23. Faith
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Faith
Outside, by this lake, with the party still just about in earshot, all I want is for Dallas to strip me down. I want him to keep on kissing me, his hands to remain all over me.
I want to taste him.
I want to swallow the sound he makes when my hand fumbles at his belt, hungry and clumsy and entirely sure of itself in the dark. He’s shaking, and I still can’t tell if it’s nerves or night air or just too much wanting.
His tongue pushes into my mouth as if we’ll run out of time, as if every second without this is a second he’s owed. I break from him and bite his jaw, and already my palms are up under his shirt, mapping the bones, the bright heat of him.
He gasps when I nip at his ear.
“Oh, Faith,” he says, and I want to say it back, but mostly I want to get my mouth further south.
I kneel, twigs and leaves grinding into my knees, but I don’t mind because his hands are fisted in my hair now, guiding me.
I taste the salt of his stomach, lick the line of muscle that leads me to the prize, and he’s already so hard it aches to look at.
I open my mouth over his boxers, breathing him in through the cotton, and he moans like he’s dying. I laugh, low and wicked, and I pull the waistband down, his cock slapping against my cheek before I catch it in my hand.
For a split second, I meet his eyes. He’s staring down at me, mouth open, chest heaving beneath the night sky, and it shreds me, how much I need him to watch.
I flick my tongue around the head, taste the sharp slit, and he whimpers. Not even kidding, an actual whimper, and that’s when I know I have him, that I could ask him for anything and he would try to give it to me, right here, right now.
I swallow him down, slow, deep, and his hips jerk up. I steady him with my hands, and he curls forward, almost folding around himself, both of us shaking with it.
The noises he makes are desperate, thick-throated. His hand pushes against the back of my head. I want to make him lose control, to pour himself into me like it’s an act of worship, or maybe a last meal before the end of the world.
His fingers tangle in my hair, and he drags my head back just enough that I can look up. His eyes are wild, lit by the dashboard glow from the party and maybe some kind of moonlight I don’t even notice until now.
“Fuck, you’re gonna kill me,” he gasps, and I smile around him, teeth grazing soft, teasing, until his knees buckle and he makes this ragged, cracked noise that shoots through me, too, like if I just keep sucking I’ll explode with him.
I don’t let up, not even when his thighs clamp my head, not even when he half collapses against the tree, my name leaking out of him in pulses.
I want him ruined, open-mouthed, spent enough to forget who he is and who I am, and whether this is summer or forever or just a moment between disasters.
After, his hand finds my cheek, gentle now, thumb swiping the mess off my lower lip. I wipe my chin with the back of my hand, bracing for sarcasm, but he’s just staring at me.
“Holy shit,” he says, lashed with a laugh. “You should come with warnings.”
I shrug, heat crawling up my face. No one’s ever looked at me in that way. Like I’m dangerous, but also worth the risk. I feel this weird, weightless ache bloom through my arms and legs. I could run for hours, or maybe just collapse into the grass and let the bugs eat me alive.
It’s so stupid, my whole body is burning, and my mouth is sweet with him, but all I can think about right now is how no one’s ever wanted to keep me, and he looks like he might.
Dallas leans back against the tree, still breathing hard, and tugs me to stand. The front of my knees is streaked with green and dirt, but he doesn’t seem to care. His hand lands heavy on the back of my neck, and he pulls me into him, hard. We’re biting each other’s lips off.
“I need to fuck you still,” he murmurs. “Desperately.”
He doesn’t wait for a verbal answer—my smirk is enough. He spins me against the tree, my back to his chest, his breath shooting fire at the curve of my neck.
Leaves and rough, cool bark scrape the skin above my waistband, but it makes me want him more.
His hands slide over my hips, thumbs digging just a little, and then he’s got my jeans at my thighs.
I shiver, it’s really cold now, the lake smell rising from the water, but he’s so hot it’s like steam when he presses the whole length of himself against me.
I reach back for him blindly, and he laughs, low and drunk on it.
“Damn it, you want it bad.”
I do. There’s nothing left of me that’s shy or self-preserving. If he said my name wrong, I’d still answer. If he wanted me to bite through his skin, I might do it.
There is nothing in my head but this: the roughness of the bark, the cold on my ass, Dallas cursing into my ear as he fists his dick and lines up, hands shaking so bad he almost misses.
I think I might be too much for him, that he’ll chicken out or snap in half, but whatever spell I have on him makes it happen, fast, grinding and dirty, his hands bracing me as he pushes in.
It hurts at first, but then I push back to meet him, and it melts, and the only thing that exists is the friction and the heat and the way he groans every time I squeeze. He can’t get a rhythm, too frantic, and I love that he sounds almost ashamed at how wild he is.
His teeth find my shoulder, and I feel his spit, the bite, his feet slipping on old leaves as he jackhammers into me, both of us barely holding together at the seams.
The pleasure is building, I can feel it with every thrust. It’s hot, actually hot, even with my ass out in the cool night.
I grip the bark so hard a splinter tears my palm, but it’s nothing compared to the way Dallas is rutting into me.
He loses his grip, slips, almost pulls out, and groans, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” which makes me laugh, chin to my chest, until I gasp instead. He finds the angle, and it’s like someone set fire to my guts, in the best way.
He’s sweating, both hands holding my hips so tight, fingertip-shaped bruises will be there tomorrow.
He slams forward, each thrust a blind, battering confession.
I meet each movement, hissing between my teeth, my body shock-pink with cold and heat. I feel him thick inside me, every part of me stretching raw and hungry, and at the same time, I’m hyperaware of how ridiculous I must look: hair wild, forehead pressed to the tree, shaking with laughter and need.
I can hear the party somewhere behind us, the thump of bass and shouts echoing across the water, but I’m a million years away, another animal in a different epoch, running on muscle memory and instinct.
I scrape against the tree as he fucks me, and every scrape is its own tiny shock, a red bloom riding the much greater, deeper pleasure that spreads through my thighs and up my spine.
His hand, hot, too big, maps the length of my belly, slides up under my shirt, and he finds my nipple with a thumb, pinches it so hard my knees go jelly, and I almost shout.
He pushes his nose into my hair and makes this strangled, broken noise.
He’s ashamed at how good he feels but cannot, for the life of him, stop.
I almost rip a chunk of the tree out when I come.
It hits fast and furious, like an electric shock. I clamp down so hard he cusses, voice shredded, and then everything inside me goes white static.
I lose my balance, knees turning to rice pudding, and Dallas only just catches me, arm banding under my ribs, holding me up so he can finish.
He comes so suddenly, he surprises himself. He lets out a choked gasp that rattles the quiet between us. My own body clutches him in sympathy, tightening so hard he can barely pull out, and I want it to hurt.
I want him to feel it forever.
He bites down on my shoulder, hard enough to bruise, and I yelp.
Half pain, half just more wanting. I can’t breathe, I can’t believe this is happening, and for a little while, all I see is the glow behind my eyelids and the streaks of frost white moonlight on the water.
I’m whimpering too, now, but I don’t care; I want it all.
After, we stand there, fused sticky together, Dallas panting into my hair, his arms tight, anchoring himself to earth. I feel ridiculous, bare-assed against a tree, jeans at my knees, and I start to laugh.
A startled, helpless bubble of laughter that breaks out of me like I’ve been holding it in for years. Not because anything is funny, not really, but because I feel too full.
Too alive.
Too wrecked and too whole and too stunned by the fact that this actually happened again.
Dallas brushes a thumb across my cheek, slow and careful, almost reverent.
“You’re something else,” he says quietly, scraped raw. “Faith… you’re…”
He doesn’t finish.
He doesn’t have to.
Because he pulls me around to face him, steadying me when my knees wobble, hands warm and sure on my hips. I’m still half laughing, breath catching on the edges, when he leans in.
I clutch his jacket and kiss him back, the lake behind us whispering against the shore, the faint echo of the party carrying across the water. We’re still pressed close, the night cold around us, but his body warm and solid, grounding me in ways I’m not ready to understand.
When his lips part mine again, it’s slow.
Lingering.
Like neither of us is willing to let go.