Soak (A Navy SEAL Mormon Taboo Romance)

by Loren, Celia

“Please let me taste you,” he murmured after a while, sounding plaintive and desperate. He was sure she would decline, show repulsion for the mountain of his want, but Chloe surprised him again. “You have to turn around and shut your eyes,” she said.

  He did so, trying not to get too excited at the sounds of cloth rustling. There was still no sound coming from upstairs. They were still alone, and free.

  “Open,” she whispered, breathlessly. Ryder felt a little fluid seep into his briefs as his eyes obeyed her command. Chloe sat their shyly, beet-red on the couch. Her body was hunched as if to hide what she’d intended for him to see. Her shirt, bra, and some unidentifiable muslin mass (the Mormon undergarment of myth??) sat neatly folded beside her on the couch. The light was dim, but Ryder could see the swollen, sweat-dampened mounds of her tits. Her pink nipples blinked at him invitingly. He thought he’d never seen a better rack, either in a magazine or real life.

  The look Chloe gave him continued to telegraph her insecurities, and instantly, Ryder moved to sate her. He pushed himself back into her body with renewed aplomb, sore lips apparently rejuvenated at the sight of such perfect, cuppable breasts. He put an exploratory palm around her right mound and squeezed. Chloe tilted her head back and made a guttural, deep, un-ladylike sound. He put a palm over her hot mouth to quell the noise even as his mouth rushed to the source of her pleasure. He began to flick his tongue back and forth over the slightly salty, slightly sweet surface of her nipple. This part of her was hard as a pebble in his mouth, though the rest of her massive, beautiful tit was soft, soft, soft.

  If there was a God up there to thank, Ryder realized, now would be the time. He moved one hand to the surface of his jeans, rubbing himself lightly. Fuck, she was hot. Chloe continued to moan as he sucked and kneaded the surface of her breast. When her joy seemed to approach an apex, she took a palm and buried him further into her chest, so for seconds he could only breathe her.

  “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” she said, through gritted teeth. Sweat was now falling in elegant rivulets down the pale, freckled valley of her collarbone. Ryder let himself live in her freckles. The cool, untasted patches all across her front. He prodded and squeezed at all the flesh he could reach, until his lips and left knee were so sore he couldn’t imagine using either again. And still, he kissed her body.

  They weren’t keeping track of how much time was passing. But at one point, once Ryder felt he’d fully explored the first of Chloe Christiansen’s secret spaces, his attention turned to the inner sanctum. He removed one hand from her tit and moved South, toward the clenched, guarded space between her thighs. Once again, he moved slowly, checking his movements against Chloe’s nods of assent.

  She seemed to brace herself for his next touch, shutting her eyes tight against the world. Ryder’s own heart was racing, but his fingers were eager. First one digit, then another, slipped past the barrier of her jean’s zipper. He could feel her heat immediately.

  Chloe’s nails dug into the unyielding leather. Ryder’s fingers brushed against her plain cotton panties, but then they nudged the elastic aside. He grazed her silk-spun pubic hair, soft and downy as feathers. Then his fingers approached her entrance. They both had to bite their lips against cries of satisfaction, when he tickled the slick mound of her entrance. For she was so, so wet against his palm. Wetter, more wanting, than any woman he’d ever felt.

  “Oh, fuck,” Ryder said. God, he wanted to taste her. One of his preferred dream scenarios involved an evening spent feasting on the slick, spotless pussy of his best friend’s sister, and the idea of this moment becoming real made his own shorts go sticky again. His mouth raced to her entrance, his fingers scrambled to peel down her jeans. Chloe’s eyes stayed shut tight, as if she could only submit to such pleasure if part of her believed it was all happening in her head. Ryder smiled at his ballerina before flicking her jeans to the floor. He ran his palms up and down the shapely expanse of her legs. There was this fine figure she spent so much effort hiding, or condemning at her mother’s encouragement.

  “You are so fucking beautiful,” Ryder said. He would have hollered the words, under any other circumstances. Chloe grinned, and her pale skin went rouge again. This felt like an invitation. Ryder drew himself closer to the couch, and brought his mouth down to her entrance. He nosed her thighs apart, then opened his mouth. He inhaled her rich, particular scent.

  His tongue lapped slowly from the dripping folds of her pussy lips to the round, bright bean of her clit. Her whole body spasmed under his hands. “Oh, Lord. Keep doing that,” she said again, in the husky, new alien voice. Once again, Ryder was putty to her command.

  He brought his lips, framed by stubble, to her mound, and began to move his tongue in tiny, pressing circles. She writhed and writhed. Her confident hand returned to the back of his skull, applying pressure, pushing him further and deeper into her folds. Ryder would have been content to stay there all night, but he knew she wanted it fast and bad. And try as he might want to, Ryder couldn’t deprive his ballerina of anything she wanted.

  So his licks came faster, harder. She remained glossy and damp in his mouth. He dug his nails into the fleshy pads of her ass, drawing her pussy closer. In return, Chloe clutched his shoulder so hard he knew she’d leave white marks. Finally, her breath began to arrive in short, almost angry-seeming bursts. “Oh God,” she kept saying. Like a prayer. “Oh God, oh God, oh-God-oh-God-oh-God.”

  He could feel her will to remain quiet failing against the goodness of his touch, so once again he moved to cover her mouth with one hand. But Chloe didn’t tolerate that this time—or perhaps the timing was simply too good. No sooner had he clamped his palm over her chapped lips than he felt her teeth on his skin. Just as she bit down, his mouth flooded with her juices, and her whole body seemed to lift out of it self and then return to earth with a crash. He had made her come. Hard.

  They sat panting in silence for a moment, after Ryder jerked his bitten hand away. (She hadn’t broken the skin.) Chloe’s eyes remained closed, but her body was blooming like a flower. She didn’t move to cover herself after the orgasm, but preferred to bask in it. When he tried to touch her ripe-looking skin, she swatted him gently away. A beatific, lovely smile danced over her pretty face.

  He wouldn’t be the first one to speak.

  “Well, well, well,” he said. (Like a fucking idiot.)

  Above him, Chloe laughed. Then—to his minor dismay—she coiled onto her side, blocking his view of her naked form.

  “I can’t believe that just happened,” she said. Her voice sounded rapturous.

  The silence reinserted itself, and Ryder took these moments to recalibrate. He watched Chloe’s chest rise and fall. Was she planning to fall asleep on the leather couch? Because that would be a hard thing to explain to the Christiansens, when they came down for breakfast in the morning.

  Above their heads, something creaked. Possibly an errant floor board, but possibly a human, tiptoeing out of bed to get some water in the middle of the night. All the warmth drained out of Ryder’s body, beginning with his penis. He felt Chloe seize up, too. The shadow of dread fell over them both.

  They sat stock still for a few unnecessary minutes, verifying that the noise had no source—and then Chloe’s eyes popped open. No sooner had she surveyed the scene of the crime than Ryder felt the room temperature shift. The smile fell off her face, and she hastily began to put her clothes on. Out of decency, Ryder turned around again. He suspected he’d never crack the mystery of the maybe-mythical Mormon undergarment.

  Instead of dwelling on the change in the air, he focused on peeling himself off the ground. His knee blazed with protest as he moved to stand. He’d sure been hard on himself today.

  “That was really special,” Ryder whispered, once they were both fully dressed and Chloe had begun the project of making the couch pillows look undisturbed. His lover said nothing, but he watched the blush return to the nape of her neck.

  “Maybe we can talk, tomorrow. Grab a bite to eat o
r something.”

  “Oh, like at the breakfast my mother cooks every day? Or family dinner?” Her tone strained to communicate a joke, but Ryder couldn’t help it: his feelings were hurt. He felt the door that was usually between them, swinging back into place.

  “I don’t get it. Did I do something wrong?”

  “No!” Chloe turned to him, and gathered his hands in her own. She looked into his eyes, though it seemed like this took effort. “No. I just think...well, maybe we should just lay low. Keep this between us until we figure things out.”

  It didn’t exactly make sense. Experience had taught him that when women got clingy after sex, he tended to run for the hills, emotionally. But Chloe’s sudden coolness left Ryder feeling like a pitiful loser. He wanted her to be the one falling against him, begging for further contact. He wanted her to be the one who wouldn’t be able to sleep tonight.

  “Sure,” he heard himself say, coolly. “Mellow works for me.”

  Chloe turned quickly away, satisfied with his answer. She took one final sweep of the room, then turned her gaze to the stairs. Her movements had become guarded and awkward again. It was like the earth-shaking orgasm he’d given her moments before had never even taken place.

  “Well. Good night,” she said, professionally, from the landing. He wouldn’t meet her steely gaze.

  “Good night,” he muttered. She snapped off the light, and he was left alone in the living room with the callow gaze of the moon.

  Chapter Ten

  “You WHAT?” Gwen actually did a spit-take with her strawberry milkshake. The other patrons at Nelly’s Diner, likewise fresh from church, shot scowls in the direction of the two noisy twentysomethings.

  “Will you please lower your voice?”

  “Umm, I’m sorry. Will you please lower your panties? JK betch—you already did!”

  “Gwen! I am serious!” Chloe thumped her hand against today’s paperback, which sat on the table between them like a challenge. Appropriately enough, today’s novel was E.M. Forster’s A Room with a View, about the dangerous love affair blooming between a straitlaced Englishwoman and a rogue weirdo in Italy. As if she didn’t already have one rogue too many in her life.

  “What do you want me to say, babe? ‘Congratulations?’”

  “I’m not convinced this is something we’re happy about.”

  “Are you kidding?” her friend’s eyes bugged out just a bit further than normal. “A devastatingly handsome, smart, courageous war hero wants to eat you out. Where’s the ‘not happy?’”

  Chloe had come to her best girlfriend hoping for a moral compass: think about God, your brother, etc. Now, she realized the error of her ways. Gwen was never going to condemn a woman for disobeying this particular slice of doctrine, no matter how much fellowship and support the Mormon church had provided her. Or maybe Chloe was fooling herself. Maybe she craved the encouragement, even more than the wrist-slap.

  Damnit. What was it with men? They managed to complicate otherwise tidy emotions. They ruined everything.

  “What’s the matter? Was it not fun?” Gwen’s eyebrows joined in the center of her forehead, suddenly playing the Defensive Mama Bear.

  “It’s not that it wasn’t fun.” It was the best effing thing that’s ever happened to me, she didn’t say. “But there’s so many reasons why this is bad. Like, very, very, very bad.”

  They sat in this truth for a moment. Chloe was disappointed when Gwen didn’t immediately crack back with a comforting word, but not entirely surprised. Her friend had certainly wormed her way around the pre-marital sex ban in a dozen ways, but she’d never done so with a man staying in her house, who was a friend to the community. She’d also never done it with a man who wasn’t Mormon. And as far as Chloe knew, she’d never had a man do to her what Ryder had done to her, orally. It was unfamiliar terrain, having a sexual one-up on Ms. Lilly.

  “It’s definitely a tricky situation,” Gwen said, finally. “But we’re still young. Lots of things are changing in the church. People are more progressive these days, more realistic.”

  “You think Elder Johannes is more progressive?”

  “Touche. Guess I was thinking of, like...” Gwen gestured, vaguely—“The Romneys. They have their moments.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “Just trying to be helpful. Anyways. Fuck the shoulda-woulda-couldas for a moment—do you want it to happen again?”

  Chloe closed her eyes. She tried to imagine the rest of Ryder’s open-ended visit passing as if the night before had never happened. Could she really keep sitting across from him at the dinner table, keep griping at him about his slights against her religion, as if nothing had happened? Even the idea of this effort seemed to drain her. It wouldn’t work. He was a magnet, and she was metal. Their next union wasn’t just something she wanted—it was something that had to happen. She felt spiritually convinced.

  “Oh, no,” Gwen said slowly. Chloe had forgotten her best friend’s probing eyes on her face, and tried to snap herself back to reality. But Gwen was ever-intuitive. “You’re totally in love with him, aren’t you?”

  “Gwen, what? No! People don’t just fall in love after a few...dangerous liaisons.” One well-placed eyebrow raise from her best friend finished the exchange. Gwen wasn’t buying it.

  “What would you do?” Chloe asked, finally. This was the first time in memory that talking to her best friend hadn’t made her feel better about a problem, more equipped to deal with conflict. When her uncle had died, when her brother had been wounded, when a dozen “reedy, nametag-wearing” Mormon boys had dented her heart, Gwen had been ready to deliver advice both witty and consoling. But today, she seemed to have nothing that helped. It was making Chloe even more anxious.

  “I guess I would try really, really hard to figure out if it’s love,” she said, slowly. “Listen, Chloe. I love you. I support you. So does your family, for the most part. But I remember when my Dad was going through hell about this stuff, and he did eventually have to make a choice. So that’s kind of what it boils down to, right? If—when—it comes time to make a choice between Ryder and all this”—she gestured around the soda shop, but Chloe understood what she meant—“what would you rather have?”

  Him, or the community? Him, or the childhood she’d known, the people who cared about her, the whole worldview she’d been schooled in? Chloe slurped at her milkshake, and brushed her blond hair behind her ears. She thought of a favorite literary heroine, who’s advice she preferred to take this morning, even as Gwen fixed her with a steely, serious stare.

  I’ll think about it tomorrow, she told herself.

  Chapter Eleven

  But she couldn’t follow even this, the easiest piece of advice. She was thinking about it that night, once again, as her family moseyed up the stairs post-Scrabble. John had hung around for a while after dinner and spoken to Ryder in the corner in serious, hushed tones, but not even her brother’s frown could banish what had happened on the couch. Against all her better judgment, Chloe had come down for every meal that day in the skimpiest garments her mother could tolerate: an empire-waisted hippie dress that designated the barest outline of her actual figure, and skinny jeans. Elder Johannes frowned at her clothing, but didn’t say a word. The twins took turns giving Chloe a thumbs-up, which she steadfastly ignored.

  “Got a hot date later?” her mother joked. Chloe pulled a face; she knew that if her mother really suspected a gentleman caller in the mix, she’d be chock full of her typical, double-edged “encouragements.” (Her mother was great at the pseudo-compliment: “You’d look so much prettier in black. It’s a slimming color, you know.”) But apparently the entire community had given up on Chloe’s ability to find a mate without assistance, for no one connected the dots. Except Ryder, of course. She caught him staring at her cleavage more than once, a look of wonder on his face.

  Movies, Chloe realized, had given her more useful information than she’d realized. Gwen’s illicit treasure trove of romantic comedies had
all the superficial guidelines she needed to “keep him interested.” In the day after Couch Night, and her best friend’s conflicting counsel in the soda shop, Chloe pursued flirtation with resolve. That afternoon, she baked cookies. She sang around the house, in the voice she knew Ryder loved. And she made a point of gabbing loudly to the twins about a new member of the Church with “nice eyes.” She felt a little fraudulent, but the results were obvious. Especially once John had finally heaved himself up the stairs and into bed.

  She stood in the kitchen this time, waiting for his arrival as she washed dishes. Her heart pounded against the cage of her chest. She continued to do her best to ignore Gwen’s wise, world-weary tone, saying: when you have to make a choice...

  “What the hell, Chloe?” Ryder had strode into the room quickly, not bothering to tiptoe. He reached around her and shut off the water in the sink. Their faces were inches apart once more, but this time their chemistry wasn’t so giddy. Ryder looked angry.

  “What?” Chloe snapped back. She heard the cross-ness in her voice, but it was too late to take it back.

  “‘What?’” he mocked, before lowering his voice. “You left me here last night with my goddamn dick in my hand, saying all this ‘let’s take it slow’ crap. You come onto me in the fucking church basement, and then ignore me for the rest of the day. Now you saunter around this morning like you’re trying to snag the Prom King. What gives?”

  She was cowed by the storm in his eyes. Without meaning to, without even realizing she could, she had hurt Ryder Strong. She had hurt a man’s feelings. Her skin went hot again, in that maddening way it did when she was in his company.

  “I didn’t mean to,” she said. She squeezed out the sponge, and sank into the nearest kitchen chair. Suddenly, she was very tired. “Look. I don’t really know how to do this.”

  “And you think I do?”

  “I’m pretty sure you know more than me,” she tossed back. For the first time that evening, Ryder smiled. He sank into the chair opposite.