His hand on her through her nightie hadn’t gotten her close to this. That last orgasm seemed like a pale imitation compared to the full-bodied gut punch of this thing, and not just because of the sheer intensity of it. There was also the length, dear God the length, oh Jesus no why wasn’t it stopping?
It wasn’t stopping. He’d pulled back a bit—he’d had to, because she had hold of his hair and she really wanted him away—but it was still going on. It was squeezing her and squeezing her now, like some great giant’s hand that wanted to wring every bit of pleasure out of her body. By the time it was done she was a wet rag, completely boneless and ready to accept anything that he might want to do with her.
So it was lucky, really, that his main urge was to pick her up and spread her out over the bed. And even after he’d done that, stroking and petting her into a peaceful laxity as he went, he didn’t go straight into something else. He didn’t let his own obvious desire overwhelm him.
He went slowly, oh so slowly. He stood at the end of the bed, watching her gradually come back to herself. Then once she was breathing a little more steadily, he started peeling off his own clothes. One at a time, like before—like he knew she wanted to look and didn’t mind obliging.
Yeah, he obliged all right. He shimmied his jeans down his legs and lingered over the stretch that helped him take his t-shirt off, and when he went for his socks he bent in a very particular sort of way. He put on a real show, in a way that should have pleased her. Yet strangely, it didn’t seem to.
Instead she thought of how many times he must have posed in his life. How many photo shoots he had probably done, with someone telling him how to stand and be and what to do to look just right. To look like Holden Stark, she thought—and that pretty much sealed it.
She closed her eyes.
She closed her eyes and just said his name—his real name. And once he was still and silent and probably confused, she added the rest. “I just want to hear you be the person you are,” she told him, then waited for a response. She waited and waited until she was certain he hadn’t understood, every word she’d said suddenly nonsense in her head. What kind of thing wasbeing the person you are?
It made zero sense.
To everyone who wasn’t him.
“I’m afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
“That I’m not enough. That without the body and the face and the glamour and the fame I’m not enough. I’m just a puny little geek pretending to be something powerful and amazing, and I don’t know what will happen if I just be that. All the time.”
“You know what will happen. You know or you wouldn’t be here.”
“Tell me then. Explain it to me because—”
“I will love you for being just that. I already love you for being that. The puny geek is the man I want, the man I love—that’s why I’m closing my eyes. So I can see him, instead of the shell he’s operating. Now say something with his voice, not Holden’s. Say something to me that he would say, okay?”
“I think my heart is coming out of my mouth.”
“That’s good. Keep going.”
“I almost passed out while kissing your cunt.”
“Oh that...I don’t know if he would—”
“He would. He wants you to look like that, when he says it. I want you to look like that when I say it. I want you to squirm because I’ve just told you that you tasted like a sweet, ripe peach. I can still taste you when I lick my lips.”
“Really? Really? I...that...”
“And now I’m going to make love to you,” he said.
He wasn’t lying. He was already somehow on the bed, even though she hadn’t felt the mattress dip. She just knew he was there now—mainly because of the hands hovering close to her hips but also the sense of him, oh the sense of him. He swamped her before he’d leaned down. And after he had...
She came close to drowning. The heat of him alone was enough to drag her down, but then there was the smell and the brush of his body and the feel of being surrounded. He was everywhere all at once but better yet—he was still saying things. He was stroking over her forehead and he was saying things.
“I love you too, you know I love you too,” he said.
“How could I not?” she asked. “How could I not when you sent me all those things? When you make me feel the way you do?”
He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to. It was in her expression, she knew it was. She could feel it all pouring out of her, as he did what she’d been dying for since God only knew when. Since the first time he’d almost kissed her, she thought, but it seemed like it had happened before then. She’d been waiting for years for him, and now he was here and holding her and finally, finally...the snap of rubber and the last little frantic fumble.
Then that long, slow slide in.
She wasn’t sure what she’d imagined. Pain, she thought, lots of pain and maybe some discomfort. They always told you to expect both, and especially when the guy was big. They probably had extra warning sections for the thing that he had, with diagrams that spelled out all the things that could go wrong.
