"Oh...my...god..." I breathed, as he drew out, fluttered at my entrance, and then plunged back in. "Chase...don't stop, please."
"Never, never" he said, his words rhythmed to the crush of his manhood into me. "God, you feel so good, so goddamned perfect."
One of his hands was pinching my nipple and rolling it between two fingers, and the other was on my hip, encouraging me into him. I was forcing myself to go slow, to enjoy every last particle of sensation, every nanosecond of this time with this incredible man above me. What I wanted, however, was to buck desperately into him, to pull him into me until I couldn't take him any more.
His thrusts were deliberately measured, as if he too was fighting for control. I didn't want control, suddenly. I didn't want him to be able to keep the rhythmic pace he was setting. I wanted to make him wild, to make him break loose with insanity.
I wrapped my legs around him and abandoned all pretense. My face buried into his shoulder, teeth biting his skin, I let myself have him how I wanted him, with animal ferocity. His eyes found mine, wary.
"Don't hold back," I told him. "I'm not delicate. You won't break me."
He responded with tender lips at the taut peak of my nipple, fingers diving down to find my clitoris and drive me even wilder. The explosions began in my belly, spread to my lungs and my toes, and then to my inner muscles, and last to my brain. The intensity of this orgasm, with him flush against me, muscles surrounding me in walls of strength and heat and man, with Chase gasping in my ear, whispering my name...it put all other sensations in my life to shame.
I saw the heavens, felt pure ecstasy, unadulterated glory. I whimpered as the climax began, and then, when he kept pushing into me, the whimpers turned to moans, and the moans to sobs, and then, at the full, furious apex of wonder and joy bursting through my body and soul, I screamed.
He wasn't done yet.
He rolled with me and the world tipped and tumbled and suddenly I was on top of him, his hands on my hips pulling me into a roll.
I tried to move off of him, but he held me in place.
"Chase, no, let me down. I'll hurt you. I'm too heavy for this."
He just grinned and thrust into me, silencing my gasps as his shaft began to push back up the peak towards climax once more, and I couldn't help but move my hips to match him.
"I'm not delicate," he said, throwing my words back at me. "You won't break me."
"Yes I will," I said.
But I didn't move to get off him. I couldn't stop myself. I'd never been like this with a man. No one had ever been brave enough to try this with me, or strong enough. But Chase, oh, the man held me in place and rocked into me, and his grunting and gasping drove me wild. He was losing control, now, throbbing into me in wild pulses, his head tilted back and his eyes closed, his hands reaching for my tits again and fondling them and lifting them; he arched his back, and with the strength of his core lifted me off the bed with each thrust. I took him, all of him, swallowing his immense size with each downward crush of my hips onto him.
He opened his eyes and watched me, his lips curling in a wicked smile of satisfaction and respect.
"Yes, yes," he groaned, driving into me with each syllable. "Just like this. God, god, oh god, Anna, yes. Oh, I'm so close now."
I was at climax again, and I leaned forward, put my hands on his chest and let my weight fall on his shoulders. Something in me snapped, then, as he supported me with just his body, holding me off the bed with his hips and his hands and his shoulders, coursing into me, wild and abandoned to the passion flaming between us.
Snapped, melted, fell...the words all mean the same. I lost myself to him, then. Heartbreak or no, I knew I was gone, no longer belonged to myself but to this man who strong enough to take me like this. I knew the double entrendre in the thought, even as it passed through me; he was strong enough to take me, physically and emotionally.
Fear at the thought of belonging to him emotionally waved through me, but I pushed it away, drowned myself in the crashing ocean of pleasure.
He gripped my hips in bruising fingers to drag me down onto him harder and harder with each thrust.
Time slowed and stopped then, as I felt his muscles tense and clench around me, felt him tighten and release. He roared, a bellow of male pleasure, and I felt the hot jet of his seed wash through me, a pulse of liquid and a thrust, a growl, and then he pulsed again, filling me with yet more seed, and now I was exploding on top of him, coming apart in his hands. I fell forward and our lips met as we came together, my inner muscles clamping around his still-thrusting, still-coming shaft.
I wept, then. I completely and totally lost it, overcome by sheer orgasmic pleasure and by fear and wonder and abandonment and that one word I didn't dare even think. Four letters, sounds like 'dove.' Means vulnerability and pain and trust.
It was there, even if I didn't dare think it.
It was there in his eyes as he came inside me, and that was what caused me to weep and collapse against him, limp and shaking and still seeing stars, still coming. He was shuddering into me, all pretense of rhythm lost as he gasped ragged inbreaths, and long quaking outbreaths. His arms wrapped around my back and neck and clutched me to him.
"Say it," he breathed into my ear.
"I am a goddess." I sobbed the words, one syllable at a time.
"Yes, yes...you are. You're my goddess." Chase kissed my throat and my shoulder and my chin and my forehead, holding me in his powerful arms. "My goddess. My Anna Devine."
I wept against him, a helpless rain of tears mixed of so many emotions positive and negative I couldn't have begun to explain it all, had he asked.
Which of course he did.
"Why are you crying, Anna?"
"I didn't know...I didn't know it could feel like that," I said. Which was true, but only a bit of the truth.
"And...?" His eyes pierced me, willing the truth from me. I rolled off of him and into his embrace. "Tell me, Anna. Tell it all to me."
I shook my head, calming now, but still shuddering with sobs and aftershocks.
"I can't," I said. "It's too much."
"Try. Just a little, for now. Just a little at a time."
"Why do you want to know?" I gazed at him, trying to keep my eyes neutral. I know he saw though. I'm shit at keeping my emotions out of my eyes. I know he saw the fear and the budding L-word in my eyes.
"Because I want to know you." He spoke the words slowly and deliberately. "I want—no, I need—to know who you are. Please."
"I'm just me. Anna Devine."
"Tell me in two words who you are. Start there."
The words came unbidden. "Big. A singer."
He shook his head. "You're not big. You're perfect."
"Stop saying that. I am not. I know what I am. I can't change it, and I'm fine with that. But don't you try to deny it."
"I'm not denying it. I'm saying you're perfect the way you are. I made love to you as you are."
Goddamn it. He said the word. I shook my head and a fat tear plopped onto his chest. "You had sex with me as I am. There's a difference."
"Why are you so afraid? Why can't you believe what I'm saying? Not every guy in the world likes women to be stick figures. Not every guy in the world want his woman to be all skin and bones. I happen to like curves, just like I like your attitude, and your style. I like the way you screamed when you came for me."
"Stop, Chase. Just stop. Don't tease me with this shit." I pushed up to an elbow, trying to summon the strength to leave his warm, comforting embrace before I got hurt any further. "I can take the truth. Just don't jerk me around."
He pulled me back down and pressed his mouth to my ear. The next words he spoke broke me.
"I made love to you, Anna Devine. I made love to a goddess."
I wrenched out of his arms. "STOP!" I was across the room, crying again. "Don't you fuck with me like this. I can't take it. You're lying to me."
He moved slowly, inching across the bed toward me as if approaching a
skittish animal. "I mean it, Anna. I mean every word." He stretched out a hand, and I shrank away, but he touched me anyway, and the same electric spark shot through me as the first time our hands had touched. "I know we just met, but I know what I'm feeling, and I'm not afraid of it."
"I am."
"I know you are," he said, both hands on my shoulders now. "But you don't have to be. I can tell you've been through some serious shit, and you've got scars, just like I do. But you can trust me. You trusted me with your body, now take another chance, and trust me with the rest of you."
I was stiff, but he was insistent and gentle and determined. He pulled me toward him until his broad chest was pillowing my face, and the soft thump-thump of his heart beat was all I could hear.
"Take a chance," he repeated. "I won't hurt you."
It was stupid, and I knew it, but I let him guide me back to the bed and into his arms.
I slept better than I had in all my life, feeling safe for once.
Safe, and loved.
* * *
I woke the following afternoon to an empty bed and a house smelling like coffee and bacon and sex.
I found Chase sitting with a cup of coffee in one hand, his cell phone in the other, and a grim look on his face.
"What is it?" I asked. "What's wrong?"
He looked up at me, wearing a T-shirt from his drawer.
"It's complicated," he said, getting up to make me a cup of coffee. "I just heard from my agent. My band is getting signed to a major record label."
I sat down next to him and sipped the coffee. "Then what's with the sad face?"
He set his phone down and covered my hand with his. "I have to be in New York by tomorrow afternoon. I'm not sure when, if ever, I'll ever be back."
Then I understood. He had to leave me. I nodded slowly.
"I get it." I scalded my mouth on the coffee, glad for the pain to distract me from my burning eyes. I'd almost started to hope.
"This was the phone call I've been waiting for my whole life," he said, staring at the phone as if it had betrayed him. "And up until a week ago, it would have been the best news of my life. Then I met you."
I squeezed his hand. "It still is the best news of your life. Don't let me...don't let some girl you had sex with stop you from being happy about this. I'll be fine. I knew all along this would be one-time thing."
He glared at me, eyes hard but wavering with emotion. "I didn't. And—god, Anna, I wish you could see yourself like I see you. You're not just some girl I had sex with. I told you last night what it was to me."
I couldn't face the emotion in his voice, how fraught with tension he was. I stood up and gathered my clothes, dressed in the bathroom, and found my purse.
"Thanks for a great time, Chase. Congratulations, and good luck in New York." I didn't turn to look at him as I spoke.
I opened the door, pushed open the storm door and took a step out, and then his voice froze me solid.
"Come with me," he said.
The Long Drive Home
(Stand-alone, after Big Girls Do It Better)
The drive home from Chase's house was the longest trip of my life. My roommate Jamie would have called it "the walk of shame."
The walk of shame is when you've got your panties in your purse, you're a little sore between your thighs but not quite sexually sated, and you have a walk from his door to your car in the pre-dawn chill that seems several miles long. You can almost see your breath in the gray hazy light, even if it's July. Your car has dew on the windows and the seat is cold against your legs, and the steering wheel is hard and frozen against your palms. The engine rolls over sluggishly, and you don't want to turn on the heater because you know by the time it warms up you'll be almost home.
You don't turn on the radio, because you want to be alone with your thoughts. You might wish you'd been able to stay over a bit longer and get some real sleep, because you've got work later in the day and you know you won't be able to sleep now but you'll be a zombie later. You might be ashamed of yourself because he seemed so awesome and sexy in the bar, and even when you got back to his place. The sex might have been okay, or even pretty good, and you got off but it just didn't quite satisfy you on some indefinable but visceral level. And now you're on the way home at four or five in the morning and you have awful morning-after-the-bar breath and a queasy drank-too-much stomach.
You know you'll never see him again, because you didn't offer your phone number and he didn't ask, which meant he just wanted a hook-up for the night. You might be pretending you wanted the same thing. You tell yourself as you drive just over the speed limit through the brightening yellow dawn that it's fine. It was fun, you had a good time and that's all it was meant to be. But, deep down, you were hoping it would turn into something more. You hoped that maybe he'd wake up while you were getting dressed and offer you coffee. You'd hold the mug in both hands and discover that he's just as sexy as you remember, if not more so, and god, he's actually funny and charming, and coffee would turn into breakfast at National Coney Island and an exchange of phone numbers and email addresses and suddenly he'd be your boyfriend.
Instead, you're alone in your car, he's asleep still and you noticed as you stuffed your tits into your bra that he's got a snaggle tooth and his eyes are too far apart and his mouth is lopsided, and you sort of remember him not being all that big, and really, the orgasm was more of a low rumble than anything resembling fireworks. Of course, the morning after a hook-up, no one is attractive. You think, as you run that yellow light, that he'll wake up and flick on Sports Center and drink coffee and wonder if you were as hot he remembered. Of course, you wouldn't be there so he'd have the luxury of relying solely on his memory rather than facts, whereas you got a good look at Mr. One Night Stand while he was sleeping and you know he wasn't as hot as when you were half-drunk.
This is what I was thinking as I drove home. Chase would still be sitting at his table, trying to reconcile his lifelong dream coming true with the fact that it meant he and I couldn't ever really be anything more than one night of hot sex.
Hot sex. That term bugs me. I mean, who thinks of sex in terms of anything other than hotness? If it's lukewarm sex, it's probably only happening once. If it's cold sex, then it's probably not even getting finished.
So Chase and I didn't have hot sex. No, we had earth-shaking sex. Universe-altering sex. Life-changing sex.
There's the truth of it. That one night of heaven with Chase Delany had changed me. He'd wanted me. He'd wanted me despite the fact that I was "plus-size." Not despite, but because of. I nearly cried right there in the car remembering his eyes and his voice as he looked at me, as he touched me. As he made me come harder than I'd ever thought a girl could come, and made me admit, out loud, that I was a sex goddess.
Cupcake goddess, maybe. Jaeger goddess, maybe. Sex goddess? Me? Psshh. Yeah, right.
Anna Devine is not a sex goddess. But I'd felt like one with Chase. I'd realized I could make him feel good. I could give him pleasure. He wanted what I had. He wanted me. Me. It came back to that one fact as I sat at a red light, wishing I had more coffee. He wanted to be with me, to have sex with me, to touch my body, to kiss my skin.
My experience with sex thus far in my life had not prepared me to feel that way. My first time wasn't fun. We'd been virgins and it had been awkward and uncomfortable and messy. It's kind of funny now, looking back, but it hadn't been then. He'd gone on to date the prom queen, and had never looked at me again after that night in Hazel Park in the back of his '91 Lincoln Continental. It was almost like he'd used me to get rid of his virginity, wasted it on the fat girl so he could get the real experience with a girl who was actually hot. That's what I'd felt afterward, and when I ran into him at a reunion five years later, I'd realized I was probably right. He'd turned into a local politician, and you know how those guys are.
After that, sex was something bestowed me, seemingly more out of pity than anything else. Lay there with him above you, not looking
at you. A little kissing to start off, then he'd grab your tits and squeeze too hard, pinch your nipples too hard. Shove his hand down your pants and grope a few inches too low with clumsy fingers. Let him tear your clothes off, fumble with your bra strap, try not to shield your breasts with your arms as he climbs on and rams into you without so much of a courtesy lick, or at least lube. God knows you don't feel prepared, as it were, so it's dry as a desert, but he doesn't care. He's already coming and he just uses his own spooge to lube you up for a few more stuttering strokes, smearing you from back to front with all kinds of mess. Roll off, turn over, snore. You're left unsatisfied, frustrated, wanting an orgasm yourself, but your own fingers just aren't doing the trick and he's done for the night, so there you are, frustrated with no relief in sight.
Or you have guys who expect you to go down on them because you're the big and desperate girl, so of course you'd willingly and gratefully give him head, just for the gracious gift of getting to touch a man's actual flesh-and-blood member rather than something rubber and battery powered. Once upon a time, I had been that girl.
But when a guy tried to jab himself through the back of my throat, and then hit me when I protested, I vowed to never ever act out of desperation again. A man would want me, or I wouldn't do a damn thing.
Which only made what had happened with Chase all the more confusing. Chase was a god among men. He was the kind of guy who gets out of limousines to the staccato lightning of flashbulbs, the kind of guy who sets fashion trends and appears in People on a weekly basis. And he'd come after me. It felt surreal. The entire thing, the kiss in the Ram's Horn parking lot, the song at The Dive, the endless paradise of last night...it couldn't have been real.
I pinched myself hard enough to leave a mark, but the memories persisted in being real. My folds insisted on being pleasantly sore. It was real. He was real. He'd wanted me.
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