It was only a flash.
Then it was gone.
“You know, we should test how far you’ve come.” His voice had the edge of naughtiness that it did when we were naked together.
It made my skin prickle with awareness and my heart pound with nervousness. “What do you mean? Do you want to bang over there behind the market banner?” I hoped he’d say, no, but let’s go bang back at the Four Seasons.
“Actually…” He shifted to study the banner I was referring to, as if considering it. Then shook his head and turned back to me. “Well, good idea. But that wasn’t where I was going with that. Though I like the way you think.”
“I don’t think that way. I was making a joke.”
“Ah, see? We haven’t come as far as I’d like then. If you were truly more relaxed, you would have been serious.”
“I…” I didn’t finish my sentence. I realized that it was pointless to argue with JC about this. There was certainly a difference between being uptight and having a reasonable appreciation for propriety, not to mention the law. Surely a person could be laid-back and chill without having to lose her sense of decency.
But since it wasn’t something he was pushing, I let it go. “Whatever. Fine. What was it you had in mind?”
“How about a little mischief?” He tossed an orange up in the air and then caught it again.
“I can’t even begin to imagine where you’re going with that.” Because I was even more opposed to an orange in the bedroom than a cucumber. Unless he was planning to squeeze it and lick it…
Okay, maybe oranges were okay.
But apparently he had other plans. His expression turned impish, and he did a rather obvious sweep of his surroundings. “Ever did any shoplifting?”
“Oh, no.” I mean, I had, but no. This was not on my agenda for today. Or ever.
“Come on. It will be fun.” He scanned the crowd again.
“Have you ever shoplifted before?” I was not going to teach him. Was not. Was definitely not.
“Nope. First time.” He practically did a full turn this time as he looked to see if anyone was watching.
“That’s not…” I put a hand over my eyes and peeked through my fingers as JC began stuffing an orange in his pocket. “Oh my God. You’re embarrassing yourself. That’s not how you do it.” I grabbed the orange from his pocket and stuffed it back in the crate.
“How do you do it, then?”
“First of all, you can’t look around like that. That’s how you alert other people that you’re doing something that you don’t want them to see. You have to be coy. And look straight at the person closest to you and smile while you’re dropping it in your bag. In the bag you already have. Not your pocket where it will stand out for everyone to see.”
“That’s brilliant. How do you know this stuff?”
I hated how much I adored his praise. “It’s not brilliant. It’s logical. And I know because I’ve done it.”
“You’ve stolen fruit?”
“Well. Yes.” Farmers’ markets were one of the easiest places to get food. But there were other places we’d stolen from. Convenience stores. A restaurant once.
I occupied myself with straightening the oranges—straightening oranges, really?—while I explained. “We were poor and sometimes my dad forgot to feed us. So we got good at this. And we never did it just for fun.”
“Then this will be your first chance. You can teach me how to—”
He reached for another orange, and I blocked him. “No way.” It didn’t matter how much I loosened up, I refused to steal again.
But when he tried to reach over me to grab another, the whole crate, which was on the end of the table, fell to the ground. Oranges spilled everywhere, rolling under the tables and out into the walkway.
“Oh. Fuck,” JC said. “Now what do we do?”
“Run!” I don’t know why I said it. Obviously, the best thing to do—the responsible thing to do—was stay and help clean up the mess. Explain that it was an accident.
But the unexpectedness of the event paired with the general naughty feeling I had anytime I was with JC, not to mention that I had stolen in the past, made me automatically feel guilty. And I reacted by bolting.
JC was on my heels, the La Perla bag full of scanty underwear and vegetables for my sister’s breakfast banging against his leg as we ran through the long halls of Port Authority. No one followed us. No one even called out after us, but we kept going until we were out the doors and around the corner.
The cool air of the March day perhaps was all I needed to knock some sense into me. I stopped running and leaned against a cement pillar to try to calm my breathing. JC put a hand on the pillar to steady himself.
He met my eyes and we burst into laughter.
We laughed like I’d never laughed before, and I knew that the cause was much more than the knocked-over bin in the Greenmarket. It was from a lifetime of not laughing. A release of all the crap that had been my childhood and the parts that had followed into adulthood. I’d always thought I grew up in a drama, but now, in this moment, it felt more comic than any sitcom I’d ever watched on TV.
It felt like letting go. And it was exhilarating.
Next to me, JC laughed just as hard and just as long, and if I hadn’t figured it out before, I knew now that he must have the same sorts of hurts built up that needed as much of a release as mine. I wondered about them as I wiped tears from my eyes. I wondered how it had been so easy for him to recognize them in me and why it had taken me longer to figure out the same about him. I wondered how he knew that spending the day with me was exactly what we both needed. How he knew to ignore our non-attachment rules and connect instead.
I glanced at him doubled over, the La Perla bag dropped at his feet, and suddenly I had a revelation. It might be what he needed, but it wasn’t what JC wanted. Just like me, he hadn’t wanted to get intimate. He hadn’t planned to take me out into the world and test my boundaries. He hadn’t planned to ask me questions about my personal life. He hadn’t planned to look at me with an emotion that was so much more than want. And when he had, he panicked. Stealing the oranges had been his way of trying to regain his composure. It was his reminder that the world could fuck off. It hadn’t been for me at all. It had been for him.
And it hadn’t worked. Because behind the amusement in his eyes was the same emotion he’d tried to hide. More vibrant now. More pure.
So a minute later when we’d finished laughing and we’d somewhat found our breath again, it wasn’t a complete surprise to find him moving toward me and me toward him. Our lips met and locked.
He cupped his hand around my neck and brought me closer to him, holding me firmly. As if he were frightened I’d pull away. Gently, he kissed first my bottom lip, then my top. Then his tongue swept in, teasing me. Tasting me. With sweet surrender, I opened for him. Sweeter still, he opened for me.
We kissed with the exploration of a first kiss. Tentatively at first, then with complete and utter focus. Because even though we’d had our mouths on each other before, it had always been in the context of sex. And while there was enough passion in this embrace to lead there, it wasn’t the reason for it.
We lingered in this kiss. We lavished. We luxuriated. I wrapped my arms around his neck to draw him nearer, then clung on tighter to support my weak knees. I fell into him. I melted.
And he melted into me. Filling my spaces, smothering my emptiness. Making me whole. Making me free.
Chapter Eleven
This time, in the cab back to the hotel, JC didn’t chat with the driver. He gave directions then turned to look at me, his eyes burning and blazing with want and affection. And I, usually one to buckle up and pray during a taxi ride through the city, climbed into his lap, straddling him. Again, our lips met. His hand tangled in my hair and my hands cupped his face as my tongue traced love notes along his. The ante was upped now. No longer was this kiss not about sex. Now, it was foreplay. The most tender, sweet foreplay t
hat I’d ever experienced. Even with the cabbie shouting obscenities at the road behind me.
JC’s hand wandered first, slipping up my shirt to push my bra up and caress my breast. His thumb brushed over my nipple until I was gasping into his mouth. He slid his hips forward, and I pressed my pelvis tightly to him so I could grind against his erection. When I couldn’t get the pressure I needed through my jeans, I stopped worrying about me and reached down to palm him through his pants. The feel of him—so hard, thickening further in my hand—I wanted more. Then JC bucked into my touch and that was all the encouragement I needed.
I slid off his lap to the floor, barely fitting in the tight space, and unzipped his pants. It was a delightful surprise to find he hadn’t worn underwear and his cock stood upright and proud.
He leaned down to whisper in my ear. “What are you doing, Gwen?” His hushed tone wasn’t worried for himself. He wasn’t concerned at all to have himself exposed in the back of a taxi. It was me, he knew, that would feel uncomfortable in this situation.
Funny thing, though. I didn’t feel uncomfortable at all. I felt excited and naughty, and wow, naughty was a lot more awesome than I’d realized.
I answered JC with a pump of my hand down his length.
“Gwen,” he said my name quietly, reverently. “You don’t need to do—” He cut himself off with a strangled breath in as I sucked the tip of his cock. “Jesus. That’s…you should stop. Ah, don’t stop.”
I didn’t plan on stopping. I didn’t think I could. I licked along the thick vein and then opened my mouth to take the whole of him in. He squirmed. He moaned. He was, for once, off-balance because of me instead of the other way around.
None of it was typical behavior for me. I recognized that as equally as I recognized that I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered at the moment was having JC as close as possible—having him in me in any way that was possible. And since stripping out of jeans and riding his cock wasn’t exactly the easiest task in a moving vehicle, a blowjob seemed a little bit more manageable.
Besides, I relished the effect I had on him. I adored his sounds and the tensing of his thighs at either side of me. More, I craved the emotional exchange that occurred as he put his hands on my head and guided me. The way he looked at me as I peered up at him, even while I fisted the base of his erection and slid his cock in and out of my mouth, continued to portray so much more than lust. When I flattened my tongue and sucked his length, my need to pleasure him was not only out of carnal desire, but also out of fondness. When I drew him in until he touched the back of my throat, it was because I suspected he’d become fond of me as well.
He was getting close when the cab pulled up at the curb. I was so entranced with making JC come that I hadn’t realized we’d stopped moving. But then he was pushing me away, tucking his erection in his pants as he fumbled with the cash in his wallet. I slid out of the car and waited for him, not even bothering to check out the driver’s expression. He could be annoyed, disgusted, turned on—let him. I didn’t care in the slightest.
The walk through the lobby was the longest of my life followed by a never-ending elevator ride. The sexual tension between us was so thick, so palpable. If it weren’t for the family with young children sharing our car, we certainly would have continued making out. We tried to make up for it with our hands, joined together between us. We squeezed and caressed with our fingers, much the way we had on our first trip to the hotel.
The family got off on the same floor we did, but even when they turned down the opposite hall, JC and I remained connected only through our hands. Each step toward our door piled on another layer of tension, and by the time we made it inside the room, I thought I might explode.
And then I did.
When JC dropped the La Perla bag at his feet and we came together, it was like an explosion of the grandest fireworks. My lips ignited and flamed against his as he worked me out of my coat. My blood roared in my ears and burned in my veins. Then he pulled my shirt over my head and when his fingers brushed against my skin, sparks shot through my nervous system. My bra came off next, and my nipples stood up under his gaze, erupting from my smooth skin like perfect pink buds.
We moved as we undressed. Except for my panties, I was naked by the time we reached the bedroom doorway. JC lost his pants in the threshold then lifted me up and carried me to the edge of the bed. He set me down, tenderly, but not too gently. His every kiss—in fact, every caress—was thoughtful and affectionate but still rough and demanding the way I’d come to expect from him. The way I liked it. The way I loved it.
The way I loved him.
I jerked as the thought penetrated through the haze of passion and landed with a thud in the spotlight of my consciousness. I loved him. Goddammit. I completely loved him.
JC lifted his head from the spot he’d been sucking on my neck. “Are you okay?”
My stomach was twisting and my heart was racing and my skin felt like it was on fire. “Yeah. I think that maybe I finally am.”
He smiled, accepting my answer easily as he pulled my panties off of me. He pushed my knees apart and bent down to the floor. Then he buried his head between my thighs, swiping his tongue along my folds and around my clit. His hands massaged up and down my calves as he continued to work me, teasing me to the edge of orgasm, taunting me until the world began to tilt and spin.
Just as I started to fall under, he stood and scooted me back on the bed. He studied me as he stroked himself. I could see the gleam of pre-cum already on his cock, and I wanted it on me. In me. Wanted him to mark me and take me.
Because I was his now. Already. Completely. All he needed to do was claim me.
As he lowered himself over me and pushed into my wet channel, I pretended that he was doing just that. I pretended that it meant everything I wanted it to mean. Whether it did or didn’t, I couldn’t know. So as it was happening, I pretended that I could know. Pretended that I did know exactly what he meant with each thrust that rammed into me.
It was beautiful. It was poetry. The way he moved and touched me. The way he took care of me. The way he kissed me—God, the way he didn’t stop kissing me.
He didn’t question me the way he usually did. Didn’t push me to tell him how I felt or how he made me feel. I was telling him anyway—without words—with my mouth, with my body, with my eyes, with the soft sounds of pleasure that sang in the back of my throat. Yes, you feel good inside me. You fit my pussy so perfectly. You make me come so hard.
And I did come so hard. Hard and long, clenching around his cock, milking him. Then he was the one who told me, “God, you feel so good, Gwen. Squeeze me like that. Just like that.” His movement stuttered as I tightened, but he grabbed my hips and found a new rhythm. “Again, Gwen. Let’s go together next time.”
I pulled my knees in and wrapped my ankles around his waist so that he could drive deeper. The shift in angle let his cock hit me in all the right places, let his pelvis grind against me with just the right pressure. But it wasn’t only the new stimulation that sent me soaring toward my next climax. It was his eyes, locked with mine. As open as my body was to him at the moment, it was JC’s soul that was open to me. He spoke secrets in that look. He told me things I wasn’t supposed to know. He told me that I wasn’t what he planned. He told me that I was everything he needed. He told me that he wasn’t fucking—that he was making love.
I’m sure I said all the same things back. I’m sure I said more. And when I went again, it was with him, my orgasm crashing and mingling with his so completely that I couldn’t tell which sounds were his and which were mine. Couldn’t tell if it was my heart pounding in my chest or his pounding against mine. Couldn’t tell whether it was me sobbing into his skin or him sobbing into mine.
But what I did know was that we’d flown together. He’d loosened me before this. Today, whatever fetters had caged him, they’d been released as well, and we met there in the sky, wild and free, two birds that had been imprisoned too long.
***
He held me long after we’d settled, sweeping light strokes down my back with his fingers and intermittently kissing my forehead. Our legs tangled together and our chests fell and rose in tandem. We never cuddled after sex, and while it hadn’t been awkward before, this was the easiest we’d ever been.
There was a part of me that was tempted to analyze the situation, wonder what the day meant for our future and try to interpret whether or not I was okay with the change. Whether he was okay with the change.
But I didn’t let myself fall into that. Maybe JC’s efforts to teach me to let loose had really taken a hold of me. Or maybe I just didn’t want to face the possible reality of our relationship. Either way, I let myself linger in his touch, in his scent, in his embrace. Let myself enjoy the exploration of my lover that he’d never allowed before.
“What does this say?” I asked after a while, my hand dancing across the tattoo on his torso. “It’s Chinese, right?”
“Japanese. ‘The current age is but a brief moment in the greater scope of existence.’”
“Um…what?”
He chuckled and I liked the pleasant way my nipples rubbed against his chest as he did. “It basically means live for today. It’s Buddhist.”
I put my hand on his chest and rested my chin on it to look up at him. “Are you Buddhist?” It seemed like I’d have figured this out already if he were. Like, shouldn’t there be tantric sex or something? That was a Buddhist thing, wasn’t it? Maybe that’s what we’d been having. I was so ignorant about Eastern religion.
But he shook his head. “No. I just liked the sentiment.”
Live for today was the epitome of my relationship with JC. “It fits you. That’s for sure.” I couldn’t see the image on his bicep in the position we were in, but I asked about it next. “And the compass? What made you get that one?”
Free Me Page 16
