Her mouth parts, and after a second she nods. “I can try.”
I lean forward, kiss the side of her head, and sit back again. “Good. Can you also stop talking shit about yourself? You’re the most beautiful woman I know. I like all of this,” I tell her, my hands trailing up and down her sides, the swell of her hips, the curves and indents along her upper body, middle, and thighs. “Alot,” I tack on meaningfully.
She lookssouncomfortable at the thought, but forces herself not to look away. To sit there and accept what I’m telling her. It looks like progress to me.
“I can try,” she finally says. “I know it’s different for girls these days. I didn’t grow up in the generation of ‘thick is the new thin,’ and ‘body positivity,’ I grew up in the generation of body shaming, and if you aren’t a size zero, you’re an elephant, and boys don’t want to date you, and girls don’t want to be friends with you.” She trails off, getting quiet for a minute. Her hands come back to my chest, and I like that that’s where they gravitate to. “Some things that take shape in your formative years are hard to shake, even when things change, when the world around you changes. Even when you know, logically, you shouldn’t feel some way, it doesn’t mean that feeling dissipates just because it should.” Her eyes bore into mine. “I eat small, fresh, healthy, pre-portioned meals throughout the week, I work out most every day, and I try to work on my mental state. Be kinder to myself. Be happier with my body. But I can’t promise that years and years of that kind of thinking will just vanish overnight. The residue of what was said about me in my younger years, the cruel things kids at school would taunt me with, it’s still stuck all over me, inside of me.” She rubs at her arms, like it’s something physical she wishes she could remove.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I tell her in a whisper, and her eyes flit to mine, anxiously. “You work on being nicer to yourself, easing up on yourself, and erasing what those little dumb fucks said and did however you can—the absurd ideas they implanted in you that you aren’t perfect—and I’ll keep reminding you what I see. How you look from others’ perspectives.” The backs of my fingers come up to her face, tracing her cheeks, pink from all the laughs we’ve had tonight, maybe from more than that. “That you’re gorgeous. With a body that haunts me.” My other hand spans her waist, flattens on her stomach, smooths around to her side and hovers there. “The woman of my fucking dreams.”
“Oh,” she says, also whispering, but hers is breathier, so much sexier. “That’s a good deal,” she says. “I accept your terms.” A small smile breaks out on her face and it’s all I can do not to kiss it.
“Good,” I tell her, more loudly, needing to make this less intimate, make it easier to keep my word of not making a move on her until she’s ready. “Besides, we all have insecurities.”
“Yeah?” she asks. “What are yours, then?”
My brows raise, mouth thins. “Mmm, well. We can start with my height, my size,” I tell her. Her arms come around my neck, holding me like I did to her as she opened up to me. “I’m not the six-foot-two, stacked motherfucker that is on every girl’s must-have list. Something I’ve finally given up on growing into. I had to accept I’m just average sized. Never gonna be the tall, dark, and handsome chicks are always looking for.”
One of Ellie’s hands comes forward, grazing my neck as it comes to rest on my face, trace my jawline and cheekbone. “You’re beautiful.” I don’t think she means to say it, think it just slipped out. “I mean, you turn heads everywhere you go, and I think a lot of it is this face, this body.” Her hand trails down my chest, my abs, over to my arms, the exposed skin and ink there. “But I think a lot of it is justyou.” That hand stops moving over my heart. “Whatever magic juju you have going on inside you, it’s fucking visible from the outside. And it’s exactly what women want.”
What most girls have wanted from me was a way to get off, some fun for a night or few, so I don’t think she knows what she’s doing to me with words like those. That she sees more in me. God, I want to kiss this woman. Make her breathless. Taste her from the inside, see if she’s as sweet, as addicting as I know she’ll be. I set my mouth to the task it came for tonight instead; more talking. “You know that’s my favorite thing about you, too,” I tell her, watching her face closely. “That energy you have, how your mind works, how you share it with the world around you. No one else has that but you, Ellie. It fucking lights you up, makes you even more beautiful.”
Her eyes dart from my eyes to my mouth, back up again. Back down again. Something in my groin tightens. If these were any other circumstances, I would’ve kissed her hours ago. A hundred times in between. Again, right now. But I fucking promised her we’d feel this out before getting physical.
So my brain tells my mouth to blurt out something on topic, but that will completely destroy the moment. Annoyingly, my mouth complies.
“I don’t know what you’ve had in your other partners, Ellie, but while we’re on the topic of insecurities, I kind of need to tell you what to expect with me. I’m average…everywhere.”
My stupid fucking brain chosethismoment to sharethat? I’ll admit, it’s been a tactic of mine in the past. Some self-deprecating humor, couple jokes about my own size, then when chicks actually see it, they’re not disappointed. Far from it, actually, once I get to using it.
I don’t want to make this a joke with Ellie. But I am a little nervous, I do feel pressure to not let her down.
“Oh,” she says quietly.
She moves her hips slightly, back and forth overtop of my lap.
“It…doesn’tfeellike a problem to me,” she tells me delicately, her eyes finding mine again, locking in on them, as her hips keep rocking. “Doesn’t feel like something you need to be insecure about.”
The movement, those words, that look in her eye as she says them, breaks something loose inside of me. My hands clasp around her hip and her waist, and I lean forward, practically throwing her backward, so I land on top of her on the other end of the couch.
Our hips are lined up just right, and I press into her once, twice, and again because I have absolutely no discipline in this moment. She makes a whimper I’ll be dreaming of until she lets me hear something more from her, and I drop my forehead to her shoulder. “I won’t have a problem giving you everything you need, Ell. Just didn’t want there to be any surprises when we get there.”
This is where I’d usually make a joke. Tell a girl,I know, I know, when you look at me, a five-ten white boy who’s not quite scrawny but definitely not John Cena, your first thought is probablywow, that guy must be packin’.And I don’t wanna call that voice in your head a liar, buuuuut.They laugh. Every time. And then I’d show them size isn’t the most important thing, anyway. Not like I’msmall, but fuck, you see the toys that are out there, what these guys in porn videos are working with, your fucking roommate for that matter, and it can get in your head. I’d rather my partners be happily surprised than disappointed, and so far it’s always worked out for me.
I’m not going that route with Ellie, she’s not just a random hookup, a way to pass a Saturday night. She’s what I want my every Saturday night to look like.
She’s still spread beneath me, her legs bent on either side of my hips, cradling me, and it would be so easy to grind up against her, slip a hand down, tweak her nipples, go a little farther down, get her to come all over my hand. Clean it up with my mouth, make her do it all over again.
Her own verbal diarrhea tries to match mine, sabotaging that plan, derailing my entire train of thought.
“I’m really insecure about my boobs,” she whispers, and I pull back so I can look down at her, right in those gorgeous dark blue eyes.
“I remember, you’re waiting on NASA to make the right bra,” I tell her, amused. That joke made me laugh, not sure I’ll be able to forget her rambly speech about how giant her tits are. Certainly not gonna be able to forget said tits.
She laughs, shutting her eyes, and her whole body rumbles beneath me, probably embarrassed she told me that particular tidbit. Eventually, she stops, opens her eyes again, and keeps talking. “It’s just, I don’t have fake boobs that float, or little tiny porn star nipples. I have naturally giant breasts. They’re probably nothing like what you’re used to seeing.”
My eyes drag down from her face to her chest, those breasts in question that are pressed up against the neckline of her tank top, threatening to spill out with her on her back like this. I feel myself harden further, lengthen at the sight, and fight the urge to bite into them, grab them, show her just how hot I think they are.
“Babe,” is what I go with instead. I think my tone conveys all that and more, anyway. “Believe me, when I get the chance to become acquainted with your boobs, you’re gonna know exactly how much I love them. Gonna worship the fuck outta these things.” Holding myself partially off of her with one hand, I slide the other down her side, grazing the spillover of one tit there, the bit of sideboob that’s within reach, watch her shudder at the contact. Can already tell they’re sensitive on her, and fuck do I wanna see what I can do to her through them alone.
