by Ines Johnson
The air around them was charged. It became electrified as Hawk pumped into Ellie. Her cries were desperate. His groans pained. They stared into each other’s eyes. Heat from their bodies hit me like a wave. I couldn’t look away.
This was love. This was what was missing from the videos. Ellie came again, her face crumbling, her eyes tearing. Hawk watched her, his face contorting in joy. But he didn’t stop. He kept going, pumping inside her.
“Please, Hawk,” she begged.
He shook his head, no. “I want another one.”
He reached down and grabbed her ass, pulling her legs up and over his shoulders. The angle put her completely at his mercy. Her head fell back. Her body went limp and helpless. He pounded into her like a jack hammer.
“You good, MK?” Christopher asked.
I didn’t answer.
“You get what you need?”
I turned to him but I still couldn’t make any words.
“They’ll be at this for a while. We can go to my room… So you can write down some notes.”
I should say ‘no’.
He knew I should say ‘no’.
We both knew that neither one of us wanted me to say ‘no’.
Ellie was coming for the third time. Hawk thrust into her with a guttural yell. Ellie’s head rolled back, her mouth in a grin. Hawk’s forehead rested beneath her chin in supplication. When Ellie opened her eyes they sparkled.
She grinned at me and waved. “I hope that helped.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Are you okay?” Christopher shut the door to his bedroom. His room was neat and orderly. The bed was made. A navy blue comforter lay folded down at the foot. I walked over to his dresser. There were a few pictures on his dresser top. No one was alone in any of the photos. There was always a group. I recognized his mother in several photos.
“It’s still hard for me to understand how they could share that.” I touched his face in the glass of one of the picture frames. “It’s evident they love each other.”
“You share your writing. It’s intimate, from your heart. You let hundreds, thousands of people read it. They’re your innermost thoughts, fears, and desires. And you let them all in.”
Adjectives, verbs, and nouns swam in my brain but I couldn’t grasp on to any one for a response.
“Can you use any of that, with Ellie and Hawk, for your book?” he asked.
I nodded, crossing my arms.
Christopher came up and wrapped his arms around me. “You cold?”
“Confused. You say were just friends. But you hold me like I mean something to you.”
“You do mean something to me, MK.”
“I want more.” I squirmed to get out of his arms, but it was a halfhearted attempt.
“Do you want to go home?” His arms tighten around me.
“No.” This time I did break away. “That’s the problem.”
He brought me back into his embrace. I held onto him tightly, like my life depended on it. But I didn’t want to be this girl. I didn’t want to cling to a man who didn’t want me, who wouldn’t be there for me.
“I should go.” I broke free from him again.
He caught my hand. “Talk to me.”
Our fingers entwined. His thumb brushed the center of my palm.
“I have feelings for you beyond friendship,” I said.
“I think I have the same feelings. I wanted to call you every day. I missed talking to you. I missed hearing your voice. I want to tell you everything that’s been happening with me since the last time I saw you. Is that weird?”
“No,” I shook my head. I wanted to do the same thing.
“MK, I want to kiss you.”
I couldn’t breathe. I had to play his words over again and again to make sure I hadn’t made them up in my head.
“But that’s not all,” he continued. “I want to play with your breasts. I want to put my hands down your panties. And then my face.”
My brain reeled and swirled at the impact of his words.
“But we don’t have to do any of that. We could just hang out,” he said. “That’s what you do on a date, isn’t it? You get dressed up in one of those cute dresses, with your heels on, and your hair out. It drives me crazy when you put your hair up. I want to pull down.”
He reached behind me and pulled my hair-tie loose. My hair spilled over my shoulders. Just because my hair spilled down my shoulders didn’t mean I let go of my senses. I ran all of his words through my head again and picked out the most important one.
“You want to date me?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said as he ran his fingers through my hair.
“But you still want to sleep with other women?”
“Yeah,” he nodded. “You’re not ready for sex and I would never pressure you.”
Again I ran the words, like an accountant triple checking their math, trying to make it add up. “So you would go out to dinner with me and come home and have sex with another girl?”
He cocked his head in confusion. “You’d rather I become abstinent?”
“I’d rather you wait for me.” My voice sounded like it had when I was twelve-years-old, shrill and crackling its way through puberty.
“You mean marriage?” He let go of the strands of my hair and stepped back. “I said I won’t pressure you into sex, but you want to pressure me into a lifelong commitment?”
I stepped back too. There was only two feet between us, but it felt like a gulf.
“I want you in my life, MK. I know that much. I’ll give you my time and my attention. I’ll respect your desires and beliefs. But I’m not willing to be celibate. I like kinky things that I know you’re not ready for, may never be ready for.”
He stepped into me, closing the gulf in one step. “When you’ve dated before, you didn’t have sex. So, let’s just keep sex off the table.”
There had to be something wrong with my hearing. Here was a guy, a very viral guy, who wanted to date me for my witty conversational skills. But the sex we wouldn’t be having he’d have with other girls.
“You can say ‘no’,” he said.
I wanted to stomp my foot. No, I couldn’t. I couldn’t say ‘no’.
I wanted him.
All of him.
“That’s everything I have to give you, MK.”
Was it enough? He was everything I wanted, minus the desire to play in other women’s vaginas. In my books, I spent hundreds of pages with characters talking and getting to know each other before they would kiss at the end. Christopher wanted the intimacy of kissing now, in the middle of our story.
He caught my chin and lifted my gaze. “You can say ‘no’, and if you do, I won’t bother you again.”
“No.”
His face fell at the misunderstanding and my heart choked.
“I mean I don’t want to say ‘no’,” I clarified. “I can’t seem to say ‘no’ to you.”
“Yes, you can.”
He captured my lips. The brush of flesh was so light I could’ve imagined it. The whisper of his breath was the only real thing I could grasp onto, and it blew by me before I could catch it.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, his lips hovering over mine.
“No,” I sighed.
“See.”
His grin spread across my lips. His tongue tasted the divot at the center of my upper lip. My lips parted on an inhale. Christopher’s tongue stole into my mouth. His lips sealed over the breach so that neither of us could escape.
I’d been kissed before. Tentative pecks on the cheek. Stiff tongues swiping my mouth like windshield blades. Sloppy, open-mouthed French kisses. Every last memory of those sophomoric attempts faded from my memory as Christopher owned my mouth.
When he released the bond of our lips, I groped in the darkness. My eyes were open, but the haze of desire blinded me. Christopher moved to my neck and began a slow trail of soft kisses southward.
“You want me to stop?” he asked.
“No,” I whimpered.
He shifted the bodice of my dress and kissed the heated tops of my breasts. My nipples were already painfully hard. The flesh beneath and around my breasts swelled until I felt the lace of my bra straining. I swore I heard the fabric tearing.
“Do you want me to stop?” Christopher asked. His mouth hovered over my nipple.
“No.”
He reached around my back for the zipper to my dress. “You trust me, princess?”
The sound of the metal teeth unclenching fried my brain. My heart was in my throat and words couldn’t get through.
“I know where your boundaries are,” Christopher said. “I won’t cross them. You can say ‘no’.”
He pulled the dress down my shoulders. His lips led the way. The fabric followed close behind. When the dress came over my stomach, I froze and caught it.
“Is that a no, MK?”
“No -I mean. No one’s seen me naked before.”
“I feel sorry for every man in the entire world.” His hands hovered over my curves. His eyes were big as his gaze took me in. His breath tickled my belly button as he looked at me like I was a prize.
My hands relaxed as he kissed at my soft belly. It was no feat for him to yank the fabric from me. I stood before him in my disheveled bra and panties. The desire for him burned away at my self-consciousness.
Christopher knelt and pressed his mouth to the crotch of my panties. My knees buckled. He caught me, lifted me, and carried me to the bed. His perfect body came overtop of over mine.
“I’m going to kiss you between your thighs,” he said. “You can tell me ‘no’.”
He spread my thighs until my heels reached the corners of the bed. I was trembling before he dipped his head. I watched the blonde tufts of hair shift as he cocked his head and looked up at me.
“Do you want me to stop, MK?” He hooked his fingers in the waistband of my panties and tugged. “What was that?”
“No. Please, no.”
I knew what he was going to do. I wasn’t so sweet that I didn’t know the ways men and women pleasured each other. I’d imagined my husband-to-be going down on me, and me returning the favor. I’d just always assumed it would happen during my honeymoon, not after I’d watched a live sex show featuring two of my new friends.
When Christopher’s lips struck my most intimate lips, I jackknifed off the bed. With the first stroke of his tongue, my hips moved of their own accord against his face.
“Fuck, that’s sexy. Yeah, fuck my mouth, princess. Fuck, you taste so sweet.”
My body undulated against his face as he flicked his tongue. The tight coil happened so fast, my eyes watered. I locked my legs over Christopher’s back. I dug my fingers into the sheets. But the release wouldn’t come.
As though he knew, Christopher reached up both hands. His face stayed buried in my core. Without looking up, his hands found the lacy edge of my bra. His fingers snuck under the fabric and found my nipples. All it took was a pinch of his thumbs and forefingers and the damn broke inside me.
A fingernail broke as I dug into the mattress. My ankles locked at Christopher’s shoulder blades. Sometime later, Christopher made his way up my body and brought me into his arms. He held me tight as the tremors receded.
“So we’re dating now?” he said.
Chapter Fourteen
“Whoops,” said Christopher. “Looks like I dropped the soap… again.”
He knelt down, filling his empty hands with my abdomen. Then my ass. Then my thighs.
I never wore shorts. I always kept my thunder thighs covered. Christopher spread them apart like he was unwrapping a gift. Then he played with the treasures he found within.
The soap lay forgotten in the tub basin as he cleaned me up with his tongue. The sudsy water slurped down the drain mixing with the sounds of his lips against my core. His hands rose to my breasts. He found my nipples and gave them a pinch.
That was all it took.
Christopher stood and caught me before my knees gave out. He held me and kissed me as the tremors stopped. Then he hefted me up and out of the tub.
I was too comatose to protest about my weight. My brain and virtue cried a warning. He was hard against my soft, wet flesh. It would’ve taken nothing for him to steal inside of me.
He’d let me put it in my mouth earlier this morning. It had been awkward at first until I looked up and saw the ecstasy on his face. The feel of him invading my jaws, sliding over my tongue, and spilling his essence down my throat transformed into something beautiful and sensual that I wanted to do again and again. In my mouth, and in other places.
I opened my legs and wrapped them around his waist. His penis behaved, aiming up instead of arrowing inside of me. I didn’t hide my disappointment.
Christopher set me down on the bed and toweled me off. He paid particular attention to my breasts again. I felt the flutters rising within me.
“Careful, you’re getting a little too excited, princess. We don’t want to make a mistake.”
I struggled to remember why that was a bad thing. Then I remembered our deal. We were dating. Well, he was dating me. I’d already planned out our life together. In my mind, my belly was swollen with child number three. My mind would not let go of the idea that I was going to marry this man. It didn’t matter that he didn’t believe in the institution.
For Christopher, dating meant dinner, conversation, and kissing. Kissing anywhere on my body. We’d only been at it for a day. We’d had the house to ourselves. He’d made dinner. There’d been light conversation. But mostly, there was kissing.
“You are so sensitive.” He pressed my thighs together, and then pressed a kiss to my lips. “I could play with you all day, princess. But I have to go to work.”
“You won’t be late. It’s just a few steps from your house.”
“No, my other job.”
“Your mom won’t mind if you’re late,” I said. “She likes me.”
He stood and passed a grin over his shoulder before turning away from me. “I don’t work at my mom’s store.”
I lay naked on this man’s bed, in a house he shared with other men I didn’t really know, and I had no idea how he spent his days.
As though sensing my confusion, Christopher came over to the bed. “I race cars.”
“Like for NASCAR?”
He chuckled. “No. Street racing.”
My brows furled. “Is that legal?”
He waggled his head. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no.”
So that was that. The guy I’d mentally planned my life with, the guy I now had two kids with and was working on number three, that guy was a quasi-criminal. I didn't know what I’d tell the children. He wouldn’t be able to go to Career Day at their elementary school.
“You’re freaking out, aren’t you?” He grasped both my hands and pulled me up until I was sitting before him. Now that I was leveled with his eyes, I saw that there was a speck of wariness there.
I reached up and ran my hand over his eyelids. He let me, turning his face into my fingers and pressing his lips into my palm. My heart squeezed as hard as my core had moments ago.
“I’m not freaking out,” I said.
His lips quirked up. That mischievous grin told me he knew I wasn’t telling him the whole truth.
Instead of owning up to it, I decided to change the conversation. “I’m just thinking about my own work. I’m having trouble with the middle of the book.”
“Tell me. Maybe I can help.” He went into his dresser and pulled a pair of jeans out of a drawer. He stepped into them. Commando.
I stood and pulled my bra and panties on. “The story is an ugly duckling trope.”
He snorted as he put his arms into a button-up shirt. “You amaze me. I don’t know how you write these things you know absolutely nothing about?”
I peered at him. He didn’t appear to be joking. He truly didn’t see how I didn’t know the ugly duckling trope. How could I not be falling for this guy?
I pulled my dress over my head and then continued the sketchy tale that was my steamy novel.
“The guy is popular and handsome,” I said. “He approaches the heroine because of a joke. Then it turns out he needs her help. And then he starts to have feelings for her.”
“I like it.” Christopher came around the bed and buttoned up the back of my dress. “Let me guess what happens next. The friends and families get in the way of their love? They try to break them apart?”
I nodded. “They’re from different worlds, so yes.”
He turned me to face him. “I don’t see what the problem is?”
“I’m in the middle of the story and it’s sagging. I started off with a bang, but I’ve lost momentum. I can’t figure out where to go next. If I go too fast, it might feel like I’ve missed all the details of why they fell in love. We call that the Fun and Games section in romance writing. If I go too slow, I risk getting too deep into the details and the readers will get bored and might put the book down.”
“It sounds like racing,” he said, putting his arms around me. “When you’re at the starting line, there’s always some jerk-off who revs his engine to show his balls are bigger. It gets attention. But if you rev too high before you take off, you can loose traction and the tires will spin out and you lose all power.”
“So, how do you win?”
“You gotta pace yourself. You gotta know where the sweet spot is. And when you find it, you gotta take your foot off the brake and go full throttle. Wanna see? Come with me to the race.”
Chapter Fifteen
There were women’s booties everywhere that I looked. In threadbare skirts that were knit crochets. In Daisy Dukes riding up their crotches. In skirts I would bet were originally used as headbands. The women were all draped on cars like in the magazines. Or in men’s laps like in porn videos.
“Hey Crow.” A girl wearing a bright yellow bandanna over her ass sauntered over. “Want a tune-up before you get behind the wheel?”
Christopher grinned at her. “I’m good. My girlfriend took care me this morning.”
