by A. J. Sand
He strung his tongue down her chest, right over her nipples, and she arched against his mouth when he reached her midsection. His movements slowed as he kissed near her navel then around it; they were calculated to push her to the extremes of her patience. He’d never make a woman beg but Lana deserved the wait as payback for her sarcasm. She dropped a hard pat to the top of his head, urging him lower. It was a shove next, and he finally obliged, reveling in her tremors from the first few whips of his tongue.
Her thighs clasped the sides of his head when he pressed another finger into her opening. One of her legs eased down onto his shoulder, and it quivered against his ear as his tongue skated beneath her folds in a rhythm; the foot of her other leg wriggled into his side. Lana grasped a fistful of his hair, and she moaned in sweet misery, rocking the bed with her hips. “Oh God…” There it is. She pushed herself into his face, and his dick throbbed so much he ground his pelvis into the bed to make it stop.
Wes glanced up at her naked frame and reached for her breast, thumbing her erect nipple. Lana’s hands were wrapped around the railings of the headboard, clutching them like she was in danger of floating away. But he wanted her to get lost in wherever she was drifting off into. His desire mounted as she reacted to the touch of his fingers; turning her on was turning him on. Badly. Intensely. Awakening gluttonous need. Gripping her more firmly, he slid his tongue into her body.
“Shit…OH GOD.”
His mouth moved fast and slow, his tongue probed deep and shallow, kissing, licking and tasting everything he could, until she was completely incomprehensible. Lana moaned and squirmed as she scooted toward the headboard. When Wes pulled his mouth away, she looked up, breathless for the moment, before she grabbed his hair roughly at the crown, and a pleased smile stretched her lips when Wes brushed his palm over his mouth.
“How about you just let me give you what you wanted so badly?” He tightened his hold on her hips, preventing her from going anywhere when his tongue went back to work, and she yielded. Completely unraveled, completely pulled free from reality. She bucked, her back arching off the bed, before she collapsed, whimpering, shaking, head thrown back. The next time she rose, she pressed his face harder against her body, thighs squeezing his ears until they hurt.
A good hurt.
She writhed on his lips, body tensing as she released successive loud moans. Lana lifted her hips higher with hitching breaths and fluttering eyelids. Her core tightened beneath his hands as shivers rippled over her abdomen, and the sheets went taut from her yanking. Wes slowed the motion of his mouth when she was just on the brink of her next orgasm, then held her raised hips in place, licking at a little faster pace. Lana was shaking, and so deep in her release, her voice went from screams of pleasure to open-mouthed silence. He paused only so she could suck in air, but Lana palmed his forehead when he swiped his tongue slowly over the sensitive spot again, and she shook her head, looking timid and apprehensive.
“I can’t feel my legs…” She blew out a huge breath.
Wes lowered her to the mattress, crawled up her body, and shot a half-smile down. “You sure you’re done? Because I can—”
“Done. For a lifetime, Wes.” She flashed a lazy smile at him. “Done.”
“Quitter…”
“No, just a selfless act. My deep concern for your jaw muscles.”
Wes shook his head. “Don’t worry about me, Lan. I like eating pussy too much to ever get tired. And I gotta say, I’m sure Mooreland Ratford is a great place but…” He touched her tattoo. “…I love the new home of the Wolverines.”
Laughing, she reached into her bedside drawer for a condom then handed it to him. “I just let you put your mouth there, I know. It’s a quirk.” He rolled it on and heard the rub of her palms against the headboard railings when he gripped her ankle and raised her leg.
He smirked. “Will you need a pillow?”
“For what?”
Wes laughed. “To bite.” Then he rocked into her a little more than midway before bracing his arms on the bed on either side of her. The feel of her around him dissolved anything beyond the room, beyond her body. Lana shifted, spreading her thighs wider for him and elevating both her legs, as he dropped his forehead close to hers.
“Oh, don’t be a tease, Wesley…I can take it,” Lana lilted as she grabbed his butt, and he obeyed, letting every inch go in with his thrusts. That primal look of hers returned, brown eyes wide and nailed to his, pelvis flexing up in a rhythm to meet his hips. A wash of warmth and tingles of pleasure shredded his frame as she exhaled raspy breaths in time with his pumps, and her fingers raked all through his hair. She was so slick, so wet, and it drove him crazy. All of it made him insatiable for her, voracious for her. The internal reminder to slow down was fraying. And the scorch of his building orgasm set his legs on fire.
“Come here,” Wes said as he pulled out, summoning her off the bed and to the other side of the room. “Put your hands on the wall. Bend. Lower. Lower…” And she obliged, leaning forward at a nearly ninety-degree angle as she separated her legs.
“Can you take this?” he said, laughing a little. Wes got down between her legs, gripped the back of her knees and snaked his tongue deep into the apex of her thighs.
“Wes…oh fuck,” she called out, knees buckling and feet shifting to her tiptoes. Suddenly, she took a fist of his hair roughly.
“Hands on the wall, Lana,” he said between flicks of his tongue.
“Wes!” she responded, with laughter filling her voice.
“Hands. Wall,” he said in a playfully high-pitched tone. Her thighs were trembling, but he felt the halting release of his strands. With his tongue back between her legs, she was stuck whimpering, her knees constantly threatening to give out. He really did love it when they forgot to stand up.
Standing, he traced the curves of her body with the tips of his fingers from her shoulder to the bend in her spine to the rise of her butt. She moaned softly when his tongue sailed up the incline of her back, before he pressed into her again, squeezing the flesh of her butt and groping her breast. Wes pushed his palm into her lower back and clutched her shoulder as he circled his pelvis against her.
“Hard…I like it hard…” she said with a deep breath. He couldn’t agree more. Then gripping her waist, he got more energetic, more powerful with his deep thrusts, and she arched, slamming her butt against him. He lowered his lips to graze from her shoulder blades to the nape of her neck. The smell of her hair was intoxicating, the rhythm of her gasps encouraging him to keep going. He stuck his hand down the front of her body. As he rubbed her clit, Lana’s back rounded and her arms stiffened, and she soon expelled a scream so sharp he was sure her neighbors probably heard. He’d felt it, the clenching, the squeezing, the vibration rolling from her body to his. She angled her head, looked back at him and smiled after she caught her breath. With their eyes remaining locked, he had to concentrate to slow the swell of his climax as it coiled through his stomach.
She pulled him down to the carpet with her on her back. Wes got on his haunches and pushed her knees outward until they were on the outsides of his, as he drove deep into her by gripping her hips. The position exposed the connection of their bodies; he could see himself moving in and out of her, and the vantage point gave him a moment to admire the beauty of her form: the curve of her breasts, the shape of the muscles extending down her torso, and the look on her face. He wanted to know every inch of her body, every angle she could bend, and every place he could kiss and grab to make her beg him not to stop.
Wes brought her heels to his shoulders before his eyes volleyed up to her expression, and it was as urgent as his. His sweat dripped all over her torso, mixing with the glisten from her own. Her fingers curled into his skin; her legs enclosed his waist with an insistent pull toward her body, and Wes submitted.
Chest on hers, he reached beneath her and clenched one side of her butt in his hand. Wes’ stomach pulsed, and heat raced across the span of his loins. His body rushed
toward the pull of a powerful convulsion. Lana’s teeth sank into his shoulder as she dragged her nails down his back roughly. Pleasure. Pain. But fucking pleasure. Fracturing, breaking, shattering in his core.
And then she was saying his name, hoarse and raspy against his ear with her legs wound all tight around his body. His orgasm seized him in its spell, jerking and wracking him as he finished with several hard thrusts. He expelled such force with his grunts that Lana’s palm went to his mouth, trapping the rest of the noises in his throat.
Wes collapsed the rest of the way on top of her, and suddenly, there were male voices just beyond her bedroom; her roommates were back. Shit. How long had they been out there? he wondered, chuckling. “Do I have to sneak out your window now?” he teased as he carefully pulled back and went to toss the condom in her private bathroom.
“You won’t be here long enough to have to worry about getting caught…” she teased back as she moved to the bed. He stopped to stare at a painting of a girl dancing in the middle of a parade, arms lifted, skirt twirling around her. She was in color but the background was black and white. Her facial features were blurry, but with the dark hair and long legs, he knew it was Lana. His gaze roamed the other walls, and there were three more just like it in style, but one was of the view of a hot air balloon from the ground and another of small children chasing each other on the playground.
“Ha! Hey, did you paint these?”
Lana nodded. “Yup. That one of me is from a photograph someone took and then the other two are based on photos I took. Total artsy type,” she said, giggling.
“They’re good, Lana.”
“Thanks. Those are old though. I hardly ever have time to do it anymore these days between my two jobs and how expensive good paint supplies can be.”
“That sucks ‘cause you should do it more if you paint like that.”
She smiled and her cheeks flushed. “Thanks. There’s a ton of stuff in my sketchbook that I need to put on canvas. I hope to.”
Wes leaned down to kiss her, but Lana covered his mouth and turned her head. He raised himself as she shifted her face back to him. “I can’t kiss you?”
She shook her head. “No…nope.”
“Why not?”
“I might still be on your face…” She was. He could taste her every time he licked his lips; he didn’t mind.
Wes made a show of running his arm across his mouth. “Happy?”
“You might like the taste of it, but I don’t…” She shook her head. “So…no…”
Wes pulled his boxers on then lay on the bed. “There’s a story here, huh?”
“Yeah, and you’re never going to get it, but my roommates are probably going to be up for a while, might as well bide our time with some actual conversation and delay your walk of shame,” she said, giggling. Lana walked into the bathroom and returned wearing underwear and a tiny t-shirt. Instead of taking the spot next to him, she straddled his stomach, her face bright with energy. And with her single braid resting on her shoulder, he thought she looked adorable. It was different; the woman on the bike had been strikingly beautiful. Mysterious. Cool. Combined with how Lana carried herself—like she thought the world was in her clutches—she could be intimidating, even for a guy like him. But he’d never admit that. Now she just looked sweet. Maybe more beautiful than the woman he’d met on the bike.
As a pensive look hardened her face, she ran her fingers softly down his chest and stroked the chiseled shape of his torso. “You really like touching me, don’t you?” he asked.
A shy smile—the first of its kind—settled on her lips. “Well, you’re pretty much built like you should be touched…all the time. But you’re…you’re walking art. You have a lot of words on your arm. I thought it was mostly images before, but you have so many lyrics and quotes…I was able to figure out a lot of them, but a few…” Lana said, pointing on his arm. “…Like this one, it sort of seems out of place. Life motto?”
Wes’ gaze went to where she pointed on his skin, to a vertical line of text in swirly lettering wedged between an array of colorful, maniacal skulls. It said, “Dirty As I Please.” He looked back to her with a frown. “Girl, I just put in all that work, and you were busy reading my arm?”
“I noticed it way earlier, Wes…” Lana said with an eye roll after she released a trill of giggles. “…Like at Vices when we got food from the food truck.”
“Oh. It’s a reference to a line in Wuthering Heights.”
She went wide-eyed. “The Wuthering Heights? Like by Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights?”
“Yeah…” Wes said, nearing offense as her expression stayed frozen in surprise.
“Sexy, tattooed, blondie surfer reads.”
“He does.” He smiled tight and flat. “A lot. My parents hired a tutor for Abel and me so we could focus on surfing instead of going to school, and after we finished, she gave me a list of the one hundred best books to read in a lifetime. That’s my favorite one.”
“Wuthering Heights?”
“Can you believe it?” Wes said with acidic sarcasm. “All the water hasn’t affected my brain at all…”
Lana shifted her weight to the arms she suddenly positioned on either side of him, inching her face to his. “I wasn’t thinking that. Wes, I’ve read a ton of your interviews, and I know you’re not stupid. And trust me, I know a thing or two about misconceptions. I was just surprised that of all the novels in the world, Wuthering Heights is your favorite.”
“What was your guess?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Just not that one.” Lana eased to the empty side of the bed and sat with her legs folded.
“What’s your favorite book? And I know you have one, given that gigantic bookcase in your bathroom.” He had noticed the rows of weathered paperback copies behind him as he washed his hands. None of his friends were big on reading, but Wes could talk about books and words all day, really. What he loved most was that a person he’d never met, who may have lived several centuries before him, could still be relevant in their assessment of the human condition and could still accurately illustrate the consistency of human struggle and triumph; Wes thought that was amazing. There was no way he could ever be anything other than a surfer, but if past lives existed, he was certainly a writer in his.
“You want us to book club, too?” she said, winking.
“Just tell me.”
Without hesitation, Lana said, “Easy. The Awakening by Kate Chopin. I read it every single year around my birthday.” They both turned silent when her roommates’ conversation got louder and then one of them burst into excited laughter. “Jesus. Are those guys ever going to go to sleep? So much for my efforts to save you from the awkward stroll to the door.” She shook her head.
“Lana, are you really okay with this situation?”
“Oh God. You didn’t interrogate me enough beforehand?”
“I don’t want this to be something you’re just saying ‘cause you think I want to hear it. I want you to mean it. I’m not against attachments. You seem like a cool girl, so I want to get to know you, either way. But we just can’t get into any expectation of eventual exclusivity or anything like that, and I just can’t have another Kiera on my hands, truthfully.”
“You think sex will turn me into a Stage Five Clinger, Wes? Or I want to live in a chick flick? This isn’t some trick to get you to fall in love with me. I like no-frills. The bottom line is, I don’t think sex needs heart-shaped confetti”—Lana waved her hands above her head—“exploding into the air every time it happens. I meant it when I said I know what I’m getting into, but…I’m disappointed truthfully…”
“Why?”
“You promised me Scrabble.”
Although she had teased about kicking him out, they spent the rest of the early morning talking, like they had at Vices. And for someone who had chided him for talking a lot earlier, he discovered she was quite chatty herself. And every time they started to say good-bye, another topic would spring up.
He sleepily listened, but he listened…because it was hard not to. She talked about her family—“My parents have been living ‘in sin’ since they were eighteen. They never married” and “James is the coolest brother in the world”—which somehow led to her summation of the current social unrest and political atmosphere in Colombia since—“I’m a quarter Colombian on my mother’s side, so I read a lot about it. I hope to go someday”—because her grandfather still lived there but wasn’t really on speaking terms with her mom. Lana said that she wished she knew him because none of her family members shared her passion for the arts, and he had painted murals all over Medellín in his twenties. Painting was never something she would consider pursuing professionally, but she had thought once that ballet would be her life, and she had dreamed of studying Dance at NYU’s Tisch.
It went on like that until the strings of sunlight stinging his eyes through the blinds woke him a few hours later with Lana curled into the crook of his arm. He slid out from under her and put on his jeans. He stepped out of her room to retrieve his shirt from wherever he had tossed it in the kitchen last night, but he found it slung over the arm of the sofa. The sofa Rick was currently sitting on playing video games, with the other roommates sitting around. Dead silence pierced the room when they noticed him. Clearly, he had been the topic of conversation before he walked out.
“Hey,” Wes said out of politeness, and they all responded with mumbled greetings in return, but Rick continued to mutter low under his breath.
“Do you have a problem, dude?” Wes asked.
“Hi. Hi!” one of the other guys said, as he leaped over and extended his hand to Wes. He was tall with jet-black hair and brown eyes. “Grayson. Sorry, we were being rude. It was my fault. I saw you at Vices, and I thought you were cute—”
“Thanks,” Wes said, smiling and shaking his hand. He was such a slut for compliments.