But it was fine, it was cool.
She knew how to get him back there.
All she had to do was act like her touch was meant in a slightly different way. Not as a stop sign. More like an urgent need to push him further. She rubbed the heel of her hand against him and the heel of his hand rubbed between her legs, and to her relief he seemed to get it. He groaned, at least, and pressed that solid shape tighter against her ass.
Now he was practically dry humping her.
Though that was okay—she was pretty much riding his hand. He cupped her sex through her jeans and she urged herself against him, over and over until her cheeks were on fire and her nipples were two tight points poking through her jersey, and her clit, god, her clit. It seemed so swollen and stiff that even this kind of not-quite contact was way, way too much.
Then he spoke, and she realized she didn’t know what too much was.
Really it was him, whispering breathlessly in her ear.
“So excited again. So ready to come. You been lying here just aching for it, huh? Watching them fuck, getting hotter and hotter until you couldn’t help rutting like that, like some animal in heat. Pussy all greedy for something thick and solid, clit this tight little bead. I’m guessing a couple of strokes will do the trick, right? Just a little bit more of this and you’ll do it, all over my hand. Tell me. Tell me you would.”
She honestly didn’t know why she said nothing in reply. What made her bury her head in the pillow and cover it over with both arms. She only knew what he did in response: redoubled his efforts. No teasing here—he slipped that hand under the waistband of her jeans, and immediately searched out her clit. Found it and rubbed in tight circles until she kind of wanted to scream.
In fact, she did scream, when his other hand squirmed beneath her body.
Partly because he cupped and squeezed her right breast, fingers pulling at her stiff little nipple.
But mostly because she knew why he really did it.
Not to please her. Not to make her come faster.
He just wanted to fondle her there. He wanted to know what it was like—she was sure of it. And the second he found out, something seemed to shift in him. Suddenly he wasn’t so focused on getting her off, hard and fast. It was like he wanted something from this, too, bad enough that he almost just said it right out loud. Fuck I bet that pussy feels so good when you sink right in, so tight and hot and wet, Jesus, he groaned, as he dipped those maddening fingers down and into her. Savoring the feel of her, she thought, before he returned to her clit.
Only now the memory of those words was behind it.
His rough breathing, his hoarse tone, the very idea of him pushing that big, thick cock into her. He would definitely fill her if he tried it. He filled her with his fingers, and they were half the size. And God, how would he be as he took her like that? He seemed half gone now, even though both of them were still fully dressed and barely touching. Surely if they were stripped, and sweating, and heaving together, things would be even more intense? They had to be, and yet…
When he shoved her jersey just a little way up, she still flinched.
She still thought of her belly, even though he could barely see it. She was mostly on her side and he barely lifted the thing, yet the feeling was there. And it stayed there, eating at her, until it became clear what he was doing. His hand left her breast and she felt him shift a little so he could get at his zipper, and then the room was abruptly filled with the most glorious sound on the face of the earth.
His hand, on his cock.
That was why he had done it: so he could do just what they’d both fantasized about. He wanted to coat her with his come, to the point where he could barely contain himself. His breath was coming in short, desperate gasps and those fingers on her clit were suddenly sloppy. But it didn’t matter. She was already going over, just hearing him. Then the first hot ribbons striped her back, and she was there, oh god she was there.
Her clit all but burst against his still-working fingers, the bliss so intense she couldn’t quite take it. She had to get away from it, but when she tried she found there was nowhere to go. He seemed to have her pinned, one hand now on her shoulder and the other so firm between her legs she couldn’t possibly escape. She just had to lie there, as the pleasure went on and on and on.
It clenched every muscle in her body, tight as a fist. Soaked his hand, in a way that would have been embarrassing—if she’d been able to care. In that moment, she couldn’t. She didn’t. All she could do was grunt and jerk like an animal, as he eked every last drop of sensation out of her.
She was crying, by the time he had finished.
Sobbing, in fact, though she tried to hide it. She put her face in the pillow and feigned exhaustion, sure that in a second he would get up and go to the bathroom. Then she could wipe her face and tidy herself, as if none of this had ever happened. Not give him the chance to be weird about her having feelings—because she was sure he would be. He might even start to put distance between them. Maybe throw in a few snide remarks until she got the right idea about what they were doing here.
They were just fucking.
Not even fucking, really.
Accidentally being super filthy with each other—and that was all. That was all, she told herself, as he tenderly cleaned her up. That was all, she told herself, as he slipped an arm around her waist.
That was all, she told herself, as he whispered against the nape of her neck.
“That’s the only reason I ever want you to cry, from now on.”
Chapter 16
She knew he wasn’t looking at his books. She knew like she’d known the last time they sat across from each other in the library, only this was so much worse. Now they were at the point where things needed to be said. He was quite possibly waiting for her to say them. The only issue was, she had no idea what any of the words actually were.
If she laughed about it, he might think she was dismissing the whole thing. Mocking him somehow, only to find he was deadly serious. However, telling him that she had enjoyed the previous night—with the movie and the…other things—was just as bad. What if he thought she was desperate for him somehow? He might try to let her down gently—an idea that set her cheeks ablaze. She almost got up and walked right out, just thinking about it.
And probably would have done, if it wasn’t for the note.
The one he slid over the pages of the book she wasn’t reading.
I want to make you moan like that again.
No confusion, no way to misinterpret, no pretense. Just a direct statement in bold black, each letter printed clearly and carefully so there could be no mistaking. This was what he wanted, and he wasn’t going to hide it anymore. Sometimes she wasn’t even sure if he’d been hiding before. It had just been easier to think he was, or to imagine it was all just some accident they’d stumbled into.
And suddenly she couldn’t do those things anymore.
He’d taken them away from her, and now all that was left was…
She didn’t know. She only knew that when she thought of it, that panic got worse, not better. There was no relief following his note, or sense that she could just give in to it all now. Instead, she found her hands were shaking. Her palms were sweaty when she picked up her pen.
And she didn’t write what she had thought she wanted to.
I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, she scribbled.
Though of course that didn’t put an end to anything.
He just scribbled back, as calm and casual about it as she’d been frantic.
Didn’t you enjoy it?
That’s beside the point.
I enjoyed it.
The first letter was blacker than all the rest, as though he’d pressed down hard enough to almost snap his pencil. She couldn’t fail to notice it.
Though she tried.
Guys always do.
Not like that they don’t.
How was it different?
It was the
wrong question to ask. She knew it. He took the paper from her incredibly quickly, and the writing he did never seemed to end. It went on and on, so messily scribbled she wasn’t sure she’d be able to read it when it did come back to her.
She was wrong about that, too, however.
She read it loud and clear in five-foot neon letters.
No one has ever made me come with barely a stroke over my dick. I sprayed all over your ass and back like a fucking teenager—and it felt that way, too. It felt like I’d never had an orgasm before. I didn’t know it could be like that, like you’re bursting, like you can’t take one ounce more pleasure, and then after we do that shit my fucking legs are always like rubber. The first time, I was still shaking twenty goddamn minutes after you left. The second time it was an hour before I could think straight. I’m still not thinking straight, because all I want to do is watch you moan and buck for me just like you did on my bed.
It took her a long while to reply. So long that she could tell he was getting impatient, even though she was barely looking. She watched him surreptitiously, from underneath her lowered eyelids, yet still caught him folding and unfolding his arms. And she could hear him after a second, too, cracking his knuckles one after the other like he used to do when he was bored in class.
Only now she wondered if it was boredom at all.
Most likely it was frustration at having to hide who he really was.
The way she had to hide the heat rolling through her body, right now.
Please don’t write things like that.
You asked. I’m just being honest.
It makes it harder for me when you say this stuff.
Makes what harder?
Being your friend. Please. I just want to be your friend.
It wasn’t what she expected to write. The words just pushed out of her, as strange to her as they were to him. He immediately scribbled back why, and it was only after he had that it dawned on her.
Because when you stop being my friend my life turns into a living hell.
She didn’t look up after she passed it to him. She was sure she wouldn’t look up, no matter what—but then he just took so much time to reply. There were no scratchings of his pencil, no curses as he stopped and started over. Just a long, endless silence as he processed what she was saying: if we are together like that, our inevitable break-up will put me right back where I started.
Though she wondered if he’d gotten the extra kick in the teeth there.
The one that left her mouth bloody the second it occurred:
Only now I will also lose a friend I care for deeply.
Too deeply to stand it, she knew. It was one thing to be taunted by an enemy. Quite another to be taunted by someone she had grown so close to. That would be bitter indeed—and she hoped he knew it. She hoped he at least understood, no matter how angry it made him.
Or how much it tore him in two.
She stole a glance at minute three, and he was just looking at her. His gaze shot through with pain so obvious she couldn’t deny it, that muscle in his jaw working and working. In fact, it was more than his jaw. The tension seemed to ripple right up to his temples, as though he was dying to let loose.
She just wasn’t sure what with, until he started writing furiously.
Until he passed it to her, mistake free and so quickly written most of the words flowed together.
No matter what happens between us, I will never make your life hell again. Mess with my head, turn me upside down, fuck seventeen guys behind my back, humiliate me in the middle of the cafeteria…it won’t make any difference. I am yours now. And nothing you say or do will ever change that.
She paused, before replying.
But only because she had to fight back tears—because of the underlined never, for the anger that was only at himself, for the way he kept proving her wrong whenever she was sure their whole paper house was about to be blown away or burned to the ground.
That was a really cool thing to say, she wrote.
Keep it. Keep it as a reminder.
Like you kept the piece of paper where I wrote that you were my friend?
Yes exactly like that. Oh, did you think I would deny it?
Maybe, she started, then gave in and crossed the word out. Wrote the truth, to match what he had offered her. Yes. Yes, damn it.
How I feel about you is not a secret.
It is to me. Can you not see why it would be to me?
No, I really can’t. I know I make it obvious every day.
You do you do you do. But this is pretty obvious every day to me, too.
She didn’t intend to grab his hand to show him. She was just going to lift her hair—you could see the scar without a ton of effort. Yet when it came to it, somehow seeing didn’t seem like enough. She wanted him to touch it, to really feel it, to know right down to his bones that it was there. Here was the evidence, and to hell with whether it made him uncomfortable.
Or whether it didn’t. At all.
Not even a tiny little bit.
She closed his fingers over that curving knot around her ear, and he just stayed there. He stroked his thumb over it, so tender and direct she wasn’t sure what to do for a second. This was not the way she’d imagined it going in her head. He was supposed to pull away sharply and tell her to get over it, and instead he just went ahead and doubled down. He put his whole hand over that terrible place, like the slight touch she’d encouraged wasn’t enough.
And even that fell short.
He needed words, to go with it.
“I know there’s nothing I can do to erase this. I wouldn’t want to erase it, or act like it never happened, or pretend that it’s not in your heart as well as right here under my hand. I get that this is always going to be there, saying you should doubt me. But I’m gonna work every day on making it easier for you to ignore. I want you to believe in me, and I got all the hours in the world to help that happen.”
This time, she couldn’t fight the tears.
One just streaked down her left cheek before she could stop it. And when she went to swipe it away, he got there before she could. He swiped it for her, with his thumb. Held her gaze, as if he never wanted to let it go. And in that moment, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to.
This was as good as life got, and she knew it.
“That was even cooler than the whole humiliate-me speech.”
“I could write this down for you, too, if you want.”
“No, no that’s okay. I now have it burned into my brain forever.”
He grinned then.
He grinned so wide it warmed her insides.
“Well, that sounds like a start to me.”
“As starts go it was pretty fucking good.”
“Then what are we waiting for?”
Instead of answering right away, she took his hands in hers. Maneuvered them slowly away from her head and her hair, until they were spread beneath hers over her open books.
That way, she didn’t have to do this while he was holding her face.
It was hard enough as it was, without him drowning her good sense in affection.
“The rest of me to catch up.”
“Tell me which part is lagging behind.”
“The part that says you want me.”
“I thought we covered that.”
“No, we covered emotional damage. Now we have to get into the enormous fucking disparity between the way you look”—she waved a hand in front his face, then her own—“and the way I look. Because even if we pretend for a second that you are Bob and I am Betty and neither of us have any connection to each other at all, you still have to admit that Bob is way, way, way hotter than Betty.”
He snorted and shook his head.
“I don’t have to admit that at all.”
“So you’re going to claim, objectively speaking, that you are not hotter than me.”
“Actually, I’m going to claim objectively speaking that the other night I shot my load all ove
r your back after about thirty seconds of fondling your right breast. Your move, Counselor.”
“I don’t have a move, damn it, you just fucked my move.”
“Yeah, and I came really, really embarrassingly fast when I did it.”
“It wasn’t embarrassing okay, it was—” she started, but then couldn’t finish.
He had been talking in the abstract. She was referring to the real thing.
And the real thing was complicated and weird and scary.
“It was what, Letty?”
“You know what.”
“So lemme get this straight: you get that I came so fast because of your hot tits, and the fact that I did come fast turns you on, and you are fully aware that this means I must want you—”
Now it was her turn to cut him off.
Mostly because he’d just said hot tits, and she needed a second to gather herself.
“I’m not fully aware of that at all. I need way more evidence to prove this hypothesis.”
“How about…when I turned tickling into a dry hump?”
“I don’t remember things happening exactly like that.”
“And when I almost kissed you, in the aftermath.”
“Okay, see I didn’t know that you almost kissed me. I thought—”
“Oh, and then there’s the fact that I got hard when you rubbed all over my body in the pool.”
She covered her face with her hands at that. She didn’t have a choice. It was like a reflex, like he’d hit her elbows with a tiny hammer and they’d jolted up—though she was glad of them once they were there. Her face was burning. Her eyes would not stop staring wildly in his direction, even though she could only see the insides of her fingers now. And it muffled the shock in her voice a little.
Though obviously, it couldn’t do anything about the words.
“Oh my god, I thought you thought I was a pervert. I thought that’s why you freaked out.”
Never Sweeter (Dark Obsession #1) Page 14