Yours to Bare

by Jessica Hawkins

  He rests his forehead against mine. “We can’t.”

  “We couldn’t ten minutes ago. Now we can. We so can.”

  “No, I mean, we actually can’t.” He takes my shoulders but seems to brace me instead of pull me off. “I don’t have any condoms. I wasn’t expecting . . .”

  Score. The red light is actually green. I smile as I suck the skin right underneath his jaw, leaning my weight on him. He’s unmistakably hard against my belly. “I’m on birth control.”

  His head falls back. “Doesn’t matter. I won’t.”

  I might be insulted at his insinuation if I weren’t so eager to move this along. “I’m clean. Rich and I haven’t even been intimate in a month. Are you?”

  “Yes, but . . .” He finally succeeds in detaching my mouth from him. “But I just can’t. It’s not a conversation for the heat of the moment.”

  The last thing I want to do is get into another deep conversation.

  “I’ll go get condoms,” he says. “Make coffee while you wait. That’ll give us each time to think this through.”

  I was wrong. Talking isn’t the last thing I want to do. The last fucking thing I want to do is think. I’m not worried I’ll change my mind, or that I need time to get over Rich. It’s that I’ve fantasized about this so long—urgent need, hunger, a real man. After years of dulling everything around me, including sex, I want to be devoured by Finn. I don’t want to talk or think because I’m so hot for him, I’m about to strap on a harness and climb him like the mountain he is.

  If he won’t fuck me, there are other ways to get close to him.

  I drop to my knees on the kitchen tile.

  “Halston.” I hear the warning in his voice.

  “You don’t have to do anything,” I coo, blinking up at him. “Just stand here.”

  His eyes darken. “I’m bigger than you’re used to.” Another warning.

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  I pull his pants down his thighs. His heather-gray boxer-briefs outline every ridge and vein of him. He’s right. He’s not like any of the other three men I’ve been with, but at least I’m not intimidated.

  “I’m not as hard since I just came,” he says. “I will be once you touch me.”

  Oh.

  He’s not completely hard yet?

  Fuck.

  He pinches my chin and turns my face up to him. “You have nothing to prove. We can go lie down until we fall asleep. I just want to be with you.”

  “I haven’t done this much,” I say, determined. Rich was the only man I felt comfortable enough to blow. He liked it at the start of the relationship, but we fell into a routine that didn’t include it unless he asked. Which he didn’t. “You might have to sort of, you know, coach me.”

  He shakes his head in disbelief. “I stand corrected. You didn’t even have to touch me to get me fully hard.”

  I blush. “You like the idea of me being your student?”

  “Let’s take it one step at a time, all right? I can’t manage roleplaying on top of this.”

  “So that’s a yes?” I run my hands up his thighs.

  “I don’t want to take advantage of you.”

  “You already said that. But if you don’t, how else will I earn my ‘A’?”

  His nostrils flare. With his eyes on me, he pulls himself out. I glance down, and my heart skips. Now I’m intimidated. I can’t handle all that, especially with my lack of experience. What if I don’t do a good job? What if after all this build up, I’m just okay? We’ve based important decisions on our chemistry, and if it isn’t there, where does that leave us?

  I glance up at him. Finn’s been respectful so far, but now I wonder if I pushed too hard. There’s an edge to him that both thrills and unnerves me.

  “I love when you look at me like that,” he says. “So innocent, and yet so far from it at the same time.”

  I put my hand around his shaft, test him with my tongue, and meet his eyes. I’ve heard men like that, and he just told me as much. I open my mouth, determined to take all of him, but I only get halfway before I have to pull back. I play it off like I wasn’t even trying. He’s sticky and salty from earlier, and the thought dampens my underwear.

  I run the tip of my tongue around his crown. “Tell me what to do.”

  With a moan, he runs his fingers through my hair and takes my roots in a light fist. “You’re perfect.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Suck,” he says. I put my mouth on him and pull, bobbing my head back and forth. I do it until my jaw aches and he says, “Yeah. Like that. Deeper.”

  I inhale through my nose and take as much of him as I can, and then even more. My mouth is crammed with him when I go too far and gag. I jerk back. My throat constricts as I gasp for air. “I’m sorry,” I wheeze.

  “That my cock’s too big for your mouth?” he asks, gravel in his voice. “I’m not. And you won’t be later, either.”

  I wipe saliva from my chin. “What?”

  His grin borders on sinister as he takes my upper arm. “Come up here.”

  “Am I that bad?” I ask, standing.

  “No. I’m stopping you so I don’t come now and end the night early.” He takes my face in his hands and leans in.

  I pull away. “I just gave you a blowjob.”

  “And?” He holds me in place and kisses me full on the mouth. “You better get un-squeamish, Hals.” He lowers his voice, trailing kisses down my neck. “So I can kiss you when I want. Touch you where I want. Fuck you how I want. You can always say no, but just assume I want all of it.”

  Hals. Nobody’s ever called me that before. I raise my chin toward the ceiling, exposing my neck for him. I think I was going to ask him what “all” he’s referring to, but I’m quickly losing my train of thought.

  Finn embraces my waist and lifts me, walking me backward. He sits me on a surface. “The kitchen table?” I ask.

  “Of course. This is where I eat all my meals.”

  Before I can ask what he means, Finn attaches his lips to mine like he needs my breath to keep him upright. He tugs my blouse from my skirt, separating from me only long enough to pull it over my head.

  Planting a paw-like hand on each side of me, he traps me where I am. “Let me see you.”

  I sit up straight. Our mouths almost touch. Sucking in my tummy, I reach back and unclasp my bra. My breasts are one area I’ve never had complaints, but when I lost weight, they got a little smaller. Rich and I slept together less and less over the past few months, even though he made sure I knew how much better I looked thinner.

  Finn nods once, urging me on, and I slide both straps down my shoulders.

  He stares while I try not to look at his cock, hard and reaching between us. “What the fuck’d I do to deserve these?” he asks, thumbing one of my hardening nipples. “You’ve got the tits of a . . . I don’t even know. A chick with great tits.”

  I can’t really blame him for going dumb. I did too a couple minutes ago. I’m more concerned with what he thinks of the rest of me. Finn’s the most attractive man I’ve ever been with.

  The elastic of my skirt and tights creates a roll of fat. Like my breasts, it’s smaller than it used to be, but Finn doesn’t know that. “Finn?”

  “Hmm?” Without looking away from my breasts, he runs a hand under my skirt and licks his lips. “Can I just . . . taste you everywhere and all at once?” he asks.

  I smile shyly, and finally, he looks back into my eyes. “You like it?” I ask.

  “Like what?”

  “All of it. Some of it?”

  He squints at me. “You’re asking if I find you attractive?”

  My chest tightens. If he says no, I don’t trust myself not to react badly. I shouldn’t’ve asked when tonight’s been going so well. “You don’t have to answer.”

  Propping himself up with one arm, he scoops his other around my waist and hauls me to the edge of the table. My legs open wider, automatically wrappin
g around him as he pushes his cock right up against me. I gasp louder than I mean to.

  “It likes you,” he says. “I like you.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “It wants to be inside you. I want to be inside you.”

  “Okay.” I blush. “I get it.”

  He moves against me slowly, every nuance of his shaft sliding between my legs, over my silky tights. “It wants to make you feel so good, you’re ruined. Right here, right now. I won’t let it, not tonight anyway, but that’s what it wants.”

  I begin to quiver. The table is cold, even through my stockings. He’s all man, bordering on Neanderthal, and I’m certain sex with him will be unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.

  “Are you afraid?” he asks.

  “A little.”

  “Good. You should be. This is scary. Are you good with that?”

  His words have the opposite effect they should. They’re more calming than troubling. He recognizes this is more than just sex. If he means to ruin me, I don’t have the desire to stop him. “Yes.”

  He holds me in place by my lower back. “I don’t want casual sex, I never have. I want you to come knowing I’m doing this to you. I’m giving you this and taking what I need from you. I’m watching you. That’s why I couldn’t do this before. I have to know you’re not holding back a single fucking thing from me.”

  If I let him in the way he’s asking . . . what if I have to one day rid myself of him? I won’t be able to. This feels permanent. Being ruined takes on a new meaning.

  He skates his hand up my spine, to the center of my back, and applies pressure until I arch into him. My nipples graze his chest. “Does that answer your question?” he asks.

  “What was my question?”

  He smirks and lowers his mouth to suck the skin between my breasts. I gulp air and let my head drop back. My nipples are painfully erect when he draws one between his teeth.

  “Oh, God, Finn.” He tugs. Sucks it hard. Lets it go with a pop. “God. Please.” I pray for relief. It’s too much. It’s not enough.

  “You like that?” he asks. “Because I’m about to do the same thing to your clit.”

  When I squirm, I’m reminded my legs are still open. Suddenly, I want to get my tights the fuck off. I want for him to tease me, sliding, filling, slamming until I feel nothing else.

  Finn lays me on my back. “Shut your eyes,” he says. “Just focus on what I’m doing.”

  My lids are already heavy, so I give in. He urges my hips up to undo my skirt. The zipper ends right at my tailbone, eliciting a shudder from me. He pulls the waistband of my tights down around my thighs and leaves them there, cutting into my skin. “Do you have the kind of tights that stop halfway up your thighs?” he asks.

  “Stockings? I can get some.”

  “Get some.” He removes them. “Cheap ones.”

  “Why do they need to be cheap . . .?”

  “They’ll only last a night.”

  My mushy brain doesn’t even know where to start with that. He’s not only going to ruin me, but my clothing too, and it’s going to be in the future. We haven’t even done this yet, and we’re making plans to do it again. I feel my breath moving through me, my blood circulating through my veins.

  With my eyes closed, I reach out for him. He complies, covering my body with his, and kisses me good and thorough. His fingers between my legs test me without entering. I groan and moan, arch and writhe, wanting him inside me any way I can get him. I don’t even know how it’s possible that I could climax already. He kisses his way down my sternum and parts my knees. I’m already at the edge, but he grabs me under the ass and pulls me onto his mouth so I’m practically hanging off the table.

  I put my feet on his shoulders. His appreciative groans vibrate against my pussy. My hips buck as he licks and tastes. He puts one hand on my stomach to pin me down, then grabs my knee with the other. Pushing my leg up, he bares me to him even more. After plunging his tongue in me a few times, he makes good on his promise to love my clit.

  As good as it feels, nothing sounds better than connecting with him in the most intimate way. I want to feel him, look into his eyes, come with him. “Please, Finn . . .” I beg.

  “I know what you want, but we can’t. You can orgasm like this.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “You first.”

  I don’t know whether to cry or come. It wouldn’t be the first time tonight I did either. His ministrations continue until my thighs shake around his head and my back arches off his kitchen table, and oh yes, finally I understand his joke about eating his meals here. I’m dinner.

  “Now,” he says, muffled by my thighs.

  Now? Now what?

  He digs his fingers into my skin and gorges on me. Aha—come. Now. That’s what I’ve been ordered to do. And like the good girl I am, I do, right in his mouth. He laps me up until I’m finished.

  When I come to, he’s standing over me. “You good?” he asks.

  My breasts rise and fall. “Amazing.”

  He picks me up from the table to cradle me in his arms. “It’s only fair you taste yourself since I did.”

  Another first for me, kissing a mouth covered in me. Finn somehow makes it sexy. “This is just the start,” he says.

  “I think we’ve gotten as creative as it gets without a condom.”

  “I look forward to proving you wrong. But right now, we should sleep.”

  Even when I messaged Finn, I never dreamed I’d be spending the night with him. I nuzzle into his chest. “Here?”

  “Yes. Well, not in the kitchen.” I hear the smile in his voice. “How’s my bed sound?”

  My skin prickles. I hope he can’t feel my goosebumps, how excited just the idea of his bed makes me. I try to play it cool. “That would be fine.”

  He carries me down the hall to his bedroom. It’s dark, but the open shades provide some moonlight. He lays me on the mattress and disappears. Either he’s only gone a few seconds, or I fall asleep, because next thing I know, he’s wrapping himself around me from behind. He squeezes me to him until I’m perfectly puzzled into his body. “You’ll be able to sleep with me crushing you like this, right?” he teases.

  I wear a smile on my face I doubt even the deepest sleep could erase. “I’ll manage.”

  “There’s so much I want to know about you,” he says, his mouth at my ear. “Earlier, when I said this was the start, I meant of us.”

  Us. How is it possible to make it all the way to twenty-five without ever having felt like part of an us? “You know more than you think,” I confess. “You probably know more than anyone else.”

  “Because of the journal?” he asks softly. “Are there others?”

  I don’t answer. I’ve bared enough of myself for one night. I’ve gotten the intimacy I wanted, and being with him has been just right. I don’t want to risk going any deeper.

  He seems to understand my silence, letting the question hang as we drift to sleep.

  13

  Finn’s bed is white, the brightest spot I’ve seen in his apartment. Snowy pillows and sheets match the frost forming on the glass outside. An indigo dawn yawns through the window. He’s no longer curled around me, but the mattress dips with his weight.

  I look over my shoulder. His face is shadowed, his silhouetted profile strong and square against the linens as he stares up at the ceiling. I want to go to him, but I’m warm and heavy where I am, glutted with him.

  “Hey.” My voice cracks.

  He turns his head. “Hey. Didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I’m going to take a quick shower,” he says. “Go back to sleep.”

  I check the clock on his nightstand. “Do you always get up at five?”

  “I’ll come back to bed when I’m done.”

  “You want company? I should shower before work.”

  “No.”

  I’m not entirely awake, but his rejection is harsh enough to sting.
I turn back to my side of the bed. “Oh-kay.”

  He laughs and squeezes my shoulder. “I didn’t mean it like that. The thing is, I’m kind of dying over here.”

  “Dying?”

  “I want to fuck you so bad, Halston. More than I’ve ever wanted to do anything. I can’t believe I’m the idiot without a condom.”

  “You could’ve just gone downstairs to get one.”

  “Then I’d have to leave you. Anyway, I’m hot and hard and it’s not going so well for me. That’s why I just need to take a cold shower. Alone.”

  I bite my lip to keep from smiling over his discomfort. “But it’s like forty degrees outside.”

  “Yeah. I realize I sound like a sex addict. I should keep my mouth shut.”

  “I like it open,” I say, my voice raspy. “Your mouth.”

  “Yeah?” He kisses me on the back of the head. “I promise, I’ll do nothing other than buy condoms today. All day long. Or at least until you can get back here. When do you get off work?”

  Work. Shit. It’s warm and perfect in here, cold, crowded and loud out there. I have to see Rich. And my dad. Maybe I can avoid them . . . the arguing . . . the attempts to change my mind . . . and come back here.

  My new happy place.

  Finn’s warm, soft bed.

  “What?” Did he ask me something? Oh, yes. Work. “I’m done at six . . . ish.”

  “How about five-ish?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Four?” His laugh sounds distant. “Sleep. I’ll be right back.”

  I nuzzle into my pillow, but just as I’m drifting into a dream, I’m jolted back to reality. I have to see Rich today. And no, there’s no avoiding him or my father. They’ll want answers. Rich will blame the break-up on my change in treatment. I’m not even sure I can defend myself. The two things may be linked some way or another.

  I’m wide awake now, and the sky is lightening to sapphire. A wispy layer of snow fleeces some bare branches outside. Work problems aside, there’s romance in the air. I’m supposed to leave Finn alone, but I think it’s because he’s so turned on, he can’t sleep. He didn’t come a second time last night, and after the way he ate me to orgasm, I owe him. I salivate just remembering him in my mouth. Maybe I’d be welcome if I showed up to finish what I started.