Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
RORY
I didn’t know what to do with myself. I was thirty-three years old, and I didn’t have enough experience to even begin to know what to do. I knew what I was supposed to do by other people’s standards—“good girls” didn’t sleep around, and they certainly didn’t do so with their youngest sister’s best friend.
But heaven help me, I wanted this—wanted him —even though it didn’t make sense. Even though in the morning I’d probably be horrified. Even though it went against what had been beaten into my head for more than half my life. And even though I could never, ever tell my sisters about it, least of all Nat.
Even with all those red flags flapping in the breeze, I didn’t care. I ignored my better judgment—because, really, that judgment had had me marrying a man I wasn’t even sure I’d ever loved and staying with him until he’d ended it for us both. It had me pleasing other people at the expense of myself. Maybe it was time I tried doing something because I wanted to instead of because I should.
“You’re killin’ me,” he said, bringing my attention back to him and how I still had my fingers curled around his very hard, very thick, very long erection.
I nearly jerked my hand back out of reflex, but I kept it there. Gave another squeeze, swallowing a moan when the beast hiding behind his zipper jerked in response.
“What, um…” I cleared my throat. “What exactly are you gonna do to try to prove your theory?”
He was so close, his harsh breaths panting against my ear reminding me he felt whatever this was between us too. He breathed out a laugh. “Never took you for someone who liked dirty talk.”
“That’s not?—”
He covered my hand with his, pressing it harder against his length. “Yes or no, princess? Much as I love your hands on me, I’m dyin’ to get mine on you.”
Heaven help me, but I loved the sound of that. I swallowed back my apprehension, swallowed back the ingrained response that had been burned into my brain for so long. And I leaped.
“I can’t promise anything, but you can try.”
Nash pulled back, his eyes so full of lust, I nearly melted into a puddle of goo on my couch. “Oh, I’m gonna try, all right. All night long, if that’s what it takes.”
All night ? Oh my word , I didn’t know if I’d be able to handle Nash for an hour, let alone all night. Was that what twenty-five-year-olds did now? Had marathon sex that lasted hours upon hours? It’d been so long since I’d done this, what if I screwed it up? What if he wanted some kind of fancy new thing I’d never even heard of? He’d be sorely disappointed if he tried to contort me into some kind of convoluted Kama Sutra position. I did my yoga three times a week, but I wasn’t twenty anymore.
Oh shit, what if he took one look at the stretch marks on my stomach and hips, or those extra twenty pounds that’d settled around my ass and thighs after having the girls, and ran in the other direction?
“Time to get you outta your head, princess.” He breathed the words against my ear, and then he pressed his lips to my neck and laved openmouthed kisses along the length of it.
It…worked. The whimper escaped me before I even knew it was coming, and I melted back into the couch, tilting my head to the side to make room for his questing mouth. My nipples were hard points against my shirt, and the throbbing between my legs was incessant. A steady, relentless thrum that did not want to be ignored.
I jumped when Nash’s hand settled on my side, his thumb brushing softly against the exposed skin between my T-shirt and leggings. Instead of shoving it under my shirt and going straight for my breasts like I thought he would, he left his hand there. Ran his thumb back and forth, back and forth, until I was a tight ball of need, squirming against him.
He squeezed my hip and groaned into my neck. “You feel even better than I’d imagined, and I’ve barely touched you.”
“You’ve…imagined?” I certainly wasn’t going to fess up to how many times Nash’s face had appeared in my nightly visions while I had some solo fun between my sheets. But, well, if he wanted to divulge that information, I wasn’t going to stop him.
He breathed out a choked laugh. “So much imaginin’, I think I’ve built up a new callus on my palm.”
The laugh that bubbled out of me was caught in the air between us as he captured my lips with his, sweeping his tongue into my mouth without hesitation. I threw my arms around him, pulling him closer, so desperate to feel his weight pressing down on me.
Somehow, in the blink of an eye, I was horizontal on the couch with Nash hovering over me, settled in the cradle of my spread thighs. He continued kissing me, rolling his hips and pressing his thick length against my clit in a rhythm that was clearly made to drive me mad.
Without thought, I reached down and gripped his ass, pulling him more forcefully into me. My body was a live wire, one big bundle of desperation, and my mind raced with thoughts of what it’d be like to feel him pushing inside me. Filling me…stretching me… Making me wild with need.
“Shit, Rory.” He pressed down hard and ground against me, making the ache inside bloom fresh with longing. “Can you come like this?”
The words jolted me out of my lust-induced trance, and I tensed beneath him.
“That wasn’t me pushin’, princess.” He lifted up on his arms and hovered over me, running a single finger from my temple to my chin. “Just plain old curiosity.”
“I don’t—” I tried to swallow down my nerves and my inadequacies, the whispered words that had settled so deep in my mind, it was as if they’d always been there. “I’m not sure…”
He sat back on his knees and fingered the hem of my T-shirt. “Can I take this off?”
I darted my eyes to the lights surrounding us, casting what was no doubt an unflattering glow over every inch of me. Reaching backward and arching against the couch, I fumbled toward the lamp, trying to get to the knob. “Can we just…”
Nash caught my hand before I could turn off the light and moved it down to rest once again against where he was so thick behind his zipper. “I’m not this hard because of a breeze, princess. I’m this hard because it’s you under me. If it’ll get you out of your head long enough to come against my tongue, then we can shut off the lights.” He brushed his fingertips over my stomach, against the waistband of my leggings, a featherlight touch designed to drive me wild. “But I’ve been fantasizing about this for ten years, and I’d really, really like to see every inch of you.”
I relaxed back onto the couch, my mind whirring with everything he’d said. First of all, his tongue ? I’d never had someone’s mouth on me, and my clit thrummed harder at the thought. Second, ten years ? What in the?—
But then Nash was sliding his hand along my side, under my shirt, and all thought promptly left my head. He stopped just below the swell of my breasts, and I held my breath and squeezed my eyes shut. I’d thought I’d feel apprehension at this point. Some kind of bone-deep hesitation at letting him touch one of my most intimate parts. Instead, I desperately wanted him to move . To cup my breasts and run his thumb over my nipples. Wanted his mouth on them, too.
I wasn’t comfortable enough yet to voice those thoughts, so instead, I arched against him and brought one of my hands to his upper arm. I wrapped my fingers around his biceps, squeezing and pulling and hoping with everything in me that he got the silent message I sent.
With a groan, he lifted his hand, and then that rough, callused palm caressed my breast, lifting the weight of it and giving it a gentle squeeze. He dropped down, resting his forehead on the spot where my neck met my shoulder, his harsh breaths against my skin a constant reminder that he was as affected as me.
As much as I wanted to see his face, to watch him as he felt me, this was easier. Baby steps. I couldn’t very well be expected to go from a nun-like sexual status to a no-inhibitions porn star in the span of a single day. And he’d somehow realized it without me even having to say a word.
“Been dreaming about these perfect little tits too. Fuck .” He cupped my breast with one hand and moved the other under me, gripping my ass and tugging me up.
The move had me balancing on my shoulders against the couch, our lower bodies grinding against each other, and it’d never before been like this. Never, in all my years, had I experienced anything like this. Not just the dirty talk—which, yeah, I’d definitely never encountered before, but if my throbbing clit was any indication, I was a fan—but all of it. His hands and his mouth and his words. This was foreplay. This was exactly what I read about in the romance books I kept in the drawer of my bedside table. This was what sex was supposed to be, and we hadn’t even gotten to the sex yet.
An ache built in my chest, a tightness in my throat over all I’d missed in the years I’d settled for lousy sex with an even lousier partner.
I was so done. So completely done. Ready to shed that part of my life and never, ever look back.
Apprehension still flickered at the corners of my mind, but I ignored it and listened to the new voice in my head. The one that said I deserved this, and it was about damn time I got it.
“I want to see you.” With hungry fingers, I tugged up the back of Nash’s shirt, desperate to feel his skin against mine.
He was too focused on my body to reach back and tug it off, so I did it for him, pulling and pulling and pulling until he made a frustrated noise in his throat and separated from me just long enough to yank it off and toss it to the side. Then he did the same to mine, sweeping the thin, worn shirt up and off me until I was bare beneath him, my tiny breasts and silvery wisps of stretch marks spider-webbing out from the waistband of my leggings on full display.
But before I could panic, before those worries and nerves could consume me, he said, “You’re so fucking gorgeous.” And then he descended on me with a groan, his mouth going straight to my breasts, his tongue circling my tight nipples.
On a gasp, I arched into him, wrapping my hand around the back of his head and holding him to me. He flicked and sucked and tugged, and the thrum between my legs only grew more pronounced, more insistent. I needed… Needed… I didn’t know, but I hoped like hell he did. Friction, suction, pressure, more, more, more.
And I couldn’t wait for him to give it to me.