by Amelia Wilde
“What?”
“This is what’s so hot it’ll burn your mouth.”
“My mouth—” she can hardly string the words together. “Is fine.” Then another moan escapes her on the tail end of a breath.
“You’re so close.”
“I’m so close,” she breathes into my ear. There are a million stars bursting in my chest. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so right in my life, here in the lamplight with Valentine, on my bed, behind not one but two locked doors.
Now I just need to make her come.
She’s right on the edge, and she buries her face into my shoulder like it’s too much to let it show.
Oh, no. I’m not having that.
“Look at me,” I whisper, and she pushes up so that our eyes meet, her red hair tousled. She bites her lip.
“This seems... like a recipe... for disaster.”
“It seems like a recipe for an orgasm. Speaking of...”
She shoots me a glare that makes me laugh, makes my cock pulse between us. “Don’t fool around, Ryder.”
“Fool around? I’d never.”
I tease the head of my cock against her opening, my hand working between us. I can see her starting to blink, starting to get overtaken by the wave of pleasure, but she’s fighting hard to maintain eye contact. It’s brave as hell. I thought it was cute, all the shit that kept happening, lighthearted as fuck, but for Valentine, those things must have been mortifying. Yet here she is, showing me all of her without flinching at all.
Her mouth opens just slightly as I push into her entrance, still teasing her. Spots of color come to her already-pink cheeks. “Ryder...” The word is half warning, half plea.
I work another inch into her tight, wet opening, and she rocks her hips back against me. I won’t give her anymore. Not until...
I pick up the pace with my fingers, just a bit, just a bit, and Valentine’s entire body reacts, her hands clenching on my chest.
“Oh...” she breathes, and then she’s over the edge, hips moving out of control, slamming back. At the peak of her orgasm, I thrust into her, all the way, taking up every inch.
I almost explode inside her right then and there. That’s how good it feels. Oh, my God, so fucking good.
It wouldn’t matter if the entire fire department burst in right now. I wouldn’t even miss a beat.
Valentine starts rocking with a new rhythm, and I let it take me away.
I might never come back.
29
Valentine
Nothing against the prep table at the Short Stack, but I would take Ryder’s bed anytime.
No matter what happens, I think I’ll always have a certain fondness for this dark blue comforter, the mattress with a little give, and the pillows that smell like him. How could I not? The things he’s doing to me are a damn revelation.
He’s hard as steel, so hard that when I reach down and take him into my hand, there’s almost no give. I don’t know how he can possibly wait...
But he does.
He spreads me out on the bed and strokes me until I’m trembling with a kind of slow-burn pleasure that I’ve never felt before. Not with Conrad. Certainly not with any of my fumbling high school boyfriends. They never had the patience or the skill.
When he tumbles into bed with me, I’m already so far gone, so adrift in a delicious pleasure that’s not as scorching as the hot sauce at the Mexican restaurant. It doesn’t take me by storm. It inches up and outward from my clit, where he’s focusing most of his attention and takes me over like the little waves on the lake that turn into big, rolling movements in the water.
I come for the first time on top of him, every inch of his perfect muscles on display, rocking against mine. I never liked being on top. Not until now.
And when he tells me to look at him while I come, everything that’s happened before flies right out of my head. I forget how stupid I must have looked shooting whipped cream right into his face. I forget how awkward it was that he felt the need to kiss me to save me at the Mexican place. I forget all of it. Nothing matters except looking into his blue eyes.
In those eyes, there’s nothing but a deep care. With a shock, I realize that it’s all for me.
This moment between us has erased the darkness from Ryder’s eyes, erased the sensation that he’s waiting for something terrible to happen. Right now, I know with all of my heart that nothing is going to ruin this.
What a fucking tease he is. I’m so deep into the pleasure that he’s giving me with two fingers—two fingers that have more skill than all of Conrad’s body—that it almost pushes me right over the edge when he enters me, just a little.
I want more. I have to have more.
And when he thrusts in, all of him at once, in the middle of the first wave of my orgasm—well, holy shit. I’ve never felt anything so good in my entire life.
Ryder starts a rhythm that feels like it was meant to be. His hands on my hips are strong and confident, adding to their dance, and I never want him to let go. Never. Never. Never.
I lose track of the sounds coming out of my mouth. I lose track of everything but his blue eyes, but his thickness taking up every inch of available space. I come again, a shorter peak than the first time but just as intense, and this time I have to close my eyes.
Ryder starts to lose it when I push up on his chest, sitting back so I can breathe. I’m about to pass out from how all-encompassing this feels, and I have to breathe. But sitting up only changes the angle of his cock, hitting all-new spaces inside of me.
“Oh, my God,” I breathe, and then he snakes his hand back between my legs and presses the pad of his thumb to my clit.
It’s a shattering orgasm, making me throw my head back, and when I open my eyes again, he’s grinning at me, wickedly, the pillows behind him framing his face.
“There’s nothing I’d rather do than watch you come on my cock,” he says into the relative quiet of the room.
“Oh yeah?” I can hardly catch my damn breath. “Well, if that’s true, then—”
He does something with his hips that deepens the thrust, making me react, rocking my hips against his, and that thumb again—
I’m not going to be able to do this much longer. I don’t even know if my body can handle this much pleasure. It never reached this level with anyone else, and it rages through me, wave after wave, shoulders to fingertips, waist to toes. This is like a glass of water in the desert. It might be too much, but I also don’t know how I’ve lived this long without it.
As I’m coming down, Ryder is picking up the pace, but I can’t stay upright any longer. He seems to sense it because he rolls us both over so that he’s on top, propped up on his elbows, grinning down at me, thrusting in and out, in and out. I wrap my legs around him.
I’ve never felt sexier in my life. I’ve never felt more wanted, more secure, in my life.
I can’t let this summer go.
I know that I can’t.
It sends a pain like breaking glass through my heart and he sees it on my face, but he doesn’t miss a beat. He brings his hand to my cheek, brings his lips to my jaw, pressing there. “No, Sweet Valentine, don’t think about it.”
“How do you know—” It’s a choked whisper.
“Just be here with me. Just be here with me.” And just like that, I’m pulled back into him, into the raw, manly scent of him, into the muscled body that’s shielding me from the world, into the in and out of his cock, in and out, in and out, wave after wave, bringing me closer and closer to the top and then sending me careening over into another orgasm. Another and another. I can’t tell when one ends and another begins.
I’m a liquid puddle of desire by the time he reaches for his bedside table. I hear the drawer open and close and the tear of a foil wrapper, and then he’s out—oh, God, the emptiness—and entering me again a few moments later. I put my hands on his hips and let myself feel the movement from every available angle—the way he brings himself close to the edge—am I w
hispering naughty nothings in his ear or am I just hallucinating it?—and then I feel it in my hands when he loses control, our bodies colliding again and again.
At some point, I don’t know when, everything goes still and dark.
Peace.
30
Ryder
I come so hard it makes the corners of my vision blurry, but things don’t exactly end there. At least, I think they don’t. Valentine is curled around me, trembling. She kisses the corner of my jaw, my earlobe, and across my cheek, hot and sweet, every print of her lips burning on my skin. I think she has one or two more little orgasms, her hips rocking against me before she falls asleep.
I haven’t slept with anyone—really slept with anyone—like this for a long time.
Maybe ever.
Valentine curls against my side, her naked, perfect breasts pressed up against my ribcage. She breathes in and out in a rhythm that reminds me of waves on the lakeshore. Her red hair is everywhere. I can see it all because neither of us thought to turn off the light.
Only I can’t bring myself to move. Not a single muscle.
I want her to stay like this, with me, for as long as possible.
It only takes a few minutes for my arm to start to ache. Still, the weight of her body against mine feels…secure, somehow. Safe. A shelter in the storm.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I wasn’t supposed to need her. I’m not supposed to need anything from anyone in this town, or any other town. But her body against mine could become a little bit of an obsession.
Who am I kidding? It’s already an obsession, even if I’m only willing to admit it in the privacy of this bedroom. It’s not quite my bedroom, but it’ll do. With Valentine next to me the room doesn’t matter at all.
My eyelids are heavy. I never get enough sleep, not with Minnie around, and I’m pretty damn spent from what just happened here.
It’s been a long road.
I raise my hand to my mouth to stifle the laugh that bursts through my chest. The thought of Valentine looking at all those sausages, so patient, while that poor kid stood there… He had to have known that we were hooking up. Had to. I mean, how could he not? I never felt an ounce of jealousy for him or his sausage-delivering life, which is rare these days.
Although I haven’t been envying anyone else’s life now that Valentine and I are playing this game.
It’s not a game, though.
I can hardly keep my eyes open, drifting off in between thoughts. Is it really a game? No, I don’t think it is. I think I want more from her, but I’m not going to ask her unless I’m totally sure I can handle it. Not to mention Valentine’s own ability to handle my life, which is almost never a sexy cakewalk of a fling. I’m starting to realize that she can bounce back from anything, though. Flour. Mexican food. Even surprise sausage deliveries.
I don’t know how long it’s been, but eventually I have to turn off the light. My eyes are begging for some country darkness—this is pretty much the country—and the last thing I need is a ridiculous electric bill.
Easing out from under Valentine turns out to be the easy part. Once the light is off, and the only thing filtering into the room is a pale moonlight, I stand at the side of the bed, trying to figure out how to get back underneath her without waking her up.
I fail.
She stirs as I slide my arm back under her, a little smile curling at the corners of her lips. “Hi,” she whispers.
“Hi. You can go back to sleep.”
Valentine yawns. “Did you get a job or something?”
I laugh. What kind of question is that? “I did…but why does that matter right now?”
She shrugs against me. “It doesn’t. It’s just that your muscles are even…better than usual.”
“Oh, thanks,” I say, pretending to be offended. She laughs a silent laugh against me. “You would notice that I’m even more ripped than usual.”
“How could I not?” She smiles, her teeth white in the darkness. “I think I’d like to notice everything about you.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“You do the talking, then.”
I shift downward in the bed so that my head is actually on the pillow and breathe her in. “What do you want to talk about?” We’re heading into territory that is decidedly not the kind of thing you get into when it’s just a fling, but here in the dark with her, none of that matters. I just don’t give a fuck about the rules of the game. Fling only…what does that even mean?
“Tell me about her.”
My heart pounds in my chest—it’s like I can feel it clamming up when Valentine asks the question. But I’m pretty savvy. I know how to avoid a grenade if I need to. “Who?”
She swallows. “Minnie,” she says, and my entire body relaxes.
I don’t bother to disguise the smile. “She’s amazing.” I think of her fine blonde curls at the back of her neck, the way she’s endlessly adventurous, the way it doesn’t seem to faze her at all that we moved cities. But it’s hard to talk about Minnie without mentioning Angie, and I think—I think—that’s what Valentine really wants to know. “She’s…she’s the only good thing to come out of a bad situation. Her mother’s name is Angie.”
Valentine frowns—I can feel it against my chest—but she doesn’t say anything.
“I knew Angie from school a little bit, and when I came home from Afghanistan, she was still hanging around the town I grew up in,” I say, every word measured. I have to figure out how to do this in a way that’s not going to make it seem like I spend all of my time thinking about fucking Angie. “I didn’t know it at the time, but she was a drug addict.”
Valentine tenses against me. “Oh, no, Ryder,” she whispers. It doesn’t have a happy ending, that story, and she already sees it coming. But here we are. Now that I’ve started telling her, I can’t stop.
“She wanted to move to the city, and I went with her. That was about three years ago.” I shake my head. “Things went south. Things were really, really bad, Valentine.” It’s the first time I’ve admitted it out loud to anyone. “She went totally off the rails. The drugs—” I don’t like to think of the way she was. Violent. Too violent. She’d come after me, and what could I do? The police would never have been on my side. So I’d let her have at me. Better me than somebody else. “Then she got pregnant.”
Valentine sucks in a breath.
“When Minnie was born it changed everything. She was such a sweet baby. So bright. So interested in everything and everyone, but Angie didn’t want to have anything to do with her. She tried, but she just wasn’t cut out for… being a mom in that way, I guess. But it was different for me.” I swallow down the ache in my throat. “A few months ago—five, maybe?—she went to work for a shift and didn’t come back.” The shame comes hot and thick. “I tried to make it work, but Minnie was beside herself. I couldn’t leave her in daycare for long enough to make the money I needed to keep our place.” There. I’ve said it. I’ve admitted my failure to Valentine.
But she doesn’t move. She only holds on tighter.
“So now we’re here. And I’ve got the job with my brother, for the time being, just until we can get back out again.”
We both breathe quietly for a few long minutes. Is she asleep?
Then Valentine speaks into the dark. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” she says softly, her voice a balm on the ache in my chest. “But I’m glad you’re here. I wish you didn’t have to leave.”
31
Valentine
When I wake up again, Ryder isn’t there, but the sheets are still warm from where he was lying.
I curl into them, basking in the scent of his skin, like Old Spice and sunshine, and then laugh out loud. Even thinking that a man smells like sunshine is unbelievably cheesy.
But he does.
After a few more minutes with my eyes closed, I open them again. My heart is beating faster even though nothing is going on. Where is Ryder, anyway? If he stepped out to
use the bathroom, it’s been a while, I think. I strain my ears, listening. There’s a low rumble from the front of the house, toward the living room.
There’s a gray haze coming in through the window. Who’s he talking to? It’s early as hell in the morning.
I wish he would just come back to bed.
I try to fall asleep again. Sooner or later, he’ll be back here, and then we’ll...
Well, we have a lot of options for things we can do. At least until his daughter wakes up. Today’s my day off this week, so I don’t have anywhere to be. Oh, shit—he might have somewhere to be. Jamie Harrison is his brother. I know Jamie from the couple of times he’s stopped by the Short Stack, usually to buy one of the loaves of banana bread Gerald makes on Thursdays. And he does…oh, right. Jamie does lots of shit. He’s kind of Lakewood’s cute, nerdy jack-of-all-trades. I’d bet anything he has Ryder working for the lawn maintenance portion of his business. That would explain the muscles.
The minutes tick by, and with every one that passes, things seem a little less cozy-lazy-morning and more... something’s off.
I stand up and throw my legs over the side of my bed. I have very little clue where my clothes from yesterday went. I think the panties were destroyed back at the Short Stack…oh, and the flour. The flour ruined everything. Somewhere, my outfit is in Ryder’s washing machine. Or dryer, if he’s really on top of things. I pull open his top dresser drawer and take the first t-shirt I see. There’s a pair of boxers underneath. Good enough for me.
I head toward the bedroom door with a funny little smile on my face. This summer has been absolutely ridiculous, but at least it’s a nice change of pace from Conrad’s faux-seriousness paired with his ultimately assholeish demeanor. I don’t think I’d change any of it. It seemed terrible to have to go back to waitressing, but at least Sharon didn’t give me a hard time. It could be worse. I could still be suffering in the city under Conrad’s influence. Gross.
