Текст книги "Dark Wild Night"
Автор книги: Christina Lauren
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Текущая страница: 12 (всего у книги 19 страниц)
“Oh, good, they’re both here,” Austin says, pushing the door open with a flattened palm. “Lola, this is Gregory Saint Jude.”
The man stands and turns, looking at me with guarded eyes.
“Our director,” Austin adds.
I reach out to shake the man’s hand. He’s shorter than I am but greets me with a firm handshake, a friendly nod, and then sits back down beside Langdon.
“My dad’s name is Greg, too,” I say with what I hope is an affable smile.
His answering one is tight around his eyes. “I prefer Gregory, actually.”
“Sure. Of course.” Gah. I’m already unsteady from the misfire with Austin, and suddenly feel like Razor himself, arriving from a completely different version of this same world. I’m clearly cracking because I have to bite back a laugh at the thought.
Sliding my phone on the table, I’m hit with the need to call Oliver and tell him that. To hear his voice, to get a taste of normalcy.
And just like that, it’s as if I’ve broken the seal and let in the flood of thoughts.
I never texted him back last night, so this morning I sent him a series of heart emojis and a S.O.S. L.A. IS WEIRD text, but his reply—Slept like a rock. Think I’ve been sleep deprived? Call when you’re done today—wasn’t nearly enough. I briefly reconsider the idea of him driving up and spending the next two nights with me, but would I be able to focus at all knowing he was within a few miles? And even if I could, when would I work?
“Lola?” Austin says, and I blink over to him, registering that I’ve been staring at the screen of my phone, and this is probably not the first time he’s said my name.
“Sorry. Was just . . .” I turn off the phone completely and smile over at him. “There. Sorry. Where are we starting?”
His smile is wan. “Page sixty.”
Chapter
TWELVE
Lola
OLIVER IS STANDING outside my building on Friday afternoon when the black car pulls up to the curb. The driver opens my door and then unloads my small bag from the trunk, refusing a tip.
“Already covered,” he says with a smile.
I wilt. This time I was prepared. I shove the twenty in my pocket and look up.
Mute at night, frantic to contribute meaningfully during the day, I spoke to Oliver only twice in the past two days—for a total of maybe ten minutes—and my reaction to seeing him right now is exactly what I expected. He’s wearing dark jeans, a deep red T-shirt, his navy blue Converse. His hair is combed but hangs over his forehead. His lenses don’t begin to filter the brilliant blue eyes behind them. When he smiles at me, tucking the corner of his bottom lip between his straight, white teeth, it’s like taking ten deep gulps of fresh air.
He takes one step toward me and I move quickly into his arms, pressing into him for more when he squeezes tight, pushing all the air out of me. His mouth is on my temple, my cheek, covering my lips in small bursts of kisses, lips opening, tongue sliding inside to claim me. Out on the sidewalk his hands impatiently move over my waist, my hips, my ass, words sliding across my lips as he tells me he missed me, missed me, missed me.
I want to go upstairs, make love, drown in him. But it’s nearly seven, and we have dinner at my dad’s. With a groan, Oliver pulls away, nodding to his car at the curb. He links his fingers with mine and walks me to the passenger side.
“Ready?”
I nod. “No.”
Laughing, he opens the door for me. “Let’s go.”
AS IMPOSSIBLE AS it seems, I’ve never really had an awkward moment with my dad. Even after he came home from the war and we sat across from each other at the breakfast table, both of us unable to think of anything but his nightmare-tortured bellowing in the middle of the night, haunted by the images scorched on his closed lids. Even when Mom left and he lost his mind in a bottle and pills and I would drag him to bed, give him water, listen to his sobs. Even when he came to my room while I was doing homework, and quietly admitted that he needed some help. We’ve had hard times—brutal even—but it’s never been weird.
This truth dissolves the moment we pull up at the curb and Dad is waiting on the porch, wearing an enormous grin.
It didn’t occur to me until just now that I’m twenty-three and have never brought a boyfriend home.
The second we walk in the door, I know Dad is going to make this as horrible as I expected: his smile reaches both ears, and when he slaps Oliver on the back, the sound cracks through the room.
Oliver smiles easily at him, eyes glinting with humor. “Hey, Greg.”
“Son!” Dad crows.
My stomach turns tight and sour. “Dad, don’t,” I warn.
He laughs. “Don’t what, Lorelei?”
“Don’t make it weird for the rest of all time.”
He’s already shaking his head. “Make it weird? Why would I do that? Just saying hi to you and your new fella. Your boyfriend. Your—”
I growl at him, cutting him off.
Reaching for something behind the couch, he pulls out a Barry White CD and an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne. “To the happy new couple!”
Oliver laughs, a single short burst of delight—always so easy, never makes it awkward for anyone—and takes the bottle from Greg. “Allow me the pleasure.”
“I don’t think I had any say in the matter,” Dad jokes.
I squeeze my eyes closed. It’s both the best and worst thing that the two of them are such good friends.
The panel shows the girl, throwing a frying pan into the air and standing quietly beneath it.
I pat both their shoulders as I walk past them. “If anyone needs me for this self-congratulatory wankfest I’ll be in the backyard.”
Dad calls after me—“Don’t you want a glass of this New Relationship Champagne, Lola?”—but I’m already through the kitchen, pushing out into the crisp open air.
It’s gorgeous out. Passion fruit vines crawl heavily up the fence separating our yard from the Blunts’, weighing down the ancient wood so that it bows toward our lawn. During the summer days there are so many bees inside the web of leaves that I used to imagine they could work in concert to lift the leaves, the fence, the yard, our house from the earth and take us somewhere else, like pulling a sticker from paper. When the fruit grows ripe, it falls from the vine, making a tiny popping sound against the hard earth below. I close my eyes, remembering the feel of the vibration of the bees above as I would crawl into the vines and feel along the ground for ripe fruit to take inside.
I feel like I haven’t breathed in days, but now that I’m away from L.A. I can. I’m aware of the tightness high in my throat and how it eases, a fist unclenching. Tension still knots my stomach. I have so much to do.
The script isn’t even finalized; Austin and Langdon compromised by letting me edit the version we came up with, on the condition that I don’t revert any of the agreed-upon changes back to the original version. Erik has given me two weeks to finish Junebug, which is good because soon after that, I leave on another book tour, and return a week later to the first day of principal filming on set. I’ve never had to juggle this much before, and every time I have to switch my headspace from movie Razor Fish to book Razor Fish to Junebug, it feels like learning how to write all over again. I am a reservoir, slowly draining water.
From the house, I hear Oliver’s low voice and then Dad’s burst of laughter followed by the pop of a cork. Despite the twisting worry in me, I bite my lip as I smile at the sound of their indistinct words, spoken in happy, easy tones. They’re a bit over-the-top when together, but I knew this about Dad already and still brought Oliver to dinner. They’re so genuinely fond of each other, and that knowledge is both a relief and terrifying.
The voices inside disappear and then the screen door creaks behind me, slow footsteps make their way down the back stairs, and I feel a long, warm body settle beside me on the lawn.
I lean into his side, closing my eyes and wanting to roll on him, luxuriate in the feel of him.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask.
Oliver slides an arm along my back, cupping his fingers into my waist. His mouth finds my neck and he speaks into it: “Putting the finishing touches on our Coming Out dinner.”
I laugh, closing my eyes and taking a deep breath.
“You don’t like how he’s taking all of this?”
“I do. . . .” I hedge. “It’s just like having a new haircut. You want everyone to like it but you don’t really need everyone to notice it quite so intensely.”
He bends, kissing the corner of my mouth. “You hate this sort of attention, don’t you? You want this, us—Loliver,” he says with a smirk, “to be a fact. Settled. Old news.”
I smile up at him, a million beating wings let loose in my heart. “Or maybe I want him to smile and be quietly knowing, but let me be the one who’s giddy over Loliver.”
“That’s rather selfish,” he says, teasing. “And for the record, I’ve never known your dad to be quietly knowing about anything.”
I bite my lip, looking up at him. His mouth is skewed by a tiny smile and I can tell he’s teasing, but he’s also not. “I know.”
He turns to me, rubbing the pad of his index finger along my bottom lip. “Greg’s happy for you.” Pausing, he studies me while I manage several short, shallow breaths under the gentle scrutiny. When he says more, his voice is quiet. “I get the sense you haven’t brought many boyfriends home.”
“Or any,” I say and his gaze becomes heavy, dropping to my mouth. “You’re the first.”
“You’ve had other long-term boyfriends, though?”
Reaching up, I touch my fingertip to his chin. “I wouldn’t call you and me long-term yet.”
He laughs. “I guess that depends on your definition; we’ve certainly been building up to this for a long time. I mean someone you’ve been with long enough to want to bring home.”
“Are you asking me how many people I’ve been with?”
A smile curves his lips. “Not directly.”
I laugh, telling him, “You’re my fifth.” He makes a little grumpy face I’ve never seen before, and I ask, “Do you want me to ask you?”
“You can,” he challenges, meeting my eyes and maybe knowing I won’t actually ask. I wait, and finally he laughs through a wince, “Though I don’t actually know. There were lots of random nights in uni. I’m going to guess around thirty.”
I nod, looking back over to the fence and holding my breath until the sting evaporates from my lungs.
“You don’t like that answer,” he says.
“Did you like mine?”
Laughing, he agrees: “Not really. In my ideal world I took your virginity the other night.”
I roll my eyes. “Guys are so ridiculous about that.”
“Well, clearly not just guys,” he argues. “You also don’t like that I’ve been with other women.”
“I don’t like the idea that you’ve loved other women.”
He can’t help the cocky flicker of a smile that flashes on his lips. Oliver leans close, mouth sliding up my neck to my ear. “Well, I don’t think I’ve ever loved anyone quite like this. In this sort of giddy, obliterating game-changing way. Where I can see myself with her for the rest of my life.”
This feels so new, so bare, so exposed. I wonder if Oliver realizes how scary it is for me to bring him here, to admit—even if I can’t say the three tiny words myself—that I care that he loves me. As soon as we open our hearts up to love, we show the universe the easiest way to break them in half.
Thirty women. It’s not that it’s a surprise or particularly jarring, not after the initial sting, anyway. It’s that it’s new after months of never discussing these things. I can’t decide if I love or hate how everything I learn about him makes me feel like I don’t really know him at all. I know what art would make his eyes go wide, which movies he hates and which he loves. I know what to order him if he’s late to meet us at the Regal Beagle, I know that he’s an only child and that he doesn’t like ketchup. But I don’t know his emotional heart at all: who he’s ever imagined he might love, how he’s been hurt, and what kind of boyfriend he’s been to some of those women. What might send him away.
His hand comes up to my back, rubbing in small, slow circles.
“I missed you,” he whispers.
God, my heart. “Me, too.”
“Why did you not call me more?”
I shrug, leaning into his shoulder. “I didn’t know what to say. The meetings were hard. I missed a really important deadline. I went to a weird place.”
“What deadline?” he asks, pulling back to look at me.
“Junebug,” I say, and feel the now-familiar roll of nausea over it. “It was due two weeks ago.”
“It was?” he says, eyes wide. “I didn’t—”
I nod. “I know. I had the date right in my calendar, but in my head I thought it was next week. Even if it was next week, it would be late.”
“How can I help?”
It’s weird—but wonderful—to hear him ask this. Weird because it comes out so easily, so readily, and for the first time I really do see what Harlow meant about me being clueless: this sort of question has been second nature to Oliver for as long as I’ve known him.
“I don’t know. I’m going to dive into it all tomorrow morning.” I squeeze my eyes closed, wanting to put that aside, just for another couple of hours. “Anyway, I’m sorry I didn’t call. I didn’t like being away. But then I didn’t like not liking being away.”
He laughs quietly. “That makes perfect sense.”
“I took sleeping pills a couple of the nights.”
I feel him turn to look at me. “Yeah? Do you need that usually?”
“No. But work was really stressful and I sort of turned into mute Lola.”
“Still a version of the Lola I love,” he says, kissing my hair. “I know her well.”
Away from him I felt crazy. Next to him, it’s easy to just spill it all and it doesn’t seem so strange. How did I manage to be away for three days?
He slides his hand into the back of my hair. “You’ll stay over tonight?”
I should say no but it’s not like I’m going to get a lot of work done tonight anyway. Tonight, I need this. I need the Oliver Reboot. Tomorrow, the crackdown begins in earnest.
I nod and turn my face to him just as he leans close, putting his lips on mine. Slightly open. Just barely wet. The tip of his tongue touches the tip of mine and it’s a match struck against pavement.
I’m over him, pressing down, needing relief in that aching part of me. Aching parts: between my legs. Inside my ribs. I want to believe I can breathe without him but I’m not sure, and I don’t know what’s more terrifying: thinking I could never be alone again or trying it.
I hear a quiet cry escape my throat. “I missed you.”
He kisses me again, whispering, “So did I. Come here, Lola Love.”
He draws his tongue across the seam of my mouth, encouraging me to open again. I feel his quiet groan, the urgency behind his touch when he cups my face and tilts his head, getting a better angle. Steam is rushing through my blood, too, urging my hips to fall into the instinctive easy rhythm. Desire flashes hot along my skin when my body remembers sex with him. I want every touch to turn into something deeper and wild. He growls and bites my lip when I grind my hips over him, needing to see if he’s hard already, as immediately desperate as I am.
But he shifts me back—reasonably—and I know the backyard of my dad’s house isn’t the right place for this. I can’t take him in small doses yet. I’m not used to kissing him enough to have just a taste.
Pulling away, I lean my forehead against his, catching my breath. It seems like instead of having five senses I now have twenty; everything inside me buzzes with sensory overload.
“Sorry,” I whisper.
“I still don’t really believe you’re on my lap like this.” He runs his hands up my sides. “Do you know how many times I touched myself to the fantasy of you sitting on my lap, fucking me while I suck your perfect tits?”
I burst out laughing, slapping a hand over my mouth as I glance back at the screen door.
He kisses my chin, his calm smile slowly straightening into a sweetly curved line. He suddenly seems thirty years older than me. He handles this infatuation so well. “We’ll finish this later.”
When I nod again, he guides me off his lap and we lie down, shoulder to shoulder, staring up at the sky. It feels like an enormous ocean above us, swimming with stars. Oliver’s hand finds mine, his long fingers curling around and between.
“Tell me more about L.A.,” he says.
I groan, taking a few breaths to collect my thoughts. “I started Razor so long ago, I don’t think I remember the stumbling at first. But going up to L.A. was like ice water dumped over my head. I felt naïve and useless in these meetings—about my own story—and then when I would go home at night to work on Junebug, it was like I couldn’t even get started.”
He hums sympathetically beside me, lifting our joined hands to his mouth to kiss the back of mine.
“I missed you and was obsessing about us, and couldn’t stop worrying about how I was coming off in these meetings.” I look over at him. “There were three of them: Gregory—don’t call him Greg, by God—Austin, and Langdon.”
“Gregory Saint Jude?” he asks, “He did Metadata last year, right?” He’s obviously more familiar with these names than I am—I had to do some quick IMDb’ing on my phone in the hall the other day—and I have a pang of embarrassment all over again.
“Right. And he’s fine. He didn’t really engage me much, but Langdon is a total douche. Initially Austin said Langdon really connected to the story, but let me be clear. He doesn’t. Or, maybe he does, but as a forty-something dude who wants to bang Quinn.”
Oliver groans. “So did you finish the edits?” he asks, and I can feel his head turned, the weight of his eyes on me.
“No, we got through it but they’re letting me have two weeks with it to ‘put my polish on it,’ whatever that means,” I say. “There are so many things I’m not allowed to change, and the things I am aren’t really details I care about. I don’t care about Quinn’s clothes.”
He sighs, turning his face back up to the sky. “I’m sorry it was frustrating, pet. That sucks.”
I nod. “It’s okay. We’ll figure it out. I’m just glad to be back with you tonight.”
“Same.” He kisses my hand again, and after we have spent several minutes looking up at the stars in silence, the screen door squeaks open and I feel Dad up there, looking down at us. I know what he sees: his daughter lying on the grass, holding hands with a man for the first time in front of him. I can’t imagine what he feels, if it’s bittersweet or only sweet, or as terrifying for him as it is for me.
“Dinner,” he calls quietly.
Inside, he’s set the table with placemats and napkins tucked into brass rings. A candle is lit in the middle and when I look up at him to scowl, his eyes are more anxious than teasing. I can tell he knows he’s gone a little overboard and I give him a reluctant smile instead.
Oliver sits beside me on the opposite side of the table from Dad and we serve ourselves in silence. Without me here they’d be laughing and eating unself-consciously. Without Oliver here, Dad and I would be laughing and eating unself-consciously. In this case, two is not better than one.
Dad clears his throat awkwardly and looks up at us. “I am really happy for you two,” he says.
I open my mouth to beg for us to change the subject, for the love of God, but Oliver senses something I don’t, and covers my knee with his hand beneath the table, squeezing.
“Thanks. It’s pretty great so far.” He smiles at Dad before taking a bite of salad.
“Friends first,” Dad says, nodding.
“Friends first,” Oliver repeats.
Dad sips his water and then gazes at me, and I see what Oliver must have: Dad usually hides behind teasing humor, but now he’s showing rare emotion. “Lola’s mom and I met at a bar.” He tilts his head, smiling. “Dove straight in. Turns out, we were better at being enemies, but when we were friends, it was awfully nice. I want you to have someone who’s better at being a friend.”
Raising my eyebrows, I give him a we’re-going-to-talk-about-this-here-and-now? face and he laughs a little. We don’t talk about Mom anymore when it’s just the two of us, let alone in front of someone else; there just isn’t very much unexplored territory. As of this summer, she’s been gone one year longer than they were married. I know the basics any child would know: They had a decent marriage—not a great one—but weren’t actually together in one place very often because of his deployments. When he was discharged and returned home, things were too hard for her. As an adult, I’ve deduced that Dad forgave her long ago and thinks she probably hates herself too much for leaving to ever try to talk to me again.
I think she’s a coward who shouldn’t bother.
Tom Petty sings about free falling in the other room, and the melody has this way of making me feel like time loops in this slowly expanding arc. We just go around and around and around, and part of me will always be twelve while the rest of me ages, navigating the world with one parent who cared enough for two.
Gratitude for my father swells in me until I feel my breath catch in my throat.
I cover Oliver’s hand with mine, grateful for the tiny breath he forced me to take, the step back for perspective, and ask Dad, “Where’s Ellen tonight?”
I can tell he’s happy that I brought her up: his smile cracks across his face and he launches into a very detailed explanation of her work schedule and late dinner plans with friends. Oliver’s hand is a distracting warmth beneath mine: tendons and bones, smooth skin, sparse hair. I want to lift it from the table, press it to my face.
OLIVER DRAWS SMALL circles on my thigh as he drives us home. If I didn’t know better, I would think he was doing it absently, but I’m finding that he doesn’t do anything without intent. He’s quiet but deliberate, relaxed but always observing.
“Where do you want to have sex?” he asks, staring straight ahead.
I turn to grin at him. “Right now?”
Laughing, he says, “No, I mean, some crazy place you want to do it someday. Right now I’m driving to my house for the sex.”
I hum, thinking. “Small World ride at Disneyland.”
He glances at me and then back at the road. “A bit of a cliché, maybe? And illegal, I’m guessing.”
“Probably. But every time I’m on it I can’t help but think about what it would be like to sneak in there and find a dark corner.”
“At night, maybe,” he agrees quietly. “Away from everyone. We’d take off just enough for me to be able to get inside you.”
I swallow, pushing his hand up my thigh as I imagine his pants hanging low on his hips, the definition of muscles framing the soft hair on his toned stomach, how fast and frantic he would move in me.
“Would you want the ride to be going while I was fucking you in there?” he asks casually, clicking on his right-turn indicator.
Goose bumps erupt along my arms at his crude, growled words. “Only if I knew we were hidden from view and it was just about being quiet.”
“That bleeding song plays the whole time anyway.” He doesn’t look my way, but smiles at this. “I’d want to make just enough noise so that you could hear me,” he says, turning onto his street. As soon as he says it, I remember the sound of his rhythmic grunts, his hoarse, guttural exhales as he fucks me hard.
He pulls to the curb and shuts off the engine, turning to look at me. The engine ticks through the silent car, and I can feel my heart pounding in my chest and all the way up my throat as he slowly leans in, his focus entirely on my lips.
The house is right there, twenty steps to inside, but we’re here, kissing like we haven’t been alone in a year. Oliver kisses me for minutes, for days, until my mouth is sore from the beard I don’t want him to shave; he’s tongue and teeth and growl while he presses me into the door. I can feel his hunger in the way he stretches across the center console and cups my head in his hand. I can feel it in the noises that escape every time he gets me at a different angle, every time I pull him in deeper, bite him, suck on his lips.
“Take me inside.”
“I will take you. Inside,” he says, laughing and opening the door behind me so we half-tumble out together and he has to crawl awkwardly out of my side of the car, practically laying me down on the sidewalk. Anyone walking by would think we were drunk.
Is that what this is?
It’s chemistry, I know that for sure, something numbing and piercing at once, something that makes me feel like I’m alive for the first time and dead in other ways—murdered memories of what anyone else felt like before this man. Murdered memories of what it felt like to be over a hundred miles away.
I know the weight of his hands and body, how he tastes just like me after only two deep kisses, the way his laughs turn into moans, and how he watches my hands when I touch him.
Oliver pulls me up so I’m standing and throws me over his shoulder, charging down the walkway and bursting into the house. He lowers me so that I slide down his front, all along him, and feel his chest and stomach and his cock pressing at me from beneath his jeans. His fingers tickle my waist, he gives me a tiny smile and my shirt is up and off, followed by my bra.
The breeze picks up and the open door squeaks on its hinges, Oliver’s R2-D2 knocker rattling against the wood. The cool air rolls along my skin, over goose bumps that pebble my arms and stomach. I kick the door closed, blocking out the intrusion of this one additional string left loose and untended. Quiet seals up around us, and then all I can hear is the soft sound of Oliver kissing up my neck.
His hands curve over my breasts, my waist, my hips. My pants are unbuttoned and sweetly coaxed down my legs.
I never want to run out of clothes because every time he peels something away, he kisses me lower, hums against the skin, and bites just the smallest bit. It’s like having lust uncorked and poured in bubbly streams across my skin.
“You’re soft in all the best places.” His voice turns to smoke against my skin as he kneels, pulling my underwear down my legs one tiny inch at a time. “Even sweeter than you are soft.”
His mouth finds my breast, nibbling and blowing across the tips while his hands are busy helping me step out of my underwear. The entryway light is on and he looks up at me, whispering, “You like having your tits sucked?”
I nod, bracing my hands on his shoulders, right there, mere feet from his front door. I push into his mouth and wonder how I’m standing naked and he’s fully clothed, and I feel like I can’t move because I don’t ever want him to stop what he’s doing . . . but I want more. I grow heavy, desire filling the space beneath my skin until I can’t help but beg out loud. He smiles as he kisses me and moves to the other, neglected breast, licking in long draws of his tongue until he gives me what I really want: the closing of his lips around me, the delicious relief of suction.
I stare down at him, at his mess of brown hair brushing against my skin and kiss-swollen lips playing with my breast.
“Is this really happening?
Oliver nods, drawing his tongue across my nipple—like he’s licking an ice-cream cone—and then sucks it so deep into his mouth I wonder if he might consume me. My breasts spill from his hands and he licks and bites whatever he can’t hold. It’s a frenzy; my body has been waiting days for this and has no patience now.
“Fuck.” My fingers curl into his hair and he pulls back, looking up at my face as his fingers stroke the inside of my thigh. I make fists in his shirt, pull it over his head, and relish the slide of my palms over his wide shoulders as he kisses my navel, my hip.
I don’t want to do this here.
I take a step backward, and then one more, and he’s up, following me down the hall with his hands on my hips and his mouth on mine and he’s telling me I’m so fucking sweet, he wants me so much.
The world tilts and his bed is soft beneath my back.
The panel shows him looking down at her. She’s wide open: the first day with these new eyes. He would take a bite out of her if he could.
Oliver takes his glasses off and sets them on the table near the bed. He braces his hand at my hip, gazing down, letting his gaze move over every part of me. In my peripheral vision, I can see my chest rising and falling but I can’t tear my attention from his face.
I remember the time he made me laugh so hard I spit-sprayed Diet Coke all over his Hellraiser T-shirt.
I remember the time he ran up to the loft to show me the Detective Comics 31 someone sold him.
I remember when he said “I do,” even though he didn’t.
I remember leaning on the kitchen counter, sipping coffee, watching him sleep on the couch.
“What’s going on in that mind of yours?”
I’m trying not to panic, obsess, fall too fast, too deep.
“I’m feeling things,” I whisper.
He bends, speaking against my stomach as he kisses it. “What kind of things?”
“Panicky things.”
I can feel his smile. “Let them go.”
I close my eyes, threading my hand into his hair. How can such happiness push a sharp spike through my lungs?
“It’s good,” he promises, kissing down to my hip. “I’ve wanted this for months. And I know you feel the same. I love you. I feel you thinking it every time I say it, in the way your hands find some part of me to hold on to.”
His fingers move between my legs, slide down over my clit, barely dipping into me. It’s a luxury, doing this, feeling this, being here. It’s a luxury to have all night, to have nothing but this thing between us to tend to. He strokes me, soft at first, so slowly, and then he speeds up as my breath catches and my legs open wider, him kissing his way to my mouth, asking quietly if I like it, if his fingers feel good. I nod, arching from the bed, working my body closer, wishing his pants were off so I could feel the thick weight of him in my hand and pushing inside me.
I don’t know what he’s doing with his fingers but it’s fast and slippery and I’m so close, almost there, everything is turning transparent and—
His hand leaves me for a split second and then I feel the stinging bite of his fingers spanking me there.
The panel shows the earth, split in two.
He swallows my shocked gasp with a deep kiss, covering my mouth and groaning when heat melts into a fevered need for more and he feels me arch under him, shuddering.
“Oh, God.”
He exhales something between a sigh and a “Yeah?” against my lips and strokes me gently again for several soft, slow kisses before he spanks me again three times, fast and sharp.
