Dear God, she wasn’t expecting him to respond. It had almost become a kind of weird science experiment, completely detached from the real, live person she was doing it to. She’d only wanted to figure out what she was dealing with, and now he’d gone all still and weird. His hand tightened much more roughly on the handful of ass he was holding, and his body sort of stiffened—as if she’d shocked him.
Surely she hadn’t shocked him?
“Jesus, Alice.”
Good God, she had. Somehow she’d turned into a lascivious little trollop, without really being aware of it. And it was worse than she’d thought too—somewhere in the middle of it all, she’d kind of crooked her leg around one of his. Her hand was pinching the nape of his neck, as though holding simply wasn’t enough. She needed to climb him like some crazed sex monkey, apparently.
So it was little wonder that he seemed so stunned.
Or that this stunned state was followed by a tentative attempt at sliding his hand inside her t-shirt. After all, she’d given him the green light. She was still giving him one now. She’d tried to stop moving once she’d realized, yet somehow she hadn’t succeeded at all. When she finally managed to focus, she discovered she was just ever so slightly rocking over him.
And she wasn’t doing it to test anything out, oh no. She was doing it because every time she rubbed against him, sensation sparked from the taut, tense tips of her breasts. It made these big delicious spirals right down to the place between her legs, so sweet she didn’t know how to resist. She’d never experienced anything like it—not even when she’d touched that same place while naked, with slippery, soapy fingers.
This was completely different.
It was so different she was doing something else too. She didn’t want to think about it too clearly, but once the nipple thing became clear it got harder to avoid. All kinds of stuff was flashing up in neon behind her eyes, like the fact that she’d spread her legs a little, at some point. Just a little, but a little seemed like a whole lot when she’d almost spread them around his thigh.
And she was...she was...doing stuff.
She knew she was doing stuff.
He was well within his rights to try taking off her clothes. Or maybe not rights exactly, but he certainly wasn’t being an asshole to imagine she might want this. There was just one small problem, really.
Her complete and total panic.
Though she felt it was to her credit that she contained said panic better than she had in the bathroom. She didn’t spider walk away from him, or knock a bookshelf over in an effort to get away. She just took one calm step back and said, “Okay, can we stop? Is it okay if we stop a second?”
She was the epitome of reasonableness and collected cool.
Yet somehow it didn’t quite feel that way. It felt wrenching—as though they’d been attached with a row of stitches and she’d just ripped them all open. She could still feel an echo of that thrumming sensation once they were apart, and wanted nothing more than to go back in and get it back.
And judging by his expression, he would have liked that too. He did his best to mask it, but there was a confusion there in his eyes. Maybe a touch of hurt too—but not for the reasons she first suspected. She got busy wondering if he felt rejected, and was just about to forward that theory when he spoke, instead.
“Of course it’s okay. It’s absolutely okay. Did you think I wouldn’t behave as though it’s okay?”
“Well we were getting pretty...and you know I was...rubbing you so...”
“So...you shouldn’t be able to say stop?”
She managed not to say the words aloud, but the thought was there.
I didn’t want to say stop.
“I don’t...maybe I...I...”
“Alice, the answer is always yes. Yes, you can say stop whenever you need to. You didn’t do anything wrong. I did something wrong when I started shoving my hand up your t-shirt like a fucking Neanderthal.”
He looked so genuinely dismayed by this completely absurd realization that she almost gave him the real reason. It had been buried beneath all kinds of things before now—like her virgin state and her fear and his fame—but as soon as she saw his expression it announced itself. It wasn’t any of those things.
It was what he would see if they went ahead with this. I have scars, she thought of saying, but was thankful it didn’t come out. If she told him about the scars, then she’d have to tell him about why they were there. And once he knew why they were there, she wouldn’t be Alice anymore.
She’d be that other girl, the damaged girl.
She couldn’t have that, and so went with all the other stuff. The other stuff was embarrassing and probably wouldn’t do her any good, but it at least was partially true. It had been true for most of their time together. He wasn’t likely to doubt it and even if he did, he probably wouldn’t say.
And that made it worth the red face.
“No, no, you didn’t do anything wrong. It’s just that...you know. I’m not very sexually experienced,” she said, then braced herself for his laughter.
It didn’t happen, however.
Of course it didn’t happen.
He knew.
“Whoa, hold the phone. You’re not experienced? I’m shocked, shocked I tell you,” he said, in a tone so full of amusement she sort of wanted to die. But then how could she have known that the levels of humiliation would be this high? She’d assumed she was doing everything right—or at least that she wasn’t totally fucking it up.
But Lord, how wrong she’d been.
“Oh God, is it really that obvious? Did I just screw the kissing up? It felt as though you liked it when I did that—”
“Alice, Alice, you haven’t screwed the kissing up.”
“But I used so much tongue. It was too much tongue wasn’t it?”
“I promise you used the perfect amount of tongue. That isn’t the issue.”
“Then what is the issue?”
“That I’m making you nervous, honey. I’m making you so nervous you’re sort of flapping your hands around. But you don’t need to—we can go slower.”
“We can?”
“I’m disturbed that you’re even asking that question. Yeah, we absolutely can, no problems. I mean Jesus, we’ve only known each other for half a week. Going slower than this is perfectly acceptable,” he said, which definitely made a lot of sense. It made so much sense that she nodded when he suggested they go back upstairs.
“I’m in the mood for a marathon of evil clown movies,” he said, and she couldn’t argue with that. Evil clowns sounded completely awesome, despite the odd thought that kept popping up behind her eyes. It happened when they settled on the couch, wrapped in blankets and cramming down popcorn. And it was there again during the dinner they had at the kitchen table, as he wiped a smear of sauce from her top lip.
It just came on her in a great wave, unstoppable and oh so sweet.
I don’t want to go slow.
Chapter Seven
She didn’t mean to say it. She had kept it in all through movie watching and dinner eating and taking him up to her bedroom to get sleepwear, and had thought she was in the clear. Then he’d put on those too-tight pajama bottoms and kind of modeled them for her a bit and that was pretty much the end. Her eyes just kept going to shapes she couldn’t quite make out and material that barely seemed to cover anything and suddenly she was speaking.
She was speaking a lot.
“What happens if...if I don’t really want to go slower? What if I like...most of what we did down in the basement, and want it to continue?” she asked, all in this big, brutal, embarrassing rush. She probably looked like a fool talking like that, and she knew her body language backed that label up. Her hands were trying to throttle each other. She was breathing way too hard.
Yet oddly she didn’t regret it. Instead she thought of the fireworks, flashing hot around her face. The way he’d touched her, as though he really liked all the things he found. It didn’t
bother him that she was oddly shaped and sort of clumsy in places. He didn’t find her backside too big or her shoulders mannish—even though she’d always sort of thought they were.
He’d made her feel good.
And he continued to do so.
“In that case, you can simply tell me the parts you liked, and we’ll do them,” he said, as though it were nothing. Guys did this sort of thing all the time. They respected boundaries and didn’t mind it when women panicked, and then they made offers like this. Of course they did. She’d totally never read a thousand books about men doing the opposite. She hadn’t the faintest clue why she sounded so incredulous.
Except she did know, she did know.
“Are you serious?” she asked, because even in the romantic stories the men were not full of the kind of understanding he had. They always seemed rough and brutal, in ways that made her worry. Was that just how things were supposed to be? It had to be the way things were supposed to be. It was never presented as something abnormal.
The way he behaved was the abnormal thing.
It was just that it didn’t feel abnormal.
It felt wonderful, to hear someone say—
“Yeah, totally. It’s kind of a turn-on, actually.”
“So I can just...say what I’d like.”
“I would love it if you said what you like.”
“Even if what I say is really weird?”
“Especially if what you say is really weird,” he said, and suddenly her head was buzzing with a billion things she might be able to do. She could definitely kiss him more, for a start. She could kiss him a lot, and he’d probably never demand that she let him do loads of other stuff. Then once she’d had her fill of kissing, maybe she could progress to something else.
Maybe she could touch him.
Would he be okay with her touching him?
“Well I was thinking...I could possibly just do things to you. I mean not if you’re uncomfortable with that, obviously. But if you were, then I might like that.”
He went very still and very silent then, which made her wonder if she’d said completely the wrong thing. It sounded kind of unfair when she put it like that, and it made her want to take it back. He was being so cool with her, after all. Surely there was a way they could do this without making him feel uncomfortable?
She hoped there was, because he sounded odd when he finally spoke.
“You want to just do things to me?” he asked, only he wasn’t really asking at all.
He was repeating what she’d said, with a stripe of deadpan right down the middle.
“I don’t know. I guess I—I mean we don’t have to do that. It was just a—”
“How would you go about that?”
“What? What do you—”
“How would you go about doing stuff to me?”
She hesitated then, unsure of how to answer. This time it had nothing to do with nerves, however. She suspected there was nothing to be nervous about. His tone had sort of shifted, from something she’d read as vaguely mocking to this much deeper and more direct sound.
He really wanted to know.
He wanted to know so much it was sort of making him all grave and intense. His eyes had turned from bright blue to that dark navy, and no matter how long she went without answering he just kept right on looking at her. He stared until she was sure she had two burning holes through her body—which probably should have felt bad.
Yet somehow it didn’t.
It spurred her on, instead.
“I could probably...start like this,” she said, then took a step forward, and just reached forward a little. Just to get hold of the hem of his t-shirt maybe, to give him an idea. That way, if he didn’t want the idea she could pretend it wasn’t what he thought. She wasn’t suggesting she strip off his clothes at all. She was simply toying with the material.
Or at least, she was until he responded.
Dear God, his voice when he responded.
“Oh like that, huh?” he asked, so low and lust-roughened she had to accept it. He was turned-on at the thought of her taking his clothes off. He was turned-on by all of this, no matter how hard she tried to make it otherwise.
“Yeah, unless you—” she started.
But he cut her off before she could finish. “There’s no unless.”
“Are you sure, because—”
“There’s no unless. Go on,” he said.
So she did. She slid a hand under the t-shirt she’d chosen for him, with the smiling face of David Hasselhoff on the front. Every breath shuddering in and out of her as if she’d just run up a hill, most of her body trembling and trembling with a sort of excitement she barely understood.
It seemed like far too much, for a slight touch to someone’s lower abdomen. But if it was, then he obviously hadn’t received the memo. He looked the way she felt. His face was flushed from jaw to hairline, and he seemed to have forgotten what breathing was. Each time he attempted it he got stuck halfway, until he was just making this hitching sound. This really, really interesting hitching sound that reminded her of moaning.
But he couldn’t be moaning, could he? They hadn’t even done anything yet.
She didn’t know how to do anything. She was just operating on some previously unknown instinct—one that told her to keep sliding her hand up and up until she could feel all that lovely chest hair and those big, firm muscles. Then once she was there it didn’t take much to move her hand around a bit. He felt so good it was kind of an imperative. She wanted to stroke and squeeze and feel things out.
And she wanted to do it with both hands. Would he mind if she put both hands up there? His expression seemed to say no, but then his expression would have probably accepted anything. He looked so intense and turned-on it kind of scared her to glance up. She had to focus on fondling him just to keep herself sane.
But even that came with problems.
For a start, it was more exciting than she had initially imagined. She kept thinking of the word grope and getting this odd burst of sensation through her. She was groping him in a really eager, greedy kind of way, and that idea was bizarrely arousing. Her nipples had gone all stiff again just like they had in the bathroom, and when she moved she could really feel something between her legs.
Everything seemed slippery down there. Slippery and enormous.
And that was before he spoke.
“You like that, huh?” he asked, so sudden and low it startled her.
Only the startled feeling was different than usual. It didn’t fill her full of fear or doubt or that idea of doing the wrong thing. It made her go all tingly instead. It made her pussy swell against the tight constraints of her ridiculous cotton underwear, followed by a pulse of pleasure so intense she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
She was pretty certain people weren’t supposed to orgasm over the words you and like and that and huh. But it kind of felt that way. It kind of felt like when she woke up from a sex dream and some fuzzy remnants of that fake pleasure remained—which only made it harder to respond. When she finally managed it, the words came out all weird and rushed. And they were not the ones she’d intended to go with.
She had thought of saying a simple yes. But somehow midway between her brain and her mouth that one reserved word turned into a blurted, “Can I take your t-shirt off?”
It was possibly the most mortifying moment of her life. She just sounded so eager and excitable, on top of the request itself. He would have been fully justified in laughing, or maybe tousling her silly little head. But the best part about it was—he didn’t do that at all. If anything, he seemed more aroused than he had when she’d squeezed him. He actually did a little shudder, and his voice was just as breathless as hers when he spoke.
“Christ yeah,” he panted out, and to cap it off he helped her. He ripped that thing up and over his head as though it were on fire, then simply stood there, chest heaving, every inch of him just waiting for her to do more.
It was like
being presented with a fabulous buffet after twenty years of bread and water. For a moment she was so spoiled for choice she didn’t know where to begin, gaze darting feverishly from one thing to the next. There was the thick jut of his collarbone and the satiny skin that covered his big shoulders. The hard slant of his jaw, now rough with a beard so sexy she often wanted to sink right into it.
But the real draw was that tattoo. The one she hadn’t been able to see in the tub or in all twenty of his movies, but could make out quite clearly now. It wasn’t a wheel, like she’d thought before when she’d glimpsed it—it was a tightly curled shell with a wave crashing around it, so beautiful she had the urge to bite.
Even though that was bad. She was pretty sure that was bad. She had no idea if it was bad at all, because after a moment of excruciating hesitation he gasped, “Please just fucking do anything I’m dying, I’m dying. I don’t care what it is. If you decided to stick your toe up my nose I’d say thank you, I swear to God. Whatever you want, anything you want, just do it.”
At which point, she realized two things.
Nothing she did would be considered bad.
And her wondering about all this did not count as wondering in the least. It counted as teasing. She was teasing him, without really meaning to. That was why he was shaking and leaning forward just a little, and it also probably explained the jutting shape beneath the material of the pajama bottoms she’d found for him.
The pajama bottoms that she was now very thankful for, because unlike the sweatpants they weren’t particularly thick. They were cottony and thin, and it meant that she could see more than a vague outline. She could see the actual ridge just below the swollen head, so much more exciting than the sight had ever been on a computer screen. Here it was visceral and raw and real, and more importantly...
She had done that to him.
She had made him stiff.
And she was making him do something else too. Something that gave her another pulse of that near-orgasmic pleasure, before she’d even fully processed what it was. She just saw the circle of wetness and felt a strange thrill...and then the truth slowly sank in. That little damp spot was pre-come. He was so turned-on he was leaking pre-come through the material, and all because of her accidental teasing and tentative teasing.
Beyond Repair (Deeper Than Desire) Page 10