’s hands seem to paint the rhythm up and down my body.
“I can,” he agrees breathily, “but I won’t. Five. We had a deal.”
<
br /> “I never agreed to that.” Truthfully, I want this fifth time. I need it with a hunger I’ve never felt before.
I wish to God it existed for anyone but him.
A new song starts, something electronic and heavy that fills my head with static. He slips his fingers into me from behind and growls against the back of my neck for me to rub my clitoris. I obey.
“Keep saying things,” I plead, so ashamed of how desperate I sound—how desperate I am—that I press my face into the cool leather of the sofa.
Theo pumps his fingers twice as hard. “You liked the dirty talk, huh?”
“I loved it.” I feel like I could subsist on nothing but that.
His breath quickens. Every beat of his heart bleeds into my spine.
“I knew you wanted this.” His tongue flicks out and traces the shape of my ear. I don’t know why, but it’s my favorite thing he’s done so far tonight: messing with my ear in any possible way. “The second I touched your pussy in the back of the car, I felt how much you wanted me inside you.”
He fingers me harder, moaning to himself in ecstasy when I release more hot liquid onto his hand and my thighs.
“That’s it, baby. Rub your clit for me.” He presses himself close when my pace picks up. I feel him growing hard again. It tips me even further to the edge of my final orgasm, knowing I have that kind of power over him.
Knowing he’s got that kind of power over me.
I rock against him, bucking my hips harder the faster our hands move. His cock presses against my ass until it feels like a concrete pipe, begging for a place to be.
I try to tell him we can get another condom, that I’m more than happy to share my orgasm—but his fingers move so fast and hard inside me, I can only moan.
When I come, it starts in my head: a dizzying high that melts down the rest of me. As soon as my muscles clench around him, he bites down hard on my earlobe.
I scream his name.
The explosion singes my nerves. Pleasure ripples over me until my brain feels wiped clean, nothing but that sinful sting in my ear and the sweet-smelling aroma of us, thick and choking and wonderfully addictive.
Theo waits until I’m completely motionless before his other hand starts to move. I feel him masturbating against my hip.
I know the polite thing would be to at least offer oral sex, even as an empty gesture, but the thought makes my stomach turn. And it’s not because I don’t want to.
In fact, I think wanting to is precisely why my stomach turns.
Instead, I lie there and pretend I’m still catching my breath. I kind of am, since my heartbeat feels faraway, and I’m convinced there’s no oxygen left in this theater. Just the sweet, wild scents of us, and the even wilder one that forms when we combine.
“Ruby,” he sighs, pressing his lips against my shoulder when he orgasms.
“Aria….”
“Promise me something,” I whisper, when we’ve relocated our hormone-drugged limbs to a dry couch with a fresh blanket. HIs arm is thrown over my waist, like the dip there was made just for him.
“Anything.”
I lift his hand off the cushion in front of me and turn it under the fiberoptic starlight. There are scars, and callouses, and patches of uneven skin from twenty-three summers of burns and tans. This one hand alone contains so many stories I don’t yet know.
“Promise you won’t think less of me.” Tomorrow morning, when we wake up here together.
Next week, or next month, or whenever I finally get the courage to either carry out my plan like the heartless, cold bitch I wish I was...or leave him, heart scuffed but unbroken, like the girl I apparently can’t stop being.
“Promise. As long as you promise to start thinking more of yourself.” He laughs as he leans up and kisses my cheek, while I nod, stare ahead at the flickering screen, and think about how I just made a liar out of us both.
18
“Morning. Espresso?”
My head pounds as I peel my drool-covered cheek off the sofa cushion. The theater is dark, unchanged from last night.
“What time is it?” I take the tiny cup he offers and throw it back, then laugh when he produces another drink—this time, a latte—from behind his back, fitting it into my hands.
“Seven-thirty.” He’s dressed but unshowered. My heart does stupid little flips when he sinks into the couch beside me: he smells like a boy, generic body spray and crisp deodorant, but also like a man. Steeped sweat. The leather of the sofa, stamped into his skin.
The scent of me, the woman he pleasured for hours on end, painted all across him.
“Last night,” he starts, seeming to read my mind (or the very obvious squirm I give) before his voice trails with a tired and deliriously happy smile. I try not to mirror it, but fail.
I am happy. Hopelessly so.
“Question.” I sip my drink. Damn, this latte is the best coffee I’ve ever had. My breakfast blend is going to taste like storm runoff, after this. “You seriously never hooked up with anyone in here, before last night?”
“Never.”
“I find that downright impossible to believe.” My free arm, half-asleep from being pinned under my body all night, sweeps to the ceiling. The stars are still on, tirelessly flickering. “A home theater of any kind, let alone one like this, is a foolproof aphrodisiac.”
“That why I broke your once-per-session record so easily?” Theo puts one arm behind his head with an arrogant smile.
His other hand creeps onto my upper thigh, tracing a scratch mark I don’t remember happening. I’m not even sure which of us made it.
I scald the lust with another sip. Between this big, empty house and Theo’s unabashed dirty talk, it’d be way too easy to fuck the whole day away.
Which sounds really, really fun.
But I also know it’s way too dangerous, like the second hit of a new drug.
“Maybe I would have used the theater more,” he answers, finally, “if my friends weren’t in here every time I happened to have...opportunities.” He shrugs. “Just how it goes. When girls are here, my friends are here, too.”
“Oh.” Don’t you dare, Ruby. Don’t. “When was your last...opportunity?”
Amazing. Two whole seconds, I managed to restrain myself.
“Depends on what you mean by that.”
“You’re the one who used that word. You tell me what it means.”
“If we’re talking about the last time I had sex....” Theo pushes my hair behind my ear, resting his hand on the back of my neck. “It had been a while, before you.”
“A week?” I ask, shrugging. “A month?” Jesus, why do I care?
I don’t. I can’t.
“A Fourth of July party. Got wasted, don’t really remember it...think I had fun?”
“So what happened?”
“After the hookup? Nothing. The girl straight up said she wasn’t into me like that, and just wanted to fuck me to get it out of her system.”
“She did not.”
“Yep. Verbatim.” He jabs my side when I laugh. “But I was like, ‘Okay, appreciate the honesty, at least.’ Not like she wasted my time.”
Heat builds in my face. I burn my throat with the latte again. “Yeah. Silver lining.”
“It was. Until the next day, when she screwed my cousin.”
I wince. “Oof. I’m sorry.”
“Eh, it’s fine. Not like it broke my heart. Van didn’t know she’d been with me, and I didn’t say anything because I figured he liked her. But then I found out he said basically the same thing to her—that it was just a hookup for him. Casual.”
“Karma’s a bitch,” I say from behind my mug. Having something to do with my hands helps distract me from the whole kettle-versus-pot aspect of this conversation.
“No,” Theo laughs, “my cousin is just a bastard. Well—he used to be. He’s changed a lot since he got together with his girlfriend.” He pauses. “She’s been good for him.”
“Fourth of July,” I m
use, after a beat. “That’s not too long. When you said it had been a ‘while,’ I figured—”
“Oh.” Theo blushes. It’s a deep cherry color that spreads all the way down his chest. “Sorry, I meant last Fourth of July.”
The little flare of jealousy in my stomach evaporates into something so chemically close to pure joy, it almost makes me sick. That, or I’m just in absolute shock. Hard to tell.
“Last summer?” I spit. “It’s been over a year since you’ve...?”
“No.” He straightens an invisible tie and checks a watch he’s not wearing. “It’s now been about...six hours.” Growing serious, he runs his tongue between his lips and looks at me. “Is that a problem?”
“No,” I say quickly, “just...unexpected.” Unfathomable, more like. “I mean, you’re—”
My sentence cuts itself off. No use wasting the brain cells trying to find words; one quick drip of my eyes down his body, and we both know exactly what I was trying to say.
Hotter than sin.
Sexy in all the big, obvious ways...but the tiny details, too.
The best, most thorough fuck a girl can possibly imagine.
“Yeah, well.” He blushes again, rearranging our blanket so it drapes across both our laps in the early chill. “I used to do the casual sex thing a lot. But it got old. I got tired of it not meaning anything.”
Huh. This, I can certainly relate to. Sex with Callum always felt the same way: just fulfilling a physical need. If that.
“You said ‘karma’s a bitch,’” Theo chuckles suddenly, drawing a breath through his teeth as he stretches, “and man, it sure is. Because what that girl did to me? I used to do it all the time, myself.”
He looks at me, a streak of shame in his eyes like a comet. “I was kind of an asshole to girls, when I was younger.”
My heart bobs into my throat. It’s become a ball of razor wire, coated in cinnamon coffee and that old, simmering anger.
“Really,” I say, but Theo misses the tone completely. He thinks I’m actually asking. He thinks this information surprises me in any way.
Well, it does…but not the info itself. Just that he’d have the self-awareness to know it, name it, and admit it.
