Chapter 22 Sem #2
Maybe she hadn’t heard me. Maybe she didn’t care. Because she leaned in, tilted her head, and kissed me back.
Her lips were somehow even softer than I’d imagined.
All the nights I’d spent dreaming about how warm her mouth might be, it was warmer, and it tasted like vanilla.
Wrapping an arm around her waist, I urged her closer, a little growl rumbling from my chest when she came to me.
As her fingers drifted up my arms, over my shoulders, I dared to slide my tongue along her bottom lip.
She went limp, just for a second. My entire life existed in that second, every heartbeat, every breath, every memory.
I tried to keep our pace slow, my hold on her hips soft and steady. But it was so hard with the noises she made, small sighs while she hooked a hand around my neck and pressed her fingertips into my skin.
“Elanie,” I said, breaking the kiss long enough to let her catch her breath, to make sure this was what she really wanted.
Grasping my face, she pulled my mouth back to hers.
Fair enough.
I moved now, twisting so my legs straddled the bench.
So I could haul her into my lap. I swept my tongue into her open mouth, tasting, teasing.
She moaned, and I devoured the sound, my hands closing around her ass and pulling her into me.
Abandoning the warmth of her mouth, I dipped my head to taste her neck, her throat, her pulse pounding under my lips.
“Sem. There’s something happening. Oh…” She ground against me, the heat of her seeping through the thin fabric of our clothes, the softness of her meeting the hardness of me. Under the stars. Out in the open.
Reality grabbed me by the shoulders and shook. I was kissing Elanie. Finally, deeply, passionately. On a picnic table in a very public place. Most of the tables around us had already emptied, the few Thurans remaining not paying any attention to us. But still…
With every ounce of willpower I possessed, I pulled away. “I’m sorry,” I said, my chest heaving. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Why did you stop?” Her eyes were dazed, half-closed, her lips wet and swollen and begging to be kissed again, all night, forever.
“Because we’re not alone here. And things were getting”—I glanced down to where I was so hard for her it hurt—“veiny.”
“I’ve never been kissed like that,” she said, breathy and wild.
“When I kissed Blake, there was nothing. I felt nothing. I thought there must be something wrong with me, but I felt this kiss.” She held up her hands.
“I felt it in my fingertips. In my toes. Everywhere.” Her eyes sparkled brilliantly. “Sem, I’m not broken.”
“I felt it too.” I took her hips in my hands again, rocking her slowly over me. “I still feel it. And you are most definitely in excellent working order. But maybe we should stop? Or at least talk—”
Shaking her head, she grabbed my hand, yanked me up from the table, and pulled me down the path back to our hut.
By the time we stumbled up our steps, I had never, ever been so turned on. She’d stopped once along the way to push me against a tree. Wrapping her legs around my waist, she’d kissed me so thoroughly I’d just barely stopped myself from flipping her around and dropping to my knees, just for a taste.
Now her hand was in mine again, tugging me inside while her hair trailed in unruly waves down her back.
I backed her toward the wall, my fingers sliding under the hem of her shirt, my mouth on her neck.
“Sem,” she hissed when I scraped my teeth over her earlobe. “Please. I need…”
“What do you need?” I asked, even though I knew.
“I don’t know.” I sucked on her shoulder, and she whimpered. “I’ve felt like this before. Once. And it was… Sem, it was terrible.”
I leaned away, meeting her stare. Her pupils were so huge there was barely any iris left. “Terrible?”
She nodded.
“When? When did you feel like this before?”
“That night,” she said, her chest heaving. “The first night we slept together. I think you thought I’d had a nightmare, but it wasn’t that.”
Even as I tried to give her space, remove the pressure, her hands pulled on me, holding my hips close to hers.
“What was it?” I asked. “What did you dream about?”
When she said, “I can’t tell you that,” I pushed into her. Just a little.
She gasped, her head falling back against the wall.
“Tell me, Elanie.”
“It was you. You were touching me. You took off my pajamas and—”
“Fuck,” I groaned, resting my forehead on her shoulder.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “All night, I felt like this. Like I was falling apart or burning up from the inside. I can’t stand it.”
“Sweetheart, why didn’t you tell me?” The idea that she’d been brought to the edge by a dream about me and I didn’t even know was unbearable. I’d never been so sure I could rewind time through sheer force of will. “I would have taken care of you.”
“How?” she asked while I kissed her neck, her throat. “How do I make it stop?”
“Did you ever touch yourself?” I licked into the sweet hollow above her collarbone. “In your pod. Alone.”
“I couldn’t. I was too nervous.”
Taking her hand in mine, I brought it to my lips. “Are you nervous now?”
She watched me, transfixed as I kissed her fingertips one by one. “Yes.”
“Do you trust me?”
Muscles tensed along the long column of her throat as she swallowed and said, again, “Yes.”
“Then let me take care of you.” Moving our joined hands down, I settled them between her legs. “Is it here, the feeling? Is there an ache? Heat building?”
Her eyes fluttered closed. “Yes.”
Sliding our fingers up to her clit, I asked, “What about here?”
“Yes.” She moaned when I applied some pressure. “It’s too much.”
“I know. I know it is.” I kissed her mouth again, trying not to lose myself in the sounds she made while I helped move her fingers in a slow, small circle. “Do you remember my drawing?”
She nodded.
“This, Elanie, is your clitoris.” I helped her make another circle. “It likes being touched like this. Does that feel good?”
“Stars, yes.”
Taking my hand from hers briefly, I tugged on the drawstring of her pants, sending them to the floor.
“Look at me,” I said, and when her eyes met mine, I brought her first two fingers up to my lips and sucked them into my mouth, releasing them with a small pop. “It likes it even better when its wet.”
We both looked down as I settled her slick fingers between her folds, nestling us in those soft, dark curls I’d felt against my thigh.
“There.” I circled again, the movement easier now, faster. “Do you feel that?”
“It’s so…sensitive,” she said between gasping breaths, her other hand closing around my shoulder. “Feeding into every…part of me. All my systems…affected.”
“Yes.” Sliding my other hand under her shirt, I traced my fingers along her side, under the curve of her breast. “Especially here,” I said as I cupped her, ghosting my thumb over her nipple, barely touching, teasing.
“Please,” she begged, kneading my shoulder now, her brow creased in an almost pained concentration.
There were things that I’d wanted before: to see the auroras in Tranquis, to have a hyperdrive engine to mess with, swoopier hair. But I’d never wanted anything as badly as I wanted to watch Elanie come.
“You’re doing so good.” I kissed her neck again, flicking my thumb over her peaked nipple. “So perfect.” I pressed my fingers into hers, circling with more pressure, more speed. “You’re close, sweetheart. So close.”
“Close to what? What’s happening to me?”
“You’re about to have your first orgasm.”
“What?” The change in her was immediate, breath held, shoulders stiff, eyes wide. “I can’t—Stop, please stop.”
Bringing my fingers away from hers, pulling my hand out from under her shirt, I cupped her face. “What’s wrong?”
“My heart is racing.” Her gaze darted over my face. “My legs are weak, shaky, and my fingers were going numb. Is that what it’s supposed to feel like? Is that normal?”
“It’s normal.” I brushed my thumbs over her cheeks. “Your heart will be fine. Better than fine.”
“It will? Do you promise?”
Without hesitation, I said, “I promise. But there’s no rush. We can stop if you—”
“No, I want this.” Her breathing slowed. “I want you to show me, teach me. But I don’t know if I can do it. My internal alarms were screaming at me.”
Kissing her forehead, then her cheek, then her lips, I smiled and said, “Silence them.”