by Selena Scott
Orion laughed and stepped them out of the tub, looking like he was going to set her ass down on the counter, but she wasn’t settling for that. He moved her there and she fought against him. Shoving forward, practically climbing up his body. She heard her toothbrush hit the floor, her soap dispenser clattered into the sink, her foot kicked the toilet paper off its spool.
He laughed again, seeming to understand inherently her need to make this feral. Still clinging to her ass, her hands making marks against his shoulders, her heels digging into his back, he shouldered past the door and into the hallway, obviously making for her bedroom. She bit his lip again, rubbed her wetness against the thick stalk of his cock and clawed at the walls as they passed by. Picture frames fell in their wake, he stumbled and jammed her a little too hard against the wall. She gasped with the raw-hot pleasure of it, dropping her mouth to his neck and licking her way up one tight tendon. He groaned and kept going.
Finally, they were in her bedroom and she was scrambling down from his arms. He set her down, a question in his eyes that was immediately answered when she planted her palms on his shoulders and shoved him backwards onto the bed. He laughed again, this time with a pained desire laced through it, and reached for her. She let herself be looped around the waist and hoisted against him as he fell back, their bodies still slippery with water, they doused the sheets and blanket underneath them. His cock found its way between her legs again and Diana moaned, pinning her thighs around his length and rubbing shamelessly against him.
She pressed to the side, he rolled them and speared forward, slicking himself against her wetness. She grabbed at the sheets beneath her, seeing stars, and felt the bed come unmade, the corners of the sheets popping off, pillows knocking to the floor.
“Fuck!” Diana shouted, thoroughly enjoying every single moment of this. She’d never in her life made love like this. There was absolutely nothing civilized about the way he was scraping his stubble against her collarbones, marking her intentionally, she was sure of it. There was nothing civilized about the handful of his hair that she grabbed, yanking him to kiss her so deeply it was almost pornographic.
Diana gripped him with her legs as he humped against her wetness, grinding his pubic bone against her clit but not penetrating her. She tried to leverage her weight to get on top again, but only managed to turn them to one side. They were hanging half on the bed and half off, tipped to one side, no clear position, her legs around him, his cock between her legs.
His hips worked against hers and Diana knew she was maybe a minute away from exploding for him. Her fingers clawed into his back and it seemed only to spur him on. He ground against her and they slid further off the bed. The bathwater mixed with their sweat and she could feel her hair sticking to her forehead and back, soaking her bed, but she didn’t care. She worked her hips against his and chased a pleasure she hadn’t even know was a possibility.
“Oh God, Orion,” she moaned, and looked up at him, the moon rising in the window behind his head, crowning him. And for a moment he did look like a god. An ancient being taking and giving pleasure that no mortal could even conceive of. He seemed to shimmer with determination, with desire. She could have sworn that the stars in the sky were reflecting off his wet skin.
He took her by the hips reared up and ground down against her clit in small, rhythmic circles. He leaned forward, gave her his weight, so much weight, crushing her deliciously.
“Give it to me, Diana,” he whispered harshly in her ear. “You don’t want to keep it for your own. You want to give it up. You want to give it to me.”
He could have been talking about any number of things. Her power, her heart, her pleasure. But Diana knew inherently that he wasn’t talking about taking something from her. No, he was one of those rare men who understood that a gift could only be given and never taken.
“I want it, Diana,” he said, his voice even rougher than before. He licked up the side of her neck, pinned her earlobe between his teeth, roped a hand through her hair and pulled her head back, his teeth needling her throat. His lips found hers and he said more and more into her mouth that she didn’t even hear, she was too busy tangling her tongue with his, grinding her hips against him, and then, finally, going electrically rigid when her pleasure took hold, peaking and tossing itself headlong over the breakwall.
She screamed his name and probably bruised his back with her heels she dug into him so tightly. They slid part of the way further down the bed and rainbows pinwheeled across the ceiling as her climax opened and accelerated and plummeted upward at the speed of light.
She fell back limp against the bed and let her eyes focus on Orion as he reared up over her, still grinding against her, his eyes lost and fuzzy and somehow still focused on her.
“God. So beautiful,” he panted, his hips grinding into hers. “Diana.”
His movements went sharp and choppy as he propped himself up on fists on either side of her, losing himself in the pleasure.
“Diana, where…” he trailed off, shaking his head against the incoming pleasure. “Where,” he tried again and failed, his teeth baring and his head tipping toward the ceiling.
She got the general gist of the question though, being the bright woman that she was.
“On me,” she panted back to him. She slicked a hand up her midsection. “Here. Here.”
Grinning in a mask of pleasured pain, Orion’s hips pulled back from hers, he gripped himself in one hand and gave three rough tugs to his cock before he painted her stomach and cleavage, landing exactly where her own hand had just shown him. He came with a gruff roar. Animalistic, involuntary, his body clenching against it and racing toward it at the exact same time.
Every single muscle was shadowed and standing out in darkened relief as he gave a last sensitive twitch against his orgasm and collapsed forward, sandwiching her to the bed, trapping the mess between them, laughing into the crook of her neck, petting her hips and ribs and sides, telling her how perfect and pretty and sexy and lovely she was.
“Oh my god,” she groaned, digging the heels of her hands into her eye sockets and fighting back the hysterical laughter that threatened to erupt out of her.
She figured she had a choice here. She could A) revert back into known territory. Which would mean that she’d shove Orion off of her, probably feed him some food, and then kick him out of her house. She could be halfway down Freak Out Highway in less than thirty minutes. She’d walk listlessly through her house and survey the shameful damage her lust had brought down on her life. Her broken shower curtain pooling in the tepid bathwater would instantly become a symbol for the way she’d just massively screwed up.
Or.
Or option B) she could instead walk -as calmly as possible- into the land of the unknown. Where instead of protecting herself, hating herself, chastizing herself, witholding every good thing she’d ever wanted, she could walk headlong into a world where she deserved these pretty words from this hunk of a man. Where she deserved the kind of pleasure he’d just given her. Where, the best gift of all, she deserved to give the kind of pleasure and affection that was swelling up between them. She didn’t have to pull it out at the root. She could actually foster what was growing here.
What a thought.
For a long moment, Diana teetered on the edge between the two options. Her self preservation instincts almost winning out. Because what would the neighbors think?
But then a voice in her head, which sounded unmistakably like her mother, spoke loud and clear.
Fuck the neighbors, Diana.
“Yeah,” she said out loud. “Fuck the neighbors.”
“Hmm?” Orion asked, lifting his head from the crook of her neck, his thumbs making circles on her ribs, his blessed weight almost untenable.
“Nothing,” she told him, smoothing his messy waves, thrilled and terrified to be making the choice she’d just made.
Option B. The scariest road she’d ever walked down. Option B. Where the potential for happiness wasn’
t automatically weed-whacked. Option B. The world where Orion patiently waited for her to join him.
***
Well, he hadn’t expected this. But then, Orion had found it best to stop expecting anything when it came to Diana. Nothing turned out the way he ever thought it might where she was concerned. He had no idea if that was because the human world was confusing or if it was because Diana was confusing.
As he chewed and swallowed the apple slice she’d just popped into his mouth, Orion reflected that it might just be a case of both/and.
Because if he’d had to guess what might happen after they trashed her house by humping each other into oblivion, Orion would have put money on Diana kicking him out of her house. In fact, after the blissful post-orgasm moment, when his brain had fought its way back online, Orion forced himself to start preemptively figuring out a way back into her good graces.
But then she’d shocked him. “Oh my god,” she’d said, lying there underneath him, the evidence of his pleasure slick and hot between their chests. He could clearly hear the thinly veiled panic in her tone. But instead of shoving him off of her, she’d waited a long second and then turned her face toward his neck. She’d kissed a slow line up to his ear and nuzzled there.
“You’re perfect and pretty and sexy and lovely too,” she’d told him, repeating back the words he’d been saying to her. Her hands had traced over his back, soothing the sharp bites her fingernails had left there in the throes of passion.
“Come on,” she’d told him, slapping his ass and pushing him up. She’d gotten them a warm washcloth and washed them both off before she’d dragged him into the kitchen and started feeding him. First it was ice cream out of the carton, and then it was the room temperature noodles he’d brought over and left on the counter. And now it was apple slices for dessert.
Neither of them spoke while they ate, but she cuddled him plenty. Her hands on his chest and forearms, her forehead nuzzling into his shoulder, her fingers in his hair, her feet between his, her hips against his as she leaned against him.
He was utterly befuddled by this sweetness, but he sure as hell wasn’t turning it away. If she was dishing out sweetness, he was gobbling it up.
“We should probably clean up,” he said when they were finally done eating but still leaning against one another in the kitchen.
She shrugged. “It’s late. We could do it in the morning.”
He crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to be able to sleep with your shower rod halfway falling into the bathtub and your picture frames knocked onto the floor?”
She laughed and shrugged, brushing her long hair back from her face and raising her lovely eyes to the ceiling as she searched for the right words. “Maybe I’m turning over a new leaf.”
He hadn’t heard that phrase before and just cocked his head to the side. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that maybe, I’m trying to develop some new habits.”
“What kind of habits?”
“Option B kind of habits,” she said with a grin. “I’ll explain it some other time. I’m tired tonight. Wanna go to bed?”
She stretched and his mouth literally watered. What they’d done just an hour previous had been by far the best sex of Orion’s life and they hadn’t even had sex. He had zero regrets about the speed or intensity of what they’d done together. Maybe it wasn’t the usual way that two grown people got down and dirty, but frankly he couldn’t wait to do it again.
Yeah. Bed sounded good.
“If you’re sure you don’t want to clean up…” He gave her one last shot.
She shrugged again. “I told you, Orion, I’ve never done messy before. But you’re worth doing messy for.” She looked at the ground for a moment and then forced her eyes back up to his. “It’s… good for me, I think.”
“It’s good for me too,” he said with a laugh. “Seriously.”
“What do you mean?”
He tugged her close to him, just because he was allowed to and it thrilled him. “You’re the kind of woman who makes a man want to get messy, Diana.” He turned his head toward her. “And I mean messy in every way. Loose ends, untucked corners, all that the good stuff. I don’t ever want things to be perfect with you. I just want you, any way I can get you. Spilled milk and all. Upturned cake facedown on the sidewalk. I don’t care. I just want you.”
He caught her lips with his and his stomach flipped hard at that surprisingly soft flavor of her. Her appearance was so fiercely beautiful, so striking. But her flavor was sweet and quiet and soft. Go figure.
“Remember when I offered to court you the right way?” he asked her.
She lifted an eyebrow. “You mean an hour and a half ago? Yeah, I remember that.”
“Well, as nice as it sounded, it felt wrong, didn’t it?”
She cocked her head to one side, obviously considering his words. “I guess you’re right. Yeah, it felt wrong somehow.”
“Because we’re not neat and tidy people, Diana. You’re neat and tidy at work, maybe. But you and me? When we’re together? We say we’re friends and then we wake up with my dick in your panties. That’s not neat and tidy.”
She laughed brightly, relief and humor in every line of her face.
He continued. “I’m just saying that a lot of people might need clear lines drawn about what we are and where we’re going and how we’re going to get there. But…” he took a deep breath, wanting so badly to communicate this in the right way. “We don’t really need that, do we? As long as we have each other, we’re on the right track.”
She pursed her lips. “If you were any other man on the face of the planet I’d think you were trying to line me up to be in your fuck buddy rotation right now.”
He clapped his mouth closed. He knew enough about human culture at this point, especially from Wren, to know what fuck buddies were. It had literally never occurred to him that Diana might possibly consider herself to be that for him. “I— no— you—“
She laughed and clapped a hand over his mouth. “Orion, I’m saying that I understand what you’re saying. I know you’re not saying you want to keep this casual.”
“Right,” he said, his voice muffled behind her palm.
“You’re just saying that confusing is okay. And that you’re not going to press me for answers. And that you want whatever I know how to give.”
“Yes,” he answered resolutely. Then a thought struck him and he pulled her palm away from his mouth, needing to be crystal clear on this point.
“And,” she said, cutting him off with one eyebrow raised. “Let me guess, you also want to be exclusive.”
“Yes,” he said with a sharp nod of his head. “We can be messy together. But not with other people. You want messy, you come to me. You want anything, you come to me. A hug at three in the morning. Dinner. Someone to turn you over and hit it from the back. You come to me.”
Diana burst out laughing and he scowled at her, his hands on his hips.
“What?” he demanded.
“Nothing,” she said. “I just find it incredibly charming that you can say something like that to me even though we’ve never officially had sex.” She cocked her head to one side. “Also, you’ve never heard the phrase ‘turn over a new leaf’ yet you know what ‘hit it from the back’ means.” She shook her head with a smile on her face. “Such a man.”
“You’re the one who gave me the phone with the internet connection,” he informed her, scooping her up in his arms and starting to walk her back down the hallway.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked and then went stiff in his arms, her mouth dropping open. “Hold the phone. Are you trying to tell me that you’ve been using center-issued property to watch porn on the internet?”
He laughed at the incredulous look on her face. “I’ll never understand human culture,” he told her. “You just let me come on your stomach yet you’re shocked that I watch porn? Humans are so confusing.”
“You can’t
use your phone to watch porn! That phone is paid for by a federal grant that I had to bust my ass to get! You can’t waste the taxpayers’ money on money shots!”
He laughed even harder. “Trust me. None of that money was wasted. It’s all gone to a very good cause.”
“Orion!” she laughed, giving herself away. “This is very serious.”
“Yeah, yeah.” He tossed her onto her bed, rumpled sheets and exposed mattress and all, and dove in after her. He rolled and tangled them up deliciously in the blankets and in each other.
“See?” she demanded. “This is exactly what I was afraid of. I gave it up in the bathtub and now you’ve lost all respect for my authority.”
“Diana, let’s make a deal. When you’re the director of the center, kicking ass and dressed up in your fancy clothes and making everyone jump six inches in the air when you come into the room, well, I’ll treat you with nothing but professionalism. But here? In bed and naked and relaxed? I’m going to tease you.”
She pursed her lips but he could see the happiness threatening to moonbeam right out of her. “Oh, fine.”
He kissed her then. And they didn’t stop kissing. Even when the moon finally set and the sky darkened even further. Finally, when fatigue took them both, almost simultaneously, they fell asleep with their foreheads pressed together.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Across town, in the dead of the night, someone else was having a terrible time.
