by C. C. Piper
Even though my body wanted nothing more than to explode, I cupped her cheeks with my hands and sealed my lips over hers. What I was about to show her now was my appreciation of her, my love for her, and fast and dirty wasn’t the way to go. When she opened her mouth to me, I tasted her, this time going slowly, languorously. I sucked on her tongue as I massaged the expanse of her back, my hands stroking her shoulder blades, her spine and her luscious hips.
I was in heaven.
Taking her hand, I led her over to the bed, lifting the covers so she could slide between the luxurious sheets. A gas fireplace had been situated on the opposite side of the room from the windows, and I flipped a switch on the wall, making purple and orange flames spring to life. The firelight spread over her face and highlighted the golden strands of her hair, giving her the appearance of an angel.
My magnificently gorgeous imp of an angel.
She reached out and ran her palm along my shaft, but I couldn’t take it and pushed her hand away. I crawled into bed beside her and licked a path from her jaw to her collarbone, pausing at her left breast. I’d been wondering about this for so long, and now I had her laid out in front of me.
Her breasts were round and ample, jiggling slightly any time she moved, with rosy nipples that puckered when I breathed on them. I pushed the tip of my tongue along the outside of them, circling them until they were wet, then blew on them, just to see if she would tremble.
She did.
I then sucked on one, pressing the nipple to the roof of my mouth with the flat of my tongue. She moaned loud and long when I did, and I dipped a finger below her navel, checking to see what kind of effect this was having on her. And God, she was wet. Wetter than she’d ever been. Even though giving such attention to her breasts had been positively rapturous, I felt compelled to sink lower so I could again taste the nectar at her core.
I reminded myself that she was a virgin and needed to be well primed before we took that final step. I flitted my tongue up and down her folds, drawing noises from her that spurred me on. So I wouldn’t go off ahead of schedule, I tilted my hips away from her so nothing could rub against me. I was too close not to take the precaution.
I continued to tease and torment her with light, fluttery touches, using only my tongue to entice her. Yet teasing her also meant teasing myself, and when she started to make a high-pitched whimpering sound I’d never heard from her prior, I knew it was time to change tactics. Up until then, I’d been avoiding her clit, so I took the opportunity to roll my tongue against that sensitive kernel of skin at the same second that I entered her with my finger.
Maybe it was due to the excitement of our trip or the overall anticipation of finally having all this unhindered privacy, but this was enough to make her fall right over the summit. She came with a loud cry, and instead of gentling my touches like I normally did, I increased the stakes by adding a second finger. While she was still in the throes of ecstasy, I pulled my body up and over hers, maintaining her pleasure with my hand rather than my mouth.
As her cries continued, I did something I always loved, I lathed kisses on her open mouth, letting her taste herself on me. We did this every time we were together, tasted one another after the fact. There was something so primal about it, so instinctual, and though we were going further than we ever had tonight, it felt important to not break with our special tradition.
It also felt important to verbalize this next part. “B.C., are you ready for me?”
Physically, her body had already told me her answer. But I wanted to hear her say the words before I proceeded. “So ready,” she said, breathily, and my erection jerked as if she’d just commanded it heel, shake, and roll over.
“Tell me if you need me to slow down or stop, okay?”
“Okay.”
Though it was difficult to think right then, I forced myself to take a deep breath and concentrate. I refused to do anything that could be anything near the realm of hurting her.
Positioning myself over her, I rubbed my shaft along her dampened folds. I was already leaking for her – I had been for several minutes – but I wanted to make certain we had plenty of lubrication. Once she began humming with pleasure again, I placed my thick head up against her entrance. Her eyes were closed, so I spoke again. “Look at me, Alaina, so I know how you’re doing.”
Her long lashes drifted open, the pupils so wide and dark that the mixed hazel coloring was nearly absent. Her forehead and cheeks were dewy with perspiration, making tiny curls appear at her hairline, and her bow-shaped lips were so plump and juicy that I groaned at the sight of them. The overall sensory effect of witnessing Alaina stretched out like this was overwhelming, so I took another breath, reinforcing my resolve.
I slid into her with cautious deliberation, only allowing in about an inch of my length before I halted. There was no change in her expression, so I pushed forth again. Less than halfway in, her breath caught, and her eyes blinked rapidly. I froze above her, quelling another groan. She was so fucking tight it should have been illegal.
“You okay?”
“Um…” she murmured, but her posture had gone taut as if in discomfort. “It… I don’t know how to describe it. There’s pressure. And I’m hot. Too hot.” Her legs kicked upwards as if to make her point, and I shoved the bed linens off to the side.
“We don’t have to do this tonight,” I said, and if my body had had a voice, it would’ve been shrieking at me in protest. But I didn’t care. I’d never willingly harm her, not to consummate our relationship or for any other reason. I couldn’t hurt this woman.
This woman I loved. This woman who’d never been with another the way she’d consented to be with me. The knowledge of this made my inner caveman growl out a single ancient word.
Mine.
Even if we never made love, I knew that was what she was. She was mine. And whether she realized it or not, I was hers.
“No, I don’t want to stop,” she said. “I’m feeling better now. Go slow but go ahead.”
So, I did.
I slid forward another inch and then another. Once I felt a wall of resistance, I halted, then glanced down to the place where we were joined. The image of our connection sent heat and lust and love throughout my every cell.
I backed out of her and thrust carefully forward again, and this time, she moaned. It was a good moan, so I did it again. And again. Alaina pushed her hips up to meet mine, and soon we’d established a steady rhythm. We increased our speed, and her lovely noises of desire escalated into a fever pitch. She was close. So, I kissed her one more time, then brought my head down to her right breast. Suckling it, I tucked one hand between her legs, my fingers going automatically to her clit. My own climax was imminent, and silently, I begged her to come.
“I’ll come when you do,” she said, and two things occurred to me at once. One, I must’ve begged her out loud without meaning to. And two, the woman I loved had just taken her first foray into dirty talk.
Good motherfucking God.
13
Alaina
“Good motherfucking God,” Mason gasped out incoherently, and if I hadn’t been riding the wave of my second climax, I might’ve chuckled at him. He’d become lost to sensation, mindless and euphoric, and I loved observing him like this.
I’d seen him orgasm before, of course. Many times, in fact. But this was different. Because we’d always pleasured each other with our hands and orally – and always in an anxiety-riddled hurry in fear of being caught – we’d never gotten uh…happy in such an intimately connected way. Every part of him was either wrapped around or inside of me. Nor had we ever been able to relax into it like we just had.
And. It. Was. Glorious.
I had felt so much. Was still feeling it. The welcome weight of his lanky frame as he rested on top of me. The muscles of his arms, back and legs as they flexed in that delicious rocking motion. His breath on my neck. His mouth on my breast. His hands on that bud at my center. His sizable erection thrusting in
to me, filling me, stretching me, completing me. I’d heard his low seductive moans and felt the warm throb of him as he came inside me.
Now, I listened to his rapid heartbeat as his breaths stabilized and slowed. I breathed in his spicy aftershave and tasted his salty skin. That was something new, too. The feel of his sweat-slicked skin as it rubbed against mine. Just yum. So, so good.
Mason rearranged us so that he was on his back with me on his torso, and now, I traced his masculine chest, marveling at him. I’d suspected that there was something amazing under those suits of his, and I was right. Mason was on the leaner side while also being built. He had well-defined musculature all over him: his pectorals, abdominals and obliques were rigid and firm beneath my touch, and so were his biceps and triceps.
I outlined those muscles with lazy fingers and then with my palms, loving the visible strength of him. The heat of him. The feel of him in my hands.
I remembered being a young girl of about eleven and watching as he and Andy played basketball at the high school with a bunch of their friends. I’d had a crush on him, even then, and his team had been shirtless. My feelings toward him had been far more innocent back then, nothing sexual whatsoever, but the memory made me ask a question.
“I don’t remember you being like this when we were younger, all muscly.”
He huffed out a laugh. “Muscly? I’m no Arnold Schwarzenegger, B.C.”
“No, you’re better. You’re all cut and delicious and just the right size.” He raised an eyebrow at that one. “You heard me. I love the size of you. All of you.” I offered him a pointed look at his groin, which was still magnificent even when spent like he was now.
“I love everything about you,” I babbled on. “And I love how well we fit together. I’ve been tall ever since the eighth grade, but you don’t make me feel like some lumbering giant. You make me feel dainty. Cherished, even.”
Oh Lord, why couldn’t I shut up? I wished I could take back that last part. My face flooded with the heat of mortification. Apparently losing my virginity made me admit way too much. At least I hadn’t told him the secret of my heart.
The secret of how I felt about him.
Back when I’d been dating Auggie, I believed I loved him. I liked my boyfriend and enjoyed his company. I’d thought it had been good with him, but in hindsight, I’d missed so many glaringly obvious warning signs. Not only had he been a cheater, he hadn’t shown me even half the kindness and solicitousness that Mason did. Auggie had barely elicited an ember of passion, while Mason ignited a blazing fire.
My ex lacked in every area that counted.
Mason had just made love to me with a tenderness that made my throat sting. He’d touched me with so much reverence that it made me ache. But romance had already burned me badly, and I was in no hurry to get singed again. I hadn’t fully recovered from my time in London, though thinking about Auggie no longer made me cry. I barely even felt angry about it anymore. Being with him had been such a wake-up call. I’d learned a difficult lesson from him.
He’d taught me to be vigilant with my heart. Which meant that although I was in love with Mason, I wouldn’t tell him. It was for my own protection. Gradually, over these past few months, he’d become everything to me. But with those feelings came power. I wouldn’t entrust him with that power unless or until I felt sure he wouldn’t ever use it against me.
I’d gotten overheated earlier, so Mason had pushed the covers down. I grabbed them and pulled them back around me now, feeling the need to cover up even though he’d seen every part of me.
“You are dainty, at least to me. I like that I don’t have to drop into some weird yoga pose just to kiss you. And for the record, you’re nowhere close to a lumbering giant. You’re mind-bendingly, dazzlingly gorgeous, and don’t let anyone tell you different.” He lifted the sheets and blankets. “I mean, look at you, B.C.”
I’d rather not. “Stop,” I told him, not really joking.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to.” I tried to ride the line between kidding and seriousness, but now that we weren’t engaging in any naughty-bad-fun, his scrutiny was making me uncomfortable.
“You’re perfect,” he insisted, playing with my infinity ring, but that was just ridiculous.
“Hardly.” I sat up and used the extensive width of the king-sized mattress to scoot away. “I’m too damaged to be perfect.”
Shit. That had accidentally slipped out, and I genuinely and sincerely did not want to go into it. I closed my eyes, praying that either he hadn’t heard me or that he’d be generous enough to let it go.
Placing his large hands on my shoulders, he turned me around. “What do you mean, damaged?” he asked, and as I squinted at him hesitantly, his chocolate brown eyes became as intense as I’d ever seen them.
Crap.
I thought about dodging his query. I thought of a couple of things I could say to put him off, but the problem was that Mason wasn’t a stranger or some meaningless weekend hookup to me. He wasn’t just some guy. He was not only a family friend, he was the man I was in love with. And even though he didn’t know that, more than likely, he’d eventually discover my secret. Might as well be me he heard it from.
“I messed up my body, Mason.”
“Explain,” he said in a no-nonsense tone. His lawyer voice. Great.
“For about a year, I was bulimic. I made myself vomit every time I ate. I damaged my throat, my esophagus, and my teeth.”
“When was this?”
“My senior year of high school.”
“The damage is still there?” he asked me.
“Physically, I’m okay for the most part.” He didn’t need to know that the least bit of nausea would make me barf no matter what. The bulimia had caused that to be an automatic reflex I couldn’t control. “I just don’t like to examine myself too closely. Especially not when I’m naked.”
“Is it because you see yourself as overweight?”
“I’m still working on it. When we fool around it’s fine because I want you so much I don’t care. But…”
“Afterward, your doubts come back.”
“Yeah.” Could we please stop having this conversation now?
“Alaina?” he said, and I peeked over at him because he rarely called me by my real name anymore. “I want to tell you something, but I don’t want you to get upset.”
Oh, Lord. Was he about to say that we could never do this again because he was no longer attracted to me? Was he going to call me “bulky” like my mother or take back all the nice things he’d said?
“I’ve been with a lot of women,” he admitted, and I stared at him, trying to decide if this was better or worse than what I’d believed he was about to tell me. “I say that because it’s true, but also because it means I have quite the sampling for a comparison. I’m not particularly proud of my one-night stands, but one thing they afford me is some perspective.
He went on. “And let me assure you that you have nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of, not in any way. I repeat what I said before. You are perfect to me. I could spend decades worshipping at the altar of your body, do you hear me?”
The sting of tears burned at the back of my eyes, so I turned away. I didn’t want her to, but my inner seventeen-year-old chose that moment to join our discussion. “My belly is so big.”
“It absolutely is not,” Mason reiterated, sitting up. He threw the covers back so that they cascaded away in a wave of cotton. He crawled down the bed and placed both his hands on my abdomen. “Look at your belly, Alaina. What do you see?”
I swallowed, doing my best to put that old version of me back in her cage. That girl had been overflowing with self-doubt and shame. Then, I did what he asked and glanced down at myself. We were both still in the buff, as starkers as the day we were born. Mason had spread his fingers out across my stomach as if daring me to not tell the truth.
“It’s flat.”
“That’s right,” he said, pressing his lips to
it. Then, he laid another kiss an inch away from the first one. “It’s tight.” Kiss. “And firm.” Kiss. “And the kind of belly many women would love to have.” Kiss. “And here’s the thing.” Kiss. “Even if it was big, that wouldn’t mean that you aren’t beautiful.” Kiss. “Someday, you might want to have kids.” Kiss. “And even if you bloomed out to where you couldn’t see your feet, you’d still be perfect to me.”
His words filled my heart and made the back of my eyes and nose sting, but I gave him a sassy response. “Getting pretty sappy in your old age, counselor.”
He sat up and nuzzled my temple with his scruff. I loved it when he did that. “Maybe so. Blame it on the sensational sex.” We reclined back on the bed, the strength of his arms laced securely around me.
“The sex was sensational,” I agreed, basking in his affection. “Happy birthday, Mason.”
And then we made love again.
The rest of the weekend was spent in the most delightful fashion possible. When we weren’t attacking one another in the shower, in the jacuzzi, on the granite island, and once, after dark, out on the balcony – we traveled around Tacoma and did touristy stuff.
We hiked up to the volcano in Mount Rainier National Park, visited the Museum of Glass and the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium. The whole trip was like a dream, and I would’ve given everything I owned to just stay there and ignore reality. But reality wouldn’t be ignored. When Sunday night came, we drove back to Seattle, getting our individual stories straight before going home.
“We need to do this again,” I told Mason, dismayed that our time together had come to an end so swiftly. Now we wouldn’t be able to go to sleep together or wake up side by side.
“We will as soon as we can,” he assured me.
Then, gathering up my courage, I broached the subject we never ever talked about. “What do you think would happen if my family found out?”
