All Things Pretty

by M. Leighton

I won’t be able to stop myself from giving in to him. I know it as sure as I’m standing here. He’s like an addiction that has crept up on me unawares and taken over. I’m smart enough to realize when I’m fighting a losing battle. I’m also smart enough to realize that if I go about this wisely, we can both put an end to the torture and move on. Just once. One and done. It’s the way it has to be.

  Enjoy tonight. Move on tomorrow.

  But we can have tonight.

  Tonight will be for us.

  Sig.

  And me.

  And all that’s between us.

  Just one night.

  I stare at the same face, reflected now with subtle changes. Eyes bright with resolution, lips trembling with anticipation.

  Once my mind is made up, I’m nearly frantic. I throw on shorts and a tee shirt–nothing spectacular since I don’t plan to be wearing it long–stopping only long enough to scribble Travis a note for when he gets home, telling him not to wait up and to call if he needs me. He’ll assume that I’m with Lance.

  I don’t even bother pulling my hair out of its loose topknot. I simply grab my purse, lock the door and run to the car. I can’t get to his house quickly enough.

  I’m out of breath when I make it to his door, knocking with all the urgency that I suddenly feel. When Sig finally appears in front of me, only a few short seconds (that felt like lifetimes) later, his expression is wild, like he was expecting something else. Trouble maybe?

  His eyes meet mine, and we stand perfectly still and silent. He frowns for a second and then scans my face. His gaze travels over my flushed cheeks, my parted lips, down to my heaving chest. And then, as though he can somehow read my body and its intent, they flick suddenly back up to mine and stop.

  For thirty second or so, a million unspoken things pass between us. There is doubt, indecision, a touch of fear. All on my part. In this moment, it’s driven home what a huge mistake I could be making.

  On his face, one thing. A question. A single query. Can I walk away?

  Can I?

  With my heart beating an ancient rhythm against my ribs, marking me with a tattoo that I will forever be left with, I bask in the richness of his eyes, the beauty of his face and the acceptance of my choice, whatever it is. It’s all here, right in front of me. Someone who wants only me, to please me, to be with me. Nothing else.

  That is what I can’t walk away from. Not just yet.

  Wordlessly, I do my best to answer Sig, to answer his question. By holding steady, by standing still, unwavering in front of him.

  Time slows. Body’s react. The only thing I can hear is the sound of Sig’s accelerated breathing and the rush of blood whirring inside my ears. And then I hear nothing. I see nothing. I’m immediately carried, heart, mind and body, into the tiny bubble of what I feel. For this man, for his touch, for this thing that’s between us.

  With a strike so fast, it seems out of place in this molasses moment, Sig’s hands snap out to cup my face and his lips crash down onto mine. There is no room for second thoughts or questions or gentleness. There is only need. And passion. And a craving that’s completely out of control.

  I open for him and he dives into a kiss that I feel all the way into my bones. I feel every lick of his tongue like a sweet scrape down my spine, every touch of his fingertips like soothing sandpaper over my soul.

  He pulls me inside, flinging the door shut behind us. He wraps his arms around me, lifting me off my feet and carrying me to the bedroom. It’s dark and quiet here, the room filled only with the heat that our fevered bodies are generating and the scorching sensation of our want.

  Already, I’m as desperate as I was this afternoon. After just one kiss, I want nothing more than for him to fill me up. Make me his.

  Leaving my lips only long enough to pull my shirt over my head, Sig strips me quickly and efficiently of my clothes until I’m held snugly in his arms with nothing but air covering me.

  With his one hand fiddling with his zipper, Sig lifts me enough to capture one straining nipple between his lips. And he sucks. Deliciously hard, so much so that I throw my head back and thread my fingers into his hair, holding his sweet cruelty close.

  Laving my turgid flesh, he manages to free himself. Incoherent with desire, I wrap my legs around him, so needy that I can’t think past how to get him inside me. I hear the rustle of a wrapper and then, almost savagely, Sig turns, presses my back to the wall and drives his body up into mine.

  My lungs freeze and my head bumps back against the cool plaster. I literally can’t breathe for a few seconds. I can only feel. Everywhere, all my nerves are alive with his penetration. He’s so big, he’s buried so deep that my body struggles to accept him just as my mind struggles to process the pleasure-pain of his presence.

  Sig goes perfectly still, only the sound of his heavy breathing in my ear for a few seconds. And then I hear a gruff yet tender, “Did I hurt you?”

  He begins to ease back out and I exhale, managing a short, “No. Please.”

  And that’s all I get out. Sliding his tongue into my open mouth, Sig lowers me slightly, dropping me down as he flexes his hips, plunging even farther into me, stealing my breath once more.

  I’m teeming with sensation. My lips, my nipples, my legs, my sex. My skin. My core. I feel Sig all over, like the brilliance of lightning, bottled and transferred to my body through his, jumping excitedly from synapse to synapse. With every movement of his cock within me, sensation explodes outward, like a geyser, raining beautiful, white fire into my blood.

  Pressing my back harder into the wall, Sig reaches down, around my legs where they join my body, and places his fingertips on either side of my straining entrance, pulling gently and spreading me further. He swivels his hips and then thrusts sharply up, the friction of the movement against my wide-spread lips stimulating every bundle of nerves in my sex. I come apart. In his hands, against the wall, around his shaft. Like a mushroom cloud, I detonate, out into the stars, and then my world quickly shrinks back to the hot, wet place where we are joined. My world becomes so tightly focused on my climax that I can neither think nor speak.

  “God, yes!” he growls through gritted teeth as my body clutches his in my first spasm. I bite my lip to keep from screaming his name. I milk him rhythmically, the fullness of him inside me intensifying each wave. His growl dissolves into a groan and he murmurs into my ear, “That’s what I want. To feel you coming for me. Just me. Just me.”

  Like punctuation to each sentence, he strokes me from the inside, slowly, gently, prolonging my ecstasy until my arms fall limply to my sides.

  When my limbs begin to regain feeling, shedding the heavy numbness of orgasm, Sig holds me to him and moves me away from the wall. His body is still deeply seated within mine when he kneels on the mattress and tenderly lowers my upper body onto the comforter.

  He keeps my legs wrapped around him, my hips off the bed, as he barely flexes into me. My body reacts instantly, shivering around him and eliciting a gasp from my tingling lips.

  “Stay with me,” he says softly, reaching out with one hand to stroke from the top of my sex to my chin. As he moves his hand back down, he presses into me, one slow, deep thrust, and I moan, a luxuriant noise that sounds like he’s making me feel.

  “Yes, for a while,” I reply, opening my eyes to his.

  He’s watching me, his eyes black in the low light.

  “Until I’ve had enough of you?”

  “Yes, until we’ve had enough.”

  He separates from me, his big hands sliding down to cup my butt. He sinks to his knees at the foot of the bed and sweeps his tongue from my entrance to my clit, drawing it sweetly into his mouth for a light suck. “Until we’ve had enough,” he agrees.

  With the very tips of his fingers, the kiss of his lips and the softest tickle of his tongue, Sig teases me back to life. The pleasure of my climax shifts and blends to accommodate the rise of something else, something new. He weaves a magical spell over my body, ruthlessly w
inding me up with a ceaseless onslaught. His pace never quickens, yet never slows; it’s steady and maddening and, within minutes, he has my back arching off the bed and my lips begging for more. For deeper. For harder.

  “You taste just like I knew you would. Addictive. Sexy. Sinful,” he murmurs against me, the unshaven scruff around his mouth a bristly, delicious torture. “I could lick you all night long and never get tired.”

  Sweep, flick, suck, nibble, he doesn’t stop. All the while, one finger slowly penetrates me in long drags that force my hips to rock against him for more. I wriggle and writhe beneath him, ache turning into throb, throb turning into need. A grunt of frustration escapes my throat and Sig chuckles against me, a low, throaty sound that makes me quiver. “Be patient,” he whispers, brushing his mouth back and forth over me.

  I’m panting, my infuriating impatience on the rise. “I need you inside me,” I plead.

  “You do?” he asks, a smile in his voice.

  “Sig, please!” I’m ready to snap and I know he can hear it in my voice.

  “Be patient,” he says again.

  He increases the pressure of his mouth, but not his finger. Still, it slips in and out, deep and deliberate. I rock against his face, against his hand, but he pulls back, unwilling to let me rush him, rush this. I grit my teeth and my abdomen trembles and jerks.

  It hurts so good– the prolonged yet steady build– that a petulant sob swells behind the wall of my ribs. Unable to think of what I might do to ease it, I fist one hand in Sig’s short hair and I pull. Harder than I might’ve intended to, but enough to ease some of my angst.

  Suddenly, Sig releases me. Without warning, he leans up and over my body, looping one arm beneath my knee and rolling my hips back toward me. Then, with one slick, thick thrust, he’s inside me. My startled yelp melts into a loud cry of satisfaction. He pounds me. That’s the best way I can describe it. Harder and harder, deeper and deeper, he plunges his length into me, bringing me back to a pleasure unlike anything I’ve ever known. I squeeze my eyes shut, aware only of the swirl of colors behind my lids as liquid heat pours through my muscles, turning them to quivering masses of release.

  Waves still rolling through me, I manage to open fuzzy eyes and focus on Sig. He’s watching me, a fierce expression on his face. It seems he was waiting for me, waiting for me to open my eyes so we could finish this together.

  The moment our eyes meet, I feel him tense and I know he’s ready to continue his own hunt. Gazes locked, I watch his expression, his intensity. I don’t think I could look away from his breathtaking face if I tried. So I don’t. I take him in. I revel in what he’s feeling, in what I do to him. And what he does to me. What we do to each other.

  Sig arches his back and holds his upper body away from mine as he chases his own peak, grinding and swiveling his hips against mine in a way that forces my body to come along for his ride. Surge after surge, I’m slave to the flow of my own pleasure until Sig stiffens, forcing his body deep within mine until he collapses atop me, his sweat-slicked chest pressed tightly to mine.

  ********

  Seconds or minutes or hours later, his harsh breathing having settled into deep inhalations and sighs to release them, Sig lifts his head and looks down at me, his chocolate eyes light and satisfied. More golden even. Like the color of molasses. “I’m glad you came.”

  “I don’t think I could’ve stayed away.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t try,” he admits, grinning down at me.

  I feel clouds roll in, like fog settling over a lush, green field of contentment. “Sig, I–”

  He lays his index finger over my lips. “We’ve still got a lot left of this night. Don’t ruin it.”

  “But–”

  “No buts. Tonight is for animal sex and happy thoughts. Nothing more. Got it?”

  I smile. I can’t help myself. “Got it.”

  With a rough kiss to my lips, Sig pulls out of me and rolls to his side, pulling me half onto his chest. I rest my head over his heart, somehow comforted by the steady thud of it beneath my ear.

  Lazily, I draw tiny circles around his little flat man nipple. “Tell me about your family. Are you an only child, or…?”

  “God no! Sometimes I used to wish I was, but I’m nowhere near an only child. I’ve got two brothers and a sister. Assholes, one and all.”

  I slap his ribs. “Don’t say that! They’re your family.”

  “What does that matter? Family can be assholes, too.”

  “Yes, but you’re supposed to overlook it.”

  “Fine,” he says with an exasperated sigh. “They’re not all assholes. At least not all the time.” I hear the rumble of his chuckle. It vibrates through my jawbone and tickles my lips. “Nah, I guess they’re pretty all right. The oldest can be a little overbearing sometimes. Total control freak. But he means well.”

  “Are you closest to him?”

  “No. I’m closest to my little sister. I’d never tell her, of course, but she’s pretty kickass. For a girl anyway,” he adds emphatically, giving my shoulder a squeeze. I twist his nipple. “Ow! God! That hurt!” he exclaims. Then he leans down to grab a handful of my butt and pinch. “Do it again.” I can hear the laugh in his voice.

  “You’re incorrigible.”

  “If that’s code for a hot, sexual dynamo with a cunning intellect then I couldn’t agree more.”

  I groan and roll my eyes, even though he can’t see me. He can’t see my smile either. “So the oldest is overbearing, the youngest is the best. What about your parents?”

  “My dad’s cool. Still around. My mom died when I was seven.” There’s no levity in his voice now. “She was sick as a kid. Cancer. They thought she’d be fine. Turns out she wasn’t. It was tough. Just about killed my dad. He loved her. Too much, maybe.”

  I lift up my head to find his eyes. “Too much? Is it even possible to love someone too much?”

  “I think so. I don’t ever want to love someone so much that being apart from them makes me forget that there are other things to be happy about in life.”

  I lay my head back down. I don’t want him to see that my heart breaks a little at his words. “I think I might like nothing more than to love someone in that way. And for them to return it,” I say softly, impulsively giving voice to something I’ve never shared with anyone before.

  “Why? Why would you want to love someone so much that you’d be miserable without them?”

  “I don’t think people set out to lose the ones they love. It’s not exactly the norm.”

  “But why risk getting hurt like that? Why seek that kind of shit out?”

  “People risk it because if tragedy doesn’t strike…and you get to keep the ones you love…it’s worth it.”

  “Even if it hurts? I mean, they’ll die eventually. In the end.”

  I smile against his chest. “Especially if it hurts.”

  “That doesn’t go there, you know. That only applies when you have to do something you don’t want to do, something that’ll end up being worth it somehow.”

  “Of course it goes there. Pain reminds us that we’re alive. Reminds us to fight. Without it, we might just drift through life, unaware.”

  “And what do you fight for?” he asks quietly.

  “Travis.” I don’t even hesitate. He’s been my reason for…everything for years.

  “Nothing else is worth fighting for?”

  “Nothing more than him.”

  Sig grips my upper arms and drags me fully on top of him until our eyes are level, my face inches from his. “I’ll help you fight for him. That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Fighting for him? This is all for Travis.”

  “I told you–” I start to pull away, but Sig won’t let me. He pins me to him with his stare as well as with his hands.

  “I know what you told me. And I’m telling you again. You can trust me, Tommi.” He pulls me down until we are nose to nose, his lips grazing mine as he speaks. “You can trust me.”

&nb
sp; We stare into each other’s eyes, a battle of wills. One every bit as fierce as the other. Me, determined not to give in, not to trust, not to relinquish control. Him determined to make me, to convince me, to sway me. When I would pull away, Sig grabs my face between his big hands and holds me still, trapped in his gaze, as though by keeping me here long enough, he might force me to believe him.

  And then his lips are on mine, hard, demanding. Hot. We are at odds. We are destined to clash, to batter, to end. But for the moment, for right now, coming together, meeting in the middle is inevitable. We are inevitable. We are smoke, we are fire, we are heat and desire and unquenchable thirst.

  My legs fall on either side of his, knees meeting the mattress, and I dive into his kiss, letting the animal loose, like he said. With fingers we grasp. With teeth we bite. With mouths we devour.

  I feel him growing beneath me, his erection pressing into my warmth, and moisture rushes to the place where I straddle him. Without releasing my lips, I feel as much as hear his movement as he reaches into the table beside the bed to get another condom. With quick, efficient movements, he jerks one off and stretches another on, and then he’s gripping my hips, holding me still, then pulling me down onto him.

  Simultaneously, he flexes his hips, seating himself more fully within me. I cry out in utter ecstasy. It takes a moment before I can relax around him, still unaccustomed to the heady sensation of being stretched to what feels as though it’s beyond my limit.

  I experience his penetration from groin to groin, from front to back, and all the way into my abdomen. He’s buried so deep, I wonder that it’s pressure from his tip that stimulates my diaphragm and makes me breathless.

  I struggle to breathe, pulling away from him to sit up and force big gulps of air into my stiff lungs. The upright position does nothing to help my breathing, only brings him farther inside me. I let my head fall back, pleasure rolling through me like thunder. As though he knows the kind of thrall I’m in, he squeezes my hips with his hands and grinds my sex against his, the friction too delicious for words.

  When I can finally manage the intake of air without conscious effort, I gasp, several long, deep, half-moans that further incite Sig. He sits up as well, his mouth going straight for one nipple, giving it a suck as he reaches between us and unerringly finds my folds. When he takes my clit between his thumb and forefinger and pinches it lightly, rhythmically, thunder turns into lightning. One moment, I’m adjusting to his size and intensity, the next I’m moving up and down on him, falling headlong into another orgasm.