In a Rush

Chapter 25

chapter twenty-five

Emme

Today’s Learning Objective:

Students will draw lines and define limits.

It took me a minute to realize it but everything in this house was white. There was a little blue, a little gray, but overwhelmingly white. And now there was also some pink in that palette from the blush that’d rubbed off my face and onto the crisp white duvet cover from flopping onto the huge, fluffy bed in my room.

Once I scrubbed makeup from my skin and made a half-assed attempt at organizing my looks for tomorrow, I opened my laptop to work on my lesson plans but quickly gave up on being productive to watch a cooking competition.

I figured I deserved a minute to recover from the day. From the whole damn week.

The competition was almost over when Ryan knocked on my door. I didn’t know which of the remaining five bedrooms he’d selected for himself or why he’d rented such a large house for the two of us, but I knew I had to get up and go to the door. I couldn’t stay in bed and invite him inside. Unless I wanted to invite him inside .

I shuffled across the extra-plush white rug, regretting my threadbare sleep shorts, equally thin henley shirt, and no bra as I went. None of it said Let’s keep it in the friend zone .

I opened the door to find Ryan leaning there, his arms braced on either side of the doorframe and his head ducked between his shoulders, like he was doing some sort of standing push-ups. He shifted his jaw, his cheek hollowing with the movement. He didn’t look at me when I asked, “What’s up?”

“Everything good in here?”

I crossed my arms over my chest. No need to involve the nipples in this. “Yep.”

He glimpsed up before returning to his study of the floor. “And you like this room?”

“Yeah. It’s great.” He nodded but didn’t say anything else. After a tense minute, I said, “Listen, if it’s going to be weird between us because I?—”

“Let me help you,” he said, his voice low. “I know how serious you are about getting that orgasm a day. You missed it this morning and the government took your toy so, fuck it. Use me.”

“Ex…cuse me?”

“Use me,” he repeated, finally dragging his eyes up to my face. No, to my mouth. “It’s worked well for you before. Do it again.”

“Wh-what does that mean?”

His hand dropped to my waist, pulled me close. “I don’t think you need an explanation but I’ll talk you through every inch if that’s what you want.”

“But what about—you know—we should talk about?—”

“You know what you need and it’s not some fucking boundaries,” he said. “Let me give it to you, wife.”

Everything inside me softened—and then clenched hard. I gulped down a whole boulder and felt heat spread across my chest, up my neck. Between my legs. And all those smart, responsible reasons for drawing this line between us breezed right out of my head. But I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Just this one time. Just tonight.”

“If that’s what you need to tell yourself.” He pulled a strip of condoms from one pocket and a bottle of lube from the other. Tossed them both to the bed. My eyes all but popped out of my skull. “Anything else you need to talk about?”

I couldn’t tear my gaze away from the condoms. And the lube. “I meant, like, logistically, how are we?—”

“Let me show you how.”

He brought a hand to the back of my neck and the other to the base of my spine, and pulled me tight to his chest as his lips met mine. My body, my stupid, needy, traitorous body melted into him like I’d been waiting for this all week.

“I’m taking these off,” Ryan said against the corner of my mouth. My sleep shorts hit the floor as he walked me backward toward the bed. A laugh huffed out of him when he realized I wasn’t wearing any undies. “You can tell me how you want to put me to work or I can figure it out for myself. Your choice.”

I lifted a hand to the back of his neck to steady myself. As if anything could steady the pulsing, rolling need that’d surged to life inside me. As if there was anything to be done about my body’s sudden awareness of Ryan and his heat, his touch. His unbelievably thick erection burning its way through my shirt.

“I’m not sure—” My words trailed off. I didn’t even know what I was trying to say. I couldn’t think. I was too busy hearing Use me on a dark, low loop in my mind. And I realized I didn’t care about being responsible anymore.

“What would you do if you were alone?” He dragged his lips down my neck and nipped the crook of my shoulder. One hand traveled over my hip to squeeze my bare backside while the other gathered up my hair in a rough grip that made my scalp prickle. “How would you take care of yourself?”

I pressed my forehead to his chest. A red, burning flush stole across my cheeks. “I just use a toy,” I said, the words crammed tight together.

“Is that all you want tonight?” He grabbed my hand, slipped it between my legs. Our twined fingers traced the damp line of my slit. “You want to lie back and enjoy the ride?”

He led our fingers to my clit and it only took a few circles before I moaned into his chest. I couldn’t be expected to answer questions. Not in this condition.

“I don’t know,” I admitted.

A growly noise rasped in his throat as he bared his teeth on my shoulder. “Then let’s find out.”

My henley flew off and then I was on the bed, floating on a cloud of pillows while I watched Ryan unbutton his shirt. He draped it over a bench at the foot of the bed and his trousers soon followed though he made no move to drop his slim-fitting black boxer briefs.

He collected the condoms and lube and set them on the bedside table, and then shifted to face me, his hands on his hips. Something about the stark efficiency of those moves reminded me that I was naked, completely uncovered and not all that graceful about it. I tucked my knees up and crossed an arm over my torso, concealing a bit of my belly pudge and corralling my breasts in the process. I knew my angles.

And I also knew Ryan had seen me naked last weekend, but in my mind that was more like a dark, moody montage of nudity. Some might even call it tasteful. But this—with two lamps lit, light spilling in from the adjoining bathroom, and the incandescent glow of these white sheets, nothing was left to the imagination.

“Don’t do that.” He arched a brow at my arm, fully exasperated. “You don’t hide when you’re all by yourself, a toy between your legs and—what else? What do you use to get you there?” He tapped an index finger on the waistband of his boxers, a mere inch from where the head of his cock strained against the fabric. “Do you watch something? Read something?”

My tongue darted out to wet my suddenly parched lips and I shifted to cover even more of my belly because I was comfortable like this and it gave me something to do other than tell my fake husband about the carefully curated bookmarks I kept in a folder titled Recipe Ideas on my phone.

Another one of those growly, raspy noises from him filled the room and I watched his finger connect with that black waistband, the same finger he’d used to tease my clit a minute ago.

“If that’s what you want.” He jerked a shoulder up. “We’ll see how long it lasts.”

He climbed over me, his knees sinking deep into the bed. His hard shaft tented his boxers and everything inside me demanded I reach out, I take hold of him, but he caught my wrist before I could.

“Not yet, little wife.” It sounded like a scolding. I would’ve needled him on that but I forgot everything when he pushed my bent legs apart and settled on his belly between my thighs. Wasting not a second, he spread me open with his thumbs. “Tell me about this toy. What did it do for you?”

He dragged his tongue over my clit like he had all night to tease me. The unhurried pressure of it startled a moan from me and I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold back. At this moment, I couldn’t remember why I’d wanted to hold back to begin with.

“Tell me,” he said again, stroking his knuckles down my inner thigh. “How’d it work?”

“Suction,” I gasped out as he licked me.

He hummed and the vibration spiraled deep inside me. As if he knew what he was doing to me—he probably did, that arrogant bastard—he ran a hand over my belly, up to my breasts. He pulled a nipple between his fingers and tugged as he licked. “Where do you like to be sucked?”

A wave of pleasure engulfed me quickly and I could barely keep my eyes open, barely breathe. “Clit,” I managed.

“Hmm. Let’s see about that.”

Ryan shifted, pushing my legs wider. He rested his head on my thigh and—and I stopped being able to form words when he sucked at my clit, hard and steady. He kept one hand on my breast, still busy torturing a nipple, and the other between my legs, stroking everything but my aching core.

He pulled off and stared at me with a slight smile. “Yeah, you do like that.” He ran a knuckle down the length of my seam, down between my cheeks and then back up again. “Is that all this toy did for you?”

His mouth was wet but he made no move to wipe it off. For a minute, it was the only thing I could focus on. Then I blurted out, “I can’t come unless I have something inside me.”

Ryan’s brows went up and he nodded like we were discussing the type of potting soil I used for my succulents. He went on tracing me with that knuckle, his touch so light that I had to rock toward him to get more. “Like this?”

Two fingers pushed inside me at the same moment his mouth returned to my clit. My back arched off the bed when he drew me between his lips with firm, relentless pulls. Everything inside me tightened, twisted. It throbbed and ached. And I couldn’t just lie there anymore. I had to—had to do something.

I shifted up, my hands lost in the millions of pillows as I tried to find a better angle, to open myself wider. Because I needed more and I was mindless for it.

“That’s right,” he said, glancing up at me. “Watch. See what I do to you.”

From this angle, I could see his jaw ticking as he treated me to the kind of long, steady suction I love and the way his shoulder rolled with every thrust of his fingers inside me. I saw his hips bucking against the mattress too.

My belly swooped and a fresh new rush of heat moved through me at the sight. I didn’t know this would have that kind of effect on him. And this wasn’t any slow, lazy thrusting to take the edge off. It was rough, disorderly rutting.

I dragged my fingers through his hair, pulling a little to get his attention. He only sucked harder, leaving me hot, desperate, and clenching while I watched his rowdy hips grind into the mattress.

“I want to know how to get you there,” he said, his words hoarse and his eyes hazy. “I need you to come on my tongue.”

I gripped my knees, holding my legs open as wide as I could manage. The wet sound of his fingers, the feel of them filling me as he seemed to unravel every one of the nerves attached to my clit made me dizzy with need. I was almost there. Just another minute and all the pressure gathered low in my belly would overflow and he’d—he’d?—

“Are you gonna come with me?” I barely recognized my voice, husky and heavy with meaning. He murmured against my damp flesh and nodded, his silky hair sliding against my thigh, and it was like he’d cut the tether holding me back. As the orgasm rippled through me, all I could say was “Oh, fuck, Ryan. Please. ”

Unable to hold myself up any longer, I dissolved into the pillows, chest heaving and my core pulsing hard around his fingers. I felt like no part of me truly existed beyond that slick spot between my legs. Everything else was secondary. Arms, legs, head—none of it mattered. Just tools for making my body do this bright, stunning thing that I could barely call an orgasm because it eclipsed everything I thought I understood about the kinds of pleasure I could experience.

Then, as I twitched and shuddered through the last waves, Ryan dropped his head to my inner thigh and groaned with such force, I was certain it shook the foundation of the house. He rocked into the mattress at a frenzied pace and I felt his teeth on my skin. He thrust his fingers into me, his palm flat on my clit, and his entire body jerked so hard, his shoulders drove my legs wide open again.

His hips sank into the mattress as he released a long, ragged breath. We were a jumble of limbs with my legs splayed and half his hand buried inside me but neither of us made any move to change that. We didn’t say a word, didn’t even glance at each other for a minute.

But then I couldn’t go another moment without asking, “How did you—I mean, just…from this?”

He tipped his face up to me, head still pillowed on my thigh. “Do you have any idea how hot you are?”

I rolled my eyes. “Let’s not get carried away.”

“I’m not.” A wet noise filled the room as he withdrew his fingers, but instead of wiping them on the sheets, he went back to circling my clit. A shiver darted through me and I tried to twist away from those almost-painful tingles but he held me down with a forearm over my hips. “Don’t lie to me and say you stop at one.”

“Sometimes I do,” I snapped.

He dropped his gaze to my cleft, watching as he tormented my aching clit. “You’re not stopping at one tonight.”

I wanted to argue with him. Tell him it wasn’t his decision to make. But we both knew this wasn’t about who called the shots. It was about letting go of the boundaries and rules I thought we needed and it was about letting go of the relationship we had before all of this started. Before we got married and consummated the hell out of it.

“You’ve made me come in my pants twice ,” he said, still staring at my most private place. “What’s it going to take for you to understand that you’re the hottest, sexiest, most alluring woman I’ve ever seen?”

I clutched a pillow to my face. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because I don’t like playing make-believe. You’re obviously exaggerating and?—”

“I’m fucking what ?” His brows pinched together and he scowled up at me but he kept stroking my clit. My head wanted to argue. My pussy wanted to be stuffed. It was very confusing. “I’ve never done this before”

“Done what?” I asked from behind the pillow.

“Gotten off just from going down on someone. And there were five different times when I almost blew it but I kept thinking you’d ask me to fuck you and I wanted you to use me any way you needed. I didn’t let go until you’d come on my face.”

I edged the pillow aside to catch his eye. “Are you being serious?”

He nodded, the rough scrape of his scruffy jaw on my thigh only making the pressure gathered behind my clit more intense. “There’s nothing hotter in the whole fucking world than turning you on and getting you off. Tasting you too. God, you taste so fucking good. And watching you drop that sweet shy girl act? Fuuuuck. That’s when I know it’s time to go to work.”

“It’s not an act,” I said. “I am shy. Sometimes.”

He leaned down, teased my clit with his tongue until my hips started rolling in response. “You’re not shy. You just need a minute to remember how it’s going to be with us.”

I didn’t trust the orgasm building deep in my pelvis. My second and third orgasms were always small, more like epilogues of the first than whole new stories. But this didn’t feel like an epilogue. It was heavy and low and unfamiliar. It was new—and strange enough that I almost wanted Ryan to stop.

Instead, I asked, “And how’s it going to be?”

He shifted to his knees, one hand still moving between my thighs and summoning something from my darkest depths while he stretched over me and planted the other hand near my shoulder. Dipping down, he brushed his lips over mine. “You’re my wife,” he said. “You let me give you everything you need.”

I chased his lips for another kiss. He gave me that—and his fingers inside me with the kind of quick, shallow thrusts I required right now. “Everything?”

“Everything. Always.” He caught my bottom lip between his teeth, bit down just enough to send a zing of electricity to my core. “That’s my rule.”

I curled an arm around his neck when the first tremors of the orgasm started. The little waves moved outward from my clit but then I clenched hard around his fingers, hard enough for him to whisper, “Oh, fuck ” and gaze down at my body like he could see those spasms as they happened. Maybe he could. Maybe I was too far gone to notice.

“You forgot.” Ryan picked up my hand from where it rested on his carved abs and pressed his thumb to my palm. Same as I used to do for him after big written exams. “I told you I’d handle field day.”

My eyelids felt heavy as I blinked at him. I knew I’d sleep like a stone if I could just stop trailing my fingertips over him, stop curling closer. But there was a ripple of electricity just beneath the surface of my skin and it sparked to life in every place where we touched. I feared it would stop if I fell asleep.

“Hmm. Yeah. I thought that meant you’d swing by and run around for a few minutes.”

He shook his head, working the tight muscles between my thumb and index finger. I pulled the blankets up around us higher. “I have it all under control. Nothing for you to do.”

I nestled deeper into the pillows to watch him. “But…what does that mean? Because this is kind of a big deal and it needs to be handled a certain way unless I want to tick off everyone. It might sound like a lot of fun for second graders to play dodgeball with McKerry but we have a lot of kids to entertain and a lot of teachers will run me out of town if I leave them with an hour or two to kill before the end of the day.”

He huffed out a laugh. “I promise you that won’t happen.”

“For the sake of my relationships with these people, why don’t you just tell me what will happen?”

He didn’t respond right away. I watched him tenderizing my palm and let my gaze follow the lines of his tattoos up and around his arm, over his shoulder. I’d always wanted to study them like this. Now I wanted to know what they meant.

Eventually, Ryan said, “I played in college with a guy who runs training camps for student athletes. Mostly D1-bound football, basketball, and soccer players, but also swimmers, gymnasts, runners. I gave him a call, asked him to come up with something for a range of ages, and just blow the whole thing out.”

I yanked my hand from his grasp so I could sit up to face him. Since we’d scooted to the other side of the bed—away from any damp spots—that basically required me to straddle his lap. His naked lap. We’d each taken a minute to tidy but it did leave us completely undressed. “You hired a pre-college athletic trainer to run field day?”

“If you hate it, we can change it. I had backup plans if that didn’t?—”

“It’s amazing.” I brought both hands to his face, cupping his jaw. “I can’t believe you did that.”

He pulled an irritable scowl. “Why not? You should expect me to follow through. Expect me to have decent plans when I commit to something. It’s the barest fucking minimum.”

“Your minimum might be a little higher than everyone else’s.”

“Get used to it either way.” He closed his hands around my wrists. “The idea of your entire class going against McKerry in a dodgeball game does have its merits though.”

I dropped my head to his shoulder as I laughed. “We’ll make that happen.” I settled deeper into the crook of his neck with a yawn. “Thank you.”

He kissed my shoulder. “Of course.”

When he banded his arms low on my hips, I felt the hard ridge of his shaft against my belly. It was as good an opportunity as any so I reached between us and curled my fingers around his length. “I told you a few secrets,” I whispered, dragging the backs of my fingers down his arm. “Now it’s your turn. Tell me what these mean.”

“Mmm.” The sound rumbled out of him and shook right through my chest. “I wish I could give you something as impressive as your story but there’s not much to explain. The waves are from the seacoast, the trees from the rest of New Hampshire.” He motioned to the numbers running down the length of his side. “Dates of my national championships. Not much else.”

“But—” I tapped a finger to the scribbled words tucked in between the trees, around the spiral of the waves. And the small flowers raining down his chest between other designs. “What does this say?”

“Nothing, really. Bullshit that sounded cool in college. That sort of thing.” When I just went on staring at him, he added, “My artist is really talented and comes up with a lot of great ideas to extend the existing pieces. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

But that wasn’t Ryan. Not at all. Everything meant something to him. Every decision was built upon a thousand others like a monument. And he’d done nothing, absolutely nothing at all, not even once, because it had sounded cool.

“Not that interesting.” He cupped my backside and rocked against my core. I was sensitive but not sore, and that mattered. “You know what is interesting? How you still haven’t told me what you’re using with those toys to help you along.”

“I can’t see why that’s something you need to know.”

“But it is,” he argued, completely serious. “If you’re going to use me, you might as well make it an authentic experience.”

“I think I’m good for the night.” I rolled against his erection just to see if I could get some exasperation from him. Not even a flash. “I’m caught up now. Thanks.”

The hand on my ass slipped between my legs to where I was wet all over again. “Are you though?” When I didn’t respond, he went on. “You prefer mornings, right? You’ve said as much a few times. How does that go? Open your eyes, reach for your phone to turn off the alarm, and then—” He followed the quick glimpse I shot my phone on the bedside table. Fatal mistake. A slight smile brightened his eyes as he reached for the device. He held it to me while the other hand stroked my seam. “Show me.”

“Why?”

He leaned in, brushed his lips over the shell of my ear. A shudder moved through me. “Because I want to know everything.”

“Nothing in it for you?”

“It’s all for you,” he said, “but that only makes it better for me.”

I didn’t know if it was the orgasms or the ridiculous adrenaline of the day but those words did something to me. They told me to get moving because there was nothing to be embarrassed about, not after everything else that’d happened tonight. At this point, it would only be crazy to not share my porn preferences with my husband.

“I’m lazy,” I said, climbing off his lap to a grunt of protest. I settled on my side and tugged him behind me. His arm went over my hip, his hand between my thighs like cupping me was his default position. “I roll over, grab a toy, and visit one of my favorites.”

Ryan nudged his knee between my legs, opening me to him as I tapped through my bookmarks. His touch was light, almost absentminded, as I swiped through the options. I heard him suck in a breath as the videos’ titles and cover images flew by. His hips surged against my backside but he didn’t say anything, only pressing his lips to the ball of my shoulder and keeping them there.

“Just so you know,” I started, fully defensive, “I like a whole bunch of different things. That doesn’t mean I want to do any of them. Don’t get any ideas or make any wild assumptions. These are just things?—”

“I understand how porn works, Emmeline. Pick something.”

I tapped the first bookmark and propped my phone on a small pillow. The video opened on a yoga studio with a handful of participants rolling out their mats. The rough exhale on my shoulder told me he knew where this would end up.

“Would you have that toy where you want it by now?”

I nodded as the yoga students started stripping out of their clothes. This video didn’t waste any time and I appreciated that. I also liked the amateurish vibe and the slightly above-average bodies that weren’t stuffed with implants and waxed within an inch of their lives. It was like a real yoga class that just happened to devolve into an orgy within five minutes.

Ryan reached for something from the other table and returned with the condoms and lube just as the instructor paced the rows of mats. “Then let’s do that.” I shifted toward him, onto my back, but he stilled me with a hand between my shoulder blades. “Stay there. So we can watch.”

I rolled back to my side in time to catch the instructor stroke a pair of dicks while the students stood in tree pose. Remarkable balance on those two.

I heard Ryan tear open the condom and then the top click open on the lube bottle. He pushed two slippery fingers inside me as the instructor demonstrated the downward dog pose with the assistance of three students. I knew he felt me clench.

Then he was there, the broad head of his shaft pressing against my tender flesh. He rocked back for a second before sliding all the way in, filling me past the point of full, and I screamed at the perfect, overwhelming pressure.

“Shhh. I’m trying to listen,” he said.

I wanted to respond with some sharp comment but this position made me feel like he was rearranging my organs and breathing was the most I could manage. I’d never been so thankful for lube as I was right now.

He skimmed a hand up my torso as the yoga class melted into a crush of bodies bucking, licking, stroking. Every possible pairing, every position. Taking my hand, he led me back to my clit. “Show me what you like.”

I didn’t think twice about obeying. It was necessary . When his fingers moved to my nipples and he pulled in time with each thrust, I knew I was a minute, maybe two away from coming. Even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to hold back.

“That is—” His words cut off as he groaned into my shoulder. He liked the three women taking turns helping each other with their bridge poses. Not that I could blame him. Incredible teamwork in action. His hips moved faster and I hoped he was close. I wanted this time to be good for him. “Fuck, I like your style, wife.”

There was an extreme close-up of the instructor guiding several students at once—she was a really great multitasker—and I jolted as the combination of his fingers pinching my nipple and his cock shuttling into me at the best angle and his teeth on my shoulder knocked me right over the edge. Before I even knew what was happening, the orgasm twisted through me, pulsing and clenching everywhere.

Ryan lashed both arms around my torso and held me steady as he hammered into me. “That was what you needed, wasn’t it?”

I managed a nod. I didn’t think I could speak.

“Yeah, that’s my girl.”

He surged up into me once more and I’d swear the groan he shouted into my shoulder left a mark. I felt it just as I felt him swell and throb inside me.

“I have another rule,” he rasped against my neck.

“Mmm?”

“This is our new morning routine.”

“But what about when you’re on the road? Which is very often. What do I do then?”

“You can do it without me,” he said with a great deal of reluctance. “I won’t like it but I’ll accept it. My one condition is that you must tell me everything about it.”

“While you’re in a bathtub?”

“If I can manage it, yes.”

At that, I giggled uncontrollably. I wanted to blame it on the sex but it was more than being fuck drunk. It was everything inside me feeling new and fresh and right, like I’d finally found a version of myself that fit on the first try.

Not for the last time, I said “Okay” to Ryan Ralston without really thinking about what I was agreeing to.