“I let you believe that because I wanted to hurt you.”
He ran his hands up my backside and under my sweater, squeezing my waist as he dropped his forehead on my stomach. His voice nearly broke when he said, “You waited for me.”
“Not waited. Hoped. I didn’t think it would ever happen,” I said, my heart in my throat, “but I couldn’t bring myself to do it with anyone else.”
“I don’t deserve it.”
I touched his hair, inky black softness sprouting through my fingers. “If not you,” I said, “then who?”
He turned his face up to mine again. “If I’d known, Lake, I never would’ve done it like that. I’m so . . . fuck, I’m so sorry. I want nothing more in this world than to worship you. To show you how much I love you because words aren’t enough.”
Immediately, tears filled my eyes. “Love me?”
“Was there ever any question that I do? Even with all the fucked-up things I did, you can’t tell me you didn’t know, for a moment, that I was in love you.”
Hearing the words I already knew to be true was validation for all of it. For the way I’d pushed him so many times over those two years I’d lived at home. My confessions had scattered on the beach the night I’d found out about the wedding—I’m all wrong without you, I’d said, and had gotten no response but waves crashing on the shore. This morning, though, he loved me. A tear slid down my cheek. “Show me, Manning, please. Don’t make me wait any longer.”
With a kiss to my chest, he sat back on his knees. Holding my hips, he brushed his lips down my stomach, then pressed them to the front of my underwear. It was an innocent kiss that felt anything but—and one that made me inhale a shaky breath. He kissed me there again, dampening the white cotton. Despite the gentle way he touched me, I felt the urgency in his movements as his fingertips dug into my skin, then a pull in my stomach so sharp, it almost hurt.
I tugged his hair. “I want this. You don’t need to go slow.”
“Yes I do. Let me savor this. It’ll hurt less if you’re wet and ready.”
“I am ready.” I couldn’t breathe fast enough. I only wanted to feel as close as possible to him. “It didn’t hurt that bad,” I lied.
He stood, tilting my head up by my chin. “Being your first means everything to me. I haven’t just dreamed about it, Lake. I’ve had nightmares about it.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” I said.
“I’ve hated myself for how badly I’ve wanted you.” He tucked my hair behind my ear, then slid his hands down my back, pulling me flush against him. “You were always the last person I should be fantasizing about. You were too young, and then you were too pure, and then you were gone. All those times I was tempted, I thought . . .”
He trailed off as he scanned my face. My nipples were already hard in my bra, but as his gaze darkened, they tingled. He had to know he had nothing to hate himself for. I stepped out of his embrace and pulled my sweater over my head. I wanted to press myself against his naked chest. I was nearly bared to him, my panties clinging to my pubic bone with his saliva, but I still didn’t know how to act or ask for what I wanted.
“You thought what?” I prompted.
“I thought it’d kill me to say no to you, but I did, and here I am.”
Early morning sun glowed through the windows, lightening the white walls. Now that we’d slowed down, I had time to think about what we were doing. The countless times I’d imagined sex with Manning, I never thought I’d be this nervous.
Manning set his dark eyes on me, and there was so much behind them, I couldn’t help asking, “Are you having second thoughts?”
“Not even close. I’m just having thoughts.”
“Like?”
He stuck his fingers under the straps of my bra and slid them down my shoulders. “Turn.”
I faced the bed. He pressed a wet kiss on one shoulder, running his mouth up the line of my neck. My hair stood on end. I closed my eyes to savor the brush of his knuckles over my back as he unhooked the clasp of my bra. I caught it before it fell off.
He put one arm around my stomach and pulled my back to his front. “It’s okay,” he said, gripping the bra between the cups and taking it from me.
He hummed against my skin and took my breasts in his hands. His long fingers met in the middle as he squeezed me to him harder, rolling his hips into my backside.
“I’m thinking about how I’ve dreamed . . .” he murmured. “And fantasized . . . of having this. How I’ve tortured myself over not having this.”
The fear in his voice calmed me a little. This wasn’t just a big deal to me. I put my hands over his, my insides tightening with the way his palms scraped my bare, sensitive skin.
“Let me see you,” he said.
I turned hesitantly, my face warming, my eyes on our bare feet. I remembered the night I’d stripped for him in the lake, me and him in the moonlight. I’d been young and foolish around Manning too many times to be that confident now. He stood there staring until he said, “You’re shaking.”
It wasn’t only that winter had seeped into all corners of my room, or that this would change everything for me. I couldn’t imagine a life in which I didn’t give myself to Manning, and at the same time, I couldn’t believe it was really happening. “Have you ever done this before?” I fought against the urge to pull my hair over my shoulders, the only means left to cover myself. “I mean taken someone’s virginity. Obviously it’s not your first time having sex.”
“It might as well be. Nothing’s ever mattered to me as much as this.”
“Nothing?” I asked. His words made me courageous, so I touched his chest. “Not your wedding day? Or the day your sister was born?”
He moved my hand over his heart. “Nothing. And no,” he added. “I haven’t done this before.”
I wanted to touch him more, but his other hand moved between my legs, stealing my focus. I swallowed up at the ceiling, my lids falling closed as his fingers firmed through the thin material of my underwear. I grabbed onto one of his shoulders, hanging on to him.
When I opened my eyes, he was watching me. “I can’t believe I’ll be your first,” he said. “And your only.”
“My only,” I repeated, still getting used to the idea. Not that I’d ever thought of anyone else that way, but I doubted any of this would seem real for a while.
The words affected him, too, his expression contorting as if it hurt him. “How many others did you turn down for me?” he asked.
I sucked my lower lip into my mouth. “Besides Corbin? None.”
“You don’t even realize, do you? How many asked you out? How many wanted to, but couldn’t? They never even stood a chance. You don’t even know what you do to us.”
Focused on his words, I almost missed him slipping a finger under the elastic. With the skin on skin contact, I sighed, wanting more than his feathered touch. “You don’t have to hold back,” I said. “I can take it.”
“I need to go slow, otherwise I’ll destroy you, and I’d like if we could do this more than once before I die.”
“You were so excited, though. I ruined it.”
He chuckled. “Don’t worry. I’m still excited.”
“But it’s not . . .” His finger slid right into me, all the way to the knuckle. I lost my train of thought, gripping his shoulders to keep myself upright. “It should be . . .”
He lowered his mouth to mine and whispered, “Should be what?”
“It was explosive before,” I breathed. “Fireworks.”
“Maybe you don’t feel what I do,” he said. “Just because we aren’t tearing each other’s clothes off doesn’t mean there aren’t fireworks.” With his free hand, he held the back of my head and kissed me. I couldn’t even handle that, his lips hungry, his tongue searching, his finger moving faster and faster inside me. Still holding my neck, he kissed the underside of my jaw, my throat, my collarbone. I salivated for him. I got wet for him. Nothing mattered but the way he held me in p
lace, his grip strong on my jaw, my body against his. Manning wouldn’t have his fireworks any other way but this—burning a slow path through the night sky to an explosion.
“Christ, you’re incredibly wet, Lake,” he muttered. Was I supposed to be embarrassed by how much his touch excited me? I couldn’t tell if he was concerned or aroused until his next comment. “You’re going to slide right onto my cock.”
I gasped, so shocked that I bucked my hips on his hand. “Manning.”
He lifted a corner of his mouth in a half-grin. “What?”
“I’ve never heard you talk like that. You wouldn’t even curse around me.”
“There were a lot of things I kept myself from saying around you, but I won’t anymore. I’m gonna say them all.”
“Say something to me you wouldn’t’ve said before.”
“Okay.” He took his hand back and stood before me, glorious, naked, huge in every sense of the word, his muscles carved and defined to perfection, as if by my own design. “Get on the bed so I can fuck you, Lake.”
My chest stuttered as I exhaled, everything inside me coiling with a fierce need. Biting my lower lip, unable to look away from the heated, almost angry look in his eyes, I staggered back and sat on the mattress. I had no choice but to crawl up the bed as he climbed over me, propping himself up with his arms.
“Say another,” I pleaded.
“I want to feel your hands on me.”
I ran my nails over his dark stubble, touched the veins in his neck, grazed his chest hair and silently counted his abdominals with my fingers. He let me explore, but after a few moments, he took my hand and lowered it between us. When he placed it over his penis, my throat went bone dry.
He shut his eyes a brief moment, groaning with that one touch. Encouraged by his response, I pushed my palm against the length of him. He twitched in my hand, pink and thick and alive. He was beautiful. All of him.
“God, Lake,” he muttered, inhaling through his nose. “Touch me.”
I tried not to look as nervous as I felt. I couldn’t even wrap my hand all the way around him. I tried to make my fingertips touch, surprised by how hot he was. How had he even gotten it in? Bleeding the first time was normal but he must’ve torn right through me.
“What’re you thinking?” he asked. “I want to hear it all.”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You have to be a hundred and ten percent honest with me when I’m in your bed,” he said. “Do you hear me? Nothing, I mean nothing, is more important than trust when we’re like this. That was the last time you’ll stay quiet when I’m hurting you.”
“What if I want you to hurt me?”
He gritted his teeth. “Then you say it. We talk about it before we get in bed. So I’ll ask again—what’re you thinking?”
“I don’t know how you fit inside me earlier,” I said simply. “It defies physics.”
His eyebrows rose, as if he’d expected any answer but that one. “It’s not anything our bodies weren’t made to do.” He kissed my chest, then slipped a hand under my bowed back, pointing my breasts to the ceiling. He licked his lips, looking torn, then sat back on his calves to remove my underwear. Cupping the undersides of my knees, he slid me to him, holding my legs open, his penis dangerously close. “It’s still going to hurt,” he said, reading my expression. “No matter how wet I get you, I can’t fix that. I’m just going to go slow. At first. Until you get used to me.” Holding my leg in one hand, he spread his other over my stomach, maybe to soothe my trembling. “And you’re going to get used to me, Birdy.”
When he lowered his hand to touch me, I arched my back, but didn’t look away from what was about to go inside me. “Manning?”
“Mmm?”
“Even after I turned eighteen, you wouldn’t come near me. Did I not turn you on?” I knew how he’d answer, but for all the times he’d shut me out, I wanted to make him squirm. “What’s different now?”
He followed my line of sight down to his erection. “Nothing. I’ve been hard for you before.”
Manning didn’t squirm at all, but I did, wiggling with excitement, biting my bottom lip. “When?”
“That turns you on, huh?” He grunted, lazily exploring me with his hand. “All the times you tortured me just by being close?”
“A little,” I admitted.
“A lot.” He removed his finger and licked it. “I’ve barely even touched you and I can taste you on my hand.”
My heart beat in my stomach. Manning may have kept quiet about these things in the past, but it definitely wasn’t because he was shy. He took me under the knees again, spreading my legs to lie between them. “Wrap them around me.”
I locked my feet behind his back.
“Now your arms,” he said. “If it gets to be too much, tell me. Or dig your nails into my back and I’ll stop.”
I circled his neck and tugged on the ends of his hair. “Is hair-pulling allowed?”
He dropped a kiss on my lips. “You can do anything you want. Can’t hurt me.”
With that, he started to push inside me. He paused to adjust himself, working only his head in. I sucked in a breath but it didn’t hurt as much this time.
“There was that time on the horse at camp,” he said. “You were between my legs and your hair was so soft. You were scared. I felt protective.”
I wondered if all the love I felt showed on my face as I looked at him, thinking back to that time when I’d been head over heels for him. It’d affected him, too. Manning got up on his hands and pushed harder into me.
This time when he thrust, it felt good. Slick. My arms loosened, and he grabbed my wrist, putting it back around his neck. “Don’t let go, Lake. Please.”
I squeezed him more tightly, even as he stayed propped over me. “Then what?” I asked.
“I got hard for you. I was so fucking confused.” He started to move, sliding in and out of me. His neck went veiny as he groaned. “And ashamed.”
For all the times over the years I’d felt confused and ashamed, I didn’t want that for him. I knew how hard this was for him, letting himself have the girl he wouldn’t even allow himself to want. I gripped the back of his neck. “I’m glad it’s you.”
“I don’t know if I deserve this.”
I pulled on him. “You do. Please. Show me how much this means to you.”
He bent his head to kiss me, and the moment our lips touched, he let loose. Now I knew what he’d meant. Our bodies were made for this. Each thrust came more slippery, more out of control. I opened for him, taking him deeper, a man who’d never been anything but composed around me. This was a side of Manning I hadn’t yet seen, and I couldn’t believe I was doing this to him.
“Am I hurting you?” he asked through clenched teeth, even as he seemed completely lost in it. “Fuck.”
“No,” I said, accepting all of him now. “Don’t stop.”
He kissed me hard on the mouth, sliding one hand over my hip to lift my thigh. He ground into me with more force, driving so relentlessly that the ache deep in my stomach became more of a throb. It was no longer a feeling I wanted him to ease but a place I needed him to fill. He tore his mouth away, keeping his forehead against mine. “How does it feel?”
I was sure I had tears in my eyes when I said, “I can’t even answer that.”
“I can. You make me so fucking crazy, Lake.” With the emotion in his voice, in his face, I started to understand what this was all about—why people confused love and sex. The urgency of his kiss, the sudden build of pleasure, the slapping of skin on skin. If my life were a song, this was the crescendo. I hadn’t truly known what it’d meant to love anyone, even Manning, until now. “When I think about you between my legs back then, about all the times I wanted to say fuck it and steal you away . . .”
As he took me back years, the present came into focus. The climax building inside me was almost painful, the way everything up until now had been. “It’s too much,” I panted.
“The
n let go,” he said. “Let it take over.”
Hearing Manning’s voice, feeling him on top of me, inside me, his face close to mine, I’d never needed anything more than to take what he wanted to give me. My face burned as I arched my back and gave in to him. He took up a pattern, each hard thrust with a grunt. All I could do was hold on as his back slickened with sweat, as my climax obliterated every thought in my head other than yes, God, yes. Every noise but my pained moans. Every feeling but unadulterated pleasure and Manning shuddering over me.
He slammed into me and said, “I can’t hold back anymore. You feel too goddamn good.” The thought that I weakened him brought me back to earth. Fascinated and sated, I watched his face screw up, his teeth clench. He grabbed one of my hands, lacing our fingers together as he buried himself in me and came hot and fast.
He gave me all his weight, his chest heaving, our bodies stuck together with a film of perspiration. After some time, he lifted his head. His brown eyes had looked upon me with a rainbow of emotions, and not always positive ones. In them I’d seen regret, anger, frustration. Now, they held a depth of love, something I’d gotten glimpses of and had tried to convince myself was all in my head.
Still hanging on to him with five fingers dug into his back, I asked, “Are you okay?”
“Am I?” He grinned. “Birdy, I have never been better.”
“You’re shaking, too, you know.”
“Yeah, no shit. Am I crushing you?” His body covered all of mine, pressing me into the mattress, hiding me from the rest of the world. The apartment’s icy air cooled my limbs but wherever our bodies touched, I was warm. “Yes. It feels perfect.”
He readjusted his grip on my hand so it no longer felt like he was hanging on for dear life. “I guess I should’ve warned you the first time would be fast,” he said. “I’m not going to pretend I had any control.”
“It was fast?” I asked.
He chuckled. “I plan to lose hours of my life learning all the ways to make you come.”
I blushed a little. He’d shown me pure bliss, yet that was only part of why I was so at ease. “I feel so close to you right now.”
“Me too, Lake.” He smoothed a hand over my hairline, and his fingers caught in my tangles. “You’ve never been more beautiful.”
Move the Stars: Something in the Way, 3 Page 9