by Teagan Kade
Geared up, strapped to the front of me, I get Reggie to help with the ’chute. It flaps high. I feel it fill, get a fix on our line down the hill. “You ready?”
But Maya’s gripping onto her harness for dear life. I can actually feel her shaking in front of me. “I’m going to kill us, Titus King, I’m going to come back as an angry ghost and kill you over again.”
I can’t help smiling. “We’ll see about that.”
She screams as we head forward, the glass-off fucking beautiful as the ground disappears under our feet and I bank left around the side of the mountain.
The screaming’s stopped. I can hear Maya breathing fast in front of me, the hot mass of her body enough to get me hard even though we’re nearing two-thousand feet. It’s cooler up here, the thermals working to pull us higher into the big blue, Crestfall shrinking into a child’s playset below.
“What do you think?” I shout.
For a moment there’s silence and I wonder if this was too much too soon.
“Amazing,” comes the breathy reply.
“I’ll take us lower.”
I dip and bank again, soaring over the valley and it’s perfect. I’ve never experienced conditions like these. It’s what you live for. An eagle passes, swooping overhead with curiosity.
I’m not used to riding tandem like this, but the lightness is there, like the whole world is lifted away and you’re beyond everything. It’s powerful stuff, the best high short of sex.
“Hang on,” I shout, swinging wide and circling the mountain, holding position until I find the best air.
Maya’s butt presses against me through the harness and I wonder if anyone’s ever fucked paragliding before. Might be a challenge for another time.
Maya gives a shout, still gripping the harness, the cinnamon smell of her hair whipping past me as we move, looking back with wide eyes and that childlike wonder you always see when people glide for the first time.
I check my watch. “I’m going to take us down.”
“Already?” she shouts.
“Wind’s picking up and I don’t think you’re ready for the white room just yet.”
I pull into a death spiral, a somewhat risky maneuver that either ends in a thrilling spot landing or a hefty medical bill.
“Wooooo,” Maya screams, half with delight and half with terror, laughing ahead as the spiral tightens.
I keep a steady eye on the ground, pulling up just in time and kicking out for a perfect landing, Reggie’s there to help bring us in. “How was it?” he asks.
It’s Maya who answers. “Incredible, though I’m pretty sure I wet my pants a little.”
“It’s not gliding if you don’t,” Reggie laughs.
I help Maya out of her harness and thank Reggie, taking another moment to appreciate the view once we’re back in the car.
Maya rubs her hands together. “Wow.”
“You liked it, huh? I was scared you might bug out at the start there.”
“Sometimes I just need to be eased into things,” she says, eyes lax.
“I can ease when I want to.”
She laughs at that. “Says Titus King. I think, much like your brothers, you’re full throttle twenty four hours a day.”
“Maybe, but I’d make an exception for you.”
She holds my gaze a beat longer than she should, blushing and reaching for her seatbelt. “Let me think about it.”
And it’s not a win, but it’s a motherfucking start
*
We spend less and less time studying over the following week and more time simply hanging. We hit Crestfall’s hottest foodie hangouts (read: not many). We catch an old movie at the Orpheum and walk around campus picking people at random and trying to guess what underwear they’ve got on. It feels good being with her. No, better than that. It feels right and I can’t believe I was so damn slow to the party.
I do my best to be sweet and romantic as opposed to the usual jock schlock I run with. I can see she wants to give in, but it’s like there’s something holding her back, a block. Hell, I even try a slow dance under the fairy lights out back, but it’s later, when we’re on the flattened part of the roof outside my bedroom window, looking over the tinsel-like flicker of the town lights, that things finally seem to be falling into place.
We’re shoulder to shoulder on the ledge, the swimming pool below us dancing with shadow.
“I want to say thanks,” she tells me.
“For?” I question.
“A great week.”
“My pleasure, but it’s not over, you know.”
She looks to me smiling, arms straight and shoulders high.
It’s right. It’s the moment, but the second I lean in, she pulls away.
I don’t know why, but the frustration seems to boil over. I can’t help myself. “What is it?” I snap. “Why are you holding out?”
I can’t make sense of what she’s thinking, what emotion she’s going through only that it confuses the fuck out of me.
“I don’t know, Titus, it’s not…” she trails off, adding nothing further.
I shake my head, looking back over the town. It’s hard to keep the bite of out of my voice and what I say next comes out far more forcefully than I intend it. “I thought you wanted this.”
It’s the question of the week, really, has me questioning why I’m trying so damn hard to get with her if she doesn’t even want me back. I thought I was reading this right, but maybe that knock to the head has done more than displace my memories.
She looks down, hair swinging forward to curtain call her face. She drags it back over her ear and looks sideways at me, looks almost sad. “I do want you, Titus, but—”
That’ll do it.
I lean in and kiss her, take in the subtle strawberry taste of her lips, deepen it until I know, without question, this is how it’s meant to be. It’s amazing, but also strangely familiar, the way her tongue and lips move against mine, the way her hand reaches to steady itself on my shoulder.
Perhaps that’s why I’m doubly surprised when we pull apart and she stands, looking around in panic, close to tears.
“Maya?”
“I, I—” she starts, but she’s back through the window into my bedroom before I even get up. I hear the door open and close. By the time I get off my ass and make it into the house she’s already gone.
And just like that, I’m back to not knowing what the hell’s happening.
CHAPTER TEN
MAYA
I can’t decide what to do. I’ve become that person—a whirly, twirling flurry of ‘What the hell do I do?’
Do I go to back his place or not? What do I tell him? Do I stay away? Do I try to forget, or help him remember? Everything’s contradictory.
“Just go,” I say aloud, almost surprised when a mystical voice from the nether does not reply back.
You really are losing it, Maya.
Christina notices me pacing around the house. The talking to myself, well, she’s used to that.
“Hun,” she says, such an old soul, “what in good heck are you doing? You’ve been burning a hole in the carpet for hours. If you’re looking for an answer to something, here’s a spoiler: You’re not going to find it staring at your feet.”
I stop and put my hands on my hips. “You’re right. God, you’re always right.”
She shakes her head, cradling a cup of mint tea—the one she pays fifty bucks to import from India. “Just go to him, will you?”
“You think I should?”
“Go!” she says, laughing through it. “You’re making me seasick.”
“Okay. Good. Great.”
I go to walk out the door.
“Ah,” Christina says, “you might want your keys, maybe? Your phone?”
“Yes, yes,” I mumble, searching for them on the breakfast bar.
“Next to the door. You know, where they always are.”
“Right,” I reply, sweeping them up in my hand and pocketing my phone.
“Bye.”
“Bye. Now go. Jesus Christ.”
I leave smiling, but it slowly starts to fade on the way back to the King residence.
Thankfully, it’s Titus who opens the door, and suddenly, like a click of the fingers, all my doubts are assuaged.
“You came back.”
“I did.” I smile.
“Want to tell me what spooked you? Have to be honest, it’s not the usual reaction I get when I kiss a girl.”
I keep smiling. “Not really.”
I walk past him into the house, his scent wrapping itself around me as I pass, comforting and confusing at the same time.
He leads me upstairs and my heart starts to beat faster.
“Where is everyone?” I ask, mouth dry.
He shrugs ahead of me. “As far as I know, they all had somewhere to be.”
I enter his room and sit on the edge of his desk.
He stands before me not speaking a word, but I know, already, precisely where this is going.
We don’t have to speak because we both know what will, must, happen.
I stand and pull off my sweater, keeping eye contact with him. I want him to know what’s happening here.
He helps me with my shirt.
I unbutton my pants, watch as he does likewise, the two of us mirroring each other as clothes are shed to the floor.
Before I know it, we’re standing there naked in front of each other. I don’t feel embarrassed, but I do feel nervous. It’s like the first time all over again.
Why? I ask myself. How many times have you been naked in front of him before? Just like riding a bike.
Yeah, a really nice man-bike with arms and abs and hard bits in all the right places.
Yet he looks at me with fresh eyes. They’re determined. I can see he knows exactly what he wants.
Make the move, I tell myself.
I do.
I press my hand against his chest and find it as firm as I remember. He takes my free hand, holding it between us.
My heart’s racing ahead of me, a tiny fist trying to leap from my chest. My breathing has escalated somewhere between a pant and a full-blown panic attack because I don’t know if I’m ready for this and what it might mean.
He brings his lips to my ear, voice gruff and heavy. “I want you, Maya. I want you so fucking bad.”
“I want you too,” I whisper back, letting go of everything and committing.
We kiss deeply, our mouths moving as one and it’s beautiful and familiar and so gosh darn good I don’t ever want it to stop.
We break apart for breath and Titus presses his forehead against mine, panting into the no man’s land between us. “God you’re beautiful.” He lets go and moves to the bedside drawers. “Give me a second.”
I hear a wrapper tearing, know he’s sheathing himself and it’s right then it hits me that yes, this is going to happen.
He returns to me. I give a startled yelp as he sweeps me up in his arms, carrying me to the bed and placing me at the edge. He drops to his knees, his fingers travelling down my sides, thumbs brushing over my lower stomach as he examines every heated inch of me.
His fingers rise, dancing over my ribs to the sides of my breasts. He looks up and I see that familiar mix of love of desire in his eyes. I hold my breath as a tear is forced from my eye because I’ve missed this. I’ve missed this so—a physical, pulsing sense of need that sprung up ever since I saw him in the hospital.
His hands are everywhere—my face, my neck, my thighs. I whimper when his mouth finds my nipple. He tugs it between my lips. All the while heat pools between my legs, my sex growing slick and ready.
He sucks deeply and I moan harder, his fingers finally moving up my inner thighs towards the source of my desire. When his fingers find it, when they open me up, he laughs.
“My, my, we are wet.”
I blush while his fingers move through the glossy heat there, entering the wetness he has created, the pad of his thumb finding my clit.
“Titus,” I whimper, wanting more. His lips leave my breast. He pulls my face to his, pulls me into another kiss heavy with need and urgency, a desperation I haven’t experienced from him before.
Two fingers fill me as I open my mouth to him. I press my tongue to his and moan against it, powerless against this fresh onslaught of sensation.
My head pulls back, and I dig my fingers into his scalp, begging him to go deeper.
His fingers curl up against the roof of me and I grind down on them, rocking there on the edge of the bed trying to soak up every morsel of pleasure he is offering knowing it will never be enough until I find release.
“Yes,” I moan. “Yes.”
He moves back to my breast, sucking and lathing. It leaves my nipple a wet, tawny tower, cooling in the tepid air of the room.
Heat builds steadily between my thighs, a furnace against his fingers. He returns to my mouth, pulling my bottom lip between his, dragging it against his teeth.
That’s always been Titus’s MO—a mastery of mixing pain and pleasure, pulling and dragging me to the edge until there’s no escape. I wasn’t used to that before I met him. My pleasure was never taken into consideration, but with Titus I finally felt like I was living… even if it was dangerously.
He kisses the top of my nipple farewell and slowly shifts downwards. I’m drenched and I know it, but I don’t care.
He licks a tight circle around my navel, stubble brushing against my clit, my sex pulsing around his fingers.
Finally, his breath is against my clit, hot and welcome. My legs spread wider, my gaping core at his complete disposal.
I don’t even have words when his lips press against my pussy. He licks me from top to bottom, pressing the length of his tongue deep into my wetness.
Oh, God.
I buck involuntarily knowing if he concentrates on my clit I’m as good as gone.
But he takes his time.
He circles my clit slowly, two fingers filling me at the same time, working both in tandem until my whole body starts to lift from the bed.
“That’s it, baby,” he whispers into my depths.
I gasp again when he sucks at my clit, fingers bent and pressing into me together, his knuckles brushing against the tight rosette of my asshole.
It’s naughty and hot and undoing me so much faster than I expected.
The walls of my pussy close around him, constricting there against his fingers, sucking them deeper and deeper inside my body.
He licks at the lips of my sex before again returning to my clit, alternating until I’m seeing stars. I hold his head in my hands, my thighs starting to tighten around his shoulders as he works.
My skin feels like a hotplate, a steady roil of sensation sweeping over it. I know he’s about to cast me into orgasm.
I’m close to the crest when his mouth leaves me completely.
He rises from between my legs instead, kissing a tight trail up the center of my body until he finds my lips once more, the tart taste of my sex upon his.
Fingers draw from me, spider-walk up my pubic bone until they find a breast. I straighten my legs on the bed and prepare for him, the both of us moving into the center of it with practiced efficiency.
“Are you ready?” he asks, the same gruff edge to his voice I remember from our first encounter.
I spread my legs wider, shocked at how wet I am. “What do you think?”
He wraps his hand around his cock and slowly guides it inside me.
I exhale long and deep. This is what I have been dreaming of, wishing for. It’s everything I remember but so much more now given the context.
I moan, can’t get enough of the way he’s filling me. I close my eyes tight and thrust back with my hips, the two of us performing a tight dance together I know we’re going to remember for a long time to come.
I hold his back, lightly dragging what nails I do have downwards—a move I know drives him wild.
He moans, a hand moving to my thigh and sp
reading my leg wider, another inch pressing into me and finding new wetness in its exploration.
He pulls out so only the tip of his cock remains inside, running back in long and hard so my breath hitches.
He slides out again and starts up a slow, grinding pace, the same hand that was just against my thigh moving up my back, cradling me there in mid-air—sexual levitation.
“Yes, baby,” he tells me, cooing it softly. “Come for me.”
He pinches a nipple, fingers dancing back down to my clit, rubbing it in soft semi-circles until I’m thrashing and moaning and somewhere else entirely.
I lift my head, searching for his mouth. He meets me, bringing his mouth to mine, stifling my cries.
“Don’t stop,” I whisper against him, and he doesn’t. He increases his pace, stroking long and deep, filling me with the full length of his cock.
I feel him grow against me and I know he’s drawing close.
“Fuck,” he stammers, forehead against mine, our breathing one. “Come with me,” he says, fingers weaving into my hair and pulling lightly.
I moan into his mouth and don’t know how much more I’ll be able to take. Anything could set me off.
He pinches my clit and I know it’s the trigger point.
My entire body tightens. With desperation, I claw at any part of him I can find, pull him as deep as I can inside me.
His final stroke is lost and lazy, but it’s enough.
We moan together, our orgasms arriving in unison and sending us into a thrashing, heaving frenzy of limb and body, an electric shock of movement that sends me far from this world into somewhere completely unfamiliar.
It’s there, in this new world, I encounter the best orgasm of my life.
Dimly, I know his lips are against my neck, can feel his cock pulsing hot inside me, but it’s distant and crowded out by the sheer energy of my climax.
I don’t count the seconds, or the minutes, but I do know we remain there in each other’s arms for an eternity. No words are spoken because they are simply not needed. We’ve found one another again, I know that.