No matter how much direction I give guys, they always go too hard—I get oversensitive fast, and it scares away the arousal and replaces it with irritation. And what is it with the consistent problem that if, by some miracle, it starts to get good and you’re vocal about it, they think it’s a great time to switch things up?Take a fucking clue, gentlemen, and stay on task.
With a chuckle, Alexander scoops both hands under my ass and pulls me close. “More process than goal here.” He brushes his lips across my small trail of pubic hair in a teasing way. “Every square fuckin’ inch of you is heaven, and I want to taste it all.”
He gentles his thumb over my clit, then kisses it, and… it’s just the first light touch of his lips there, butoh my God, it’s better than what I fantasized, because it’sreal. My thighs relax, but I’m practically holding my breath, willing him to do it again. Normally I’d be barking commands right now—I’m not shy about what I want. But the uncertainty is part of the excitement. I want to see what he’s going to do. So far, every way he’s touched me and kissed me has felt right.
His ministrations are soft, languorous, and have effortlessly perfect pacing. He seems to understand to keep his touch so light that sometimes I’m more feeling the heat of his breath. When something is exactly right and I arch and push againsthim, he’s there with more. Two of his fingers flirt at my pussy and I didn’t even realize I was aching to feel him inside, but I open my legs wider and tilt my hips and he slides in.
Holy fuck, I will never look at long “piano fingers” the same.
The delicious whisper-light rasp of his tongue is killing me, and I don’t know if I’ve babbled some encouraging directions or he’s just paying attention, but… the nerves aren’t always perfectly the same in me from day to day, and tonight I’m feeling best a little high up on the left side of my clit andhe fucking finds the spot, and better yet he sticks with it like a goddamned champion of both intuition and patience.
My hips are rising and falling with my gasps that are increasingly close to sobs, and before I know it, I’m wringing the sheets. But then as climax rumbles onto the scene and stampedes over me, I just want to becloser, closer, closer, and my arms shoot over my head so I brace my palms on the headboard and push against him like I never want him anywhere else. My shocked scream fractures into laughter and I cover my face with both hands, but not as if I’m hiding—it’s more like I want to hold this joy so it can’t leave.
After the last tremors rattle through me and I settle, he moves up beside me, laying one big hand gently on my lower belly. I lift my head and his arm tucks beneath it. I can feel him hard against my hip, and I both want to fuck him stupid and to sleep for about ten hours, I’m so blissfully wrung out.
I side-eye peek at him. “I’m pleasantly surprised that you’re talented at more than piano.”
He kisses my shoulder, smiling. “Thank you, love.”
My heart clenches at the word, and I remind myself that it’sjust a casual Briticism and people call complete strangers “love” at the grocery store in England and it doesn’t mean anything. Also, I have zero interest in beingin-loveloved. But for some idiotic reason I want to cry, and… it’s both in a happy and sad way.
I am losing my shit big-time. Hormones, right?
A wave of paranoia that he’ll see this on my face makes me turn away. I roll onto my side, then scoot back to stay pressed against him. I place my hand on top of the one he has lying open on the bed. When his fingers close around mine, they’re a bit sticky, and it turns me on because I think of where they just were. His dick is temptingly settled between my ass cheeks. I trail my fingernails up his forearm and adjust my hips so he’s right at the gate.
He gathers me back against his chest. “Salvi,” he whispers simply.
I clasp one of his hands—the one I just came all over—and playfully bite the tip of his forefinger. He curls it and enters my mouth a knuckle deep and I sweep him with my tongue, tasting myself. When I suck a little, he groans and tilts his hips to slide that fantastic dick of his into me. As he begins his slow thrusts, I rock sinuously back against him.
Goddamn, this guy has the best sex soundtrack I’ve ever heard, and that’s something you can’t engineer—it’s either right or it isn’t. Some guys are businesslike-silent when they fuck (not great, but at least it isn’t distracting), and most are stupid sounding. Like, it’s a monologue of the type of dirty talk that porn taught them, and they’re rattling off a litany ofYou love it, dontcha, baby?and other such horseshit that never feels rhetorical enough to ignore.
But fuuuuuuuck, Alexander is pure erotic music. I can hear every change in what he’s feeling with his catch of breath, his small groans that are a natural surrender to pleasure, his occasional dominant growl. He doesn’t talk much, but when he does, it’s like hearing words spoken in my own language after years of speaking something else.
I raise one leg and hook it back over his, and as I reach to touch myself, his hand is there too. Sometimes when that happens with a guy, I’ll shove his hand away so I can do what I need, and other times I cede and just let him fumble around. But I thread my fingers into Alexander’s and move his hand how I want, so we’re both touching me. Maybe it’s like how he can focus on both the left and right sides of a piano keyboard at once, but he has absolutely no trouble caressing me softly, even while he’s clearly getting close to his own climax.
My ankle flexes around his leg and I move my hips in time with what he seems to need, and that fucking auditory witchcraft of the way he sounds boosts me higher as his helpless and slightly shocked groan breaks. I can feel him jerk inside of me, and his fragmented release of breath is a little like the way I tend to laugh when I come—something I’ve always felt self-conscious about, like people might not understand that I’m just happy.
Knowing he’s happy too does something unexpected, and yeah, definitely this is a new thing for me—I’m so…here. A flicker of impending orgasm blooms on my horizon and I let go of his leg with my ankle and tense both thighs and push his hand against me, grinding my pussy into his palm as another peak hits, harder than expected for a second round.
As we both come down, the two cadences of our breathing play off each other and I listen to us and thinksyncopation, and I wonder if I should confess to Alexander that when he left Bahrain, the day after he bought that stupid record, I looked up a bunch of jazz stuff because I was curious about it, and… well, curious abouthim.
I try to fight the sleep that’s creeping over me. The last time we had sex I was all,Thanks, dude, and rolled off him and was out like a light, so it seems like I should try to do the polite chitchat thing. But he pulls my hair away from my neck in this nicely tired and lazy way and kisses the curve of my shoulder, then nuzzles against me andfalls asleep first, still half inside me, which for some reason makes me really blissed out.
As I follow him into unconsciousness, I can’t help thinking,Maybe we’re sort of a good match.
20
RAVENNA, ITALY
ALEXANDER
For years, it was my preference to send women off with a friendly pat on the bum after sex—ta-ra, thanks for the memories—and that was obviously not nice. Then came a night when I was twenty-four and a woman named Rose screamed at me in my foyer, “It’s still muggy even if you pay for the cab, you feckin’ tosser!” before slamming out my door, and the angry tears in her eyes made me feel like a world-class arsehole.
Since then, having women sleep over if it’s their preference has been, to my mind, part of the deal. But this is the first time I’ve been delighted with it.
When I wake just after 5:00, Sage is lightly snoring. I prop on an elbow and watch her in the faint light. She sleeps on her stomach, arms and legs sprawled, face unglamorously mashed against the pillow, and I’ve never seen anything more lovely.
After we’d slept for a few hours last night, I was pleasantly roused by Sage’s mouth on me. I assumed the sex would be one of those drowsy, quick things people do with minimal words, but we ended up making love for an hour or better (contrary to her previously stated preference for speed and repetition). She still won’t kiss me when my cock is in her, and I’m not sure how to feel about that, but I acknowledge that she makes the rules.
