Ally was grateful that he didn’t tease her. She wasn’t sure she could stand it if he took his time. She squeezed the cushion beneath her hands and stood on her toes as her pleasure swelled with every swipe of his tongue, every thrust of his fingers.
Unable to support her own weight a moment longer, she went down onto her forearms and pressed her forehead into the sofa seat. Ethan draped his free arm across her ass and held her, bobbing his head against the cushion as he lapped at her. His lashes fluttered as he closed his eyes, and she could feel the energy centering between her thighs.
She moaned, and it was like a signal flare went off. His fingers pumped her faster, stoking the fire into an inferno. His lips closed around her wet mound, and he used the entire width of his tongue on her.
“Oh, fuck yes,” she said with a growl before her body seized with the onslaught of her climax. His grip on her tightened, and she let go, grinding her pussy against his mouth as her body erupted. She bit into her fist and squeezed her eyes shut, blind and deaf to everything but the pleasure rocketing through her.
She came down slowly, her weight supported by Ethan as he continued to lick her with slow, lazy strokes. The withdrawal of his fingers sent a shard of disappointment to the bone, but he quickly replaced them with his tongue penetrating her cunt. She opened her eyes and pushed up enough to look between her body and the sofa. He kept her teetering on the most decadent precipice between satiation and famine, his wet lips brushing against her pink folds and his tongue darting in and out of view.
“Hey,” she said, and when he didn’t stop, she reached down and tugged his hair.
Ethan craned his neck and grinned. “Hey.”
Ally groaned as he wriggled out from between her legs and then groaned again when he flipped her onto her back. The twinge that had been lurking between her shoulders spread along the back of her neck as she watched him stand and peel away his clothes.
He kicked his boots aside and shuffled out of his jeans. When he reached for her, Ally stretched out her leg and pressed her foot against his abdomen.
“Now what?”
“I want to look at you for a minute,” she said quietly. “I like looking at you when you’re ready to fuck.” She wiggled her toes. His abdominal muscles rippled magnificently beneath the ball of her foot.
She lowered her foot as Ethan straightened. For a moment he just stood with his hands at his side, his back rigid and his round shoulders squared. Warmth spread through her as she studied him. She slipped her hands behind her head, mocking the pose he had taken earlier, and let her gaze slide over him from head to toe.
When her attention honed in on his erection, he closed his fist around his dick. “You tie me up in knots, you know that? What do you say—this time around we skip the breaking up and just keep making up?” He smiled and slid his hand along his dick.
He took a step forward, and Ally brought her foot up again. “What makes you think that’s what I want?”
“Ally, you had your chance,” he said as he pumped his fist along the length. “You could have walked a dozen times. You could walk now, but you won’t, and we both know it.” He placed his other hand on her foot and leaned forward. In a voice so low, so sinful, he said, “Turn around.”
Ally obeyed, knees pressed into the cushion, fingers wrapped around the edge of the sofa.
First, there were his hands, splayed across her ass. Next, the tip of his penis brushed against her. Then, the sharp intake of breath as he filled her, the sting when she bit into her bottom lip, and the wooden frame of the sofa creaking with the weight of two bodies.
She relished each stroke of his cock, the way it stretched her. She clung to the sofa’s edge to keep from careening as he pushed and pulled her. Every time he went balls deep, Ethan grunted and Ally answered with a moan and pushed with her knees, riding him back until the friction became so intense it was almost unbearable.
“Ally, baby, beg me like you do,” he said with a puff of air. He clamped down on her shoulders and worked his hips faster, then slipped his other hand between her legs and brushed his thumb over her sensitive clit. Ally pressed her lips together and held in a retort until it beaded on her tongue like a drop of water.
The drop spilled and her words with it. “Ethan, please fuck me harder. I need you to come inside me. Oh fuck, Ethan, please don’t stop, please fuck me.”
He grunted, and the tempo of his thrusts increased. “I’m gonna come soon. Real soon.”
Ally reached behind her and cupped his ass with one hand. “Don’t stop. Don’t hold back on me.”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
The ache that had been budding at the small of her back diminished to nothing as they moved as one body, feeding on the unstoppable pace. She was on fire. With the heel of Ethan’s palm rubbing against her clit, she rode him forward and backward until that first delicious pulse ran the length of her pussy.
“Oh god, yes, here we go,” he said. His hand tightened on her shoulder, and he dragged her against him. “Come on, Ally. Let me feel you squeezing down on me.”
His words were the catalyst that drove her over the edge. The slick walls of her cunt formed a tight sheath around his dick. Close to her ear, Ethan cursed. The hand between her legs cupped her wet mound. His huge arm cinched around her, and he pushed forward. He buried his face into the hollow of her neck, and Ally felt the sting of his teeth as he bit down. She clamped her legs together to hold on to the decadent feel of his thick cock throbbing inside.
Ethan flinched, and she was almost crushed by his grip when he tightened his embrace. He pulled out, and his hot semen jetted against her crack. She tilted her head back and sighed as the warm rivulet ran down her thighs. She flopped forward and rested her head against the sofa’s edge. His mouth moved against her shoulder, and she felt his teeth, his tongue.
One breath at a time, the tension in his body ebbed away, and he sighed. “Damn, baby.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I mean it. Enough with this fucking around. I want this to be for good.”
Biting down on her bottom lip, Ally giggled. “That’ll cost you.”
“You’ll get it. Whatever you want.”
LOOKING FOR THE WINTERGREEN
Trish DeVene
When my younger brother came home for winter break, he brought a friend with him. Our small ranch house was buried under swoops of snow, glazed and treacherous. I watched them approach from the front window. The friend trudged behind my brother, his black hair glinting in the stark sunlight, his eyes weighted under dark brows and lashes. He hugged his narrow frame and disappeared behind my brother’s bulk as they stomped up the three wooden stairs I’d scraped clean that morning.
“The couch or floor is all we have,” my mom said, then brushed by me to sweep her dust cloth over the console at the front door. “That’s where he’ll sleep.”
I imagined his black hair on our clean white pillow, Gran’s soft gold blanket halfway up his body, his satin back umber in the night. I let the wispy curtains fall back over the glass when the friend stepped on the landing.
But still I peered through the sheer curtain as they stood there talking. My brother was one of those amiable guys who had a million friends in high school. It’d been nothing new to have a different boy sleeping on our couch each weekend. I was the bookish older sister who walked past them with disdain.
I wanted to recite Hamlet for them, Wuthering Heights, and show them how no real-life man could match what an imagination could conjure. Would this college friend have read Les Misérables, The Brothers Karamazov?
His profile made me think of the valley out back at sunset, the gentle slopes that rode out to the tree line. He could be that evening sky, that last breath of the sun’s deep, red heat. He didn’t belong in this white landscape; he was brown-skinned and warm. He should stay in a house of adobe, clay that matched his skin. I tasted clay in the back of my mouth.
As my brother’s hand reached for the door, I che
cked the ice patches under this friend’s feet, sure they’d be melting.
They crossed the threshold, laughing. We placed importance on thresholds and bridges in our house. Think first; know the destination; prepare. There should be commitment in any crossing. Did he know what he stepped over and into?
No, he didn’t seem to think at all about that step. He slipped out of his jacket and shook that sleek black hair. Treacherous, I thought, to skim that hair. It was darker than our starless nights here in the middle of nowhere. Maybe he was used to wandering in mystery, since darkness capped him daily.
He looked up, and I stepped back at the sight. Here was his light—gold-brown eyes, sparkling, as his full lips smiled—a wide, white, dimpled smile. This would be the token that would pass him safely over any threshold.
I smiled. My mother touched my elbow. “Leah, get some milk warming. The boys might want hot chocolate.”
My brother shook off his coat and nodded toward his friend. “Mom, this is Aurelio.”
“Thanks, Mrs. McConnell, for letting me stay,” Aurelio said. My brother ignored me, no introduction, but Aurelio nodded to me and put out a hand. “I’m Aurelio.”
I reached for the slim brown hand. He had a masculine grace that surpassed any feminine attempt I might have made. My hand quivered, reaching for his. He was from a warm country, a welcoming place. “Leah,” I whispered, then escaped to get the hot chocolate and breathe.
I HAD MY OWN STUDIES, though I hadn’t gone away to school. I left my bedroom door open to listen to kitchen chairs scrape and catch on our broken tile. Books thudded, pages fluttered, and the two male voices were low. They had a botany project together, a long-weekend assignment in our snow-buried home.
The spine of my book rested between my legs, and when he spoke, my hands trembled and the book rubbed what began to ache in me. Masturbation was nothing new to me, but throbbing at the mere sight of a man was new. My breasts swelled in my flimsy bra. I wanted to raise my sweater, to sit with sixteenth-century literature rubbing what swelled.
Desire for a real man. This was foreign. I’d had sex once at the start of college. Sex only because I was tired of being asked what I was waiting for. I fell in love with literature, with brooding poets and feisty boys coming of age and fallen angels seeking redemption. I fell in love again and again, but never with real people.
Footsteps traveled the hall toward my room, and I had to pull my hand from under my sweater. My heart was quick; I couldn’t move the book from its place of pressure.
His fingers touched the age-softened door frame before he peered into my room. “Sorry,” he said. “Your brother said you might proofread our paper.”
I was lying back on the pillow, the book still pressing. His slender legs stepped through, another threshold conquered with ease. Sheets of paper fanned from his other hand, in line with his narrow pelvis. The belt looked like a threshold to me, but a bound place. I could imagine no bridge to arrive there safely.
My chest rose with a long breath, and I wanted those slender, brown fingers to peel each sweater button from its careful eye. I just nodded. He held the paper tentatively forward, and I watched. I didn’t move. Then he grinned, and my chest broke with effervescence, something tingling up my throat. If I spoke, my tongue would only know the words You’re beautiful. I bit my lip and smiled. He laughed and set the paper on my bed.
IN THE BLACK NIGHT of our country house, the gutters creaked with each gust of wind. Despite the cold, I had to throw back the covers as I rubbed myself, listening, straining to hear one breath, one soundasleep mutter from the room where he slept. My room was centered between my mother’s at the far end and my brother’s up front. I could go into the kitchen for water; I could check the rattling at the front door. I wanted to see his face asleep. I wanted to see those dark lashes at rest, the moonlight’s sheen on his cheekbone, the full lips soft with sleep.
I imagined his silhouette now in my doorway, coming to retrieve the paper. His knee touching the edge of my bed. The impression as he set one hand to the mattress. As he leaned in farther, into the cold stream of moonlight, his shoulders bare, neck sleek and strong.
What was this strange attraction? I didn’t know him. He was no full-bodied character alive with yearning and passion that matched my own. He’d stood on our porch step. He’d smiled.
My hand didn’t listen to my mind; it rubbed quickly, and my body arched to a silhouette. As I came down from the pinnacle of release, I was sweating, breathing too hard, and I saw the room again in its empty, stark reality.
THE NEXT MORNING, rattling pans woke me. My mother was making breakfast for the boys. A hearty breakfast always for my brother. I understood. I was here; he was away. He had that freckle-faced enthusiasm that she remembered in Dad.
I wondered for a moment what she thought of Aurelio. Would she flush when she passed him a plate of eggs? Did girls scramble for the desk next to his at school? Teachers change Cs to As when he flashed that smile?
I was angry in the melting morning. Icicles dripped outside my window, and I brushed out my hair, vowing not to shower until after I had coffee. When I walked into the kitchen, his mouth was open to a forkful of scrambled eggs. He shoveled them in before he smiled. Anger dissipated. I was the melting icicle.
Between him and me were twelve tile squares, two chair backs, one oblong table with a cracked Formica top, and a great wash of blurring sunlight. No slim belt-line barrier this morning. It was as if the entire room were a blockade. I was braless under the sweatshirt I’d thrown on, and the soft fabric scratched my nipples, sharpening them.
“Morning,” I managed, skirting the counter, as far from him as our small kitchen allowed. He grinned again and bit into the toast.
I was used to pale: the kitchen walls a faded yellow wash, the curtains sheer to sunlight, and all of us fair-skinned Irish. He was a shaft of dark color sitting at our table. Raven hair cut a straight line just above his black shirt collar, only a sliver of brown neck, and his hair fringed down his forehead, meeting black, defined brows. He looked down at his plate, focused on food. And he looked warmer than a hot plate of fresh pancakes, that syrup-colored skin shining in the streaks of sun.
I was staring at the sheen on his cheekbone when I realized he’d looked up. The smile was gone, his warm eyes darker. He knew I’d been looking. I tried a small smile and picked up the coffee mug on the counter, but he only stared.
So this was how it felt when a man knew a woman’s desire. I bit my lip, immediately annoyed with myself for this foolish reaction. Bitten lips. What did that mean?
His arm stretched toward me, that smooth hand wrapping the cold chrome of the chair. Here was a bridge—fingernails, knuckles, forearm. “Are you having breakfast?” he asked, and the chair scraped toward me.
I held the coffee pot up. “Just this for now.” I ignored the bridge, poured the dark liquid into my mug, and started back toward the bedroom.
“Did you get to look at the paper?” he called.
The paper. Yes, it was on my bed. I was stalled in the hallway, between the pull of his stare and safety. I pointed toward my room and nodded. The coffee mug steamed, my hand burning around it. I felt my clothes dissipate with the steam, and I was left standing in his stare. “Yes,” I managed. “It’s . . . ”
“I’ll come get it when I’m done,” he said.
I trusted my feet to take me back. I sat on the bed beside the paper. I wanted him.
“LEAH,” MY BROTHER WAS CALLING as I towel-dried my hair. I’d come out of the shower to find the paper gone and hot disappointment stinging my eyes. “Hey, Leah.”
I penciled a smudge of eyeliner around my eyes and made a quick skid of lipstick over my dull lips. I could think of nothing so silken as his skin to put against my mouth, to rub along my cheek, to sigh against. He set a kind of hollow in me that hungered. Like a child testing with its mouth, mine hung open, needing him inside.
My brother had a hand on the front doorknob, about to step
out. “Leah, I gotta go into town for display boards. Take Aurelio out back to the winterberry patch. We need leaf, berry, and root samples. There’s a shovel in the shed.”
Aurelio was bundled in a black padded jacket, a dark knit cap pressing his black hair tight against his forehead. “You can just point me,” he said, his eyes wide with apology.
There it was, something lodging in my throat again, a tingle in my chest. His mouth spread slightly, again apologetic. I would trudge a path for him myself, clear the land if need be, to get him where he needed to go.
“So . . . good, right?” my brother asked, paused in the white slit that opened to the brisk and sparkling morning. I felt like one of those big-eyed dolls, my head bobbing acquiescence. I wanted to get under Aurelio’s winter jacket, feel the warmth of his chest. My brother looked from me to Aurelio, stepped one foot over the landing, and hesitated.
“You’re letting in the cold,” I said.
The door slammed as he left; the house suctioned us in.
“You don’t have to,” Aurelio said, those fine white teeth flashing this time.
Sir Galahad had a fine white smile; Lancelot a captivating grin. Nothing I imagined compared to this.
“It’s okay,” I practically whispered, then shoved my feet into the boots at the door, lacing them tight up my legs to stop the ridiculous quivering that threatened to topple me over.
WHEN WE VENTURED from the clean porch into the wide, cold drifts, Aurelio looked down and laughed at our legs drowned in white. “We can’t dig up roots in this.”
“My brother’s stupid,” I said.
He laughed and trudged at my side, though I had to look to be sure his feet really sank into snow. He was soundless, his stride effortless despite his having to raise each leg out and forward and back down. Like an animal, lithe and confident. His shadow nudged mine, and a step drew us closer. I smelled blood, animal hide, but the air was too crisp and pure for such things, and he was draped in nylon.
Nice Girls, Naughty Sex Page 5