Chapter Seventeen Good Is Relative #2
“Shhh.” I press my finger against her lips, not wanting to make a moment that feels so light, so joyful, so emotional into
anything heavier.
Let us have this. Let us have each other, if only for now, if only forever. For as long as the universe lets us.
I grind against her pelvic bone, leaning down to kiss her as she pops open the bottle of lube and drizzles some of its contents
over her fingers.
“You’re so wet for me already, Andy,” she says, nipping at my wrist by her head. “We probably don’t even need this, do we?
Because you’re so good for me, always so ready.”
Nikki sits up quickly and I whimper at the shift in position.
She slides a hand around my neck with a determined look in her eyes as her other hand moves lower, much lower, ghosting over the skin of my belly with featherlight touches.
I lean into it, chasing the sensation. So close, I was so close, so close.
She shushes me with a kiss as her hand slides down, her palm putting just the right amount of pressure on my clit as her
fingers curl inside of me.
“This is better, isn’t it?” she asks and I quickly nod.
Her hand on my neck tightens, just a little, until I meet her eyes. “I want you to look at me when you come,” she says, flicking
her eyes down to where are bodies meet and then back up to mine. “And I want you to say my name.”
“Yes,” I pant, fucking into her hand as she holds my gaze.
“That’s it, baby, keep going. You’re doing so good for me. So good.”
I nod, my mouth dropping open as my eyebrows furrow in concentration. The electricity keeps building so deep inside of me,
so deliciously, that it almost hurts.
“I’m gonna come,” I say. “Don’t stop, don’t stop.”
“I won’t, Andy. I want you to. Come. Now. Come for me.”
Her words, her hand, her emerald eyes, she’s here. She’s really here. “Nikki. Nikki!” I’m a live wire snapping, sending sparks
shooting through my body, arching my back until stars start to spiral in my vision.
The hand on my neck rushes behind me, catching me before I fall back. She pulls me tight against her while I ride out the
waves, nuzzling into her neck. I am lost to the sensations and the smell of lilacs on her skin, chasing it with my nose and
tongue like an animal reduced to its basest instincts.
“You’re perfect,” she says, kissing my temple before sliding her other hand from between us and wrapping me in a tight hug. I smile lazily against her neck, flicking my tongue out to taste the sweat as she shifts us back to lying down.
Nikki hums at the sensation, tugging me closer, and I swap out my tongue for my lips. I kiss her again and again as I slide
lower, nibbling on her collarbone and feeling her heartbeat thundering beneath my hand.
I’m not done with you yet.
“Your heart is pounding,” I whisper, resting my palm over her chest.
She drags her fingers through my hair. “It’s ’cause it’s happy,” she says, and I grin, feeling the same, determined to show
her, with my teeth and my tongue and my hands.
I will pour myself into her body until she can feel what I cannot say.
This body, I think, tugging her breast into my mouth, pulling moans from her lips as I bite and suck and squeeze . . . I once knew
this body as well as I know my own. Every freckle, every mark, a map not just of her history, but of ours.
I lick at the tiny scar beneath her nipple, an unfortunate mishap with a fence when we went skinny dipping on a dare, breaking
into the pool of the apartment complex next door. We were nineteen and free, and I bandaged her like we had been to war and
then made love to her until she forgot it had ever even hurt.
“Andy,” she sighs, like she’s remembering the same thing.
I go lower, tracing the scar from when she got her appendix out, an emergency that shut down filming of our show for weeks.
We were twenty then, still playing sixteen, and I had sat by her bedside holding her hand until the hospital released her.
She had looked so small in that bed. I hated it.
I was so scared. But we made it through, and she got better.
She got better.
I go lower, dipping my tongue into her belly button and making her jolt, savoring the taste of the little raised dot where
her piercing used to be—an act of defiance that she quickly lost once she went mainstream as an actor.
I’m about to head to my favorite spot when I see it. A jagged slice of silver across her right hip bone. My eyes narrow as
I move toward it, feeling knocked off-center from the sight of something new on her body—like waking up to a fully grown tree
outside your favorite bedroom window when before there was only lawn.
I trace the line with my fingers, and she pushes up to her elbow, watching me take in this new discovery.
“I was in a car accident. A bad one. They kept it out of the papers, but . . .”
A slice of panic whips through my head. I could have lost her—permanently. She was hurt and in pain and on the other side
of the country and I had no idea. Did she wake up scared and confused and calling my name, like she did after her appendectomy? Or was someone else sitting
by her hospital bed? Another lover in the place where I was meant to be?
I put my head down and suck on the scar until it bruises, until it’s mine now too, instead of just hers. Nikki lets me—she
even smiles at me—as if she’s enjoying this reclamation as much as I am.
I feast on her skin, spurred on by that smile—sucking and nipping at anything I can, marking her and making her mine, before reaching my hand down where she wants it most. I grab for the lube, but she stops me. “No, just you,” she says. “Just me.”
She’s so wet, so hot, so inviting. I dip my fingers inside, feeling her clench against the intrusion with a happy punched-out
moan, and then I slide them up to her clit, repeating the motion until she’s deliciously sloppy, grinding against my hand
and making messes of us both. I want it to be phenomenal. I want her to feel it, understand it, memorize it. I want her to
understand how good she makes me feel and to thank her for it.
One more nip and I drift down lower, shoving a pillow under her hips as I devour her like she’s my last meal . . . or my first.
Because she is, she is. I have been starving for her since the day I met her, just like she’s been for me.
I press my tongue inside, lapping up every drop I can, not wanting any to go to waste. She grinds against my hand, my face,
letting out little blissed-out noises here and there. I lay my arm across her hips, trying to pin her, but she jerks up on
one arm and grabs my hand instead, lacing our fingers and reminding me that I might be eating her out but she’s still the
one in control.
I look up at her, our eyes locking as I lick and press and drown inside of her.
Tell me how good I am.
“That’s it, right there,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper, sensing my needs when I’ve barely thought of them myself.
“Fuck, baby, you look so pretty between my legs,” she says. And if I could come from words alone it would be those, it would.
She wraps her fingers in my hair, tugging me harder against her, just how we both like.
Take it. Take whatever you want, I think, as she starts to unravel. Nikki clenches around me, finally coming with a shout. I keep going, the ever-obedient
servant, until she shudders and slinks back against the headboard, pushing me back gently but firmly with her toes.
“Holy shit, Andy,” she says. I grin, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand and then sucking my fingers clean.
Her pupils are wide, impossibly so, hiding the depths of green that I love so much. It feels heady and drunk to know that
I’m the one who did that to her. I’m the one who made her come so hard there’s a tremble in her breath and a glassiness to
her eyes. I feel holy tonight. Royal. Me. Anderson Ducharme. Queen of the fucking orgasm.
Nikki reaches down to pull me up against her, letting me curl up into her body, pressing us as close as we can be. She kisses
my hair, running her jaw along the top of my head, seemingly as desperate as I am for contact. I slide my leg between hers
and she wraps one of hers around me. We could not be more aligned if we tried.
Nikki and I drift in and out of dozing, tracing gentle circles into each other’s skin, needing the reassurance that we’re
both really still here. That this is true and real and really happening. I smile when her breath finally evens out—her fingers
moving slowly and then stopping as she drifts off into sleep.
I did that. Me.
I shift against her, and her sleep-warm hands tense slightly like she’s worried I might leave. But I won’t.
I won’t.
Not tonight.