Текст книги "The Plan"
Автор книги: Qwen Salsbury
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Текущая страница: 13 (всего у книги 15 страниц)
A monumental shift in our positions. He finishes removing his pants, leaves me for a moment. Bereft. I never knew its real meaning before. Then he’s down beside me. I can feel my hair splayed out around me. Slowly, he combs the already tangled ends out with his fingers. Reverent. Continues to kiss me, forever kissing me. He is braced on a single forearm, moves his touch from my hair, to my face, and down. Draws a line along my body, pausing. Pauses briefly over my heart. He presses his palm flat there. Bends. Places open lips there, on the space that drums below him, that might now have fulfilled its dual purpose in life.
Yeah, well, open my envelope and call me a Hallmark card. He already said I gave the very best…
The rough of his hand slips lower, then lower. I cannot stop, don’t want to stop my reactions. Hips rise. Plunging my hands into his hair. He slides a finger under lace, past the band of my panties.
I know if I shift ever so slightly I will be able to feel his erection, pretty much ride it. But he is trying to be gentlemanly about it. How very sweet.
But we will have none of that. None of that, I say.
It is touching…but I want to touch him.
His fingers skim the near flat of my stomach as he approaches…me. His focus on our kisses falters for the first time; while he continues to press his lips to mine, a greater portion of his attention is clearly elsewhere. As is mine. For, while he had been successful in keeping the physical evidence of his arousal somewhat discreet, there just is no disguising my excitement.
At this point, I’m pretty much a Slip ’N Slide. Like, a Slip ’N Slide with Wesson oil and the hot on full blast. Wheeeeee.
He grips the edges of the fabric, drags it down my thighs and legs. My flesh contracts where the fabric leaves a wet trail along my inner thighs. I feel my breathing still as I await his reaction to the effect he’s had on me. My panties find their way onto the floor, and Alaric wraps one arm around me at the waist and the other around my shoulders.
His face buried in my neck, he continues to cradle me within one arm, the other drifts. Glides.
Fingers play along my hip. Thigh. There.
A gasp. Harsh and low. Resounding below my ear. Moment of stillness, and he stills momentarily, then his deep moan into the hollow of my neck makes my thighs clench together over his hand.
“My God, Emma,” he rasps. Single finger slips inside. “You are killing me, lady.”
Bite back a moan. Fight back all sounds, all words, not trusting what telltales may escape. Or shocking compositions of curse words. Like Beethoven found a late-life penchant for salacious symphonies. Alaric’s been so composed, worshipful, while I was on the verge of shouting some incredibly vulgar things. He must notice what I’m doing, because he gently pulls my bottom lip from between my teeth with his own. Half suck, half bite. Watches my reaction through hooded lids.
“No, Emma, don’t hold back.” Throaty rasp. “Let me know how I make you feel.” Then he slides a second finger. Stretch. I moan.
He curls them in me, searching.
My hands cling, dig. Fix to the contours of his back, then downward, and around to trace the V that has called out to me for so long.
He finds the spot. Brushes. Strokes. Then assaults. Crushes my lips.
Unable to aim. Almost on his lips. Kiss anything, all that I can find. Shout against him. Sounds, not words. The open ache of vowel sounds. No language known to man or beast.
Fall back together. Tangled arms. Foggy, I hear murmurs. Soft reassurances in my ear. Missing most of it in the thunderous blood rushing around my system.
“Always you. Only you.”
My treacherous, trembling hand fumbles its way. Close him in my palm. Brush the tip. He hisses. Thick. He’s wet, too. Coats my fingers. His hips move forward into my hand, and he’s panting.
I wrap my leg around his hip, tucking my ankle against the point where his thigh meets his perfect ass, and encourage him to move over top of me. Which he does, then halts. His weight rests on his forearms, hands on either side of my face. His eyes dance…and since it is Christmas, I will allow the comparison to Fred Astaire, because I’m my usual Ginger Rogers, doing my dance in high heels.
Heat radiates from him. Near me, not entering me. He shakes above me, apparently awaiting some unknown cue.
I’m too busy with my turn kissing his throat, his shoulders, any part of him I can reach. A shadow of dark hair below his chin calls out to me; I swirl my tongue, roughness runs under my tongue, and draw his Adam’s apple into my mouth in a long suck.
“Christ.”
He speaks, and my suction breaks with the movement. He bends and curves over the top of me, bringing my nipple between his lips, pulling at it, drawing it deeply into his mouth. He moves, repeats.
Lick, and touch, and draw long breaths. Pull back, survey his landscape. Look for something more. More connection, as if I need another sense to take him in. So I want to give him the single one left: hearing.
The problem is, I don’t know what exactly to say.
The high ceiling is invisible in the current light, only acoustics of reverberated gasps bounce back down upon us. In a room already filled with our soft moans, he needs words.
In this moment, I recognize my power. Because, for once, I can say how I feel without reservation. He needs to know, and I need to tell him. Where earlier words had seemed trite, in this space and time I accept that they can, they will, they must—must—make everything right. I conjure strength and force myself to break away and speak.
“You are who I’m meant for.”
Lowest groan. Eyes close. Breath holds. Touch lips. Tremor. Enter. Lightning strike.
The unspoken words “Take me” rattle around in my brain. The sentiment seems insufficient somehow, perhaps embedded in patriarchal notions. The idea that there is a penetration, a plundering, an invasion, so there must be a taking. It’s somehow off to me…for I am taking him. I am claiming. I receive. There will be just as much of me when we are done. If anything, he might be the one leaving himself behind. I will be the same…but more. I envelope, encase, claim. I accept.
I take him.
There is a responsibility in that notion that I never saw before. Take care of as well as care for.
He trusts me to be as strong as the both of us need me to be. We are but two short steps from loneliness, longing.
Trust gives way to thrusts, and I find I can no longer contemplate the intricacies of the universe.
He’s being so careful and slow. It’s touching, torture. Both.
Braced on his elbows, hover and touch and rasp, shallow breaths. Move, slip. Flat of palms beneath my shoulder blades. Wet along collarbone, neck. Water drips, rivulets beyond my ear. Kissed away. Pound. Harder. Harsh. I want him at the spot inside me all his own. Again. Beyond count. Fuck, I don’t even know anymore. More. More. Fuck, please just more. Thunder, shudder. Body wracks. Hair clings, slick locks.
With each movement, each in then out, he moves fractionally further. Slow and paced and acutely aware of each new stretch. He continues, quakes so much and me, maybe more. I think, perhaps, he’s resisting the urge to plunge ahead and finish the trek. I would be inclined to appreciate the need represented by such urgency—because I’m only human, heck, I want to feel that desired, that wanted—but it occurs to me that this inch-by-inch method has been going on for quite some time…and he’s not done yet.
Move. Kiss. Slide. Farther. Further. Stretch. Again. Move…
And he’s not there yet…
That is to say, Elvis has barely entered the building.
Holy. Shit. Am I that nervous? Or were those pernicious pineapples I’ve been sneaking into his meals really GMOs laced with super-conductor growth hormones?
I mean, I have been doing Kegels like a mofo, but seriously? This fit before? Just yesterday?
“Ungh…uh…uh…a…ric. I…oh, God—” I cry out as his hips tilt and thickness presses inside me against the spot his fingers had stroked earlier. My limbs leave my control, and I wrap around him, clinging. I clutch and grasp, fingertips pressing at the contours and sinews of his back.
Legs flail, and suddenly, I find I’m around him, past waist and hip, ankles entwined above. It causes a shift, a surge. Farther in, into me, much farther.
A shift that may catch him unawares; long, moaning curses fall beside and all around me. Progress and movement still. Only tremulous movements along his limbs. Strain and hold back.
I wriggle, then writhe, then learn to make his body beg.
Hands down the small of his back, smoothing one over his hip, press thumbs into bone. Will him, plead with him to continue. My hands slide between us, to where we meet. Near scorches, humidity, heat.
Partially sheathed, consume, complete. Hands run circuits along my sides, along my waist. Palm draws my thigh up, anchors him down. Transfixed, I don’t have any idea why I note the soft webbing between his thumb and index finger as it presses against the back of my right knee. He holds fast, sounds so soft, kisses forming a line over my breastbone. They’re unsteady. Tender whisper-laced kisses. Barely audible over the pulse thrumming in my ears.
These are the secrets.
Finally.
And I hear some of what he has to say for the first time.
Furtive, so much so it almost feels like I eavesdrop. “Only you…” His mouth press to the pulse point on my throat.
“Whatever it takes…” His lips smooth along my neck, open and moist. “Mine…goddamn it all….now…” The words are hoarse and dry. I feel him swallow against my breast.
My hands fly to his face and pull him to me and kiss him and never let go. I have never felt more. My palms rub against the scruff along his cheeks. Kiss and delve and swallow any more of these clandestine curses. Then I spread my legs, strain near pain, drag the hand he held me with along the way. Hips hitch forward. Manage a great deal more poise than I would have ventured I possess. Draw his length in. To the hilt. All of him, all that remains of him, of me.
He cries out into my mouth when his hips fully meet mine. I think he might have tried to hold fast and allow me to adjust, but I am having none of it; I raise myself and grind against him. Alaric breaks from our kiss and watches the space where our bodies join. Each joining, his breathing picks up more, and then yet more. Strong fingers wrapped at my waist. The fingertips of one hand feel as though they may almost touch the other, completely encircling me in his grasp.
Full, long, deep…complete.
Steady movements. Try to force my eyes to remain open. More than can be managed. Peek through foggy slits. Shadows, silhouettes move above me, within me.
He alternates in some rhythm I can’t measure. Lips to mine. Then, watching himself in me. Slide. Disappear. Focus, gauge my reaction.
Vaguely, I register one of his hands moving from my waist, feel the drag along smooth sheets, past my body, my face, my hair, sliding until it extends over my head and, probably, latches onto the back of the mattress. Leverage. Heaving push.
I’m no scientist, but if this is what fulcrum or leverage (or, hell, thermal dynamics and industrial water technology, for all I know) do for intimacy, sign me up for the courses.
For a doctorate.
Pressure, and the hand he still uses to secure my waist tilts my pelvis up to greet his. He draws himself up on his knees slightly, slides his length into me. Slow. Rubs along my front wall, edges. All. Watching, ever watching my reactions.
I give up. Give in. Unmasked and no disguise, he sees it all. All that is me on display.
Draws back out, maneuvers me again. Forward plunge. Different path. Different point. Oh, more right there, and again, again and please. Air in throat, breath catches, soundless moan.
Moonlight glints off his smile. Finds what he’s looking for. Takes a long breath, then draws back, then enters and pounds again, again. There. Just…there.
Scream. I want to. Need to. For all I know, I might.
Force. Extreme. Hold on. Ankles dig and ache. Feel my body, my back arc up and away from the point where we join. My head is weighted, too heavy, stays touching the bed. Back bows, mimics a flesh rainbow.
Might say his name. Might blaspheme. I begin to call out all manner of sounds. Some might even be actual words. Or the recipe for tuna noodle surprise.
Clutch at the sheets, pulling, arc further, and shake. He moves his hand from the mattress and drags a flat palm down the length of my torso to join his other one in holding my waist.
Breaths that are rough. He continues to pound into me. Thoroughly. Fully.
Completely.
All around, words spill. I hear myself saying things and can’t stop. I tell him how I would think of him every day. Thrash and cool sheets and night air. Whisper nonsensical rants about cherry wood doors and white dress shirts and conference room C. How I can’t concentrate except on him.
And still he pounds into me and still I keep pouring my heart out to him.
In shallow gasps I share with him how much he means to me and it scares me that he does.
Happy and terrified. I’m sobbing about how much he means to me when Alaric suddenly stops, his eyes wide. Stops, scoops me up. Flat against him, every crevice, every space. Fine hairs and cool sweat.
His hands run through my hair. Kisses my cheeks, my lips, corners of my eyes, every part of my face as if I’ve been missing and he has just found me. He lowers us both back to the bed. Lips tease flesh inside of one of my elbows. He places it on his shoulders, wrapping around him, holding him. Encased. He resumes. Long, full.
Maybe only moments and I splinter. Fall. Tense and clench. Lungs tight with confessions and courage and cowardice. He seems near the brink. His muscles writhe and contract. His words like whispers, inaudible through my haze. Breathes more secrets into my skin, and I strain to hear the tale, and he throws his head back, shouts, pours. Heat. Spasm. Full.
He shudders and continues to spill. Runs open-mouth kisses wherever they land.
I stay silent, and he continues to whisper, to respond to the confessions I have been unable to hold back. I begin to hear and understand the hum decoded through dissipating fog. His voice a low thrum. “I do…so much already…” He kisses my eyes and smooths the dampened hair from my face. “Already and always.” He swallows thickly and runs his nose alongside my own. “Oh, God, Emma. You don’t know how much…I do.”
He wraps his arms around me and breathes his words into my hair. “I love you, too.”
Say who with the what now? Well, Merry Christmas and Ho Ho Holy Crap.
Just what the hell have I been yammering on about?
Christmas Morning
10:09 a.m.
WARM. EVERYTHING IS WARM, and I’m being jostled.
My eyes flutter open.
“Hey,” he says, kissing my bare shoulder. “I couldn’t wait any longer.”
His lips are wet, soft. I stretch and kiss his throat.
“There is something I have to tell you…that you should know,” he says against my skin. “I meant what I said earlier. It was not because of the heat of the moment or because I felt compelled to respond in kind. I want you to know that.”
“Hmm?” So sleepy. Content.
“I love you, Emma.” His lips brush the corner of my eye, my cheek, my own. “I love you and I know you. I know you in my soul. With everything I am, I love you for everything you are.”
In my waking haze, no act, no filter, I say the first thing that comes naturally to me.
“I probably love you, too.”
11:15 a.m.
*
Stockings
: Hung over the lampshade with care.
*
Coital
: Post.
*
Note to Self
: Find Cheesecake Factory suggestion box. Submit pineapple cheesecake.
*
Reindeer Games
: Is that what you kids are calling it these days?
SO MUCH SEX. I feel limp. Like I should move to a Boneless Chicken Ranch.
5:02 p.m.
*
Lather
: Rinse. Repeat.
*
Condoms
: Soon the way of the dodo.
AN ODD GRAY AREA now settles between us. Too intimate for small talk. Not intimate enough for talk of bigger concepts like relationships, futures, curtains.
How do you start a casual conversation after you’ve been fornicating like the survival of the species depended on your successful efforts?
Hey, hun, did you like the mount up I did on you last night?
Yes, yes. I’ve been stretching. Trying to keep limber.
Today is a holiday. Canon is wearing Baby Jesus’s birthday suit.
Well, at least he says it is. I recall some business about swaddling clothes and something else about men being wise. And we know that men are no such thing. But “holiday” with Alaric seems to translate to some variant of “wall sex,” so…well…who am I to quibble with trivial matters such as accuracy and facts?
We have been enjoying a little celebratory SOS—Shoes-On Sex.
They say practice makes perfect, but that doesn’t seem to apply. If so, I’d have a doctorate. An FMP PhD.
It isn’t Valentine’s Day for a couple more months, but that doesn’t stop my heels from piercing Alaric’s heart.
If by “heart,” one means “dick.”
“Are you prepping me for some sort of genital piercing? At least let’s discuss that sort of thing first.”
“Do you mean an apadravya?” I try not to snort at the idea of this stiff and proper man with such an ornamentation.
“Apadravya? Any intent to plunge a steel rod through…there…best begin with ‘Abracadabra.’” He exhales sharply, cupping himself like a baby bird fallen from the nest, and shudders.
I snicker. He looks nauseated. If I ever broached the subject again, I’d be better off to just go straight for Avada Kedavra.
A piercing like that isn’t anything I really want, but I can’t help myself when he’s like this.
“I hear it’s very pleasurable,” I say as innocently as possible, running two fingers over the sheet in slow, swirly patterns. His eyes follow their trek.
“It’s done in one quick session when they pierce the mea—”
“Emma, I swear on a stack of balanced portfolios, if you finish that sentence, we are never having intercourse again.”
Oh, dear. Instant mute. Just add threat of celibacy.
Hour: Late. Or early. A matter of perspective.
*
Snow
: Sheets.
*
Actual Sheets
: Mostly near the lamp base.
*
Condoms
: Completely exhausted.
*
Us
: See above, re: “Condoms.”
I AWAKE TO NEAR DARKNESS, the moon’s effects shy behind murky clouds. Fat snow obscures the silent cityscape. Norman Rockwell would be proud.
The only sounds I can discern are the soft, even breaths that accompany each rise and fall of his chest beneath my cheek. If there had been an actual zombie apocalypse and we were all that remained of humanity, I would still be content. Right up until the special of the day was my brains, anyway.
We’re wrapped up in one another…finally. Not only physically—with his strong arms encircling me and holding me to his chest and my legs warm underneath the one he has draped over me—but emotionally as well. He had let me know as much in no uncertain terms.
I love you, too.
When he said the words, the feeling that overtook me was indescribable. Like the physical answering of a prayer unfurled in my chest and rapidly seeped out to the farthest points of my body. An incorporeal warmth in places I hadn’t even known to exist within myself, as though my very soul heated and healed.
I’m still my whole person, but with this special new addition.
All that, but more, better. New and improved: Now with more sex.
At that time, for a split second, I had opened my mouth to tell him that I wasn’t sure how I felt, that I wasn’t sure I was ready to confess it was Real, True Love that had snuck up and came about when I was busy ogling his ass. But his phrase rang in my ears. “…too.”
He wasn’t waiting for a response; he responded to me.
“Um…Hey, Emma.”
His chest vibrates with groggy words. I look up and can see that he’s still bordering on slumber.
From between us, unbidden, my right hand ghosts up from beside me.
I want to touch him.
Everywhere and always.
I can see my hand’s shadowed outline, fingers like dark tree branches against the window’s scant light, Each one carved into the night with more distinction that would’ve been noticed under the midday sun. They rise above the landscape hills of his side.
The slope of his right shoulder is silhouetted against the midnight light that filters through the shade. The air warms briefly with each breath.
He shifts, momentarily restless, only to gather me up closer still and hum as he falls back under sleep’s spell.
My hand remains aloft. I let it descend and trace the outline of his form. First, up his sculpted arm, then around the bend of his shoulder, across his collarbone. Still, he breathes softly. Then, emboldened, I smooth my hand down his side, his hip, thigh, and around to his butt. Nice. My fingers run along his curves, his flesh pebbled under my touch. The whole area is addictive and oddly comforting to touch. Like a stress ball. Or dough. Really, really great dough. I began to gently knead it like I’m baking bread for the troops.
Ass. It seems like a wonderfully crude word for such an amazing piece of…art.
“Um, Emma?” Alaric’s voice, groggy but amused, breaks my musing. “What precisely is it you think you are doing?”
Whoops. “Oh, sorry…I thought you were still sleeping.”
“I would be concerned if I—or anyone for that matter—could sleep through that.” He kisses me with a practically audible smile.
“Well, I was just…doing a little impromptu exploring.” I squeeze his cheek, and my index finger runs down the first inch or so between.
“Oh, well, so be it.” He hums a bar and pulls me to him, my hand falling unceremoniously to his groin. He huffs. “I feel positively objectified.”
My breath catches. He grows, more, under my touch, and he seems unaware, or unwilling, to stop his small tremors and rocking motions.
“Emma,” he whispers and repeats and pulls me up into a kiss, his soft lips brushing over mine with every syllable as he continues to kiss me.
Alaric dips further, heat pushing into me. My head arches back into the pillows, I incline myself.
He slides fully. Throaty, deep moan.
Everything is hips…
and lips…
and real.
Only ever out partially, rejoin fully. A concentrated, delicious rocking motion. Scruff along his chin grazes my face and neck. I duck further into his embrace. Kiss the hollow of his neck; he tastes of sleep and sweat and…I can’t imagine ever getting enough. I dive in, kissing and biting and pulling him into me as much as I can with my softening limbs.
Instantly, he stills inside me. All his movements halt, the caresses he had been trailing along my ribs, the rocking. He holds his breath.
Eyes clench. Face unreadable. I’m unsure what he’s thinking, but I know I will remember this moment, that I will find the right time to ask what clamors inside his thick skull.
Moments pass, voice still AWOL. He looks down at me in what seems like relief.
“Oh, God…Em…Emma…” He rolls me over, holds me against him tighter than ever. Thrusts—frantic, possessive—names tumbling over then over again like a staggered ballad. We wrap around and hold on. Strokes, fan the flames.
I resist the urge to dig into his back, instead fisting the sheets in one hand and holding on tight across his shoulder blades with the other, straining my fingers straight to keep what little nails I had from scratching his skin, marking my territory.
Find my voice. “I’m…I’m…” Stars, novas. Pop and burn.
“Come on, Emma…Yes…let me have it.”
Clenching, I cry out something close to his name. He falters. Shudders. Fingers clench hips. Stills. Moans low from the bottom of his lungs. His arms seem to fail him; his body crushes into mine, pressing. I feel covered, protected, even if I don’t need protecting.
He flops beside me again, one arm still under me, his chest rising and falling rapidly.
“That was…” His free arm does a solitary, boneless flop.
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah,” he breathes and looks toward the growing light of dawn.
After a few moments, he rolls to kiss my forehead. “Looks like it’s about that time,” he says and inclines his head to the window.
And just like that, our night is over.
Probably a good thing. With our stockpile depleted, unless the Trojan man makes house calls, I shall henceforth be looking all gift horses in the mouth.
“Emma, you are pouting.” His thumb plays with my bottom lip, and I suck it in quickly. He huffs an almost laugh, shakes his head once and rolls, sitting up on the edge of the bed.
“Stay,” I hear myself speak before I have even thought the word.
He leans back to me and sweeps what is probably a matted mess of hair over and behind my shoulder. “We will be together, right back here—together…in about ten hours.”
That, actually, sounds like a dreadfully long amount of time.
I do my damnedest not to pout again; the entire concept of me doing so is shameful in the extreme, but I fail. Alaric shakes his head and runs the back of his index finger along my lip. “What can I do?”
“Stay.” I reach up, peck his lips.
“Believe me, I want to. We can’t just skip work, Emma.”
“I’m sure Diana will manage to contain her disappointment.” At least, better than she does her unruly bosoms.
He says nothing, just a nod and a shrug before kissing my cheek again and bee-lining for the shower, leaving me with only the view of the same ass that started all this to comfort me.
It does a fair job.
