by Lindsey Hart
Raiden’s hands are strong and sure. He braces one hand against my hip, and the blistering heat of his touch makes me want to scream already. I nearly tear his hands away from my shorts so I can tear them off, but I manage to restrain myself, barely. He does a pretty good job of being fast, bordering on desperate, all on his own. He gets the button undone, and then the zipper zings through the silence with the force of a fog horn renting the night.
Strong, wonderful, and warm hands tear my shorts down my legs. I kick them off so frantically that I nearly fall over. I’m the one who hooks my fingers in my panties, which are a very unsexy, plain white cotton, before pushing them down my legs so hastily that I hear something rip.
Whatever.
I never liked them anyway.
And even if I did…well, whatever.
Raiden’s hands trail up my legs. Both of them. And god, his hands are glorious. Is it weird I could come just from feeling his hands on my legs? I’ve had some sex in my life before. I mean, I’m thirty. I’ve even been lucky enough to date a couple of guys who knew what they were doing. It just never felt…it never felt like this. Just this is already better than anything I’ve ever experienced.
I’m more of a lights-off kind of girl. I guess I’d also classify myself as tame in bed. Tame, not lame. I have done some experimenting before—kind of. I think. Anyway, the normal Zoe would be stamping her foot and demanding that someone—and I’m not sure who because it’s an irrational demand—turn off the freaking sun, so it’s not so bright. She’d be running for the shelter of the trees because it’s maybe a little more shadowy and shady in there.
Maybe some of the shadows would cover up the dimple in my left ass cheek or the fact that I shave instead of getting waxed because it’s cheaper, and I’m a wuss and can’t take the pain. I do work out a few times a week, and I know I’m in pretty good shape, but still. Everyone has their insecurities.
When Raiden’s hands pause on my thighs, I look down. He’s looking up at me, seeing me. Not just seeing naked me, but really seeing me.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he hisses, and somehow, it doesn’t sound vulgar coming from him. Rather, it sounds wonderful. Now my head is swimming so hard that I think I might have sunstroke and rabies.
“I…I’m seriously n—”
“Don’t even say that. Do not.” Raiden leans forward, and my god, now his breath is exhaling all over my most sensitive place, and it’s making me realize I’m soaking wet because there’s a strange reaction going on down there that feels a lot like wind cooling off your sweat on a hot summer day. “All I’ve thought about is doing this. For days now.”
I gulp. “Days? You’ve thought about eating my…uh…well…for days?”
“Yes. Is that weird?”
“Kind of. I mean—”
“I think it’s hot. If you knew how hard it was to walk around with a fucking pine tree in my pants for a week…”
“Haven’t you ever heard of your hand?” Why did I just say that?
“I tried that. It didn’t work. I need the real thing. I need you.”
“Ouch!” I smack at my thigh on instinct, nearly taking out Raiden’s face. I glance down after moving my fingers away. “Dang mosquitoes.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll take care of them.” True to his word, Raiden swats another away.
“You should have brought a change of clothes,” I say smartly, because of course, right now is the time for sarcasm—with Raiden’s hot as farge face just an inch away from my lady cave. And my lady button. And my lady bits. What the hell am I even thinking right now? Does it all need separate classifications, or does cave just encompass it all?
“Don’t worry. I won’t need them.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Argh!” I slap at a mosquito that just bit at my arm.
Raiden smacks another on my thigh. Suddenly, I’m worried about my butt getting bitten or somewhere more private, but then Raiden moves, and I’m no longer focused on the bugs anymore. I think they could bite me near to death, and I wouldn’t even realize it was happening until I was just one big bite.
“Well, goo…oh. Holy. Wow.” That’s about as articulate as it gets because Raiden’s jaw, which probably hasn’t seen a razor since yesterday, rasps along the inside of my thigh. Even that steals all my oxygen, but then he decides to put his tongue where it matters.
Since there are quite a few places that could potentially count, and no, it’s not my toe or my armpit, I’ll be more specific. He runs his amazing, dextrous, and incredible tongue along my seam, and his breath feels delicious against my overheated skin. Warm against warm. I can freaking feel drops of wetness trickling down my leg.
The second pass he makes with his tongue makes my legs quiver, and I feel like I should be doing this sitting down. Before I embarrass myself and fall over, I grab Raiden’s hair and hang on for dear life. Good grapes, how is it possible for a guy to have such soft hair? Oh right. He has lots of money, which can buy you just about anything.
The third and fourth pass nearly make me lose my mind.
I’m not a screamer as I think that’s just overdone. I don’t need to bellow my lungs out in an effort to convey that I feel pleasure, but holy hotdogs, I kind of want to let out some feral sounding noises at the moment, and Raiden hasn’t even touched my clit yet.
Not because he doesn’t know where it is. I know he can find it. I also know he’s going to try and drag this out just to prove a point. Raiden is like that. He’s competitive, and he thinks I’m thinking about the incident from last time though I’m not. Well, maybe just a little, but he’s right. I might bug him about it, but it was kind of a compliment, which is exactly why I’ve spent so much time trying not to think about it.
As if he knows I’m too much up in my head and not enough in my body, Raiden’s tongue takes another hot pass and then arches upward, gently flicking against my clit before his lips are there and he suckles the tight little bud into his mouth.
Bling and bananas! My hips rock hard right into Raiden’s face, and my nails are probably going to leave a permanent mark against his skull.
He keeps it up, dancing away from my clit, flicking it with his tongue, and doing all sorts of crazy, fantastic, and un-freaking-believable thing with his mouth for a good few minutes while I writhe and buck and do all sorts of crazy, fantastic, and un-freaking-believable things to his face. Basically, I’m riding it while standing up.
To his credit, Raiden knows what he’s doing. I don’t want to think about how he got the experience or the fact that I can’t possibly measure up to the perfect looking women he’s been with—women who have money, talent, fame, and more. Women who are basically unattainable to the rest of us. For the most part, I’m successful, partly because Raiden is doing things with his tongue that I didn’t think were humanly possible.
Just when I think he’s done about everything he could, he curls his tongue and thrusts it up inside me. The lady cave has never had a tongue inside her that felt like that. Full. My god, I feel so full. How can his tongue do that?
Raiden makes a noise of pleasure low in his throat. There’s a suckling, slurping sound that I’m embarrassed is coming from me. The wet sounds of him eating me make me want to push his face away and run for cover because it’s so light out, and I’m half-naked here, and we’re in the middle of the woods, and I know I’m far from perfect, and what if I taste weird?
My tirade of self-doubt gets cut off when Raiden goes back to attacking my clit with his tongue. This time, he lets his fingers in on the action. He curls not one, but two fingers inside me, and holy, if I thought I was full before…
He does perfect things with those fingers. He thrusts slowly, letting me savor the sensations before he curls one finger and hits the spot inside me that is like a magic button. Between that and what he’s doing with his tongue, it makes all the wicked, furious heat boiling and curling inside me explode.
When I come
, I don’t know if I make a weird face, if the sky falls in, or if the earth truly is moving or not. I just know it feels good. So, so good. I’ve never felt anything this good. This might be a life-ending kind of good—certainly life-altering. I’m not sure my body is even still together.
When I open my eyes, I expect to find some gory scene with bits and pieces of me scattered all over since it felt like I fell apart, but all I see is Raiden smirking up at me with a very satisfied grin on his face.
“I told you that I could make you scream,” he informs me.
I guess maybe there really is such a thing as karma because something black and huge goes clicking through the air and lands straight on Raiden’s forehead. I open my mouth to show him what a real scream is because that thing looks like a dang cockroach or something, with huge antennas and a big black shell, but then the bastard bug opens its pincers and literally takes a chunk of skin right out of Raiden’s forehead. That takes the wind right out of me, and my scream gets frozen in my throat.
“What the…ouch!” Raiden slaps madly at his forehead, right as I bring my hand back and swing. Too hard. I hit him, smack dab in the middle of the forehead, and the sound of skin smacking skin rings through the woods.
The bug must have gone flying when Raiden slapped at it. I withdraw in horror, and when I see the blood…oh my god, when I see the blood, I nearly pass out.
Raiden stares at me, staring at the blood on my hand. He then lifts a trembling hand to his forehead, brings it down and stares at it. I’m not sure what happens then—if the bug was some type of poisonous bastard or if it hit a nerve that is lethal—but Raiden’s eyes roll up in his forehead, and he slumps backward in a heap on the ground.
CHAPTER 13
Raiden
When I come out of a black, hazy fog, Zoe’s face is just inches from mine. She’s crouched down, her brows nearly knit together, and her eyes wide with worry. Oh, and I realize she’s put her clothes back on.
I swipe a hand up to my forehead and stare anxiously at the smear of red on my fingertips. “What happened?”
“This crazy black beetle looking bug bit you. I think it was one of those spruce beetles the people from the lodge kept telling us to look out for. The thing flew out of nowhere, and it made that weird clicking noise they were talking about. I only realized after it bit you that it must be one since they said it might take a real chunk out of you.”
“Nice. I love having a bite taken out of my crime.”
“Did you pass out because it’s poisonous? They never said it was poisonous.” Zoe starts working her bottom lip between her teeth. Her hands churn around in the air around me without even touching me. I realize I’m sitting up. How the heck did I get to be sitting up? Did I pass out and land flat on my ass?
“No. I think…I just saw the blood and thought…I don’t know what I thought. I’ve never passed out from the sight of blood before.”
“I know. We cut our hands when we were kids and did the blood brothers thing.”
“Hardly sanitary.”
Zoe winces. “Anyway, uh, are you okay? Most of the bleeding stopped. It’s a nasty-looking bite, though. You’re going to have a crazy lump there for a while.”
“Should be a good story to tell my mom tomorrow at lunch.”
Zoe’s face shifts back to ultra-panic mode. “About that—”
“Please don’t tell me you’re bailing.”
“N–no, not bailing. Not like that. I…” Zoe sighs hard. I guess she figures getting out whatever it is she has to say is better than keeping it locked up because she goes on. “I just think maybe this is the universe’s way of telling us this is wrong in just about every conceivable way. This. Us. The first time, you…well…yeah. And this time…the bug—”
I smear my hand over my forehead again and nearly groan at the sting. There is a massive lump there—what my mom would, and probably will call, a goose egg. I don’t know how something small enough that I couldn’t even see it coming could do this kind of damage.
“So, you think those two incidents are some higher power telling us we shouldn’t do whatever we’re doing.”
“See!” Zoe leaps to her feet. “We don’t even have a name for it because we can never give it a name.”
“I could give it a name if you wanted me to.”
“No! I don’t want you to. The first time, I said this shouldn’t happen again, then this madness—rabies or something—got me today, and I…I had this massive lapse of judgment because it was spreading to my brain.”
“What was?”
“The temporary rabies.”
“I see.” I have no idea what Zoe is talking about. She used to be pretty no-nonsense, so I’m not sure how she thinks she has rabies. “What bit you?”
“What?”
“To get rabies, you have to be bitten by something rabid. And I think it takes a while to get to your brain, but when it does, you literally die, I think. You start foaming at the mouth and acting strange.”
“Exactly!”
“I didn’t see any foam. Drool, maybe…”
“Shut up!” Zoe stamps her foot. “Maybe it wasn’t rabies. It was just straight-up bad judgment, and I’ll own that. I’m a full-grown adult, and so are you. So, I’m saying that at lunch tomorrow, there is no way in harging heck you can mention this to your mom. She would be so scarred if she found out that we were…uh—”
“Bumping uglies?”
“Don’t call it that! Jesus!” Zoe spins around. She goes to storm off down the path, but then she stops. She slowly spins around, her face scarlet.
“You forgot you were lost. You don’t know which way to go,” I state flatly. I’m really not making fun of her, but she obviously takes it that way, so up goes her jawline again as the traditional Zoe stubbornness kicks in.
“Sometimes, I hate you.”
“You used to say that back when we were kids, too. I always knew you never meant it.”
“I mean it now.”
“I saw it.”
“Saw what?”
I push up slowly, testing my equilibrium and sense of gravity, but everything seems to be fine. I don’t exactly know why I fainted, or sort of fainted just now. I’m kind of embarrassed about that. Was it the blood? Or was it just being completely uncertain of what caused it? I had no idea what bit me. Not that I thought a rattlesnake could have launched itself from the treetops and landed, mouth open, right on my forehead, but then again, panic isn’t rational. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty. I feel pretty stupid now, but I do my best to hide it, and part of that is diverting the attention from myself. It’s an asshole move, I know.
“The tattoo. On your hip. When I was down there, I got a good look at it!”
“You…you…just…argh!” Zoe storms off down the path in the wrong direction. I start off the other way, waiting. I only have to wait a few minutes before Zoe power walks right past me. She’s moving so fast that I swear dust is flying up from her runners.
“You said you had it covered up.”
“I say lots of things. And so do you. You’re hardly one to talk,” Zoe huffs without turning around to actually look at me. “Why do you want to get in my pants so bad anyway? I’m not even your type.”
“I wasn’t aware I had a type.”
“You do. Gorgeous women. Flawless women. Expensive looking women. Successful, beautiful, and out of everyone else’s league kind of women.”
“I dated people who pursued me. Sometimes, it felt right. Most of the time, it was mutually no strings attached. I can’t think of a single one who even holds a candle to you.”
Zoe spins around and marches back to me. She’s seriously pissed, and I have no clue why, because I thought that was a compliment.
“Why would you say that?”
“Say what?”
“Just to make me even angrier? Just to mess with my head? To get under my skin? You’re already under it!” Her nostrils flare. She means business. “You don’t have to rub it in
that I’ll never look like those women. If I’m just some weird conquest, then whatever. You’ve accomplished it. You can stop trying now. You can leave me alone. And you can let me quit like I want to. Clearly, we should never be in the same room again.”
“Or maybe we should never be out of the same room again. Maybe we’re good for each other. Maybe we’re what each other needed all along.”
“That’s the world’s worst idea.”
“No. You said you felt it too—some kind of madness. And you couldn’t stop thinking about it. You want me. I want you. What’s so wrong with that?”
“Everything! I thought it was rabies. I still think it’s rabies, and rabies is never a good thing! Anyway, I doubt you could satisfy me even if we did keep this up. You only last about three and a half seconds.”
“That’s not what your screams said earlier.”
“You’re terrible.”
“I might be, but you’re not. You’re amazing. You might not look like a model, and you might not be an artist or an actress. You might not make tons of money, and people might not know your name, but I know your name. And I think you’re beautiful. I know for a fact that you’re not perfect, but that’s what makes you real. I told you before, and I meant it, you’re you, and that’s the best thing on the whole fucking earth. Don’t sell yourself short just because you want to try and prove a point or get back at me.”
Zoe’s nostrils flare. She stands there, huffing in place, and I almost move my hands in front of my balls because she has a strange expression on her face.
“Besides, we’re tied. We need to have a tiebreaker. There has to be a clear winner.”
“What the dirty dog devil are you talking about? Rock, paper, scissors?”
“No.”
Zoe studies me for a minute. Then her eyes flash with understanding. “You’re a pig.”
“I can be. I’ve been called worse, and I can probably be that too at any given time. But sometimes, I’m nice too. Like right now. If you say this will never happen again, then it will never happen again. I believe you, and I respect you. I’m sure as hell never going to force you to do something you don’t want to do, and I’m not going to tell you how to feel either.”