mutual appreciation
alyssa
Julian’s handaround mine was warm and certain. We’d walked down the hall and I was aware of everything. The quiet of his house now that everyone was gone, the way my heart was still beating irregularly from standing in that living room and letting India.Arie come out of me like a confession. The sound of our footsteps.
He opened his bedroom door and then we were just… there. Facing each other. He reached out and touched my face, eyes on me, taking his time like he only wanted to look at me before anything else happened. Like I was worth looking at.
Finally, he led us to his bed. I let out a ragged breath, as he pulled his shirt off over his head, then lifted my top off me. He laid me back on his bed and hooked his thumbs in the waistband of my pants, easing them down my legs, sending a jolt through my body. I lay there in my bra and panties as he hovered over me, then he bent down and we kissed each other insatiably.
He sat up and hooked his fingers into my panties, pulling them down. I lifted my hips to help, and as the lace slid past my thighs and he settled between my legs, something in me tensed and braced.
My legs shifted. Not closed exactly, but angled away. Part of me wanted to hide on reflex. He caught it, and looked up at me, confusion on his face.
I pressed my lips together and looked away. My voice barely made it out. “It’s okay… you don’t have to do that…”
“What is it?”
Embarrassment crawled up my neck. “It’s just… it’s been a while. And I don’t need that, if… you don’t like it. It’s okay.”
I didn’t say the rest. That somewhere over the years of my marriage I had learned to stop asking for this. Expecting it. That I had quietly decided that the issue was me. My body, my smell, my taste, something about me that just wasn’t… enough. I had never felt wanted in that way. Somewhere along the line I had stopped believing I was the kind of woman who got to be.
Julian didn’t flinch. He didn’t speak right away either. He just leaned back down and kissed the inside of my right thigh, then the left. Slow and unhurried.
“Alyssa,” he murmured against my skin, caressing my hips and thighs while staring at my sex. “This is the prettiest pussy I have ever seen.” He lowered his face back down to my center and inhaled deeply, closing his eyes with a satisfied moan. “Mmm.”
An involuntary gasp broke out of me. My whole body jumped and I swallowed the tears that tried to well up at his words. He parted my legs slightly. Not forcefully, gentle enough that it was an ask for permission. I let out a breath, and relaxed my shoulders, then slowly let my legs fall completely apart.
“Thank you, baby,” he grinned, and leaned in, his lips settling against me.
Then I felt his tongue, long, firm, and slow. The first lick made my back arch. My hands flew to the sheets and held tight. The groan that came out of his chest vibrated through me. He didn’t rush and he didn’t hesitate. He licked me again, and again, flattening his tongue, his head moving up and down, and side to side, with maddening pressure that had my hips jerking. He’d just grip them tighter, sliding me back down to him, grounding me, anchoring my storm. The more I squirmed the firmer his grip, daring me to try to get away from it.
He licked and sucked until the ceiling swayed. Slow drags, then soft circles, a flick, then a suck. Somewhere in the middle of it my hands found his head and my hips were bucking off the bed, chasing his mouth.
“Feed it to me, baby,” he moaned into me, like he loved how I tasted.
I couldn’t stop trembling, and whispering his name. I had never had it like this, and I knew, even before I came, that I would never forget the way he made me feel right then. Like I was precious.
Then he changed up, focused and greedy, his mouth working me like he was trying to learn every crevice by heart. I unraveled for him. I came the hardest I’d ever come in my life, with a cry that tore out from the center of me.
He began planting kisses up my thigh, over my belly, my chest, dragging his mouth up my skin until his breath hit my cheek. When I opened my eyes he was staring at me like I was art.
“You’re beautiful like this,” he murmured.
I lay there catching my breath, every nerve pulled tight, as I came down, and I realized I had been waiting for a shift at first. I had years of knowing how this went. I had learned to lie still and put myself somewhere else in my head and wait for it to be over, then lie in the dark afterward feeling worse than before and tell myself it was normal.
I went into this, deep down, expecting it to turn into that. Muscle memory.
It never did. Julian’s hands moved like he was learning something he meant to keep. His mouth found places that made me unravel, like my response was the whole point. He said things to me that could only mean he’d been paying attention to me for longer than tonight. And I felt myself answering in ways I had stopped expecting my body to answer. Warmth building where I had been cold for so long. Something loosening that I hadn’t realized was still clenched.
At some point I stopped waiting for the shift. At some point I was just there. In my body. In his hands.
Julian rose above me, broad shoulders blocking the lamplight, eyes locked on me. My gaze dragged lower and caught on the thick length straining against his boxers, and my lips parted, understanding exactly what that meant.
He reached for his nightstand and pulled out a condom. “I know it’s been a while for you,” he said gently, voice so deep it reverberated through me. “I want you to know I’ve been tested. I’m clean. We didn’t really talk about it, so…”
A faint, sincere smile pulled at my mouth. “Thank you,” I whispered.
He gave me a half grin, then slid his boxers off, and I watched him sheath himself. He was the kind of put-together that did not happen by accident. Broad chest, abs carved like they’d been laid into him by hand, every line of his deep brown body intentional. The tailored suits I knew. The workout gear I’d seen. This was him with all the management off, and the management had been the only thing modulating his full impact. I didn’t have a word ready for what he was. I had never in my life looked at a man and thoughtthat body is going to wreck me in ways I can’t fathom.He was a damn specimen. And all I could do was stare. Mesmerized.
