by Julie Kriss
Sex was supposed to be where you let the walls down—but I never had. I had controlled it, kept it conventional and expected. I’d never dated a guy with a very high sex drive. I’d told myself I had bad luck, but deep down I knew the truth. I didn’t pick guys who were passionate and wild. I didn’t pick guys who wanted to see me naked, wanted to make me come, wanted to fuck me senseless, and then do it again. And again. Guys who wanted to break me down into pieces until I didn’t know who I was anymore.
Jason was about to do that to me. I was about to let him. And it was fucking terrifying.
I slid my knees up toward my body and raised my ass into the air. The light in the room was dim, but still I was completely exposed to him, and in this position I couldn’t see him at all.
The bed sagged just a little, as if he’d put a knee on the mattress behind me. “Spread your knees,” he said softly.
I did, moving them apart. I should have been embarrassed, and part of me was, but part of me wasn’t at all. I had asked him for this. I had asked Jason, of all people. Because he was the only man I’d ever met who made me throw my pride away and beg—that was one reason. But the other reason was because I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. When he took me apart, he wouldn’t break the pieces.
The mattress moved again, and I knew he was on the bed now. A big, warm, powerful hand cupped my ass, moving up the back of my thigh and over the curve of it, gently gripping and pulling the flesh, making it move.
“God, this is fucking gorgeous,” he said.
I squirmed under his touch, but he gripped me harder.
“Don’t move,” he said. “Do not move. Close your eyes.”
I did. Now I was in the darkness, just me and his hand on me. His touch sent skitters of electricity through my skin, just like it always did. My body always felt different when Jason touched me.
His other hand joined the first on the other side of my ass, and now he was gripping me in both of his big hands, his palms moving over me. Spreading me.
It should have felt strange. But then his fingers slid into me, over my pussy and my clit, and there was nothing but sensation behind my eyelids, nothing but the feel of him touching me, the heavy sound of my own breath.
He touched me as if he knew my body better than I did, as if he knew every curve. He rubbed me slowly and sensuously, over and over. He’d touched me this way even when he’d had me pressed to the grass in the park, as if he knew exactly what my body liked. How hard, how fast. He knew exactly what would make me come.
I was starting to feel the flying feeling that meant I was nearly there when his hand left me. He adjusted himself on the bed behind me. And then I felt his breath on me, and his tongue.
I gasped and my hands twisted in the pillowcase. He had lowered himself to the bed and put his head between my legs—my eyes were closed, but just the picture of it in my mind made me throb. He closed his mouth over me and I rocked on him, moving myself on his mouth as his hands cupped me again.
“Jason,” I begged him, my voice muffled by the pillow.
He lifted his mouth off me to speak, his breath on my swollen flesh. “I love watching you come,” he said. Then he slid two fingers into me, pressing with his thumb.
I went over the edge, my body convulsing as I squirmed. He held me hard, his fingers still inside me, and then he moved out from between my legs and loomed over my back. I was still coming, shaking with aftershocks, when I heard the crinkle of him putting on a condom.
His arm came around my body, holding me as his hand cupped my breast. “That was number one,” he said in my ear. “Put your hips down.”
I slid my knees out from under me, feeling the cool sheets against my thighs. He held me tight against him, his big, muscled arm holding me easily, his chest hot against my back. I felt his teeth graze the back of my neck.
“Spread your legs wider,” he said against my skin.
I slid my knees further apart. “Fuck,” I panted. And then I sucked in a breath as he slid into me from behind.
My skin was already oversensitive, my body still thrumming from the orgasm, and I felt every inch of him. I already knew what he felt like; I’d gotten myself off on the memory twice, to be honest. But the real thing was better. The real thing was amazing.
He moved all the way in me, slow, and then slowly moved out again. His muscles were tense where he held me, and I could hear his breath. I could smell his skin, that sexy Jason smell, and I opened my eyes and moved back against him as he slid in a second time, making him grunt with pleasure.
His weight on me, and the way he held me, made my clit press against the cool sheets. I was so raw from coming that it was rough, almost painful. And at the same time, as he stretched me and filled me, I knew it would make me come a second time, so hard I might never recover. I would scream, or cry, or embarrass myself. But still I moved with him, coaxing him to go faster.
He didn’t. He kept the pace torturously slow, pushing all the way into me, then all the way out again. He was perfect, controlled. His breath was harsh in my ear.
I made a sound, a whimper of frustration, and he paused, his lips brushing the back of my neck again. “What do you want?” he asked me.
It never crossed my mind not to tell him the truth. “I want you deeper,” I said.
His mouth moved to my ear and he grazed my earlobe. “Fuck,” he said. “I’m already balls deep in you, Megan. I can feel you breathe.”
He was. He was. It was the most perfect, incredible sensation, but I wanted more. “I want to see you,” I said.
He pulled out of me and turned me over, bracing himself over me. His hair was mussed, his eyes dark and intense. He leaned down and kissed me, pulling my tongue into his mouth. I kissed him back, hard, drawing my knees up, desperate for him to come back. He wound one long, muscled arm around the back of my knee, the back of my thigh, and hiked my leg up until my ankle was almost on his shoulder. Then he thrust into me again.
I moaned into his mouth. He was deeper in this angle, and the feeling was pleasure on the thin edge of pain. Balancing on that edge shook something loose in me, and I slid my hands up his back, digging my nails into his skin. He broke the kiss and thrust into me harder.
“Okay?” he said when I gasped.
“It’s so good,” I said. “It’s so good.”
He braced himself, his strong body in one perfect line, and pounded into me. The bed creaked, the headboard tapped the wall. I dug my fingernails deeper into him and held on.
He brushed a thumb over my clit, and I bucked, close to coming. He did it again, and again, still pounding me, and I came, the second orgasm sharper than the first, the edges harder like diamonds, the sensation exploding through me almost in clenching pain. He gripped my knee with one big hand and came, making that sound I recognized, that deep growl in the back of his throat that I’d heard in my fantasies when I’d imagined him over and over.
We were quiet for a minute, both of us panting, our bodies twisted like pretzels. I unlatched my fingernails from his back. He let go of my knee and moved his hand appreciatively up my leg.
“Jesus, you’re bossy,” he said.
I looked up at him, watched languidly as he slowly detangled himself from my leg, which was practically strangling him. I had no idea I was capable of being so flexible. “Deal with it,” I said.
He laughed, a low rumble, and the sight of it did something dangerous to my insides. “I like it,” he said, leaning down and kissing me, surprisingly softly for a man who had just about banged me into oblivion. “I like learning what you like.”
I should have said something. I should have had a response, something witty and tart. But my words had left me. So I let him kiss me, and I didn’t say anything at all.
Seventeen
Megan
I wanted to put his shirt on afterward. When I went to the bathroom to clean up, I saw his white t-shirt crumpled on the floor, and I wanted to put it on, even though I had six feet four of the real thing, naked i
n the bed behind me. That was how pathetic I was. But when I came back out of the bathroom, I grabbed a small blanket from the spare bed and wrapped it around my shoulders instead.
He was lying on his back on the bed, one arm behind his head, the other bent with his hand resting lightly on his stomach. Every inch of him was perfect, from the long, strong lines of his thighs to the dip of skin in his clavicle, which was damp with cooling sweat. I tugged the blanket around me and sat on the bed. His cock, which was relaxed and temporarily satisfied, was still fascinating, and I found my gaze drawn to it.
He lifted the hand from his stomach and tilted my chin, and I looked up to find him grinning. Sex, I realized, put Jason in a supremely good mood. He was a complicated man in some ways, a few of them surprising, but this wasn’t one of them.
I was tempted to feel as good as he did. My body sure as hell felt good, but my brain, of course, had to tie itself in knots.
“Spill it,” Jason said, because apparently he was freaking psychic when it came to me.
The words came out before I could stop them. “You don’t think I’m using you, do you?”
He didn’t even blink. “You mean, do I think you’re just using my dick?” He grinned again. “You do seem to appreciate it.”
I felt my cheeks heat, which was ridiculous, and then I realized he was fishing for a compliment. “Fine,” I said. “I suppose it’s… okay.”
“Okay?”
“Acceptable.”
“Keep talking dirty. I like it.”
My cheeks went even hotter, but I had to say what was on my mind. “I just didn’t want you to get the wrong impression,” I said. “That isn’t… I mean, that isn’t how I feel.”
The teasing went out of his expression. “Relax,” he said. “That isn’t what I think. Besides, I get a lot out of this, too. You may have noticed.”
I waved a hand. “You get laid,” I said. “I think you pretty much get laid all the time.”
“What?”
“Oh, please. Don’t tell me it isn’t true.”
“It isn’t.”
“Jason, come on,” I said, rolling my eyes, trying not to think about it. “You can just be honest, for God’s sake.”
To my surprise, he sat up, his expression solemn. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked for his boxer shorts, sliding them on.
I blinked. Jason seemed almost impossible to offend, but that was what had done it? I’d somehow touched a nerve. “What is it?” I asked him.
“You don’t want to know.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to me. He’d put his boxers on, but nothing else yet. He hadn’t yet stood and walked away. I still had a chance to fix this, whatever it was.
I scooted across the bed until I was next to him, my knees under me, the blanket around me. “What is it?” I said again. When he didn’t answer, I added, “I told you my thing. So tell me.”
He turned and looked at me. His gaze was assessing, as if he was figuring something out about me, trying to read me like words. “It’s embarrassing,” he said.
“More embarrassing than how drunk and stupid we were at that party?”
“Maybe.”
He was worried. That I would laugh at him, maybe. He had no idea that laughing at him was the last thing I would do. “Just tell me,” I said.
He sighed and gave in. “Do you know how many times I had sex with Charlotte?”
“No.” The word came out as practically a shout. I did not want to hear this. “Noooooo…” I said, lifting my hands toward my ears to block him out.
“Seven.”
I froze. “What?”
“Seven,” he said again.
“Seven times?” I stared at him. “Jason, you were dating for four years.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said. “Here’s how it breaks down.” He counted on his fingers. “Twice before I joined the Marines. Once a year while I was deployed. Once when I got home. Seven.”
There was so much in this, I didn’t know where to start. “Once a year?” I asked. “Once a year? Jason, we’re practically going to hit seven times before morning.”
A smile twitched the corner of his mouth, but then it disappeared again.
“And only once after you got home?” I couldn’t get over this. “You were engaged to her. You were living with her.”
“I told you it was embarrassing,” he said, his voice tight.
Blonde, perfect Charlotte. Was she insane? “Is there… something wrong with her?” I asked.
He scratched his chin, his fingertips rasping against his dark stubble. “Not physically, no,” he said. The words sent a white-hot blast of jealousy through me, but I swallowed it down. “She just never wanted to. She never enjoyed sex.” The scratching stopped. “At least with me.”
“What do you mean, with you?” Anyone who didn’t enjoy sex with Jason was definitely insane. “Were there other guys? Was she cheating on you?”
“No,” he said. “There were no other guys. I think she has problems with sex in general. But it took a long time for me to realize it wasn’t me.”
“Jason,” I said, my voice coming out more passionate than I intended. “It isn’t you.”
The smile briefly appeared again, then vanished. “I know that now, I think. It wasn’t just the sex—I couldn’t do anything right with her. I never said the right things, got the right job, wore the right things. Nothing. But I think now that she’s just an unhappy person. She’s unhappy with everything, everyone. Unhappy with her whole life. And it took me all that time to see that she was taking all of her misery out on me, and that nothing I would ever do would fix it.”
It sounded perfectly, honestly terrible. I could not imagine living like that. And I could not have been more wrong in my mental picture of their relationship. “Why did you stay?” I asked. “Why did you put up with it for so long?”
He sighed and closed his eyes briefly. “It’s hard to explain,” he said. “We met only a few months before I joined the Marines. So at first the lack of sex was because it was so soon. And then I was deployed, and the first few times I was home on leave I thought it was no big deal, because she needed time to adjust, you know? We barely knew each other, really. She made it seem like it was a burden, being my girlfriend while I was deployed, but she didn’t want to break up. And what could I do, dump her from the other side of the world because I wasn’t getting laid enough? How big an asshole would that make me?”
I bit my lip, but I didn’t speak. Of course Jason didn’t want to be an asshole. That was the last thing he’d want anyone to think of him. It didn’t matter what the cost was.
“So it just went on and on,” he continued. “And then I came home, and I thought, Okay, I’ll fix everything now. So we moved in together and I asked her to marry me. And it didn’t fix anything. Things got even worse.” He shook his head. “We fought and fought, and then we broke up.”
“So she treated you like a piece of furniture for four years, and then it was over? Aren’t you mad?” I ran a hand through my sex-tangled hair. “God, I’d be on a rage path. I’d be so furious if someone fucked with my head like that.”
“Part of it is my fault. I should have sucked it up and broken things off.” He looked at me. “Besides, you have exes. You don’t seem like you’re on a rage path.”
“That’s because my exes are lame.”
“Even the wedding guy?”
Talking about Kyle while I was in bed with Jason was so jarring it made me wince. They were not from the same planet. “Please. I don’t want to talk about how I embarrassed myself over him when I was seventeen.”
“But you’re not angry. You’re going to his wedding.” He smiled a little. “It’s only me you get mad at.”
I stared at him, stunned and a little embarrassed. He was right. When my last boyfriend had cheated on me and dumped me, it had sucked, and it had hurt, and he was an idiot, and I’d beat myself up for my stupidity more than once. But I’d never felt even
a shadow of the want-to-break-things anger I’d felt over Jason forgetting me after that party.
Jason was my weakness. The knowledge that he’d been sex-deprived for four years, that his life with Charlotte was nothing like I’d pictured, only made it worse. It made me possessive, like I wanted every piece of him. Like I had a chance of having it.
Just the sight of him sitting there, giving me that little half smile, made me want to climb him like a tree. I wanted to wrap myself around that big body, feel the flush of his hard parts against my soft parts, feel the way he touched me and maneuvered me and fucked me until I stopped thinking. I didn’t care about who he’d been with or when, not really. I wanted him, and I didn’t care about anything else. Except for maybe one thing.
I swallowed. “Did you love her?” I made myself ask.
Jason scratched his chin again and stared at the ceiling, thinking. “I don’t think that’s exactly the right question.”
My heart did a nervous flop in my chest. “That doesn’t sound like a yes,” I said.
He thought about it some more. “I don’t think I knew her very well,” he said.
“Still not a yes.”
“She’s not a bad person. I think she’s just screwed up.” He looked at me. “God, listen to me. That means no, doesn’t it?”
“I think so,” I managed. I tried to keep my voice calm. “Has there… been anyone since?”
“What do you think?” he replied, his gaze on me. “Seriously?”
Everything inside me was shifting, changing. I felt like people do when they first put on a pair of glasses, and suddenly they can see. I’d thought so many wrong things. I’d let my anger, the sting of my own screw-ups and insecurities, paint the picture of who he was. Because it was easier. It was easier to just be mad at him, to stay mad at him, and to pretend it was his fault. It was the coward’s way out. The way that refused to see him as he was.
But I saw him now. Even though I’d seen him naked, even though I’d fucked him spectacularly, now I saw something different. He wasn’t a golden boy or Mr. Perfect. He was a guy who doubted himself. Who got jerked around and screwed over. Everyone always assumed I was a mess—but everyone assumed Jason Carsleigh was just fine. I wondered which was worse.
