43. Selfish
Summer
It didn’t happen that way.
I knew that all those things I’d said were still true. But … murimuri aroha. Where it feels so heart-achingly good that it touches you all the way down deep. When you know it has to end, but you need this moment, this man, past all bearing. And you tell yourself you can handle it.
In other words, when you lie. Not that I knew I was lying, not then. This was brand-new territory for me.
That was why, though, when I walked through the restaurant and into the lobby of the boutique hotel with Roman’s hand on my lower back, feeling all the possessiveness and the urgency of it, and he said, “We could just stay here,” I turned, looked into his dark face, and said, “Yes.”
I’d never done this. Not once in my careful life. Standing at the desk while Roman found that, yes, there was indeed a room open, while he handed over his credit card and collected his keycard, nodded, and turned away. Feeling him take my hand like he needed to, and seeing his other hand push the lift button. Not his finger. His whole hand, like he needed that lift to be here now. Cool and controlled on the outside, and not a bit that way inside.
When the lift doors closed behind us, I knew I’d been right, because his arms were around me, I was rising to my toes, and his mouth was on mine like all he wanted was all of me.
I’d said I didn’t want possessiveness. I wanted it now. The lift doors opened, and Roman didn’t let me go. He walked us down the hall like that, me moving backward in my heels, his hand in my hair, my hands on his face as he kissed me, deep and hard. No chance to think, because I was in the sea again, and the waves were thundering over me. He got the door open somehow and pulled me inside, I felt the brush of the keycard against my bare leg as he dropped it, and my hands were on that white dress shirt, tugging at the buttons.
He didn’t bother with my buttons. He pulled the dress straight over my head. Then he said, “Fuck me.” Not a command, probably, because it was a groan. I wasn’t paying too much attention, though, because I was still working at his shirt, undoing buttons, my mouth going to his chest like I needed to kiss it, because I did. My hands splayed across that broad expanse, then stroking down his sides, over the shifting planes of muscle in his back.
When he stepped back, I let out a noise of protest. He said, his voice hoarse, “Let me look at you. Let me—” A tug at my hair, and he was tossing the comb on the dresser, then running his hands down my arms and back up them again. Not going for my breasts, not yet, but he was sure looking.
He said, “I think we’ll leave these on for a while. Come over here.” His hand around mine, but I hadn’t even got his shirt all the way off. I hadn’t …
His hand pulling me down to the carpeted floor in front of the bathroom door. In front of the mirror. His dark voice saying, “Get on your knees.” The sight of him dropping to his own knees behind me, white shirt open over his chest.
I said, “I need to see you, too. I need to …” Then I stopped, because his hand had pulled back my hair, and his mouth was at the side of my neck. Pulling me back into him with the other hand as his mouth worked at my tender skin, and … oh. I would have closed my eyes, but I couldn’t. I was watching my back arch, watching his hand splayed over my belly, then moving up. Watching him watch me as his hand drifted over my breast in the bra I’d bought for this date with too many of his four thousand dollars, telling myself, This wasn’t part of the deal. Hair, makeup, dress, shoes. Not semi-transparent lingerie. How could I resist, though, when I hadn’t worn anything pretty in so long?
The sweet, simple bra in palest blue lace. The matching lace thong. And the thing I really, really shouldn’t have bought. Floaty shorts of the sheerest flower lace, worn over the thong for no reason at all. Except for the way Roman was looking at my body in the mirror, and then moving back so he could look at them—look at me—from the back.
He didn’t exactly whisper tender things. He groaned just one word. “Fuuuccckkk.” Then he was pulling off his shoes and socks and unbuttoning the cuffs of his shirt. When I moved to take off my own high-heeled wedges, though, his hand came down over mine and he said, “No.”
“No?” I tried for some detachment. Some irony. It didn’t happen. “Why not?”
“Because,” he said, “I need you taller. For later.”
I would’ve answered, but his hand was under the shorts now, stroking over my bottom, and then both his hands were there. Sliding over my skin, then stroking my thighs. The outsides of them and then the insides, forcing them gently apart. He said, “I want to do all the things to you. I want everything. But I can’t wait any longer to?—”
I said, “Condom.” It was very nearly a gasp. That was how good his hands felt on my thighs, and we’d barely even started.
“We’re not there yet. Not by a long chalk.” His hands at my bra strap, then, and the drift of lace falling to the floor as I watched. The shorts sliding down my thighs, and the thong following after, so they were around my knees, and he was pushing me down. Pushing me onto my belly with his hand between my shoulder blades. “Arse in the air,” he told me, and oh, God, I was doing it.
I was still thinking “condom,” but he wasn’t, because he was sliding under me, face up, and when he pulled me down into his mouth? I let out some kind of sound. A moan, or a cry. I pressed my palms into the carpet, lifted my head, and stared at my reflection. Eyes wide open, and mouth open, too. Starting to pant, because the man had a mouth. And, oh, God, a tongue. He also had his hands around my hips, pulling me down, his fingers digging in.
Pressure. Force. Sensation. Hands and mouth relentless, and no sound but my panting breath. I tried to move, to writhe, but he gripped me tighter, almost but not quite painfully, and increased the suction, and I had no choice. No choice. No …
Choice.
The orgasm came on me fast and suddenly, sharp and hot and hard. I was rocking now, because there were no hands in the world that could have held me down. Wailing, and watching myself do it. Helpless.
And then he did it again.
By the time he finished, my face was buried in my hands, and I was shaking all over. That’s when he finally pulled off all that lace and, yes, unfastened my shoes and pulled those off, too. I struggled to my knees, and was glad when he took my hand and helped me.
The woman in the mirror didn’t even look like me. My hair was tumbled around my face, my cheeks were pink and so was my upper chest, and I was still gasping a little. Also, my body was still shaking. I said, “I thought you said …” and then couldn’t even go on.
He put an arm around my waist, pulled me into him, and bent and kissed my cheek, then looked into my eyes in the mirror and said, “Decided I need to love you slow.”
“That was a … fail, then,” I managed to say. “Because I feel like I’ve been, uh … slammed up against the … wall.”
A smile on the tough face, though if all of that had been as exciting to him as it had been to me, he must be dying. “Yeh,” he said. “but I had to do it. And now I have to do this. Come on, Summer. Get on the bed for me.”
Roman
I’d had plans. Every one of them had vanished when I’d seen her in those lacy things. Sweet as honey. Hot as hell. All I’d thought was, Mine, and all I’d wanted to do was grab her, hold her, and make her come hard. Now, though? There was something washing over me, looking at her shaking like that, naked and vulnerable, eyes huge and unsure. It could be tenderness, and it was messing with those plans.
I needed to be inside her. But I also had to pet her and kiss her and love her until she trusted me to take her someplace new. Someplace a little scary, maybe, where she’d go because she trusted me. Until she was warm as honey and soft as wax.
So that was what I did. I put her on her back. I took off my clothes, and she put her arms up over her head. I pulled out the condom packet, and she sighed. I willed my hands not to shake, putting it on, and she bit her lip. Then I set out to let her know how beautiful she was. All over. Her front, and then her gorgeous back. Eyes and hands and mouth, telling her as best I could without saying a word.
Is there anything like telling a woman, “Turn over,” and having her do it? Yeh, there is. There’s kissing your way down the delicate bones of her spine, rubbing your hand over her arse, over those thighs, until your mouth settles in that spot just above her tailbone, and your fingers are feathery-light over the gorgeous paleness of her inner thighs. Until she’s squirming again.
By the time I told her to turn over again, she was doing some more of that panting. And when I slid inside her at last, then pushed her knees up and shoved my elbows over them, pinning her in place by those thighs, she called out. And when I finally turned her over one more time, tucked her body over her knees, and took her that way, so she was as tight as a woman could feel around you? I was the one panting then. My hand under her, helping her out, because I was what I’d said. Greedy for her, and selfish all the way. Wanting to feel how tight she’d be when she was coming around me, when I was over her and inside her and around her as much as a man could possibly be. Wanting to make her wail.
Tight and warm and silken as a glove. Curled up small under me, all of her taut and straining. Saying some things now, at last, because she couldn’t help it. Begging me.
God help me, I wanted to make her beg some more. So I did. I held off as long as I possibly could, and when I couldn’t wait anymore? When the darkness gripped me and pulled me under? When I was so big inside her, and she was so swollen, every movement was piercing her to her core? That was worth it, because that was power.
I may have shouted myself. I can’t remember.
Summer
I was still curled up tight, mostly because I didn’t have the strength to uncurl. That is, until Roman put his hand on my low back in the way he liked, kissed my shoulder, and said, “Oi. OK?” Then, I uncurled, because I had to touch him.
Or maybe, I thought dimly as his arms went around me and he pulled me in, I needed this. He said again, “OK? I may have got a bit …”
“I can’t even think how you’re going to finish that sentence,” I said.
A huff of quiet laughter, another kiss—on the top of my head this time, because somehow, my head was on his chest and my hand on his shoulder—and he said, “Yeh. Felt like I’d been waiting years for that.”
“I don’t think I was waiting at all,” I said. “Because that was, uh … not how sex normally works for me. You can’t anticipate what you don’t know about, I guess.”
“Yeh?” He rolled now so we were looking into each other’s eyes. His hand came out and traced my lips. “How d’you mean?”
“You said you were selfish,” I said. “You’re not selfish.”
“Mm.” His hand, so gentle now, stroking over my hair, a smile on his lips. “I’d say I am. Did exactly what I wanted, didn’t I.” Another soft kiss, on my lips this time. “Need some water? Champagne? Like that?”
“Water,” I said, and pulled myself to sitting against the padded headboard. It wasn’t easy. I was jelly. “I should find my phone. Call Delilah. What time is it?”
Roman looked at his wrist, but there was no watch on it. Somehow, he’d had the presence of mind to take it off. Not me. I was still wearing my earrings, in fact—the only ones I still had, the pair I’d been allowed to keep. Tiny white-gold hoops, so the holes wouldn’t close. Now, I tipped my head and pulled out one, then the other, and watched Roman, unselfconscious in his nudity, pad back across to me with two glasses of water. It was a pretty wonderful sight. Why had male thighs never featured on my list of favorite body parts? I’d been married to a footballer, but his thighs had never done for me what Roman’s were doing.
Not his thighs, and not any other part of him, either.
“Ten,” Roman said, and when I blinked at him in confusion, took my water from him, and drank half of it down, “O’clock. I doubt Delilah’s worrying.”
“Still,” I said. “I should text her. Or we should go home. Back to the house, I mean. I can’t believe you paid for two places, and for a woman who can’t be impressed anymore. At least not by money.”
He pulled the duvet back on the bed. “Of course, you could be—I don’t know, triumphant, maybe, over how much you made me spend tonight. That’s how most women would feel.”
“Oh.” I considered that as best I could in my semi-liquid state. “I don’t seem to feel that way, though. Just sort of … warm and satisfied and sleepy, and like my caution sensors are turned off.”
“In that case,” Roman said, “why don’t you get in here while I find your purse so you can text Delilah, and then fall asleep with me? You’re pretty sweet to hold, and I want to keep doing it. And don’t tell me about your logical mind. I know all about your logical mind. Tonight, I want the rest of you, too.” He smiled, but it wasn’t one bit predatory, and it went all the way to his eyes. “Like I said. Selfish.”