The Sure Thing

by Samantha Westlake

  And a few moments later, I'd forgotten all about my anxiety. He explored me gently, almost teasingly, lingering and tasting just long enough to make the waves of pleasure start to rise inside my head before backing off and frustratingly letting them ebb back down. I found a growl coming out of my mouth, annoyance clashing with desire at how he wasn't letting me get all the way to my finish!

  Again and again, he drew me up to the brink – only to pause for just long enough for me to lose that nearly grasped orgasm! Finally, my eyes shot open, and I reached down for him, intending to demand that he keep going or I'd kill him!

  At the sight of his face, however, I knew that he'd been intentionally pushing my buttons. "Ugh, Sir Asshole," I growled, even as my heart sang at the sight of his smiling face. "You're denying me my finish on purpose!"

  "I'm enjoying the moment," he allowed. "You ready for the main event?"

  He didn't need to nod down to his bulging boxer briefs to let me know what the main event might be. I didn't hesitate. All the nervousness, all the concern and self-doubt, had vanished from my head. My whole body rang like a bell with desire for him, and I knew that he had to be all but bursting to take me, using all his self-control to keep from leaping on me like a rutting beast.

  I slid my hands down over his chest, feeling it rise and fall with each breath. I tucked my fingers into the elastic of his waistband, curled them around the thick, hefty rod that I felt inside. I loved the sudden sense of control, how he stiffened from just my touch. For all that he'd been teasing me, I knew that once I had him inside of me, I'd be the one in control, the one calling all the shots.

  The prospect thrilled me, and I pulled him down towards where his oral attentions had gotten me wet and ready. "I'm ready," I whispered as I rubbed him against my entrance.

  With one hand, he cast off the boxer briefs. From somewhere, he produced a condom, rolled it onto his member – and oh my, wasn't he huge! – with a single movement. He placed the head of his shaft against me, pushed.

  For a second, there was pain, sharp and piercing. But it faded almost as quickly as it came, replaced by a new and wonderful sensation of fullness, of him inside of me.

  "Paxton," he groaned as he settled down atop me, filling me. His lips met mine, hungrily biting and tasting as he took me, his hips rolling back and forth.

  I clung to him, a sailor clinging to a life preserver in high seas. I moved with him, wordlessly cried out as he brought me over the edge, kissed him back and pulled his hands to my softness. My heart sang, and I did everything I could to please him, to show him how much he meant to me.

  Finally, just as I feared that I wouldn't be able to take much longer without pleasure turning to pain, his movements quickened. I felt his breath splash more heavily against my neck, heard him groan as he lost the fluidity of motion and became more ragged. He pushed inside of me one last time, as deep as ever – and then sagged on top of me.

  "Paxton," he cried out one last time as he went over the edge, and I joined him, tightening my legs around him and feeling one last orgasm wash through my mind and clear away all negative traces of emotion.

  There was a little cleanup, a little awkwardness, but it passed quickly, helped away by Alex's smiles and attention. We settled down in the bed, our naked bodies reclining together, talked about nothing in particular as our hands traced patterns across each other's bare skin, committing features to memory.

  Eventually, the rumbling of our stomachs grew too loud. Just as he'd promised, Alex ordered dinner. I burst out laughing when the doorbell rang and he got up to get it – still gloriously naked, not a stitch of clothing covering up his perfection! He laughed along with me when he returned, holding the pizza box and a handful of napkins.

  "Don't worry, I gave him a good tip," he promised, as he dropped back on the bed beside me, opening the box and helping himself to a slice.

  "I should hope so! You probably traumatized him," I said, casting a sidelong glance at his member. Even after sex, it still looked damn impressive! "You could put an eye out with that thing!"

  Alex just grinned at me. "Once you finish that pizza, you should come crawl over here and sit on my lap," he murmured. "Wouldn't want you dripping sauce on your bedsheets, after all."

  "Is that why? You're watching out for my laundry?" But it didn't stop me from doing as commanded, settling down on him and feeling his hands wrap around my breasts.

  "You're amazing," he whispered to me, kissing the back of my neck. I waited for those intrusive voices in my head to second-guess his intentions – but incredibly, they stayed silent. I felt warm, safe, better than I could ever remember feeling before with another person. I settled back against him, my hand falling between my thighs to absent-mindedly rub him as he bumped against my bottom.

  That soft rubbing soon turned into heavy petting, which became making out, which became another round of making love. At one point, a spasming kick from my leg sent the pizza box flying, and only Alex's quick reactions saved my floor from picking up a big marinara sauce stain.

  "We'll need another snack after this bout," he panted, turning his attention back to my bouncing breasts as they bobbed in his face.

  "Too bad we don't have any cake," I said, the end of that comment lifting up into a moan as he hit a new pleasure button, deep inside of me.

  "You let me get back on top, and I can make your fridge full of any flavor cake you want."

  "Deal." I rolled across the sheets, marveled at his muscles as he lifted himself up to plunge down into me. I tried to think of what flavor of cake I'd want most.

  The thoughts all fell away as he brought me over the edge of the cliff, plunging down into the waters of my next orgasm. I couldn't think about anything except warmth and desire and a rush of pleasure so acute that it was nearly painful, and how much I wanted Alex to be there forever, to do this to me forever.

  We had cake... eventually. We ate it together in bed, still both gloriously naked, having all kinds of fun with smearing the frosting in different places on each other. Then, after one last bout of lovemaking, Alex sighed, closed his eyes, and promptly drifted off to sleep.

  I lay awake beside him for another minute or two in the darkness, looking down at his slumbering form. My heart throbbed for him, and I couldn't keep a little smile off my lips. I'd never met a man like him, never slept with a man like him.

  Suddenly, my life was better than I'd ever imagined could be possible. Lying down beside him, listening to the slow, steady sound of his breathing, I felt happiness, more complete than I could ever remember feeling before now.

  It was nice, and it soon lulled me off to sleep beside him.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  ALEX

  *

  I opened my eyes, yawned, stretched. Something seemed a little different, but in the half-asleep haze that came when I awoke, I couldn't think of what exactly might be off.

  I pulled the pillow back under my head, frowned a little. The pillow was different, I thought sleepily to myself. In my bed, I had pillows stuffed with goose down, covered in silk. This one felt a little different, a little scratchier and uneven. Had I gotten a different pillow somewhere, or had my housekeeper bought the wrong ones by mistake?

  I shifted, and felt the bed sag a little more under me than was normal. This wasn't the right mattress.

  This wasn't my bed.

  I sat up a little, opening my eyes in confusion as this thought made itself heard inside my head. I would have sat up all the way, but a soft weight across my chest kept me from rising fully. I looked down at a delicate arm, cute little fingers twitching slightly as they pressed gently against my bare skin.

  I followed the fingers up the arm to its source, to a naked Paxton.

  That was enough to deserve its own paragraph.

  Paxton was naked, in bed next to me. Or rather, I was in her bed next to her, I corrected myself. I was lying beside her, both of us half-tangled in her sheets. They clung to her curves, not hiding anything but so
mehow making her look incredibly seductive, a goddess reposing in profile. I couldn't pull my eyes away.

  She looked... well, perfect probably wasn't the right word. I'd slept with supermodels, some of the hottest rated women on the planet. The kind of women who were instant centerfolds in any magazine. I'd seen their bodies on full display, without a single hint of cellulite, without a single tan line.

  Paxton wasn't perfect, not in the same way. Her belly wasn't totally flat, her arms and thighs not completely toned and tight. Her breasts sagged down a little, pooling thanks to gravity.

  But she looked more real than any other woman, and I drank the sight of her in, a man dying of thirst in a desert now faced with an oasis. My eyes danced on the curve of her round ass, an ass that I itched to grab and pull against me, to squeeze and pinch and slap and jiggle and hold. I wanted to be the bra that held up her breasts, to feel those incredible curves wriggle against me as I kissed her, as I took her again and again, as I made her scream out my name with pleasure until she was hoarse, to lose myself in her...

  I didn't need to look under the sheets to know that my cock was rock hard. This wasn't just morning wood; this was the work of Paxton's body. How could she not realize that she was a sexual goddess? I replayed a few choice scenes from last night, and actually sagged back in bed at how amazing they'd been. All that teasing, all that time she'd made me wait before we slept together – it had all been worth it for the payoff.

  I lay beside her a few more minutes, but my brain didn't seem inclined to go back to sleep. She wasn't yet up, so I figured that I'd surprise her with some coffee.

  And then after the coffee, maybe I'd eat pastries off her naked ass, then lick off the crumbs. God, she was hot.

  Not bothering to pull on my boxers, I strolled into the kitchen, looked about for any breakfast items. There was an ancient looking drip coffee maker, but that was about it. Paxton didn't seem to have much in the way of cooking amenities, and I gave up my search in vain.

  Not that I needed to find pastries in a cupboard, after all. I closed my eyes for a moment. "Full breakfast spread, laid out on the counter – pastries, coffee, fresh espresso, the works," I murmured aloud as I wrote the words in my head.

  I opened my eyes – and looked down at the empty counter, curiously bare of any sort of pastry, any kind of coffee.

  What? Why wasn't my power working? Sure, I was near Paxton, but I wasn't trying to do anything to her. Frowning, I repeated the command inside my head – and this time, when I finished writing out the words, I felt a strange sort of... resistance.

  I don't know how else to describe it. Have you ever tried to walk through an alley that serves as a natural wind tunnel, and you find yourself getting pushed ten inches backwards for each foot that you advance? Have you ever tried to push against a door while someone is pushing back from the other side, so that you need to groan and strain just for each inch of progress?

  That was how it felt when I wrote that command in my head for a second time. I could do it – but barely, and only by pouring more effort into it than I'd ever had to exert before.

  I finally opened my eyes, breathing heavily and feeling like I'd just sprinted half a dozen blocks to catch the last bus ride of the night. I looked down at the counter, and found two cups of coffee sitting there, along with a pair of small, rather sad looking muffins.

  All that effort, and this was the most that I'd been able to produce?

  For a minute, I just stared down at my meager results. What in the world was happening?

  "Try something else," I panted out loud to myself a minute later, hating how my voice made me sound desperate. Not that I'd ever had performance problems before, not until-

  Not until I met Paxton, and discovered that my powers didn't work on one person.

  Could her apartment have the same sort of negating effect on me? Maybe, because she'd lived here so long, it also canceled out my ability to make the commands in my head come to life and impose themselves on reality. That seemed like a reasonable explanation...

  "Not so fast," my brain pointed out a second later. "What about last night, when you ordered pizza?"

  "I did that by calling the place on the phone," I countered. My theory still held up-

  "Except that you didn't have your phone on you," my brain went on. "It was still in your pants, which you took off somewhere between the entrance to the apartment building and the foot of the bed, and you didn't want to go searching around to find them. So you snapped your fingers..."

  Now I remembered. "...and my phone magically appeared in my hand," I finished my brain's thought. "And besides, I summoned cakes for her."

  Damn. So I'd been able to use my powers in this apartment last night. Could it be related to time, perhaps? My powers weren't as strong in the early morning? Or maybe it had just started, and if I got away from here, it would work?

  I started towards the front door of the apartment, intending to run down to the street and try my powers out there – but hesitated as I realized that I still wasn't wearing nearly enough to consider myself decent. And if my powers weren't working in here, there was no indication that they'd actually do any better out there. I really didn't want to make Paxton need to come bail me out for public indecency.

  I glanced over my shoulder at the door to her bedroom, still half-closed. She was still asleep in there, still gloriously and deliciously naked from all the fun that we'd shared last night, twisted in the sheets together...

  Wait a minute.

  No. Please, no.

  I suddenly had a guess what might have happened to my powers. It was horrible, almost too terrible for me to consider, but I needed to think of every option. All this time, when I'd hung out with Paxton, my powers worked on everything except on her, like she had some sort of field inside her body that nullified my abilities when they tried to reach out and touch her to reshape or alter her.

  What if... what if after we slept together, I'd somehow managed to submerge myself in that field of hers that canceled out my ability? What if the act of sleeping with her had stripped me of my powers?

  What if it was permanent?

  I stopped for a moment, reached out and grabbed onto her counter with both of my hands. I leaned my head forward, concentrating on just taking deep breaths, in and out, trying to cling to my last little scraps of calm. Don't lose control and freak out just yet, Alex. It's only a theory.

  A theory that made sense, though. What had changed between last night, when I'd still been able to use my powers, and this morning, when I couldn't?

  I'd slept with Paxton. Repeatedly. What if each time we came together, I'd been stripping more of my power away from myself?

  No sex was worth that, worth losing everything that I had. Not even with Paxton.

  I opened my eyes and looked down at the pitiful excuse for breakfast I'd summoned up. Without much hope, I checked in the fridge, hoping that I'd find more food. No such luck, however. I picked up the two coffees and the pair of muffins, juggling them a little to hold all three items in my two hands.

  Paxton stirred a little as I settled down on the bed beside her. She reached up above her head with both hands, stretching and yawning. Despite my concern that dominated most of my mind, I still had to take a second to appreciate the way that her whole chest swelled when she took a deep breath, the way that her nipples stood out so temptingly against her pale skin. I almost felt distracted enough to put the coffee and muffins aside and reach out to pull her into my arms. After all, if she'd already stripped me of my powers from our previous sexual sessions, could one more really hurt...?

  "No!" I muttered to myself, shaking my head and trying to fight down the swelling occurring between my legs. "Bad libido!"

  "What?" Paxton yawned again, blinked her soft brown eyes at me. She looked so soft and adorable, and I had to keep on continually reminding myself that she might be deadly to me. "Did you say something?"

  She leaned in, looking like she wanted a kiss, and I ha
stily thrust the coffee at her as a distraction. "Here. And there's muffins, too." I dropped them on the covers, not bothering to take one for myself. My appetite was currently nonexistent.

  She took a sip of the coffee, smiled at me. "You know, I wasn't planning on waking up next to you."

  "Yeah, me neither," I said. "Listen, you said that you did some research on King Arthur, right?"

  "Sure," she said, her smile fading a little. "Hey, are you okay? You look a little pale."

  "Yeah, fine," I answered shortly. "Did he ever lose his powers?"

  She didn't answer, instead sitting up a little further, setting her coffee cup aside on the bedside table. The motion made the sheet fall further away from her bare chest, and I fought another surge of lust. Stay on target, Alex, I reminded myself.

  "What's going on?" she asked, turning to face me. Her face looked serious, now, and she brushed her hair back with one hand as she looked up at me.

  Please, I prayed, let my hypothesis not be true. Please don't let her be the cause of my loss of powers.

  "I think something's happening to me," I said, after a minute. "This morning, when I woke up, I tried to use my powers to summon up a full breakfast. I could barely get coffee and a couple of muffins. Something..." I reached up, rubbing my aching head. "Something is wrong."

  Paxton opened her mouth, looking surprised – but then, a second later, closed it again, and I saw something that looked like recognition dawning on her features.

  "You know what's going on," I read from her face, a huge wave of relief rising up to take over me. "Oh, thank god. What is it?"

  She bit her lip, not replying for a minute. "You'd better put that down first," she said, nodding at my cup of coffee.

  That wave of relief, such a balm on my anxiety, evaporated in an instant. I set my own untouched cup of coffee aside and tried not to hold my breath as I waited for her to reveal what I most feared.