Chapter 23 #2
“Ah, so you’ve pictured it?” he says, and she nudges him. “Not enough Freud posters watching us?”
“He’d probably love that, the perv.” She cranes her neck, as though still taking stock of the room. “So your new apartment will need space for all the records. Probably a better sound system.”
“I don’t know, I don’t hate how cozy this is right now.”
He almost regrets that word, cozy, because of how relationship adjacent it sounds. But it doesn’t push her away.
Instead she leans into his chest, her nose right at his sternum, and inhales. It’s the third time she’s done it, and now he’s almost certain: she’s breathing him in.
“What are you doing?” he asks with a laugh.
“Okay. You’re going to think I’m weird,” she says, still pressed against his chest, the sound a little muffled.
“Already do.”
“The way you smell here, it’s like, I don’t know…everything good bottled up in the world. It just instantly makes me feel calm. Safe.”
Nick has to fight the urge to stagger backward, her words knocking the breath out of him.
He makes her feel safe. God, that’s…that’s something he’s not sure he’s earned. Something he wants to honor with every fiber of his being.
With a finger under her chin, he tips her face upward, mouth softly sliding over hers. This kiss is tender, lazier than the way they kissed at her house or during either of those rushed hookups. Wholly new.
“I really like you,” she says, and with the tremble of her voice, maybe now it’s her turn to be nervous. “You have no idea how much. Being around you makes me really fucking happy. Just like, ridiculously giddy. I think maybe I’d forgotten I could feel that way.”
“Me too,” he says, a hand getting lost in her hair. “I haven’t felt this comfortable around someone in a long time. You just…you completely surprised me. In the best possible way.”
He’s not sure how to put the rest of it into words when the truth is that she makes him feel all those things a hundredfold. He assumed any of this intimacy would be an uphill climb following the divorce, but it sneaked up on him, told him that maybe, just maybe, it could be easy.
Maybe he can be her something, after all.
Ramona swallows hard, as though preparing to say something that scares her. “You make me want to be honest,” she continues, and then her gaze drops to the floor. “And I’m not sure I’ve ever really enjoyed…”
His brow furrows as he tries to fill in the blank. “Sex?” he says, though surely that must be wrong. She certainly seemed to enjoy his mouth on her.
“In the traditional sense, yes.”
Oh.
“Ramona,” he says. “We don’t have to. I know I made that joke about seeing you naked, but we don’t have to do anything but this, if that’s what you prefer.”
“No—that’s the thing. I want to. Fuck, I want to. We just…” She grasps his arm a little harder, as though seeking out an anchor. Safe. She finds him safe, and maybe that shouldn’t be the hottest thing he’s ever heard, but somehow it is. “Maybe we could go slow.”
He skims his hand along her cheek, thumb tracing her lips. “You already know I love taking my time with you.”
“And…and we could talk.”
He draws her closer to kiss her jaw. Her neck. “I love talking to you.”
Her hum of pleasure goes all the way down to his toes. She stretches up to kiss him, pressing herself against him while he slides down the straps of her tank top. She isn’t wearing a bra and her nipples are hard, and in this moody romantic lighting, she looks ripped from a Renaissance painting.
“You have the cutest freckles,” he says. “That day at the taco truck, your sweater slipped down and I saw them on your shoulders—I haven’t been able to stop thinking about them ever since.”
“If this is your idea of foreplay, it’s working.” Her eyes flutter shut as he holds his mouth to her collarbone, desperate to kiss every single dot.
He could do this every day—could he ever be that lucky?—and it would still be a small miracle, Ramona here in front of him. He bends to kiss her breasts, sucks one into his mouth and then the other, and then he’s backing her up to the couch, sliding off her skirt, getting to his knees beneath her.
“Huh,” she says, clearly trying to hold back a smirk. “I think I like you on your knees.”
Fuck, he likes it too. He drapes one hand on each of her thighs as she leans back on the cushions, letting him hike her legs over his shoulders. She’s too pretty from this angle: lavender silk panties already damp, nipples taut, a flush fanned across her chest.
“I could spend the whole night with your pussy in my face.” He kisses slowly down her hip. “I love the way you taste. I didn’t get enough of you last time.”
“Did I distract you during class today?”
A kiss to the inside of her thigh. “Even more than before.”
She bites down on her lip, as though she knows exactly what she does to him. “Am I your favorite student, Professor Navarro?”
In response, he presses his mouth to her center over her panties, drawing out a sharp gasp. And then he can’t hold himself back—he kisses her harder, faster, savoring that sweet, earthy scent of her. Licks her through the soaked fabric. Grips her ass to bring her closer.
He could live out the rest of his years right here in her lap, her fingers scraping through his hair—he’d be completely content.
She’s already pleading, but he’s not ready for this to be over just yet.
With his teeth, he snags one edge of the fabric, lifts it up slightly.
And then, every ounce of his concentration focused on that single inch of silk, he drags it against her pussy.
She’s so fucking drenched, all pink and swollen just for him.
The awareness of what he’s doing sends shock waves through her—he feels every single one.
So he keeps going, using her panties as extra pressure as he rubs them along her clit.
Bunching up the fabric in his mouth. Biting into it. Giving her almost everything she wants.
“You—” she pants, “are going to destroy me.”
Not if she destroys him first.
Then, when he senses she’s on the verge of collapse, he yanks what’s left of her panties down her thighs. Holds the flat of his tongue to her clit, flicks and curls and sucks the way he learned she likes yesterday. He thinks he might devour her.
The room fades away, and it’s only his mouth between her thighs and her breathy, perfect moans. The tightening of her stomach and the graze of her heels on his back.
He lifts his mouth for only four words. “Come for me, honey,” he says, knowing she’s close.
And so she does, trembling against his tongue and crying out his name. He kisses her where he’s made a mess of her. Rubs soft circles on her hips.
“Nick,” she says, a little hoarse as she reaches for his belt. “Please, please fuck me.”
It’s a heady, addictive thing, being needed so primally. He pulls her to her feet until her mouth meets his, needing her the same way.
One benefit of this guesthouse is that the bed is only a few steps from the couch. Ramona can’t stop touching him, barely breaking the kiss to shuck off his shirt and pants. Hooking her hands into his boxers. Palming his cock.
“If there’s anything you don’t like,” he says when they’re side by side on his bed, the place where he dreamed so many dreams about her. “Or if you want to stop…just tell me.”
She lifts herself onto one elbow. Runs a hand along his cheek. “I will.”
He reaches for the nightstand drawer, where he stashed the box of condoms he picked up on his way home from her place last night. When he passes her the foil packet with a shaking hand, she can read him right away.
“Are you nervous?” she asks. No judgment, just curiosity.
“Maybe a little,” he admits. “I just—I want this to be good for you.” That new desire settles like a lump in his throat. A few minutes ago, he was all confidence, but now he’s too trapped in his own head.
He wants to tell her how much it means to him, that she’s letting him in this way.
Ramona’s eyes are heavy on his. “It’s you,” she says simply, kissing him softly on the mouth. “It already is.”