He doesn’t hesitate. He leans away from me and pulls my underwear down, and as soon as he’s exposed the triangle of hair between my legs his jaw clenches, his body a study in restraint. Smooth, hard lines, fully upright. W-A-I-T, those lines spell.
“Show me,” he says, and if it’s impatience, it’s exactly the right kind. It doesn’t promise me anything but his desire, his enjoyment of this, wherever it goes from here.
My hand smooths down my stomach, lingers in the soft, curved space between my belly button and my pubic bone. I stroke my fingers there lightly, a tiny, gentle cursive, the same way I would at home, in my own bed, late at night.
“I like this to start.” I already know I don’t like it as much as I would if it were Reid’s hand, Reid’s fingertips.
He makes a noise, puts one knee back on the bed, but keeps his distance. My fingers skate down, and I know I’m more sensitive than I would be usually—one glancing touch from the soft pad of my index finger and my lower back arches from the bed. Reid sets a big, warm hand on the top of my raised knee, watching me with a hot concentration. God, that stitched-up brow, that bruise. I feel warm and liquid and desperate.
“Do you like being kissed there, too?” he says, after a few seconds.
“Sometimes.” When it’s hungry and unreserved, when it feels less about a technique for me than it is about some urgent, desperate need for him. “When I think . . . when I think the guy is into it.”
“I’m into it,” he says quickly, and I can’t help but smile. I hope it’s a smile of the sultry variety, but it’s probably more the irrepressible joy variety. I close my eyes, picture Reid’s head between my legs, those broad shoulders spreading me apart as he licks and sucks, and my fingers circle that firm nub with a faster, more insistent rhythm. Reid squeezes my knee, and I open my eyes again, stilling my fingers.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so worked up.”
“Don’t be sorry. Don’t—if this is all you want, you showing me what feels good—”
His saying it makes me realize how completely this isnotall I want. Doing this—telling him, showing him—all of it has released me from the preoccupation with finishing. I want Reid to touch me; I want Reidinsideof me, and I’m past caring if it gets me there. If it doesn’t I’ll happily take this same look in his eyes again as he watches me do it myself; I’ll happily let him practice again and again and again.
“This isn’t all I want.” I remove my hands from my body, prop myself on my elbows to get closer to him. Beneath his gray boxer briefs I can see him, long and hard, stretching the material tight, and I get an entirely new face-pressing instinct when it comes to Reid, but that’s going to have to wait until later, because I feel aching and empty between my legs, wet and worked up andready.
“I want you. You and me, together.”
He leans down to kiss me, his tongue sliding against mine, his arm coming to band around my lower back as he shifts me, moves me farther up the bed. When he’s on top of me again, my hips rise to meet his immediately, and without the material of my underwear covering me, without that trace of anxiety, the contact between us makes me gasp in pleasure. He bends his head, his tongue tracing that curve I showed him on my breast with his tongue, the exact right pressure before he licks up to my nipple, his teeth grazing me, and when, a few delicious minutes later, he moves his hand between us, I can tell from his first touch he paid such good attention, suchclose,closeattention, and I practically jolt off the bed in pleasure.
“Can you—” I gasp. “Can we practice that later? It feels so good, but I need . . .” I trail off, pressing against him.
“Say it, Meg.”
My God, the way he does this, when we’re this way together. The way he’s the right kind of direct. The way he makes it safe for me to be the same.
“I want you inside me.”
He rewards me again, because we both know now the wait, the anticipation is over. He reaches his arm out, yanks the drawer of his small nightstand open for a condom, and within seconds he’s shucked his underwear and sheathed himself, movements I watch with the same hungry intensity that he gave to me.
And when he settles between my legs and pushes forward—so slow, so perfect, so focused—it feels so good, right from the very first second, and I see what’s happening inside of me. In my mind there’s a gorgeous, dangeroustaking shape, swooping across my thudding, happy heart, looping behind and around it, catching it unaware, holding it fast and tight.
In a sort of desperate, surprised panic, I clutch at Reid’s sides, pulling him closer to me, relieved when the bolt of pleasure I get from feeling the full length of him inside of me scatters the rest of those too-soon letters from my mind as if they’re pencil shavings I’ve blown from the page. Then all I can think about is the next thrust of his hips, the next roll of mine, the way we find such an easy, perfect rhythm together, like walking in sync, like reading the signs we share with each other—a touch here, a suck there, a gasp, a groan, a sigh.
I make a liar of myself, my release building fast and insistent.
“Reid,” I breathe. “I’m close.”
He ducks his head, presses his forehead into the now-tangled mass of my hair, gusting out a breath even as he—gorgeous, smart, always-paying-attention man—keeps theexactsame pace, the one that’s rocking me to a pleasure so intense I’ve never felt anything like it before.
“Good,” he says again, and I’m so turned on by the way his breath comes short, the way it sounds as if he’s speaking tight, almost through his teeth, holding fast to his control.
“Come with me,” I beg. “Please, please, please.”
And I don’t know how he does it, Reid with his mysterious, magical numbers, but he does, every one of those pleas a count for him and his perfect, hard thrusts—
one
two
three
