10. Cali #2
In my head, he's got the glasses on. And those sweatpants again. He's kneeling at the foot of my bed like he's got all the time in the world, more patient than ever, probably because he knows that pisses me off.
Come here, dream-Ronan says. He crooks one finger. Scoot to the edge for me.
In the fantasy, I don't argue. That's how I know it's a fantasy, because in real life, I'd tell him to go to hell.
Not here, though. In the fantasy, I slide down to the edge of the mattress and let him hook his big hands behind my knees and drag me the last few inches. He looks at me over the top of those ridiculous glasses, smirks, and licks his lips.
My own fingers move slow. Matching his imaginary pace.
He'd take his time. He'd make me wait.
So I'll do the same to myself.
Look at you, he murmurs against the inside of my thigh in my head, his stubble scraping there, and my hips lift off the bed for real. You spent ten years learning to hate this body. A kiss, higher. What a waste. Another. What a criminal waste of the most beautiful thing I have ever put my mouth on.
He'd say it like that. The baritone purr. Sex in auditory form.
I bite the inside of my cheek hard. It turns me on to think that he doesn't know I'm doing this right now. I'm the one using him, for once, and he's clueless. Serves him right.
Dream-Ronan drags one knuckle along the seam of me and tuts. The glasses catch the moonlight.
So wet already, kotyonok. And I've barely touched you. He cranes his head to see me better through the lenses, professorial, appraising. Is this all for me?
No, I'd say, because I'm a stone-cold bitch even in my own fantasies.
Mm. I beg to differ.
And then his mouth would be on me.
My hand speeds up.
Oh, the patience is the killer. That terrible, unhurried patience.
Long, flat strokes of his tongue around the outside, and every time he got close to the hot spot, every single time, he'd feel the giveaways—my thighs tightening around his ears, the ragged moans spilling past my lips—and he'd stop.
Pull back an inch. Look up at me over the glasses.
Not yet, I don't think, he'd say. You don't get it that easily.
I'd hate him. I'd beg.
Dream-Cali has no shame. She has both hands fisted in his dark hair, and in addition to the moans, more things are pouring from her mouth now. Please and I need it, I need you, I need you so fucking badly.
He'd grin and lick his lips again, shiny with my desire. You've always been an honest one. I like that about you. Tell me more about exactly what you need.
But how could I speak? He's the one who's good with words. I've only got all these illegible feelings stirred up inside me that I can't find a way to express.
He'll have to do the talking and wait for me to confirm.
Luckily, Dream-Ronan has no issue with that.
Do you like when I flick my tongue over your clit like that?
Nod. Yes.
And do you like it when I suck it, slow, into my mouth?
Nod. Yes, God, yes.
What about when I slide one finger inside you? Just one, to start. Do you like feeling how full you get, even from that?
I nod so hard my head presses into the pillow, and my own finger obeys, curling in.
Greedy little thing. The glasses catch the light again as he watches me squirm. Should I give you two?
Yes. Please. Two.
Tell me. Out loud.
But I can't, so I just whimper into the dark of my empty room. Dream-Ronan takes pity on me the way real Ronan never would.
Do you want me to curl them right there, where you can't stand it? Do you want me to keep my mouth on you the whole time, so you've got nowhere to run?
Yes. Yes to all of it. Yes to every question he asks, one after another, each one worse and better than the last, each one narrowing the whole world down to this bed and this hand and that taunting snarl cataloging every single thing I've spent so long pretending I didn't want.
My real hips are rolling against my hand now, the sheets twisted around my ankles. I've kicked the covers half off. I'm sweating. I don't remember getting this worked up in my whole repressed life. The shame always used to hold me back.
Not anymore.
Ronan has set me free.
In my head, he pulls back just long enough to look at me. The glasses slide down his nose, and he starts to build to the finish.
Look at these hips. His palms drag over them, greedy, worshipful. Made to be held onto. Made to fill my hands. A kiss to the swell of one. This soft, wet cunt I want to press my face into. Another kiss, lower. These thighs I could live between for the rest of my days and call it a life well spent.
My hand moves faster.
You think I want you smaller? A dark laugh against my skin.
Fuck no. I want more of you. Everywhere.
This ass. These breasts. Every generous, gorgeous inch.
His mouth returns to me, relentless now, no more stopping, no more teasing.
You're a feast, kotyonok. And I am a starving man. Let me fucking eat.
I'm right there. The whole world is narrowing to a single unbearable point, my back arching off the mattress, so close I can taste it, so close it aches, so close, and—
—cum on my fucking tongue, Ms. Meadows—
And—
—Yes, fuck, Ronan, oh my God, I'm gonna—
And—
—Soak my beard, ruin me, drench my lying lips and let me taste every drop of you—
Until—
I stop.
I yank my hand away like it's the hard thing in the dark that turned out to be his crotch, and I lie there, gasping at the ceiling, every nerve in my body screaming bloody murder at me.
Because—no.
No.
I will not.
It'll kill me if I do.
I lie perfectly still, chest heaving, that terrible knot pulsing between my legs with nowhere to go, and I make myself breathe.
In. Out. The ache is so sharp it's nearly a cramp.
My whole body is furious with me, betrayed, straining toward a finish line I've just pulled out from under it, and it takes everything I have not to reach right back down and give myself the two seconds it would take.
Because that's the thing. That's the whole thing.
If I finish, he wins.
I know that doesn't make sense. He'll never know. There is no tracker for this. It's just me and the dark and my own hand. Nobody would ever have to know that Calista Meadows lay in her bed and came moaning as she imagined the man who ruined her life going down on her in a pair of reading glasses.
But I'd know.
And I'll be damned if he wins, even here. Even in a fantasy he will never, ever know about.
So I take my hand away and I lace my fingers together on top of the covers like a corpse laid out at a wake. It is, without exaggeration, the most physically uncomfortable I have been since giving birth. Isabella at least had the decency to eventually come out. This is just going to sit here.
Unless I do the inevitable.
But I won't make that choice. I just lie there, wide awake, wet, wanting, and denied, and remind myself that I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.
They're the least convincing words I've ever thought.