by Malcom, Anne
The jaw tick disappeared. And pure male hunger replaced it.
My inner thighs clenched together as I responded to the look physically.
He moved then, rounding the bed to place the water on the bedside table and then yanking me up off the bed and into his arms.
He toyed with a strand of my hair, his hand biting into my hip. “No, Sunshine,” he murmured, not taking his eyes from me. “I’m the one at your fuckin’ mercy.”
Cue another thigh clench.
A fricking huge one.
And a stutter in my heartbeat.
A fricking huge one.
He didn’t move to kiss me, didn’t brutally throw me down on the bed like the darkness in his eyes communicated.
“I haven’t done this before,” I said, trying to sound proud of my virginity instead of slightly ashamed, as I did right now.
Which was completely and utterly unreasonable. Up until tonight, or right this second, I had been proud that I didn’t give in to society’s pressures of ‘losing it’ like some sort of race where there were no winners but a small number of losers who would take home an STI or an unplanned pregnancy as their prize.
My whole identity was about being me in spite of what the world told me to be. But now, I had a vague sense of regret that I hadn’t gotten the messy, awkward—I had no such romantic notions about the first time being ‘magical’—act out of the way so it wouldn’t be messy with Heath. It was awkward already because I was being awkward. Which was not something I was familiar with. Because I liked this man. Really liked him. I felt like there was a lot riding on this.
On us.
I wanted to not be an awkward virgin.
So then I would know about sex, and not seem like the little girl in the bar he’d rescued, and she was now offering up her virtue as thanks.
I supposed it was a modern-day fairy tale if I wanted to look at it that way.
Because I had retreated into my head, as I often did, it took me a long moment to realize that Heath hadn’t replied to my admission.
I blinked him into focus.
Then I blinked away my response at hot freaking hot he was.
He hadn’t moved since I spoke.
Crap.
His eyes locked on mine as if he sensed I was now mentally present and not thinking about fairy tales.
“You’re a virgin?”
Though there was an inflection at the end, it was obvious it wasn’t a question.
But I answered it anyway, just so I could fill up the silence that was no longer comfortable between us.
I couldn’t read anything from his voice or his tight expression. And I was guessing his lack of expression was a bad thing.
“Is that a problem?”
“Yeah, Sunshine, it’s a problem,” he replied, voice clipped.
I cringed.
Of course it was a problem. He was a man. A real one. One who was only here temporarily. He didn’t need to be tangled up with a girl still in high school, and a virgin at that.
His hands moved so they were on either side of my neck.
His expression was no longer blank.
“It’s a problem because it’s not a gift you should be giving to a man who you met in a bar,” he rasped. “A man like me. It’s a problem because a man like me knows that gift isn’t meant for him. Maybe if I was a different version of the same man, I might be able to make sure you give it to the right person.” His grip tightened, toying with the idea of pain, but stopping short. “But I’m this version. So even though it’s yours to give, and not mine to take. I’m going to take it anyway.”
I didn’t even have time to let his words sink in, let them chase away all feelings of awkwardness with pure need because he was kissing me.
Kissing me.
Brutal. Hard. Soul destroying.
“But we’re at the point of no return, I’m at the point of no return. So I’m gonna take it,” he murmured against my mouth. “And I’m going to give you fuckin’ everything that a boy couldn’t give you.”
And then he kissed me again.
Every time he kissed me it was different than the last. Because it was more than a kiss. We were getting more tangled up in each other with every second spent together. Tangled in a way that my insides—my heart—would stay that way even when he left me, never to be seen again.
He was taking something from me, but it was a connection that I’d never lose. And he’d told me I was going to lose him, this, from the start, I found myself desperate for something to hold onto when he became nothing but a memory.
I blinked when he was no longer kissing me. His body was no longer tangled in mine.
He was almost pressed up against his dresser, the space between us obvious but somehow more erotic than the way he’d been kissing me moments ago. And if you’d asked me moments ago if there could be something more erotic than the way he was kissing me I would’ve told you, you were straight up crazy.
But his stare turned my body to flames, my knees to jelly.
I was breathing heavily, audibly.
He was a statue.
“Take off your clothes,” he demanded, voice hoarse.
“Do you not want to do that?” I asked, my voice once more being back to shy and uneasy.
Virginal.
He shook his head violently once. “No fucking way. This is an image that I’m gonna be searing into my brain. I need to watch. Need to be able to drink in every inch of you, naked before me, right before I touch every single part of you that hasn’t been anyone’s but yours. Before I take it for myself.”
My knees trembled again, threatening to give way completely. I had never been spoken to like this. With a voice dripping in sex. In desire.
My hand shook as I directed it to the top button of my dress. Not from fear. Despite the way his face had changed, turn almost feral, I wasn’t afraid of him. No, I was afraid of myself. Of what the romantic in me would turn this into. Of what I’d torture myself with.
But thoughts of the future didn’t have a place in the present. I never thought of the consequences. A character fault, a lot of people, including my guidance counselor, would tell me. I wasn’t about to start being a better person right now, especially if it meant I had to do anything but undress in front of the man in front of me.
I had three buttons undone before I even realized what I was doing.
The fabric slipped off my shoulders and down so my already hard nipples were exposed to the air.
Heath let out a sound that was a merge between a hiss and a growl when my breasts were totally exposed to him.
My heart bounced against my now naked chest with a force that threatened to shatter through my entire ribcage.
Boys had seen my boobs before. I wasn’t exactly shy. Plus, I had good boobs. Not overly large, but not small either. Round, perky, with average sized nipples.
And of course, my virginity was completely technical, so my boobs had had attention before.
Or I thought they had.
But Heath’s gaze was more than any fumbling set of hands could ever have been.
His hands were fisted at his sides and his knuckles were turning white with the force his was obviously exerting to keep them there.
My nipples ached for a touch that I knew would not be fumbling or awkward. But I also ached for more of this, of this distance that was more intimate than anything I’d ever experienced.
“Keep going,” he growled.
I’d just been standing there, half-naked, my hands poised on the button above my bellybutton, staring at his fists and imagining them on me.
I did as he asked. Immediately.
My dress pooled around my ankles a moment later.
I was still wearing my shoes. That and a white pair of panties.
Nothing else.
But Heath’s stare, of course. And that covered me in a way clothes never would.
His jaw was iron.
My fingers went to the edges of my panties.
/> “No,” he snapped.
I paused immediately.
He was in front of me in a slice of a moment.
He wasn’t touching me.
“Lie down,” he ordered.
I ached to touch him, to press my naked body to his clothed one, to wrap myself up in him and kiss him since it felt like an eternity since I’d done that.
Instead, I did as he asked.
The comforter felt rough against my skin. But the air itself felt coarse against my skin. Because I’d never been this naked—truly naked—in my life.
I expected Heath to cover his body with mine, or at least start undressing, but instead, he knelt at the side of the bed, never taking his eyes from mine.
His hand circled my ankle and lifted my leg, working the straps of my wedges so they fell to the floor with a resounding thump. He continued upward from my ankles so slowly it was torture, I felt like I was coming apart from my skin but unable to move.
I inhaled roughly as his hands got to the top of my thighs and his thumb brushed against the apex of my legs, right above that magical spot that was all but crying out for his attention, for a release.
My entire body reacted to the barely-there touch.
Violently.
I almost lost it all then. Just from his hand brushing me.
I’d had orgasms before. All but one self-induced. The one was only because the boy in question had done extensive research on the female anatomy and obviously learned nothing from that, but was very open to direction.
So I knew what it felt like.
But the soft brush of his thumb against me showed me that I knew nothing. Not a damn thing.
“Heath,” I whispered, my voice raspy and thin.
His eyes darkened. “Like that, Sunshine,” he murmured, moving his hands up the side of my thighs so they were fastened on the edges of my panties. “You breathing my name when I’m close enough to taste how much you want me. How sweet your pussy’s gonna be.”
My core spasmed from just those words. Words pushing me closer to the edge.
Heath purposefully moved his eyes from mine to the triangle of lace covering me. Another nudge toward the edge.
My heartbeat was thunder inside my chest. A fricking earthquake inside my bones.
Then he moved his hands down my sides. And since my panties were clutched in his grip, they came too. Instinctively, I lifted my hips up slightly so he could get them down.
He let out another strangled hiss.
Because he couldn’t speak.
Because of what I was doing to him. Upon first glance, him being fully clothed and me being naked on the bed would’ve seemed like an obvious exchange of power. I’d assumed that he held it all, until that moment. It was me. Naked, and at his mercy, I had the power. Power to make his body so tight he was shaking with the force of making his movements so small and tender.
Power to make his gaze turn animalistic with the need for me.
And power to literally take the words from his mouth when I exposed myself to him. His eyes were fastened on my core as he moved my panties down my legs.
It should’ve been embarrassing, uncomfortable to have a man so close to a place that hadn’t been intimately inspected in such a way...well, ever. A place that was hidden and personal, sacred.
But it wasn’t.
Because his gaze told me that he considered it just that. Sacred.
He was literally on his knees in front of me.
Like he was fricking worshipping me.
Me.
His hands were up at my hips and he dragged me across the bed until my legs rested on his shoulders and I was inches away from his mouth. The apex of my hips was right in his fricking face.
My body was an inferno.
Heath moved his gaze from in between my legs to my eyes.
My thighs clenched instinctively from that gaze, from this whole fricking situation.
“Gonna bet you taste sweeter than you look,” he rasped.
And then he put his mouth there.
Like right fricking there.
Again, boys had tried to put it there. But they didn’t know where there was, or what to do with it. It just turned into an awkward and unsatisfying act.
I cried out the second Heath put his mouth on me.
My hands fisted the comforter to the point I feared I might rip the fabric apart. I’d thought he was worshipping me with his eyes.
I was so fricking wrong.
I didn’t know worship until he worked his mouth against me.
My climax came fast and hard. Hard enough for stars to invade my vision, my body, to the point I must’ve blacked out because as soon as I started to come back to earth, his fingers were inside me, gentle and expertly working me back up, back down, back somewhere beautiful and almost unbearable at the same time.
His eyes were locked against mine the entire time his mouth was working me to release, that was something one could only call life-shattering.
Not only did he give me something I’d thought was a myth, but he watched me lose control, completely unravel. There was something intimate about that. More intimate than his mouth on me, his fingers inside me.
Something that added yet another layer to whatever this was.
But something that was pushed away at the same time Heath gently, tenderly pushed my spent body backward, so I was once again splayed on the bed.
He stood.
I blinked him into stark focus.
In another blink, his tee was off, and I was completely and fully lucid. A torso like that would turn Charlie Cheswick lucid.
I’d known he’d have a great body, because, well, I had eyes. But seeing a hint of it covered in clothes was impactful enough. Actually gazing upon his sculpted abs, his defined pecs, the wide shoulders and muscled biceps was something else.
But there was something else.
Because I expected him to be smooth, like his pressed exterior. And the skin I’d seen had been smooth. Like granite. But dotted around his torso were puckered pieces of flesh, where something had violently torn through his flesh, scarring it forever.
He told me about his violent life.
He wore it behind his eyes.
But it was something else entirely to see the evidence of it on his skin.
“You’re beautiful,” I whispered, because somehow the ugliness of whatever had marked him only made him more so.
If he was one of those men who took offense to being called beautiful because it threatened his masculinity, he didn’t show it.
Wearing a pink fricking teddy and matching shoes wouldn’t threaten his masculinity.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, his eyes feasting on me lying there, naked, propped up on my elbows.
“Unbutton your pants,” I commanded.
His mouth turned up, but he was still in intense alpha male mode, so a full-on grin wasn’t possible. “You telling me what to do too, Sunshine?” he asked.
I nodded. “Turnabout’s fair play.”
The mouth turn disappeared as he kicked off his boots and did as I asked. I itched to be as cool and erotic as him and not take my eyes off his when he did so. But I wasn’t. I was greedy. I wanted to imprint every part of his body onto my memory. And he was hotter than any man I’d seen in real life. And he was undressing.
For me.
So yeah, I was looking at the goods when he took his pants off.
And his underwear.
My stomach clenched when he was naked, oh so gloriously naked in front of me.
Naked and hard.
I wasn’t a stranger to this specific male appendage. I’d seen them up close, and been kind of, underwhelmed with them. Plus, they weren’t exactly...nice to look at.
I wasn’t underwhelmed right now. Heath standing in front of me, naked after just making me orgasm in a way I never thought possible was beyond purely nice. As was his manhood that was easily the most impressive I’d ever seen in my young life.
My core
twitched just looking at it, craving him inside me.
Then I swallowed, thinking an utterly cliché virginal thought of ‘how the fricking heck is that going to fit in there?’
But he would fit. Because we fit. And I was ready. Beyond ready for him. He’d made sure of that. My muscles were not tight with nerves as they had been before. My muscles were all but liquid underneath my skin.
I did feel a spark of nerves, but it was physically impossible to manifest the entire nervous reaction that all girls got right before the act itself.
I did find it physically possible to push off the bed and stand on shaky feet in front of Heath.
He immediately gripped my hips to steady me, as if he glimpsed that small shake to my body. But then again, he was responsible for it, and he was very in tune with my body, as he demonstrated earlier.
“For what I’ve got planned, you’re gonna be on the bed,” he murmured, yanking my naked body to his.
I let out a gasp as our bare skin touched and a very obvious part of him pressed into me.
“Well, for the first time, at least,” he continued, eyes dark. “Once you’re ready, I’ll educate you on the many places that aren’t a bed that I can fuck you on.”
My pussy clenched at the promise. At the need for him to make good on it. And he would. He was a man who kept his promises, after all.
“Well, for what I’ve got planned, I’ve got to be right about,” I trailed my fingers down his chest, dancing over his scars and then moving to kneel at his feet. “Right about here,” I breathed against him and his entire body stiffened.
“Fuck,” he hissed. “Baby, this is meant to be about you,” he protested in a thick voice.
I looked up at him while I fastened my hand around his length.
He let out another curse.
“Oh, but what was it I said before?” I asked sweetly, moving slowly up and down. “Turnabout’s fair play.”
And then I moved my mouth to fasten right onto that beautiful cock of his.
It was not an act I’d enjoyed in the past. Especially because every teenage boy is desperate for it and it never really felt organic. But with Heath, I loved it.
With every swipe of my tongue, with every time I twisted my hand and mouth in opposite directions—Cosmopolitan told me to do this—I coaxed his surrender. I was in control, I had the power.