I couldn’t do that, though. I’d had a “talking about it” lesson from them today. Later, another time and place. At best. Not right now. Right now, I had to let Andrew show me what he needed from his actions. And I had to take his word for it. Even if that word changed every few days—or every few minutes.
Which left me guessing—which I hated. All the same, I was pretty sure I was right. He’d started to care too much—plus he knew I cared—so he’d pulled back because he was still grieving, afraid to love someone else, probably feeling guilty about any real intimate feelings beyond simple flirting. What had started as light amusement had become too many reminders of what it was to have a real lover: a true connection with another person. What could be scarier after what he’d been through?
Isaac, and others in my life before him, had said I was empathic. Yes, perhaps. In observation and the sort of sympathetic responses only possible in very empathetic people. But empathic didn’t mean telepathic. It meant I suffered when I saw someone else suffering. Not that I could read his mind.
Empathy was going to have to carry the weight with this sixth member of my pack—our hitchhiker, our troublemaker. And, come to find out, one of my best friends.
So this was exactly what we each needed? This was just right?
When I said I didn’t need him to tell me what he’d stolen, I found my lips moving, forming more words, ready to tell him good night again. “Andrew, I—” Stopping, confused, brain catching the words as I realized I’d been about to say I love you instead of good night. Nothing wrong with that, was there? Unless it made him uncomfortable. Unless it hurt something between us that needed more boundaries and less back and forth. Less uncertainty in the meaning behind one another’s actions.
So I hesitated and started to change, again unbidden, almost saying, “I’m sorry,” but the words stopped once more. This time I couldn’t finish them because Andrew’s mouth covered mine. Taste of hot salt and caramel. Lifting both hands to his face as he pressed in until my head struck the white headboard. And it was just right.
Chapter 16
I waited for him to stop. I waited for him to pull away, tell me good night, maybe laugh about something—such as snatching the underwear back from my bedside table before trotting off.
I waited for him to change his mind: to keep me at arm’s length again.
All the time I waited, Andrew leaned into me, following me onto the bed, his hands in my hair, his tongue in my mouth, until it dawned on me that I was waiting in vain. Which was the best news I’d had in a long time.
I was sweating already, yet this feeling was a good heat—a rush like exquisite chocolate when you already thought you were full from dinner. Even through the pressure—him pushing me back to the headboard—he used his lips and tongue to caress mine. So much more than just a kiss; he didn’t simply shove but explored. The heat of his mouth merged with my own the way he molded his lips to mine. His fingers pressed through my hair, then stroked down my face, thumbs over my cheekbones.
With my own fingers I also examined his face, around to the back of his head and tight muscles of his neck. He leaned against me, somehow now sitting on the bed rather than standing, so our hips touched—though he faced the headboard, his knees almost against the bedside table.
He kissed down my jaw to my ear, my neck, inhaling against my skin. Surely he would speak. He would tease, joke about something, compare my taste to a PayDay—anything. He did not. He didn’t say a word—which worried me.
I needed more than empathy. I craved being able to read his mind as much as anything I’d ever wanted—left instead with guesses and uncertainty.
He didn’t close his teeth around my throat but kissed down my flushed skin, slow as a caterpillar, to the hollow there, the points of my collarbone. He kissed as far as the tank would allow, nearly between my breasts, and lifted the hem.
I sat up but grabbed his hands, stopping him.
I meant to say, “Wait a minute.” Or, “Are you sure about this?”
What I said was, “Get the door.” And kissed his hair.
Andrew left the bed to close the door while I pulled back the blanket to climb properly into bed.
Again, I should say something. All I could think of sounded pointless.
I pulled off my top, feeling weird about it in our silence. Guilty wasn’t the right word, even though I couldn’t help thinking of Sarah. More like … scared. For him? Because I didn’t trust he was ready for this kind of relationship? For me? Because I still expected him to flee at any moment? Fool me once and all that. Or for both of us because friendship into lovers could be dangerous ground, potholed with regrets?
My physical relationships with them had caused many problems—a lot of pain. Please, no more casualties on this battlefield.
“Andrew…?”
He tugged off his T-shirt as he stepped back to the bed. Sleek and tanned and beautiful as ever, I realized in the moment before he was close enough to kiss my lips that he looked better than when I’d first met him. Still lean and wiry, yet not so much that I could actually see his ribs—only sculpture-like definition at the false ribs and hipbones. Still a pointer, but not a greyhound.
This raised new questions. The sorts of questions I’d have felt more able to ask Jason than Andrew himself. I hadn’t been mistaken to feel that he’d been noticeably underweight when I’d first met him in July. Now it was the change in him that I hadn’t consciously noticed. Lithe but healthy, his hair thick and begging to be touched, more color in his face.
This health hadn’t come about by stuffing himself on candy bars, but over the summer working with us and spending time at home where he’d been cooking for himself again. Again. But perhaps not eating for the past eight or nine months.
The realization gave me courage—at least that Andrew knew what he was doing, that I was part of his own healing. At the same time, it made me want to cry.
He kept kissing my lips and neck while he climbed onto the bed, only in the cargo pants. I didn’t have to finish my question or say anything else—for which I was grateful to him.
He slipped down the waistband of my underwear with his thumbs. I lifted my hips. Dressed only in the glow of the reading light and warm, rushing air from fans, I watched him return to meet my lips after plucking the panties off my feet.
He studied my skin, his mouth and hands exploring every inch with the visual he was enjoying while I contributed very little to the exercise. I only followed his lead, moving against him and touching him for as long as I could reach. Mostly, he touched me. And yes, cliché, but he touched me in a way I’d never been touched. This was weird because … it shouldn’t have been so weird.
I had not been vastly sexually experienced before meeting my pack. But I wasn’t a total novice either. Lately, my horizons had been expanding. Not to Andrew, though. Andrew had been right when he’d promised he could make other males look like amateurs.
He didn’t even take off his pants as he worked his way down my body, caressing with hands, lips, and tongue. He spent as much time on my arms as my neck, and even more on my hands than my breasts. He was kissing my stomach, stroking my sides, before I even realized he was giving me a massage, using each finger in tiny circular motions, changing pressure from firm force to moth wings.
He kissed my navel while working down my sides with both hands, the play of his fingers over my hips making me shiver. I opened my legs, turning slightly into him as he was beside me. He followed the invitation with only the hint from me, as if choreographed. While he rested on his knees between my feet, I drew my knees up. The whole time his tongue did not leave my skin. While he stroked my thighs he inched his face between my legs. He ran his tongue down, almost into me, inhaling, but back up instead, licking and kissing as if drinking me in.
I reached for his head, raising my hips for more contact, wanting to hold him against me. Andrew did not pause, however: all skin equal, already inching down my inner left thigh with wet, soft kiss
es, massaging my butt and down the outside of my thighs with both hands.
I panted, sweat on my skin as if I’d been jogging, still trying to get closer against him. He returned, moving up while I opened my legs wider and welcomed his tongue once more. Thank you. But it was only an instant—only moving across so he could kiss my right thigh instead.
By the time Andrew had found my knees with his attentions—progressing with the languid ease of one who has several hours to kill and nothing much to do besides, say, practice yoga—I was shivering.
Was this some sort of punishment for sins of my past? I recalled Kage that morning in his home when I’d run out on him. But I’d had to reject all of them, aside from Jason, at various times for various reasons. Time constraints, public settings, and so on. I’d wanted them also. I’d understood the frustration, the unrequited desire, the need building without being met. So I’d thought. Yet I’d never wanted like this before.
I’m sorry, I mentally insisted to Isaac, Zar, Kage, and Jed. I’m so sorry for any time I’ve ever made you feel like this.
Andrew, as if needing to get the lines just right on a sketch, was carefully kissing and caressing my knees and shins. The dry patches on my knees seemed particularly to interest him.
He licked my knees—considering, wine sampling—then leaned over me, supporting himself on his right arm above me while he reached for my bedside drawers.
What? Do you want a condom? Just take your damn pants off.
“Andrew—” I started to sit up.
He kissed my mouth—slow, sensuous, molding to my movements.
I grabbed his face in both hands, failing to finish my sentence.
He extracted something from the drawer and moved back, stroking fingertips of his right hand from my lips to between my legs in an unbroken line. I lifted my hips and he brought his light massage to my clitoris, one finger exploring as his tongue had.
Stay, please, stay.
In his left hand he twisted free the top of the travel-sized tube of shea butter lotion that I kept in the bedside drawer. He must have been able to smell it was there. Or he’d guessed.
While I moved down for more contact from his right hand, willing him to take his pants off, Andrew smoothed the lotion into each of my knees with his left, followed by stroking along my legs.
He used both hands, lips, tongue, and eventually lotion, on my feet. I was stunned by the sensitivity and sensations as he first licked, then kissed, then massaged the soles of my feet, one by one, spending a long time tasting and inhaling against the inner arches where the nerves tingled from his touch. It was absurdly erotic—from tongue to lotion, from the feel to the visual, to the way he kissed the tips of each toe and rubbed his cheek along the top of my foot as if on satin.
When he’d done with my feet—which took a ridiculously long time—and tossed aside the lotion, he started back up. Kissing all along my legs, between my legs, right to left across my pelvis, hipbone to hipbone, then up my stomach. He kissed around my breasts, sucked my nipples, and pressed his ear to my chest, listening to my pounding heart and shaking breaths fluttering through my lungs.
From that position, head on my chest, right elbow supporting some of his weight at my side against the bed, left thumb stroking back and forth over my stiff nipple, his legs were also against mine. I wrapped a leg around his. Worn fabric of his cargo pants felt soft with age. I wriggled against him, trying to get one leg between his, but Andrew was moving again.
Finishing his path back to my mouth, he kissed my chin, then lips, while all I could think about was his groin against mine.
I couldn’t reach his fly, but fumbled at the waistband, hardly able to return his kisses as I gasped and shivered for him.
Please…
Andrew moved up more, his nose in my hair, taking in a long breath. I blindly found his belt buckle and yanked it open. I kissed his jaw, his neck, all I could reach, as I fumbled to push him back, get weight off me so he could remove his pants.
He kissed my hair, twisting long strands around his fingers.
I managed to open the two buttons but couldn’t get the zipper all the way down with his weight against me.
On fire, wet and burning for him, I at last turned my prayers into gasped words. “Andrew … please…”
He pulled back enough to help me. In a moment he had his pants and underwear down, freeing his erection. I held him in while he twisted out of the pants. The glans gleamed wetly in lamplight that made his skin look orange, and darker where engorged with blood. His shaft curved slightly in my hand, reaching for me with the same urgency that I pulled him closer.
I drew up my knees as he settled above me, both at last completely naked, even myself stripped of jewelry for bed—the heat making so much as keeping on a ring unpleasant. Yet not him. I wanted more heat from him, all he could give me—and still more.
I guided him, holding on, while he pushed into me, meeting my eyes. His amber ones glazed over but he blinked and kept the contact. I had to shut mine against the first rush, which merged my own built up need with the ecstasy of finally connecting inside. I found his gaze once more and moved my hands to his face and neck while Andrew also shifted. He moved up, giving me pressure as if this were standing sex. I felt my own climax starting with a sense of shock—which might sound stupid considering how aroused I was. Yet I had no past experience for a frame of reference: intercourse plus orgasm. Literally as fast as it takes to read the words. This had never been a reality for me before.
Again, I gasped his name, then only breathy sounds with the shock and pleasure as I looked into his eyes, holding his face close, fingers digging into the back of his neck. Like the heat and shivers from craving him, my body tingled with pleasure speeding through what must be each nerve, mingling explosively with the feel of him in me.
Andrew pulled himself tighter against me, leaning in until he could penetrate deeper and still keep pressure upward—especially on each slower backstroke before the faster thrust in that made me groan, letting out breath I didn’t have.
The second orgasm was almost part of the first. Cruising, then dipping, falling off while pleasures from the way he touched me remained. Then bursting again, the second round holding me just as long as the first.
I was speechless, breathless, dazed, while Andrew was only starting. He let the eye contact break to kiss me—mouth, jaw, eyelids, hairline. At the same time, he moved his position again, supporting himself more on a knee, drawing his weight back, giving himself more freedom. In this way, he found his stride with gradual experiments. Running through his own favorite pleasures, it seemed, with his speed and angle after he’d started out pushing purely for my stimulation.
Situated how he liked, he withdrew his tongue from my mouth, staying nose to nose, leaving just enough space to focus. I held his face in both hands, staring into his eyes, mouth open, trembling under him.
Soon, he slowed, catching his breath, and changed his balance. He pushed up tighter, still keeping his eye contact as he moved to be taller than me once more. His muscles were bunched, his skin covered in a film of sweat. I wasn’t surprised when he said, “Cassia,” staring into my eyes, his thrusts frantic, then held himself fully inside while his high continued. What was odd, though, was that I wasn’t even surprised by my third orgasm—myself savvy by now that this wasn’t a usual encounter.
I started just after him, coming with him while he held himself as deep into me as he could for his own release, then returned to thrusting as his pleasure rippled and waned. I held on, hands at the back of his neck and head, pulling him in. He resisted this pressure enough to still gaze into my eyes.
What I saw in his was too much to know in the moment. Even at the time, in the rush, I knew those eyes would haunt me. Eyes layered with emotions like a galaxy is layered with stars.
He slowed to only rocking his hips. When his erection began to relax, he withdrew with a new wet heat following him. As he pulled out, broke the gaze to kiss my neck, he
wasn’t relaxing in any other way—his muscles still strained. He trembled as much as I did while we kissed, then moved away.
He was trying to get up, retreat to the bathroom. Yet I’d been a step ahead of him already. I’d known about this part while watching his eyes—which he had so willingly shared with me.
I didn’t let go of his neck, instead using my weight to drag him back down before he could truly sit up or touch a foot to the floor.
“Don’t, Andrew. It’s okay.”
He struggled, trying to turn his back to me, to twist from my hands.
I wrapped a leg over his as well, one hand at his back, one at his head, holding him to me, drawing him in while we gasped and shook and wrestled.
“Stay, please. It’s okay…”
He gave up flight, curling against me when I would not let him run. I draped myself tighter around him, holding his head while he tucked his face against my shoulder and pillow—his body a taught, burning wire.
“I’m sorry, Andrew. I’m so sorry,” I murmured, holding on—to shelter him with my body, my soul—through minutes, or hours, while he cried himself to sleep.
Chapter 17
I was still awake, room dark, fans humming, when my alarm jingled softly from my phone. Andrew, his tears long since dried on our skin, shifted his face against my shoulder. I stroked his hair and reached to silence the phone.
“Shhh, just my alarm. I have to go shower.”
He didn’t budge, apparently drifting back off.
I lay there another ten minutes, rubbing my thumb softly back and forth across his temple, listening to all-night traffic. Preeda had arrived home hours ago.
At last, I had to disengage, removing his hand from my arm, drawing my sweaty leg back from his.
“Sorry.” I carefully sat up, easing away from him. I kissed his eyelids and brow in the gloom. “I love you, Andrew.” Climbing over him to get out of bed with even more care, again stroking his hair, then finding my waiting outfit on the desk.
Moonlight Lovers: A Reverse Harem Shifter Romance (The Witch and the Wolf Pack Book 7) Page 10