Her hair is mussed, her lips a little swollen, and she’s glaring at me like I’ve besmirched her honor, when that’s the very thing I’ve been trying to avoid doing. I might even laugh at her irritation, if I weren’t also feeling the same frustrating, pressing need. “I don’t want to take things too far. Once I start, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop.”
“Then don’t stop,” she insists, spreading her legs wider.
Heat jolts down through me, straight into my cock. “Helen,” I growl in warning.
“Please, Thad. I need you. I need you inside me.”
I capture her lips in mine before she can say anything else, because I honestly don’t know if I’m capable of self-control when she’s begging me to be inside her. This time I do touch her, though, running my hand up her thigh, and hoping that if I help her find her release, she’ll allow me to stay chivalrous and not deflower her before we’ve had a proper conversation about it.
She whimpers and gasps and twists around at my touch. After a few moments of teasing her, I dip my fingers into her panties to find her already soaking. Jesus.
To my surprise, she twists away from my touch. “I don’t need that. I need you inside me. I want to feel you inside me.”
I stare at her dumbly, heart pounding, sending all the blood in my body down to my dick. Struggling to remain coherent, I start running through the reasons why we shouldn’t have sex, out loud this time. “It’s your first time. We shouldn’t rush it.”
“I’m thirty-one years old. I’d hardly call that rushing it.”
I grit my teeth. “We’re both feeling the adrenaline from today. We should wait until we’re thinking more clearly.”
Helen grips my chin, forcing me to look at her. “If you don’t want to, that’s fine. But please don’t try to come up with excuses forme. I’m a grown woman. I know what I want. I want you.”
For a long moment, I stare at her, trying to remember again why I’ve been fighting so hard against this. Everything in me is urging me to sink into her warmth, feel her wrapped around me, and she is quite literally urging me to do the same.
Rolling off her, I push myself off the bed, shucking off my clothes. Naked, I move to the dresser for my wallet. I’m pretty sure I have a condom stuck in there. After checking the packaging for the expiration date, I tear it open, extracting the condom and rolling it on. It’s been a while, but turns out it’s just like riding a bike.
When I turn back, I see that Helen has also removed her clothes and is lying there, naked, waiting for me. For a moment, it feels like all the air has been pushed out of my chest. She is soHelenin that moment—brave and curious and determined and vulnerable all rolled into one—that it hurts to look at her.
“You’re so beautiful,” I tell her, gently easing her legs open. “Is this still what you want?”
“Yes.”
I step in between her parted legs, encouraging her to wrap them around me, before I ease myself in slowly at her entrance, little by little. She is concentrating hard, her brow furrowed as she stares down at the place where our bodies meet. “Breathe,” I remind her, then push in a little deeper as she does so. “This okay?”
“Yes.”
“Does it hurt?”
“A little. But don’t stop.”
I won’t, but I do pause for a moment, reaching up to take her breasts. Her perfect, voluptuous breasts. I become entranced, watching the way they move, seeing the rest of her posture relax into the sensation. I turn my face up so I can lick and suck and bite at her neck, her shoulder, her collarbone, her ear.
This time there’s less resistance as I sink in a little bit further. She gives a little involuntary gasp, her eyes pressing shut, but I’m in deep enough now that I know the best thing is to keep going forward. “Move with me,” I encourage her. “It’ll help it pass more quickly.”
I have only vague recollections from my younger years of this being true, but it seems right as I say it, and Helen obediently begins moving her body with mine. I’ve been so focused on her pleasure that it isn’t until I’ve sunk all the way in that I allow myself to really feel mine. For a moment, I’m blinded by it—her warmth, her scent, her sex clenching around me as her body moves to draw me in even deeper.
I rouse myself out of the sensation, trying to focus on her, make sure she’s all right, that this experience is memorable and meaningful andenjoyable. By now she’s moving at an almost frantic pace, encouraging me to keep up, and I think any pain or discomfort must be gone, or long eclipsed by something else. “Thad,” she breathes, urges, reprimands. There is so much need in that word.
Then all coherent thought disappears, and I’m simply moving, moving, bucking toward the sensation that’s building inside of me and that seems to have possessed her, too. The last conscious action that I take is feeling for that sensitive nub in between us. She gasps, and moans, and pulls me in tighter, tighter, and I finally let go.
Chapter 45
Helen
Iknow something’s wrong the moment I wake up.
Thad sits at the edge of the bed, his back turned toward me. He’s fully dressed, just staring straight ahead, his shoulders tense. When I glance over, I see his bag is resting next to the door. He doesn’t have to say anything. I may not have much experience, but I know what this means.
The hurt, the shock, the pain of it is almost unbearable. I don’t move for several seconds, fighting back tears, my heart aching. If this had happened a few days ago, it would have hurt, but I could have understood it. We hadn’t made any promises to each other then. We hadn’t known what it would be like to almost lose each other.
