“Beautiful Tess. You feel so good, soft…exquisite and perfect. Perfect, sweetheart.”
“Scout, oh…”
She presses herself into my hands, making my heart flip. I’m certain she’s turned on by the way she’s moving her hips the tiniest bit against my cock, which for about the ninth time today is rock-fucking-hard.
“Does it feel good, Tess? Tell me. I need to know if you like me touching you, because to me it’s incredible. You’re amazing, and I’m so hard for you…so fucking hard.”
“Scout, I…”
“Tell me…say the words, Tess.”
“So good…it feels so good. I didn’t know it could, I didn’t know it would…I never thought…”
My gorgeous, brave girl sits in my lap, taking a chance, blessing me with something so dear and fragile. Something she’d thought she hold forever. Something so terrifying to her, which made her feel so ugly that she couldn’t even trust me, her very best friend, with it. The man who loves her more than any person on the earth. So I, too, decide to take a chance. Not a huge leap the way she has, but one that I know will be good for us, one that may help her see me as someone worth making a different choice for.
“Tess, I want to feel your body against mine, your whole naked body next to me… all of you. Can you do that with me?”
“Ohhh, I can’t…I can’t take off my shirt, Scout. I’m trying but…no, not that.”
“Please say yes. I won’t do anything but lie next to you and touch you just like I am now. Let me in, Tess.”
“I am, Scout. No one has ever touched me…this isn’t easy. I’m trying so hard…. I’m trusting…please…”
“Sweetheart, I know. I know how hard it is.”
“I can’t have you see me…I can’t. it’s different than touching…you don’t understand. You’ve only seen my back. My front is…”
“…is beautiful, that’s what it is, and perfect, and it’s you…and I love you. Can you see how I love you…all of you, every inch? Tess, let me in…let me love you.”
I feel a shift of energy between us as though the angels hear and want to answer my prayers, and she again comes over to my side the tiniest bit more. She finds me…finds us…sacrificing herself for the hunger we share.
“I want to be against you. I want to be naked with you.” Her eyes smile at me through her fear, through tears.
“Tell me, Tess. You can trust me. Tell me how you want to do this. I want you to be okay with it.”
And while it’s not exactly what I was hoping for, it’s as close as she is going to be able to move, and that works for me.
“I need it dark. No lights…dark. Dark, dark.”
“Okay, you got it. Dark.”
Her determination to find a way feels like a declaration of her soul. I can do dark. It’s a start…it’s Tess finding me. It’s her soul making its way to me like water that etches its way through an impassible rock.
“Don’t move. Don’t take off a thing. Let me have that, okay?”
Then, for the first time in a while now, she smiles at me. It’s a coy, sweet smile that sends a shiver straight down my spine directly into my groin. All of this has been worth the wait. And maybe, I think…at some point she’ll come around and really let me in the way I need to know she can.
My only fear is we won’t get there before it’s too late.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
TESS
The warmth in his eyes says everything. making my heart swell and spin at once. It’s an unquestioning look of love, need, and want that leaves me wondering…can I change all of my plans? Can I be okay with the idea of ending my engagement knowing that there’s no way in the next week I’ll be able to tell Scout that I can let him have me exactly as he needs me? Is the risk too great for both of us? If only I had more time…
I’m just not sure how much more time though would be enough. Would two weeks help, a month, six months…years? It’s taken us fifteen long years just to get here. And I just told the poor guy to make the room pitch black because I can’t bear for him to see who I really am. In this moment he feels like my oxygen, my entire world, my rock. Stabs of fear course through my body, throwing me off balance as he blows out the candles, but my need to be with him, near him…and against him, flesh on flesh, wins out as a vow of trust and courage.
The room is as dark as it will ever be. And still, when he comes to me I see the flash of his eyes. Knowing he’ll be able to see mine and maybe my body sends my nerves chasing through me. The outline, I tell myself…. he’ll never see more than that in this darkness. It makes me feel flustered, ashamed, and angry about my situation and myself. I’m sitting on my knees, legs tucked under, as he comes into the bed. I don’t where this is going but I can’t stop it now. The brakes are off; my fear, though, of a crash is that it’ll bankrupt us both.
“Hey, is this okay?”
His words are my undoing, and a cloudburst of tears spill down my cheeks like warm honey. Crazy, right? I want him so badly, more than anything, but my uncertainty feels like a strangling weight.
“Come here, sweetheart. I’m only going to love you.”
His soul reaches out to mine in a dance I’ve never felt in my entire life with a man. The pit of my stomach tingles as he wraps me in his soothing words like a blanket, melting my resolve, finding me through the web of illogical reason that I try desperately to shut off. I hide my fear from our sacred union, pushing it to an out-of-reach place in my mind, as I fall into him with untethered desire for the closeness I crave, allowing it to engulf me with titanic force.
His fingers are at the bottom of my T-shirt, his knuckles brushing my hip bones. Slowly he pulls it up my body, then over my head. My heart is skipping everywhere. My immediate response to cover myself with my arms as I free fall into my new awakening.
“Tess… Jesus, sweetheart, you’re exquisite…just more beautiful by the minute. Do you hear me? Breathe, my love. Let me in…”
His eyes—though I can barely see them at all—flicker at me as they dance across my body. I look away in fear, so that if for one second he changes his mind, I won’t see it in his expression. He takes my chin in his hand, bringing my gaze back to his.
“Look at you…you’re amazing. Always have been…everything about you.”
Goosebumps skate across my skin, chilling my nipples to stand taut, beckoning his touch as the rawness of cool air and his gaze startles me. His lips trail down my neck with kisses and licks as he breathes me in. In tiny, provoking circles, his fingertips move exquisitely over my breasts, unraveling the threads of every last nerve in my body. Gently he pinches both nipples and a mess of luxuriant, erotic feelings lawlessly explode inside of me, his sexual aura arousing every pore.
“Oh God…” I’m scrambling to catch my breath.
“Is it okay, the way I’m touching you? Tell me how you like it…what you want.”
“So good…more…” The beginnings of my new identity bubble up to the surface of my soul with unabashed opulence.
My hands trace his face as though I’m blind. I want so much to know what he’s seeing, what he’s thinking. How must it feel to touch me, my skin, unlike anything he’s ever had under his fingertips. Is his craving for my breasts, which are nowhere close the wonderlands of flesh he’s felt in his lifetime, meeting his hunger? What’s in his expression; what meaning does it hold? I run my fingers over his lips, finding his smile—his soothing smile that seamlessly ties me closer to him. My sweet lover…my soulful, dear heart…my Scout.
“I love being with you,” he murmured. “Touching you like this, having you in my hands. My skin against your warm flesh, all of you next me…do you feel all of this?”
His lips navigate every surface, from whispering in my ear to kissing my collarbone in ravenous, wet sweeps that move over my body. His tongue laving my skin, washing me, testing me, searching for more. Moving rapidly, as though he’s starved, he finds me. He’s voracious, insatiable, acting as if I’ll disappear i
f he skips an inch or misses an undiscovered taste.
My arms hang liquid at my sides. I’m unable to do anything but feel the heaviness of blood in my pulsing fingertips as I melt under his roving mouth, knowing exactly where it’s going next. My reflex, as his lips close around my left, barely-there nipple, is to stop him. My arms freeze while my body reacts desirously to his mouth, as I moan in pleasure, praying as his tongue feels me that he’s not thrown by the texture or distortion of my skin. His possessive kisses, the sensation of his mouth on my skin is all so new and euphoric, a claim to everything hidden in my soul. I feel the flick of his tongue combined with the pressure of his hands squeezing the top of my breast into his mouth, torching me. Lingering on my nipple, pinching and tugging, he sucks me into his mouth, then trails his tongue to my right breast. I fall into him, the invitation of his lips turning my world upside down. I rise up on my knees giving him access to my open legs and to what I hope are his wandering hands as I pull his head onto me, forcing my breast into his mouth with animal-like fervor. His touch shatters me—delicate, decadent, rough and rapid, the bone-deep thrill of it—as I lose control and let my libido drive.
“Tess…Jesus,” he groans.
I grab his rigid cock in my hands, rubbing the large drop of pooling liquid over its head, then back down the length of his shaft as I cup his balls tenderly in my palm.
“I need you…please,” I beg him, the flutter of nerves in my belly making the air around us feel as if it’s shifting. I’m lost, I’m found, I’m drunk…I’m drugged by him. His mouth finds mine and he makes love to it deliciously with his tongue, with his lips, with his forceful inhalation of me, releasing every last bit of restraint I hold. He rises up to his knees, meeting me, thighs pressed against thighs, our combined hands moving rapidly across wet skin, folds, and plains…no surface untouched. In and out, over and under, the unrelenting pace between us making me feel like an orbiting satellite.
“Tess…oh fuck…I can’t stop. Dammit, I can’t…I want you…”
He hooks his thumbs into the sides of my panties, pulling them down swiftly and off of me. He greedily spreads me, finding my slick. One hand fills and explores me while the other skates across my breasts with greedy pinches that feel like erotic raindrops of blistering heat. We grind against each other, skin against skin, every piece of me craving all of him inside of me.
“Please…oh, Scout. I want all of you…inside of me.”
“Baby…this…now…Jesus, you’re so wet….”
Then, with my heartbeat dancing like fireworks while his tongue deeply penetrates the depth of my mouth, as his fingers explore, invade, sear and stir me…I let go. All of me, falling into all of him. I drown in our union, lose myself to the ride that my senses crave, the spill of emotion combined with the furthest edge of heat that my body is able to drink in.
“Tess, fuck… Oh God, baby, come with me. Oh Christ, yeah…”
His words incite a flame inside of me as I hear my name on his lips. Our combined loss of control along with the sight of him coming undone, his head falling back in ecstasy, unravels me. With delirious devotion I let the raw, endless waves of impulse guide me through the most charged orgasm of my life as Scout comes in my hands at the very same time.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SCOUT
“Please…make love to me. I want you, Scout.”
The sensuousness of our union leaves me thunderstruck. I knew she’d touch me like she did. Once it started, there was nothing that could have stopped me from indulging. Another threshold—though one that can’t go beyond our current crossing.
“Come here, gorgeous.” I lay her down next me in a comforting spoon, her entire body next to mine, her soft, round bottom snuggled tightly against me. I breathe in everything about her and hope to hell the forces of good can find us. I can see us like this in six months and then again in ten years. She’s home to me, to everything inside of me.
“Please…I want you inside of me. Make love to me.”
I’m fucked. Because I know what will happen if I do and I know what will happen if I don’t: either way, I stand to lose her.
“Tess…just once? Is that all you want from me? I can’t do once. Do you want that? Is once enough for you? Is it? Once might be the death of me.”
She flips over, pulling the blankets up to her chin. A tiny sliver of light bounces off her eyes, making me wonder what’s going on in her mind and how far she’s willing to go to find us.
“Or the beginning of us?” she answers, pressing herself against me. She’s soft, tiny…my end-all, be-all. She feels like heaven lying in my embrace. Sliding one arm under me, the other around me, she clings to my chest in a never let me go way. I wish to hell… Damn, how I wish.
“Tell me then…tell me, baby, how this week is going to shake out? Because once won’t happen, not until I know. It will never be once with us. I’ve told you I can’t do that to you or to me—to us. I can’t have you when you’re his…when I know in my heart I may not get all of you for eternity.”
Her face is buried in my chest as she lets out a deep, angst-riddled sigh, every ounce of which I easily read into.
“Why are you attaching so much to it?” she asked. “What ever happened to you and all of the one-night stands you’ve had for years on end? Why can’t I fit that bill?”
A one-night stand? Lightning flashes through my spine. Now she’s delusional.
“Really? How can you attach so little? Is that who you want to be to me: a one-night stand? A thread of a lover? A notch in my belt? Best friends…one erotically sensuous, mind-altering fuck, and then what? We just go back to the way everything was, nothing attached? Friends? I’ve already crossed the line; I’ve gone too far. You own me… Fuck, you think I want to stop? I’m seconds away from sinking my everything into you. Do you not feel what I do—everything that ties us together, the chemistry between us? You—the one woman I want—the only being I crave…I…Jesus Christ, Tess. Maybe we’re more different than I thought we were.”
“Why, because I want you to love me?”
I literally chuckle at this one. She’s clearly stuck on some Land of Oz fantasy where all the poppy meadows are sending out a fucked-up essence that’s twisting her perspective around.
“I already love you. You’re killing me. Are you blind to me? You want a quick hard fuck? That’s it? You want me to fuck you? Now? You want me to spread your legs, sink myself into you, love the ever-living daylights out of you…then move on as though nothing ever happened? You must have more testosterone than me. If you wanted me to love you, then you’d be making some changes in your upcoming weekend plans. So tell me, what exactly is rocking around in that brilliant head of yours? I’m leaving tomorrow, since the snow has settled, and either I’ll be walking you down the aisle to hand you off to your husband-to-be next Saturday, or I’ll be taking you out on a date. Again, my lady…your call.”
She slides her arms off of me, pushing back a little in refusal of my argument. I’d give anything to see her face. This talking in the dark crap, though fine for a bit of groping, is not working for me when the topic is this life-altering. We should be looking at each other. I need to read her eyes.
“Why do I have to choose?”
“You’d be okay hurting me like that? Because the hole you’d be leaving in my heart would be massive if I fucked you tonight and you still married him. That works for you? Does it?”
“What do you want from me, Scout?”
“All of you. It’s that simple. All of your trust. The fact that you want to marry a guy who you can’t give that to is bullshit. You’re better than that. Can I turn on the light to look at you while we talk, to look at your body that I’ve just held and kissed and worshipped? Can you trust me? I need to see your eyes and all they’re saying. Do they match your heart? Please Tess…just fucking trust me.”
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want her—she’s that ingrained in my world. But for the life of me, I can’t und
erstand how it is she feels okay with wanting to love me and leave me so ruthlessly.
“No…no light. I already told you; I keep telling you. I can’t give or promise you all of me in that way. It’s asking too much—why don’t understand? Don’t you get me? That may never happen. You can’t push me like that. No one has that access. Not even you.”
She rolls back over, and this time there’s no spooning, no flesh on flesh. Just a glacial distance that she can’t seem to get beyond, making it feel as though a pool of ice has just been dumped into my gut.
“Oh, I get it. And that’s what makes him the safe choice, isn’t it? You, my lovely creature…you get to hide in him. He’s as safe as a vault with no opening. God bless him and his oblivion. The cape, the mask, the lock…everything you wear, he’s blind to. As for me, nothing goes without notice to me. You won’t get to hide from me. But to him, it’s all closed doors that he couldn’t fucking care less about opening. He has no idea who you even are, or that you’re hiding anything at all. You should be proud of your Houdini trickery, sweetheart. Perfection without chance of a reveal…half of you is all of you to him. He doesn’t need to see who you are, because he doesn’t even know you exist on another plain. And amazingly, it works for you. How very lovely for your padlocked chest of emotions. He makes sense. That’s some kind of love. Love…pfft. You think you love him? You don’t know love. You don’t want love—you want convenient. You want foolproof. You want a sure thing. I think I’m finally understanding who you are. You don’t want love because it’s too messy, too risky…. too hard to navigate with your mess of logic. Love takes courage and a willingness to let go. Love’s a free fall, baby. But you’re stuck in self-serving harness. You’ll never find love the way you’re playing the game. Though you’ve forgotten one small detail: your soul. She’ll rot without love, darling. Love is a dark angel, Tess: it’s imperfect, just like you, just like all of us. You see, here’s the thing. You want certain things I can’t offer. I can’t offer you a blind eye. It’s all so ironic when I think of all the things I love about you. Taking the safe route…now this is a new one for you, girl.”
A Mess of Reason Page 14