Chapter 25
Jasmine
We don't say much on the drive back to his place. There’s nothing left that needs saying, and for once, the silence between us is not something I need to manage.
It’s something I’m sitting inside of on purpose, his hand warm over mine on the gearshift, the whole impossible day finally behind us both.
His apartment looks the way it always looks, bare and half unpacked, the single lamp burning low in the corner because he figured out months ago to leave the hard overhead light off for me.
But the moment he shuts the door and turns the lock, something settles over me that I cannot name at first. Then I can. It’s the door.
For the first time since I started coming here, I’ve walked into this room without quietly mapping a way back out of it.
No one is going to call. No one is climbing the stairs.
There is no morning on the other side of tonight where this gets taken away from us for being caught.
We’re not a secret anymore. We are two people, alone, behind a locked door, with a season ahead of us that finally belongs to nobody but us.
“You went somewhere,” he says, leaning back against the door, muscular arms folded, watching me. He does not come closer. He has never once hurried me across a room in his life.
“I'm looking at your door.”
“My door?”
“It's locked, and there's nobody behind it who can take anything from us. I’ve never once stood in a room like that with you. I'm letting myself feel it.”
Whatever crosses his face then pulls his voice down low. “Then come here and feel it next to me.”
There was a version of me, not very long ago, who needed the gap closed for her. She is not the woman walking tonight. I cross the entire room to him so fast, I barely feel my feet underneath me.
I reach him, and I put my hands on his face, and I bring his mouth down to mine before he can offer to do it first.
He goes still for half a second, caught off guard, and then a low sound breaks out of him and his hands close over my hips and haul me flush against him, and the kiss stops being gentle almost at once.
“Look at you,” he says against my lips when we come up for air, his voice gone rough. “Starting shit.”
“I've gotten brave lately. Somebody said it looks good on me.”
“It does. It really does.” His forehead drops against mine. “You have no idea what you crossing a room does to me. It means you want me. You love me.”
“I crave you,” I say, “all the time.”
He growls, low and undone, and then he’s kissing me again, walking me backward toward the mattress on the floor that I’ve somehow come to think of as the most comfortable place on earth.
He draws my sweater up and over my head and drops it, and then he just looks at me, too long, all of me, the look that used to make me want to fold myself smaller and now makes me feel like a Disney princess, simply beautiful.
“How long has it been?” I ask because I already know, and I want to watch him not know.
“Too long.” His hands travel slowly up my bare sides, relearning the shape of me. “Felt like the better part of a year.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” I tell him. Then I turn myself over, straddling his hips on the mattress. “I think I want to ride,” I say.
That dismantles something in him. He sinks down onto the mattress and grabs my hips, and the rest of what we’re wearing comes off between kisses that keep getting interrupted because neither of us can stop smiling…and moaning.
“But first come here, Dixon. I want to taste you.”
He pulls my hips forward, over his face. It’s embarrassing at first, this position, but all that self-consciousness flies out the window once he slides his tongue between my folds.
He laps at my core and massages my ass with his hands, and it feels so amazing, I’m not sure what to do with my hands.
“Clasp them behind your back,” he says against my clit. “Stick out your tits.”
I do as he instructs, and it helps me get out of my own head and just enjoy the sensation of his wet mouth on my warm vagina.
“That’s it,” he says. “Now move your hips anyway you want. Ride my tongue so I can make you come for me, baby.”
My head falls back as my hips rock back and forth. This feels amazing, and I didn’t even know this was a thing.
“Caleb,” I call his name because my climax is creeping up on me, and my hips seem to be finding a faster rhythm.
“Whose pussy is this?” he grunts between my folds.
“Mine.”
“No, baby,” he chuckles. “Guess again.”
He now moves his tongue like a vibrating rotor along my clit, and I’m so close to coming I can’t breathe.
“Yours!” I finally realized the right answer because it’s true. My pussy does belong to him. In this moment and forever.
I unclasp my hands and fall forward, my palms flat on the floor above the mattress, my hips still moving. I am fucking Caleb’s mouth, and I can’t believe I’ve never done this before.
“Caleb!” I beg as my orgasm builds. “Please, Caleb!”
He doesn’t say a word; he just sucks on my clit and gives me a slight smack on one ass cheek that sends me over the cliff.
“Oh, my God!” I cry, and I mean literal tears, because it feels so amazing.
He peppers kisses along the inside of my thighs as I come down, running his fingers along my back, my ass, the backs of my thighs. I’m breathing so hard I feel like I just ran a marathon.
With one quick motion, he flips me over and drags me down further on the mattress. He kisses my throat, the dip of my collarbone, the swell of my breast, and I let my hands move through his hair.
His mouth closes over my nipple, and I arch up into it without deciding to.
“Did that feel good?” he asks against my breast.
“So good,” I tell him.
He tells me what he means to do, and tonight the words are not a rope I'm holding onto, they are a promise, low and filthy and fantastic.
“Now that I’ve felt you and tasted you, it’s time to remind you what I feel like.”
“Uh-huh, yep, that’s a good idea.”
He chuckles as his fingers stroke between my folds.
“I’m going to turn us on our sides, in what they call a spoon position, and fuck you that way.”
He turns me over and lies behind me.
“I can’t see you.”
“That’s okay. After I fuck you like this, then you’ll ride me and you can see me all night in that position.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
He finds the rhythm that takes me apart, and he stays there, patient and merciless at once, one calloused hand splayed flat on my stomach so he can feel what he's doing as he fucks me from behind, and when I come again, it’s loud, and his name is buried in the middle of it.
“That’s it, baby. Remember who you belong to.”
He kisses a slow path along the back of my neck for what seems like an eternity while I’m still trembling.
“I missed this pussy so much,” he says against my hair. “Let’s not ever be apart this long.”
“We won’t,” I finally turn to face him, kissing him all over his chest because it’s one of my favorite places on his body.
“You good?” he asks.
I kiss him long on his lips, then move to straddle him.
“I’m so good, I’m ready to go again.”
“I’ve created a monster.”
“Oh, do you need a minute?” I tease.
“Stop playing and get on this dick.”
I lower myself down on him slowly, because while I enjoy this position, it always takes me a minute to adjust to his girth from this angle. He’s enjoying this. Watching my face the whole way, and the stretch of it and the fullness of it and the plain relief of having each other again.
He goes still once I’m all the way seated. I lean forward, my forehead against his, the two of us breathing hard into the small space between our mouths.
“Okay?” he asks.
“Help me move,” I tell him. “Please.”
And he does, guiding me carefully. Pulling my hips forward, then back. Reminding me of everything I love about this position. My breasts jiggle as I rise and fall on his dick, and he groans at the sight like I’m the most gorgeous woman he’s ever seen.
I’ve already come twice, and I’ve learned that it may take me a little longer for me to make the climb this time.
That’s fine. The part he doesn’t get is that I love riding Caleb because he loves it so much.
I think it’s because he loves me being in control.
And watching me. This boy loves watching me.
Yeah, he’s going to come fast. I can see it all over his face. His adorable face.
“Stay with me,” he gets out, ragged, and then he laughs, catching himself. “You already are. You're right here. I keep forgetting I don't have to ask you anymore.”
“I'm here,” I tell him, and then I bend down and breathe it into his mouth. “Now, are you going to come for me or what?”
That’s what ends him. Even though I’m on top, he’s the driver now, grabbing my hips and pushing them down as he thrusts in me deep. We fuck like this for a while until he whispers my name like a prayer, and I feel him let go.
The look on his face coming undone under me and inside me tips me a third time, unplanned and unmanaged, the two of us wrecked together the way it should be.
Afterwards, he does not let go of me. He pulls me half up onto his chest and folds both arms around my back, and he does not reach for anything to say, because he worked out a long time ago that I land softer in quiet than in conversation.
I press my cheek over his chest and listen to his heart hammer itself back down to something human instead of his usual superhuman.
I lie there and let myself be in the moment. I love Caleb. I love him. And I marvel at how we got here.
“I can hear you thinking,” he says into my hair, sleepy and undone and happy. “What about?”
The old me had a small, careful, sometimes snarky answer ready for a question like that. I’m not her anymore.
“That we made it,” I tell him. “You’re still a hockey god, I’m still on staff, and nobody is coming up the stairs.”
His arm tightens. “Nobody's coming up the stairs,” he agrees. “It’s just us…forever.”
“Forever,” I say. I’ve gone my whole life unable to believe in anything I couldn’t verify first, but I believe in this. I finally have the proof. I have him.
“I love you, Jasmine,” he whispers in my hair.
“I love you more,” I say.
“That’s fucking impossible, baby. I promise you.”
And in the safest space on earth, in the arms of the one person who gets me, I close my eyes and fall asleep for the first time in my life without once checking the exits.