“Whatever feels right.”
She rolls her hands over my shoulders. “Maybe we…”
I smile down at her. “Maybe we what?”
“Just kiss and don’t worry about stopping? Maybe if…if you wanted to touch me, somewhere, you could.” She licks her lips, searches my eyes. “When you put your hands on my waist…I liked that.”
I currently have my arms around her shoulders, holding her close. Now, I let my hands drop to her waist. To her hips. She bites her lip and her eyes widen, her breathing quickens. She doesn’t pull away; her fingers dig into my shoulders.
It seems like she wants to test her limits, a little. See what she’s okay with, how it feels.
So, I let my hands wander lower. Over the gentle swell of her hips, then pause, searching her for signs of even a nonverbal stop. I see none. I lean down and nip her lower lip, and she gasps. I kiss her as she gasps, tasting her inhale. Her fingers tighten, and she lifts to deepen the kiss. I offer her a tease of my tongue, and she responds immediately, hers slashing against mine greedily, eagerly.
Her hands leave my shoulders, and I can feel them trembling. She explores my biceps, my ribcage. My abs. She slips her hands up under my shirt, and I lean back, breaking the kiss momentarily—she takes the invitation for what it is, peeling my shirt up and off—where it lands, I don’t know.
Her hands are greedy, exploring my torso, finding each ridge, each divot and line and curve. Her mouth meets mine again, and we’re off together, still standing in the middle of the room.
Desire pulses through me—for more of her. I tamp it down, contain it.
Her tongue is eager, soaring through my mouth and tangling with mine. Her hands clutch my biceps, my chest, rubbing and massaging and raking. I run my hands over her head, scratching my nails against her scalp, and she shudders—she likes that. I do it again, and her knees buckle. I huff a laugh, but it doesn’t stop our momentum. If anything, she’s emboldened. Her hands go to my abdomen, tracing the outlines of my muscles there. Not quite as far as the button of my jeans, but damn close.
She’s ablaze with desire—I can feel it in her. Sense it in the way she kisses me, in the greedy, daring scouring of her hands on my body, the way she leans harder into me. Pressing her chest against mine, angling her hips into me.
She wants more, she just doesn’t know what that is.
I run my hands down her spine, over the shirt. Down, to the small of her back. I wait until she breaks the kiss to breathe, till her eyes meet mine. And then I cup her bottom—it’s small and tight and firm, fitting neatly into my palms. She gasps, eyes flying wide, tensing all over, just for a moment, and then she relaxes. A smile crosses her mouth.
I explore her backside, then, cupping, massaging, dimpling with my fingers, tracing the underside where it meets her thighs.
She’s barely breathing, lip caught between her teeth. “That feels…good.”
I just smile and tug her against me, hunger for her kiss making me impatient for more. She melts against me, and her hands go to my back. She finds my shoulder blades, the serpentine line of my spine. Lower, and lower.
To the denim over my butt, with a firm, declarative grip. Her laugh, then, is one of giddy disbelief. She pulls away from the kiss, but her eyes are mischievous, sparkling with delight and desire.
“You make me feel good,” she whispers. “About myself.”
“Good.” I grin, cupping her tight, round little butt in both hands. “Now what?”
She searches my face, and I can see her thinking, see the desire warring with nerves. Desire wins.
Her fingertips trail against my skin, around from my butt to my abdomen. Pauses there, fingertips against my belly. Watching me. Waiting for me to tell her to stop? I don’t know. Whatever she’s looking for, she won’t find—unless it’s my barely restrained need. That, she’ll find in spades, if she were to go looking.
When her fingers go to the button of my jeans, I’m kind of surprised at her forwardness—this is faster than I’d have thought she’d want to go. I just hold her gaze evenly, steadily, tacitly giving her the go-ahead.
She frees the button. Tugs the zipper down. She’s holding her breath one moment, and then sucking in deep shuddering breaths the next. My jeans sag open. She hooks her fingers in a pair of belt loops and tugs down—I step on a cuff and yank my leg free, then the other, kick them aside. My black briefs do little to hide the evidence of my arousal.
Her eyes, obviously, go there. Widen dramatically. Her breathing stops. “Um. Wow. Okay. Um—wow.”
“Your speechlessness is flattering,” I whisper. “And also? I hope it tells you what my words can’t about how I feel about you—that I really am attracted to you.”
She lets out a shuddery breath, and her head tips back, eyes blinking rapidly. “Wes, god…”
“What? What is it?” I’m worried instantly that I let things go too far too fast.
She shakes her head. Her hands press against my chest—not pushing, but bracing. “Just…overwhelmed.” She puts her hand over my mouth, silencing me. “I know, I know.”
I wait.
She swallows hard. “Can we—could we—” she meets my eyes again. “I think I need to…stop…now.” She frowns. “I’m sorry.”
I take her hands in one of mine. Cup her cheek. “No, don’t—do not apologize. Not for anything. Certainly not for telling me you want to slow down.”
“I just…I know you’re—and I was…and we were—” she breaks off with a self-conscious laugh. “Let me try that again.”
I touch her lips with a finger, pull backward away from her, and sit on the bed. “This happens at your pace, Jo. Don’t even think about me, or what you think I want.” I kiss her cheek, the corner of her lips. “What I want is to help you feel good. I want to help you learn what you want and what you like. And that’s the real truth.”
She shakes her head, following me to the bed, standing with her thighs pressed against my knees. “Wes, I—I don’t think that’s how it’s supposed to work. I know I’ve never had a boyfriend before, but…I guess I feel like I’m supposed to think about you. About what you want. What you’re feeling. That’s how a relationship works, right? Each of us thinks about the other, tries to make the other person happy? I want…I want to think about you, and how the things we do affect you. Because I care about that. So, what I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry for leading you on, or…or getting you worked up and then stopping. That’s what I mean to say.”
I reach up and grasp her hips. “You didn’t lead me on.”
Her eyes flick down to my groin, to the obvious protrusion there; to say I’m tenting the front of my underwear would be an egregious understatement. “Is that…does it…hurt? Like, is it uncomfortable?” She plucks at her lower lip with her teeth, seeming unable to pull her gaze away. “I mean, when it’s…um, big like that. How—how does it feel?”
I let out a breath, considering my answer. “It doesn’t hurt, no. It can be uncomfortable, sometimes, especially if it’s not, uhhh, straight, in my underwear. Like if it’s folded over or bent.”
Like it is right now; problem is, if I were to straighten it, I would for sure stick out the top of the waistband of my underwear. And I’m just not sure if she’s ready for that.
“As for how it feels?” I shrug. “I mean, how do you describe something like that? How would you describe being aroused?”
“Are you asking me?”
I nod. “Yeah, sure.”
She rolls a shoulder. “I don’t know. I’m not sure if I can say with a hundred percent certainty that I know what It means to be…aroused.” She whispers that last word.
I can’t help a naughty grin. “Well, that’s not good at all.” I stand up. “You do not have to answer this, but I admit I’m insanely curious. Have you ever given yourself an orgasm?”
Her cheeks flame red. “Um.” She ducks her head. Gives a small, shy, almost miserably embarrassed shrug. “No?”
“You don’t sound sure,
Jo.” I collide into her personal space, hands wrapped low around her hips. “You don’t have to be embarrassed. You can tell me the truth,” I whisper. “Everyone does it, Jo. It’s natural, it’s normal. Masturbation is good for you.”
She groans, covers her face with her hands. “Yes!” she hisses, barely audible. “I have. At least, I—I touched myself. Down there. It…it felt so…weird. So intense.”
“What were you thinking about?”
“Don’t make me tell.”
“I’ll never make you do anything.” I pull her closer, harder against my body. Let her feel my arousal against her. She’s breathing deeply, sucking in rough, shuddering breaths. “I’ll also never ask you a question I’m not willing to answer.”
“It’s so embarrassing. It’s mortifying.”
“It can’t be that bad.”
“It is.”
“You don’t have to tell me.”
She hesitates. Hands over her face, she rests against my body. “You.” This, in a barely audible whisper, muffled further by her hands. “Before I met you. Before the TikTok. It was a good day, before the last set of scans and…all that. I told Mom and Dad to go out, have a date. I was home alone, and I watched a movie, some dumb rom-com, I don’t even remember the title of it.” A pause. “I was…thinking about you. Imagining myself as the heroine and you as the hero, and I got kinda carried away, and…”
A harsh exhale. She won’t look at me, but she doesn’t stop talking.
“I was picturing us together. Doing…well, what we were just doing. And I got kind of…excited? Like, my pulse was racing and…and down there, I—it felt…I don’t know. Hot? Tense? I don’t know. It wasn’t like, a moment where I decided. I just remember all of a sudden my fingers were under my panties and I was touching myself. And it felt good. Really good. The more I touched myself, the better it felt. But I started to get…it sounds dumb now. But I was scared. Of how it felt. Like I was going to explode, almost. So I…I stopped.”
“That’s how it feels for me, when I’m aroused like this. Hot, pulse racing, tension, excitement. Like I could just explode at any minute.”
“But when I got scared and stopped, it…it didn’t exactly hurt, but it was almost a worse feeling than being scared of how I felt. Like, I didn’t want to stop. Everything inside me except this weird guilt and fear was insisting I keep going until I did explode.” She finally tilts her face up, out of the covering of her palms, to look into my eyes. “That’s why I’m worried I’m getting you all worked up and then saying we have to stop because I’m scared or not ready—like…” A nibble of her lips, a sign she’s hunting for the right words, or the courage to say what she’s really thinking. “I’m girl, and we don’t have, um, something that—that grows. That gets…all big and hard. And I guess I’m worried it’s going to hurt you, or make you upset or uncomfortable. Like, does it go away on its own?”
I grasp her wrist and kiss her palms. “The truth is, yes, it is uncomfortable both physically and—not necessarily emotionally, exactly, but maybe…psychologically—to become hard with arousal and do nothing about it. The point of arousal is to seek release through climax—orgasm. That’s the entire function of arousal. And to get fully aroused and then stop? Yeah, it’s not fun.” I smile, reassuring. “That’s the truth. But it’s also part of life. Part of relationships and sexuality. I can deal with it. I am absolutely one hundred percent capable of and willing to go through this process with you. Help you find yourself, sexually, one step at a time. You can’t just jump into the deep end, Jo.” I hold her eyes. “I can be patient. We can take this at your pace. That’s what I meant when I said you shouldn’t think about the effect on me. I just mean I’ll be fine. I can handle the minor discomfort of getting turned on and having to stop and pull back and let it subside. Which it will, and I’ll be fine.”
She inhales to the full capacity of her lungs, holds it, lets it out slowly. Puts her hands on my shoulders, then uses her hip to wedge open my knees and fit herself between my legs. Closer. Closer, till she’s flush with me in the V of my thighs, gazing down at me.
“What would you do next, if I were to say I want to keep going?” she asks.
“I would ask if you’re sure. If you want to keep going for yourself.” I clutch her hips, thumbs rubbing over the dimpled hollow between hip bones and pubis.
She nods. “I would say—”
I cut in. “Let’s cut the hypotheticals, Jo. Tell me what you want.”
A roll of her shoulder. “More?”
“More of what?” I ask.
“Touching. Kissing.” Her small pink tongue slides nervously over her lips. “I want more of…of how I feel when you touch me. I want—I feel so…alive…when you touch me.”
I gaze up at her, searching her face. I’m aching with arousal, but in this moment the only thing I can think of, the only thing I want is to make her feel more. More alive. More connected to herself, to me. Everything.
She’s never had an orgasm—I wonder if it’d be pushing her too far.
Maybe just…one little step at a time.
I slide my hands up to her waist, under the hem of her shirt. “How about we start…”
My palms skate up her belly, then, to her ribcage; her breath catches, her whole being freezing, except her pulse, which races madly, visible in the hollow of her throat. She swallows hard, blinking rapidly.
I reach up, then, and cup her breasts. “Here.”
“Ohhh god, Wes. Yes.”
“Yeah?”
Her eyes close. “Yeah. Yes. I like that.”
They’re small and firm. Delicate. Her nipples are hard pebbles against the center of my palms. When she finally sucks in a breath, I brush a nipple with my thumb, and she whimpers at the sensation. I watch her thighs press together, and when I flick both erect nipples at once, she throws her head back and gasps a choked moan.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders, head lolling back on her neck, eyes squeezed shut. And then, as I rub the pads of my thumbs over her nipples in small light quick circles, her eyes snap open, wild and eager and bold.
In a single rough gesture, she rips off her tank top—arms crossing at her midsection to grasp the hem, then tearing it up and off and tossing it aside recklessly. As if she’s worried the courage to do so would dissipate any moment.
Her skin is the pale color of cream, with liberal freckles like stars, and I find myself leaning close to kiss one freckle, and another, and another, as if to link them in a constellation. “So beautiful,” I murmur. Another kiss, another freckle, from ribcage up higher, between her breasts. “So, so beautiful.”
Her hands clutch into my hair, spastic and strong. “Oh god, Wes.”
I look up at her as my lip stutters across her flesh. Already peaked, her nipples tighten further to diamond points. Her breathing halts. Mouth open, jaw dropped. Brows drawn yet eyes wide. “Okay?” I whisper, seeking affirmation at every step.
She nods jerkily. No longer grasping fistfuls of hair, her hands now cup my head, gentle and tender. Is there a hint of guidance, in her touch? Pulling me closer, hinting at a nudge toward her breast. I smile. Cover her breast with my mouth; slight, soft, and firm, it’s a warm globe against my lips. She gasps, a sensual, shaky sound. I flick my tongue against her nipple, and she whimpers something that sounds like my name.
The other one, then. Tongue flicking, circling. Her back arches, pressing her into my mouth.
I pull away, and her damp nipples beg for more. They’re upturned at the tips, with quarter-sized areolae a few shades darker than the pink of her nipples. Freckles dot her breasts liberally. “I love these,” I whisper, kissing a freckle and another and another.
“The—the freckles? Or my boobs?”
“Both. But I was referring to the freckles.” I kiss from freckle to freckle across her chest. “Maybe I’ll just follow the trail of freckles across your whole body until I’ve kissed every single one.”
She whimpers when my tongue drags o
ver her nipple again. “That would…ohhh, oh oh—that would take a long time. I’ve got…a lot of…of freckles.”
I look up at her. “I’ve got time.”
I want to make her feel good. So good. Better than she’s ever felt. I caress her breasts with my hands while kissing her skin, touching my tongue to her myriad freckles on cream-and-silk skin. I drift my touch down, then. From breasts to waist, to hips. Clutch her buttocks, and then the backs of her thighs. Run my hands up the front of her legs, then, with my kisses somewhere just below her breasts but above her abdomen. Hook my fingers in the elastic of her underwear, and her breathing catches on a whimper—but this one sounds nervous, almost fearful, so I release. Over the garment then. Her breathing resumes, still ragged with arousal.
Touch her hip bones. Kiss her belly.
Her hands remain on my head, holding me, following me as I kiss her here and there. I drag a fingertip down from her belly button, and she freezes, tenses, fingers clawing into my scalp.
“Oh god, Wes,” she breathes. She knows where my touch is leading.
Does she want it?
I feel like she wants me to lead her, to take her perhaps out of her comfort zone. She’s not stopping me… and she did, earlier. Slowed us down. And then asked to resume. She’s proven that she’s able and willing to communicate with me what she wants and doesn’t want.
I slide my fingertip, just my index finger of my right hand, over the band of her underwear. Slowly, soooo slowly. Monitoring her every breath, her every expression, I slide my finger lower and lower, millimeter by millimeter.
Until I feel the silk give way, slightly, when I reach the apex of her sex.
Her eyes are open, wide open. Watching.
Lip in her teeth.
Not breathing—and then, all once, her breathing resumes but in short, sharp, shallow gasps.
Down the seam of her sex, over the silk of her underwear, I slide my finger, slowly and slowly. Then, my touch halts, and returns upward.
“Ohhh god, Wes.”
“I can stop, if you want.” I don’t quite smile or smirk, not meaning to tease her. I know she doesn’t want me to.
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