Exquisitely Yours: A Sin City Tale

by M. Jay Granberry

  “What’s the other way?”

  “I can shotgun you,” I offer, working hard to contain the excitement immediately pumping through my veins at the prospect of sharing any kind of intimate contact. “Full disclaimer, we’ll have to get up close and personal.”

  “How close?” she asks, scooting a couple of inches closer.

  “A lot closer than that.”

  I take another drag, holding the smoke in my cheeks and slowly, my eyes searching hers, I lean forward, giving her ample opportunity to retreat, but she doesn’t.

  My face is about an inch from hers, our lips perfectly aligned, and I blow.

  Smoke billows around us. Most of it dissipating into the night air. It’s not much of a hit but Jessica’s eyes flutter as she draws a shallow breath of the pungent smoke.

  She doesn’t cough.

  Good sign.

  “You want another hit?”

  I’m not trying to get her totally baked. Holding the smoke in my mouth first dilutes it, makes it a little less potent and easier to take in for a newbie.

  She nods in answer to my question, scooting even closer.

  “This time I’m gonna need you to open up for me.” I grip Jessica’s chin and her mouth parts wider, the tip of her tongue darting out to swipe the center crease of her bottom lip.

  The movement, slight and delicate, infuses my bloodstream with unfiltered lust.

  “When I exhale, breathe it in nice and slow, okay?” My voice is deeper. The words coming in a raspy growl. Her nearness way more intoxicating than the smoke filling the space between my ears.

  I take another deep pull. This time when I lean forward, she meets me halfway. Our lips connect in a perfect, sexy seal and I release the fumes into her mouth.

  Jessica’s chest rises with an inhale and this time she does cough.

  “I’m okay.” She pulls back coughing into her hand, wide eyes watering. “That one burned a little.”

  “How do you feel?” Of its own accord, my hand slides into the soft hair at the nape of her neck while my eyes roam her face, trying to assess her level of intoxication through my own.

  “I don’t really feel much of…” Jessica shakes her head and rolls her eyes up, searching the starless sky before they drop back to mine. “Anything.”

  The pliant muscles under my fingertips and the gentle sway of her body call bullshit. It’s more likely that she doesn’t recognize the high because it hits differently than drunkenness.

  “Can we do another one?”

  “You sure about that?” I gently dig a thumb into the muscles of her neck and the low moan that escapes her mouth hits me somewhere between see where this goes and lay her back to take it where it needs to go.

  “I am.” She pushes up to her knees, scooting close enough that I tip my head back to keep eye contact.

  Raising the spliff to my lips, I take a long pull to once again fill my cheeks with smoke. This time Jessica moves forward, her mouth soft on mine. Her hair falls forward and her hands grip the tops of my shoulders. I already feel the suction before I blow.

  The exchange is smooth.

  No coughing or awkwardness. The smoke dissipates around our heads, but she doesn’t retreat to her side of the sofa. Instead, she brings her mouth back to mine and my body lights up.

  Heart pumping faster.

  Dick getting harder.

  Breaths getting deeper as I try to pull in enough oxygen to get my brain synapses to fire.

  Her lips on mine is barely a kiss. It’s tentative and subtle. A barely-there press of our skin, almost like she’s asking for permission or is unsure if I’ll like it.

  For the record: I fucking love it.

  “Daniel…?” she whispers, forehead dropping to mine.

  I hesitate because the woman vibrating under my touch is, in a roundabout way, my bandmate’s little sister, which has the potential to get extremely messy ridiculously fast. That’s before you consider all the other differences—age, background, ethnicity—that, on a good day, make people intolerant.

  “Talk to me, lady—”

  “What if I don’t want to talk?” she replies in a husky whisper. “What if I want…” This. She doesn’t say the word, but it’s not necessary when she straddles my lap, a knee resting on either side of my thighs.

  Jessica’s weight settles over my erection. Through the thin material of my boxers, I can make out plump pussy lips and the ridge of her opening. The scent of her excitement hits my nose and I grind up because how could I not?

  I fist the curls at the back of her head and attack her mouth. Closer. I need to get closer. Her tongue teases mine, sliding and twisting, and I’m going up in flames…flayed from the inside, and that’s before her hands comb through my hair and her hips grind down.

  “Fuck.” I snap forward, effortlessly flipping Jessica beneath me.

  Our lips lose contact in the maneuver. We’re both panting, chests rising and falling in a harsh but excited rhythm. With every inhale our ribs collide, and our bellies kiss, and in the abnormally silent night, every breath sounds loud and labored.

  A finely sculpted leg curves over my hip bone, amping up an already explosive situation to a new level. Much to my chagrin, Jessica once again makes the first move.

  Skilled hands rove the muscles over my shoulders and arms, kneading, gripping, scratching. She leans up; an open-mouth kiss ghosts over my Adam’s apple and my body spasms and, hand to God, I whimper.

  Pull it together, D.

  Do not embarrass yourself by blowing your load after a couple of minutes of heavy petting and what equates to a bump-and-grind.

  But God, this body and these lips.

  Her hands dive back into my hair, using the leverage to draw me down into a spine-tingling, nut-tightening, blown-away-like-I’m-center-stage-on-a-world-stage kind of kiss.

  On instinct and out of self-preservation, I cuff her wrists in both hands, raise them above her head, and lock them to the arm of the sofa.

  “Goddamn, Jessie.” I break the kiss on a groan. “Give me a sec.”

  Eyes closed, she lazily nods. Her chest rises and falls in a stilted staccato. “Mmm. ’Kay.”

  Contrary to the words, Jessica’s body rolls beneath mine. Her breasts press into my chest, her pelvis seals to mine, the leg over my hip tightens.

  “Jessica…” I warn in a terse voice. It’s taking every ounce of restraint I can muster not to pull down her tiny shorts and go straight to pound town.

  “Daniel…” She eyes me through cracked eyelids. Her body literally vibrating with desire. “Please don’t stop. I never…” She breathes. “Just once I want to know.”

  She just wants to know what?

  My mind spins like a fucking top, careening, first one way and then the other at that morsel of information. Does she want to know what I’ll feel like filling her body? How wide she’ll need to stretch to accommodate my length? Girth? Maybe she wants to know how I fuck? The answer to which is, loose—letting the moment unfold, no maps, no expectations, only instinct and drive. Oh, and wild. I don’t believe in perfunctory actions taken because an article in the latest issue of Men’s Health promised it would ‘drive her wild’ or because my friend said it worked for his lady.

  My dick swells uncomfortably tight at the images my mind conjures in answer to the hypothetical questions Jessie might ask, at Jessie fully and beautifully naked and on display for me. Legs parted, the plump slit of her pussy exposed and glistening. Wet, needy, soft female flesh waiting for me to touch and eat and fuck.

  Rein it in, man. You’re not fucking Sin’s soon-to-be little sister-in-law outside on a sofa. Not gonna happen.

  I take a deep breath, forcing the air over the lump of desire that has wedged itself in the space just under my Adam’s apple.

  “What?” I croak.

  Je
ssica’s eyes drop from mine. Embarrassed, she turns her head to the side, and my heart rate kicks up a notch.

  Please don’t let me have messed this up.

  I place a hand on her cheek, caressing the skin that’s smooth, slightly heated from a blush, and I wait.

  I will not push her. I won’t be that guy who thinks just because she gave me a kiss, she owes me the whole shebang. As the seconds tick by I realize my opening is more than likely diminishing.

  I drop my hand from her face and go to push away, but she brings the other leg up to bracket my ribs. Ankles cross at my waist. She turns eyes on me and in their depth, I see the internal battle. The push and pull of a woman alight with passion but struggling with the base and carnal realization that she wants it with a man, me, that she doesn’t know.

  I haven’t promised anything, and she knows instinctively that I won’t. That I’m not the guy that’ll be hers, one that she can take home to her momma or flaunt with her high sadity friends.

  We have a shelf life. From my perspective it expires when the gentle high from the weed fully evaporates and the blazing sun, unique to the desert valley, finally breaks over the eastern rim of mountains.

  “Show me what it feels like to live in the moment.” Her eyes flutter with that statement. She’s achingly exposed and vulnerable. Asking the bad boy to give her what good girls aren’t supposed to want.

  Jessica is new to me. A mystery discovered and waiting to be solved. In our brief history, I’ve been able to put a couple of things together.

  One. She’s the quintessential Vegas girl. Honey-brown skin, sun-kissed and flawless. An effortless kind of beauty cultivated on the West Coast. If I use the surprised eyes and stilted speech she’s given me during what I’d call tamed flirtation as a marker, she doesn’t recognize her own appeal.

  Two. She’s a Johnson through and through. Cultured. Moneyed. Responsible. A little less severe than her brother but more controlled, purposeful.

  And three, she’s never given voice to her desire. Never looked a lover in the eye and demanded in explicit detail what she wants.

  It’s not that she can’t identify it. The strong muscles straining against my hold around her wrist, the hips unconsciously rocking against my shaft, the pupils dilated and totally eclipsing the hazel irises, tell me her body knows.

  Just to test the theory I meet the next shift of her hips with a shallow cotton-covered thrust. Her lips fall apart on a gasp and her legs draw back further, opening her even more to me.

  Mmm. Fascinating. A study of opposites.

  Doesn’t change the fact that we’re not fucking in Adam’s backyard, but it’s definitely something to be tucked away and examined if I ever get the chance.

  “Forget I said that. I…”

  There’s a weight to her words that tempers the heat pulsing through my veins. At twenty-four, Jessica Johnson should be footloose and fancy-free. Making out under the stars in front of a sick view and a sparkling blue pool shouldn’t be a one-off event.

  “I’m not stopping, just taking a little break, lady.” More like a big break.

  Jessica is young, nine years my junior, and the reality of who I am, a man who has spent the last fifteen years of my life indulging in the frivolous, and the fun, shines a spotlight on the disparity between us in age and experience.

  I’d be willing to bet good money that up until this point her sexual encounters were the juvenile kind. The kinds that take place in the back seats of luxury vehicles or hotel rooms. The ones that set the stage with cliché expectations.

  In this setting, in my arms, there’s no stage, no directions. We do what we want to do. Go where it feels good.

  And eureka. I’ve hit the nail on the head. The uncertainty centers around the unknown.

  One more thing that solidifies my decision not to go there tonight.

  I don’t like uncertainty.

  When we go there, shit, I’m already thinking like it’s a foregone conclusion. If is the word I’m looking for. If, with a capital I and F, I want her sure, unwavering.

  That’s a hard line that I have never and will never cross. I don’t take advantage of beautiful girls who will no doubt regret me in the light of day. She deserves better than an outdoor fuck with a relative stranger.

  Which still leaves the question of what the young Ms. Johnson deserves.

  “Would you kiss me again?”

  I narrow the inches between our mouths until my lips hover over hers. “Only because you asked so sweetly.”

  Once again, I’m deep diving into this kiss, and this woman. This time it’s a languid survey of a new body, a new taste.

  Our tongues stroke instead of duel.

  My hands glide instead of grasp.

  I release her wrists because I want her hands on me. As much as I loved the heated clutch of her fingers pulling me closer, right now I crave a more nuanced exploration. One that leaves us both shaking and spent, and familiar in a way gained exclusively through touch and breath and sound.

  No fucking tonight. Doesn’t mean you can’t do something else, though.

  “What do you like?” I wonder aloud as my palm slides down her toned thigh, stopping just shy of her pussy.

  “Huh?” Jess blinks, passion-glazed hazel eyes looking up at me.

  “What.” I nip at the skin of her neck. “Do you like?”

  Arched brows bunch as her eyes search mine. “I don’t understand. Do you mean like a position?” The last word is whispered, and once again her eyes drop from mine, embarrassed.

  “Exactly like that. But given that we aren’t fucking, I was thinking something a little tamer, like nipple play, or finger-fucking.”

  “Yes,” she says in a rush, voice tinted with wonder.

  “Yes?” I ask, dark and husky. “To which one? The first? The last? Both?”

  “Why do I have to choose? I’ve never had a guy…”

  I kiss the words out of her mouth. The mention of another man…now, when she’s under me, soft and pliant, is a no-go. Jealousy for the nameless, faceless guy that I don’t know, have never met, that I’m sure can’t fuck her like I can with expertise and care and adoration, snakes around my belly.

  We break apart panting, but I stay close enough to breathe in the air she expels.

  “I’m not asking about another guy.” My lips graze hers with each word.

  “I want to know what you like. What turns you on. What you think about late at night when you’re alone, uncensored, and needy. I’ve already decided that tonight can’t end with se…”

  “Why?” she cuts me off. “Please tell me this isn’t about Jake.”

  Yes and no. We already know that her brother will peel my balls like grapes if he finds out that I so much as touched her, but it’s more than that. I don’t like the location. It lacks the privacy needed to take her how I’d want. I’m not a fan of the fact that I smoked her out and as a result, I’m not sure if this is post-high horny or if she would have allowed herself the same freedom without the weed as an instigator.

  The more I think about obstacles, the more obstructions pop up, and the more hopeless hooking up with Jessica Johnson seems.

  “Your brother isn’t our only issue,” I speak the obvious.

  “Actually, he isn’t a problem at all,” she counters. “So,” white, even teeth sink into the corner of her bottom lip. “What is?”

  “We’re high, for one—”

  “I already told you that I don’t feel…” I place a thumb over her lips, ending the useless explanation.

  “Which doesn’t change the fact that I think you are. I am,” I add as an afterthought. I don’t feel intoxicated, but the world is soft at the edges. The sensations of her hands toying with the ends of my hair and her legs restlessly moving against my sides are heightened in my dulled senses.

  “Is that w
hy you don’t want to do it?” I barely contain a laugh at the middle school vernacular.

  “Yeah, it’s one of multiple reasons I don’t want to fuck,” I say, purposefully refusing to tone down my language. As a woman, if she wants sex, she should be able to ask for it. Articulate not only her body but her words.

  “If we don’t…” She looks at me with big eyes, unable to bring herself to repeat the crass expletive.

  “Fuck.” I supply.

  She nods her head, teeth gnawing on the corner of her bottom lip. “I don’t want you to think I’m a—a tease or something. I…” Her body tenses, the muscles braced against my response.

  “Let me stop you right there. You have every right to only go so far without being called a tease. I would never.”

  “No?”

  “Not at all.” I give her a moment to let that sink in before continuing. “Which brings us full circle. Boning is off the table,” I reiterate, leaning forward to silence her protest with a slight kiss that instantly goes deeper and burns hotter than I originally intended.

  “What do you like?” I ask against her lips, a little desperate. If I can’t have her tonight, I at the very least want to rock her fucking world. I want to be the gold standard that keeps other men sidelined because, even given days of seduction and chance after chance, they can’t make her feel what I do with an impromptu make-out session on my buddy’s couch.

  “You,” she answers, nipping my lips. “I like…you.”

  I crush my mouth to hers in a blistering kiss. Her quiet confession lands somewhere between my ego and hunger, bolstering both to dangerous levels.

  It’s the first and oldest story in the world but because it’s mine—ours—it feels bigger somehow. Unique and special, and more meaningful than every moment I’ve had before it.

  The cool thing, the thing sealing my mouth to hers and spurring my fingers under the edge of her swimsuit bottoms, the unspoken thing that kept my eyes finding hers throughout the night, the very same thing that got us here, on this sofa, is that Jessica is in it with me.

  She arches underneath me as I slide a thumb through her wet folds, and she gasps as the same digit circles her entrance.