by Julia Kent
“You have my blanket consent forever.”
Forever.
My hands froze.
Could you really feel this so quickly for someone? Could two days on the road together lead to this kind of certainty? Tyler paused, too, but instead of freezing, he tightened his arms around me, burying his chin in my hair. The smattering of chocolate-colored hair across his chest and abs scratched against my bare breasts and belly, interrupting the smooth warmth of his skin. He smelled like salt and excitement, like musk and second-hand smoke. I licked his shoulder.
“What’s that for?” he said, laughing into my neck.
“I’ve wanted to do that for days.”
“I’ve got other more interesting places you can lick.”
“Promise?”
He groaned, his mouth slanting over mine, my hands resuming their job. In seconds he was naked and we were on the bed, my movements fast and heated, his slower and gentler.
“Are you sure?” he said for the thousandth time, and finally my anger poked through.
“I’m not a porcelain doll. I’m not a sheet of glass. You don’t have to treat this like it’s some kind of therapy.” I tried not to sound annoyed, but I failed. I just wanted...to feel normal. To fall into the arms of a man I wanted and make love. To have this roll out like any other couple.
But we weren’t like any other couple, were we?
“It’s not. I’m not. I just...” His hands filled with my ass and he made a low, animal sound in the back of his throat. “It’s so fucking hard to hold back, Maggie. You’re the most desirable woman I’ve ever laid hands on, and you’re fucking amazing, and you just—I want to bury myself in you and never leave.”
I closed my eyes and smiled against his mouth as his tongue slipped between my lips and he kissed me until my legs wrapped around his waist, the tip of his erection so close. Too close.
“We need a condom,” I rasped.
“Too early for that,” he murmured as he kissed his way down to my breast.
“No. Not this time. I just want you. Now.”
He frowned. I could feel his eyebrows move on my nipple and I laughed. “Now? Already?”
“Three times,” I hissed as I twisted away and found my backpack. Condom secured, I turned back to find him on his knees, cock at attention, a skeptical look on his face.
“Margaret Stevenson.”
Uh oh.
“I just showed up at your house two days ago and made you drive me twenty-nine hours through armadillos and biohazard gummy bears and a yappy dog that bit me.” He pointed to Attila's puncture mark on his calf, his body fluid and graceful, my eyes hungry and body ready.
“I am not,” he continued, in a voice that was half joke, half lecture, and half earnest, “going to just wrap it and slap it inside you.”
I reached for him and laughed, breasts bobbing, his chest so textured and gorgeous. He didn’t pull away when I rolled on the condom and I didn’t pull back as he reached out, his hands roaming freely against my skin, our bodies free and open.
“Maggie,” he said softly.
“Just shut up and make love to me, Tyler. You’re using too many words.”
His mouth twisted with amusement and then he was over me. In me, rocking our world as my hands dug into the tight muscles of his back, fingers curling to touch him, squeeze him. I matched his rhythm until my breath came in little pants, my body so close, so close...and I was lost in the movement, consumed by the flow of flesh and groans, sighs and touches, until he came and shuddered, leaving me on the edge but not uncomfortable.
It was good.
It was better than good.
It was getting closer to normal.
He rolled off and sighed, the sound long and full of frustration. I took that as my cue to get more wine. My body was loose and my mind and heart were overflowing.
Life was good.
Tyler went to the bathroom and I heard the tub faucet. He came out a few minutes later, naked and handsome, casual and cut. The slope of his muscles gave life to his tattoos, the rose somehow more heartfelt, the colors vivid and alive.
“Let’s have a soak,” he said, taking the full glasses of wine from me. “Let me make that up to you.”
“Make what up to me?” I was genuinely confused.
“You didn’t...I can’t make you...” He swallowed, suddenly nervous.
Nervous?
“Can’t make me what?”
“C’mon, Maggie. Don’t make me say it.”
“Say what?”
“Did you orgasm?”
The room went ice cold.
“What?”
He shrugged. “I think that’s my answer. I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? For what?”
He gave me a look that said the answer to my question was obvious. My eyebrows shot up as I got what he wasn’t saying.
“You think my orgasm is your responsibility?” I squeaked. “Where the hell did you come from, Frown, and did they break the mold after you were hatched?”
He just rolled his eyes and walked into the bathroom, carrying our wine with him. I chased after.
“No, really. You think...help me out here.”
He stopped in the bathroom and handed me my wine, crossing his arms and holding his stem in one hand, twirling it. The image of our nude bodies in the mirror, leaning against the bathroom counter as if we did this all the time, made me laugh.
“You’re laughing because I’m not a good enough lover to make it pleasurable for you.”
“Now you’re just fucking with me,” I said, gulping down my entire glass of wine in a few throat spasms.
“No. I was fucking with you a minute ago. Unsuccessfully.”
“Tyler. Seriously. Just because I didn’t come doesn’t mean it wasn’t pleasurable.” I reached for him, trying to block out the image of our bodies in the mirror. A huge wave of exhaustion hit me like a fog bank, like walking into a mist and suddenly having no visibility.
He frowned, his eyes finally meeting mine. “But it’s just...you gave and gave so much to me and I couldn’t even give you this one thing.”
Something clicked in that moment. “Is that part of why you left me at the campground?”
“Yes.” He didn’t even try to deny it.
I climbed into the tub, reeling from that fact. He climbed in, too, moaning as the hot water hit his skin. We were road weary, full of fading adrenaline, and boneless from sex. The water was perfect and I curled in his arms, the water lapping at my nipples as I reached up with my foot and turned off the water.
We said nothing for a few minutes. Just soaked and breathed and thought.
“You were amazing tonight. On stage. You totally rose to the occasion,” he whispered.
His erection began to press into the small of my back. “And you’re rising to the occasion right now.”
He chuckled, running his hands down the lines of my arms, my hips, up between my legs, fingers tickling my inner thighs. “Do you know how beautiful you are?”
I shivered against him, my heart in my throat. “No one has ever said that to me before.”
“Not even boyfriends before...you know.”
“No. Not even them.”
“Then I need to say it again: you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known, Maggie. And someone should tell you that every day of your life.”
You.
“And I’m sorry I let you down, but I’ll—”
I stood, the water dripping down on his face. I reached for his hand and brought him back to the bed, both of us wet as we walked with a slow deliberation that was rapidly blooming into something much, much more intense.
“Listen.”
“What?” He looked down, eyes hooded, sitting his wet ass on the bed.
“Tyler.” I took both his hands in mine, standing before him, nude and ragged and dripping. “My orgasm is my issue. It’s not a new issue.”
“Huh?”
“My best friend is a se
x toy party hostess. I have every device in the world to try to get off. It’s...me. It’s something I have to deal with. It’s part of the legacy of the rape, I guess.” I felt my mind start to tear away from the moment, like a balloon string you let go of for a second, then grab just before it’s out of reach.
Tyler’s warm hands on my shoulders anchored me.
“So you’ve tried.”
I shot him a look. “Wouldn’t you?”
He snorted. “I’m a guy.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
His face clouded with confusion. “Good point. I just mean I don’t have a problem coming. I can make myself come by brushing up against the cantaloupe stand at the grocery store.”
“I think Lena knows that trick, too.”
“Are we going to talk about cantaloupes and pansexuals, or are you going to let me make love to you for that second time?” he asked, kissing me deeply, his mouth urgent and his cock hard and throbbing against my hip as he pressed against me.
“Already?” I wrapped my hand around his shaft. Oh, yeah. Already.
“I’m twenty-three, Maggie. I’m ready about thirty seconds after I come.”
“A perk of dating a younger man.”
“Is that what this is? Dating?”
“What would you call it?”
“I don’t need a word for it,” he said, pulling me down on the bed on top of him, his fingers finding my swollen clit and touching it with a slow, slippery movement that made my core clench and my mind splinter. He rolled me onto my back and spread my wet legs slowly, his mouth headed down as his hands caressed my legs.
“Let me try,” he whispered against my knee. “Let me enjoy giving as much to you as you’ve given to me, Maggie. There’s something about giving to you that opens up a part of me that feels more whole.”
Well. When he put it that way...
And then his mouth was on me, teasing and soft, his lips and tongue so giving. The wine had loosened me up, but so had life. We were past the awkward (though compassionate) sex at the campground, had just plowed through a horny romp. Now that I knew Tyler’s feelings about my climax, it seemed I was a different kind of project.
I could get behind the Let’s Make Maggie Have an Orgasm project.
And yet, as his mouth made parts of me clench and pulse, my hands twisting the sheets as I lifted my hips to be closer to that magic tongue, I also didn’t want sex to be about a goal. Whatever thin shred of organized thought was left in me fixated on this as Tyler’s talents were being put to incredible use on the soft, sensitive skin between my legs, but I didn’t want to feel pressure to come.
I just wanted to feel pleasure.
His tongue teased layer after layer from my willing body, my hands uncertain. I finally threaded my fingers through his short hair as he gave, moving with me and stroking with tenderness and thought. The moment was so bare and intimate. So much about giving and accepting. Blood pounded through me, my skin flush with the heat of the bath and the fevered touch of his mouth and hands on my body.
My fingers tightened, then I moved my hands to his shoulders, pulling my legs up and feeling the scratch of his beard against my inner thighs, the sensation so alluring it made me blossom, unfolding before him, baring myself emotionally as well as physically in ways that were uncharted territory. His tongue moved with erotic precision and yet his hands roamed over me like a man spellbound. Bewitched. He wasn’t just on a mission to make me come.
He was on a journey to come with me.
My breath hitched and a wave of pure lust washed over me, making my legs quiver and my mind move as he rode with me, following my gasps and writhing, the soft interplay between my body’s instincts and his need to give growing stronger as the intensity of what Tyler gave spiraled ever higher.
I knew the wall was there. Could sense it before I even came close to it. That barricade was erected seven years ago, made of pain and vulnerability, of attack and violation. This time, though, it was weaker. It wavered. It shimmered like a mirage, and as I moved my hands to each side of me, desperately pawing for something to grab as Tyler’s touch drove me to crest, the wall moved.
It...folded, fading to nothing at the exact moment I cried out his name and tipped over into a nothingness that was pure energy and sultry release.
“Oh, my God,” I rasped. “I’m...oh, Tyler!” I began to shake from within, a vibration without origin, a feeling of deep frequency that felt like I was a stone thrown into a pond, my skin and bones the ripples on the water, my pleasure riding out in concentric circles as Tyler made love to my body with a deep determination and a soulful need to make my orgasm a reality, as if he’d conjured it by sheer will alone.
And he had.
We had.
Pulsing with the extraordinary, feral climax, I groaned and moaned, twitched and twisted, the sensation too much to be contained in my body, crying out from my throat. I shattered over and over, as if all the porcelain and glass that people had thought I was made of needed to be broken by this ecstasy.
Tyler rose, breaking his mouth’s touch, and crawled up my body, giving me a kiss filled with my own taste. I reached for the condom I’d placed, this time, on the nightstand, and quickly dispensed with the ritual.
He moved me, gently, so that he rested on his back, then reached for one of my legs, pulling me on top.
“You’re in control,” he whispered, my hand guiding him in me, the feeling exquisite after the enigmatic emptiness of my orgasm. “You.” His eyes traced my body, the moon peeking in and shrouding us in a grey glow that gave an ethereal feel to the moment.
I was transcendent, a goddess, and Tyler made me feel like we were the only people in the world.
We were.
Instinct drove me to move against him, my thighs still shaking from his ministrations moments ago, his palms on my hips, urging me through a rhythm. His hands reached up, cupping my breasts, and I leaned over him, now moving faster, feeling the deep clench of muscles that came from that core where I’d been vibrating earlier.
“What is this?” I hissed in his ear, my hair dragging over his shoulder and neck.
He kissed me, open-mouthed and with a groan, the sound of a man about to lose control. “Whatever it is, go with it. Lose yourself in it. I’m right here. You can grab me when you fall.”
“When I fall?” Those were the last words I could say or think as I did, indeed, fall. Floating in a space where my body and his stopped having boundaries, where our hearts no longer beat separately, where skin brushed against skin and it felt so good, so hot, so uncontrolled and frantic that I soon lost my words once more, finding solace in his breath, his cries, his taut athleticism and a rhythm that carried us through our separate climaxes, the joint push of so much want turning into something sweeter than love.
Hours passed.
Maybe just minutes.
My breath came into focus first, then the brush of hair on his chest against my cheek, my eyes opening, lashes fluttering against his ribs. I’d gone completely limp, crashing into his body with the abandon of someone who...well....
Who falls.
He stroked my hair and whispered, “You okay?”
I laughed. “Better than okay.”
His palm cradled the back of my neck, moving down to follow the lines of my ribs, my torso. “I don’t even have to ask my other question.”
I lifted my head and moved up his body to taste him with a kiss that made arousal stir in me once more. “No. You don’t.” He nuzzled my neck and brushed my mussed hair away from my damp cheek. We were enshrined in sweat, the air redolent with sex and fun.
“Good.” His single word rang out like a victory cry.
He reached over to the bedside and casually poured a glass of wine, handing it to me as I sat up. The other glass was across the room and he shook the bottle, peering at it with one eye.
And then he took the bottle and held it up to me.
“A toast.”
“To...?�
��
“To breaking down walls,” he said.
I dinged my glass against the bottle. We finished our respective wine in a few gulps, then set the glass and bottle on the nightstand. I had to lean over him and as he pivoted, he took my overhanging breast in his mouth, the cold from the wine lingering on his tongue.
I yelped.
He laughed.
We both sighed.
“That was amazing,” I said, over him and peering into his eyes.
“Yes. Thank you.”
“Thank you.” My body had lost its normal tension. I was loose and free, and as I bent down for another kiss, I realized:
I was ready for more.
I reached down and found him wearing the condom.
“Let me take care of that,” he announced, moving me off him and striding to the bathroom. I stretched, blood pouring into muscles that seemed to accept it faster. Sex—my orgasms—had changed my body.
For the good.
I heard the toilet flush. Then the water faucet. Then Tyler, humming one of the band’s songs.
By the time he came back, I had taken up the whole bed.
“Room for me in there?” he joked.
“How about round three?”
His eyebrows flew up and his smile turned seductive. “Again? Already?”
“Didn’t you say you could go again thirty seconds later?”
“Yeah, but...”
I looked at his cock, which stirred in return.
He looked down. “Huh. I guess I was telling the truth.”
“You guess?”
He bit his lower lip and looked up at me under his lashes. “I was pretty sure.”
I threw a pillow at him and said, “But we have a problem.”
“What?”
“We’re out of condoms.”
“You’re serious,” he choked out. “Now?”
“Now.”
Tyler
When a woman makes an offer like that, you jump. I had my pants on and room key in my hand before Maggie could finish her sentence. I was the king of the world, man.
I’d made her come. She’d let me.
And she was asking me to do it again.
I knocked on Trevor’s door. He answered.
Completely naked and high as a kite.
And wearing a “Service, Please” door tag on his very erect cock.
