35. Kodi
CHAPTER 35
Brian clicks his tongue as he rotates my knee back and forth. I try to keep my own voice from squeaking out of my throat at the pain, but I’m not quite convincing enough. A relieved moan gets past my lips when he finally lowers my leg back onto the table.
“It’s not looking good, Kodi.”
It’s all I can do to keep the tears from falling again. I’m so sick of this knee failing me.
“I thought everything we were doing was supposed to help me get better. Why is it getting worse?”
Brian leans into the table beside me and grabs hold of my hand. It’s warm, and I can’t tell if it’s the doctor talking or the man who held me in the parking lot when he answers.
“The frustrating thing is, you were getting better. Honestly, it was because you were favoring your leg less and walking more evenly that you were taken so off guard by the sudden trip at the golf course. For years, you’ve been protecting your knee from any little twist or jerk, but today you were walking normally. Which, in any other circumstance, would have been a good thing.”
“But this time, because I wasn’t guarding against injury, I got injured again.” I snort. The air scrapes through my tear-congested nose with a mucusy pop. “Figures.”
“It’s a speed bump. You’ll get past it.”
I turn my head away from him, unable to bear the pity in his eyes. I pull my hand away.
I hate how cold it feels in his absence.
“Face down.”
“Maybe I should just give up. Maybe I’m not meant to get better.”
I turn as I talk, lowering my head into the face rest, and just as I relax into the table?—
Smack!
Brian’s hand slaps against my ass. Hard.
“Ow!” I rear up, arching my back as I whip my head around to scowl at him. “What the fuck was that for?”
“Say stupid shit like that, and you get a spanking.” Brian’s arms are crossed across his chest, and he’s meeting me glare-for-glare. The fire in his eyes sends my heart into my throat. I raise my eyebrows.
“Excuse me?”
“Do you honestly think you can’t get better from an ACL tear?” He snorts. “People get over those every day. You’re telling me that Kodi Fucking Gander, Tuft Swallow Superstar, can’t handle a little setback?”
“I’ve been trying–”
Smack!
The strike comes down fast, stinging through the denim of my cutoff skirt and making blood rush to the skin. I can feel pins and needles and heat there as my body reacts, and I gasp at the impact.
I also feel heat begin to accumulate elsewhere in my body, and I quickly hide my face back down in the table so he can’t see my blush.
Why do I want him to keep going?
“Brian, stop it.” It’s everything I can do to keep my voice steady. My pulse is racing so hard, I’m half-scared Brian can see my ribcage bounce with every beat.
“Are you going to stop trying to get better?”
I can feel his eyes on my back, and I clench my legs together as fire continues to spread through my body.
“No.”
“You sure?”
And then I feel his fingers press into the outside of my calf. It’s a pressure point, I know: one of those angry muscle bunches he’s worked on before. But in the past, his hands have felt neutral whenever he’s touched me like that. Unemotional.
This time, his hands feel hot, intimate even, and the pain explodes beneath his fingers as my tendons protest. His other hand grips my ankle as he holds pressure, and I tense beneath him.
“Don’t fight me. Relax the muscle.”
My heart is racing. I try to relax, but then his hand moves again, and my stomach clenches. I feel the muscles at the apex of my thighs, miles away from his grasp below my knee, twitch as his fingers trail higher against the bare skin of my leg.
“Relax.”
“Are you going to spank me again?”
His hand freezes. I hold my breath, waiting for his response.
With my eyes staring at the floor through the hole in the table for my face, I don’t see him move. I only feel his hand lift from my leg and the warmth of his body radiate against my back as he leans his mouth mere inches from my ear.
“Do you want me to?”
My body tenses again, and his hand returns, this time brushing lightly against the small of my back. “Relax. Tensing isn’t good for you right now.”
“How am I supposed to relax with you standing over me like that?”
My voice is muffled by the facerest. Brian removes his hand from my back, and even though my body relaxes, my heart clenches at the same time.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?” Brian’s voice breaks on the last word, revealing a vulnerability I’ve never heard from him before. More tears spring to my eyes when I hear it, making the crinkly paper on the table stick to my cheeks. “What do you want me to do?”
What do I want?
How do I even begin to answer that?
I want my knee to get better. I want to go back to being the town champion, and I want the cornhole team to actually respect me instead of just tolerating my presence at practice. I want to feel like I can actually trust my friends and family instead of feeling like they all want something from me that I can’t deliver. I want this stupid paper to stop sticking to my face so I can take a full breath, and I want…
I want Brian to spank me again.
I want to feel his hands grip my thighs like they did when he came to my apartment last week, and he buried his face into my most intimate parts.
I want to return the favor, to do something, to watch him writhe for once, under my touch, and to make him moan and grunt and scream my name like I did his.
I want, for five minutes, to forget that this is all some act we’re playing for the town of Tuft Swallow, for his stupid fucking ex, and for his business, and instead just be two people who could maybe, maybe, have real, actual feelings for each other.
Slowly, I lift my face and torso off the table, and Brian is there, waiting for me with a firm hand to help me into a seated position. I grasp my fingers around his firm forearm, and once I’m fully seated with my legs dangling off the edge of the table, my head is level with his chest. I reach my other hand and spread my fingers against his t-shirt, before fisting the fabric and pulling him close, so my forehead is leaning against the strong muscles of his abdomen.
I take a sniffling, pathetic sounding inhale that could be a sob or a gasp and somehow, his amazingly warm and comforting scent–like sunshine and baking bread–fills my senses. I feel his muscles flex under me and slowly, his strong hands weave their way around us until they’re rubbing down my back.
“Kodi–”
“Don’t call me that,” I whisper, shaking my head against him, squeezing my eyes closed tight. Dear God, it’s like every muscle in my face clenches shut, trying to keep out the feelings that are becoming increasingly clear in my mind. I know what I want.
“What should I call you?”
It’s then I finally look up, my tear-stained cheeks dragging across the bunched fabric clutched in my hands as I lock my eyes onto Brian’s. The sometimes-green, sometimes-blue irises are dark, oceanic outlines of his blown-out pupils in the dimly lit office, and they lock onto me. I see his Adam’s apple bob with a strained swallow.
I don’t want to say it. If I tell him what I want, it’ll be real. He’ll know how I feel, how much his words mean to me. He’ll want to call this entire deal off, and I’ll be lost again, without any chance of recovery.
But worse than that, I’ll be alone.
And I can’t…I can’t handle that right now. Not when everything else is crumbling around me.
“Baby girl…”
My eyes close as his fingers rise from my back and twist in my hair. The words drop from his lips in a barely audible wisp of air. I shiver and pull him closer, squeezing the bunches of his shirt in my hands tighter and tighter until the fabric stretches taught across his torso. He follows my hands, leaning closer into me and pressing my head into the firmness of his chest.
And then I feel another firmness rise and press into my chest.
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes,” I breathe, and slowly unclench my fingers. His arms stay firmly latched around me, with one hand twisting into the loose strands of hair that have fallen from my messy ponytail and the other pressing gently against my back. I slide my hands down inch by inch, feeling him grow bigger with every creep closer to his waistband.
“You don’t have to–”
“I want to,” I interrupt him.
He spoke when I undid his button, but I need him to know that this is exactly what I need right now.
I’m tired of feeling like nothing is in my control. I don’t–I can’t– feel weak anymore. For once, I want to know that my actions matter, that the things I do can have a real effect and impact on my life. It may be new to me, and I might be setting sail on uncharted waters by taking this next step–especially with Brian–but deep down, I need to know that I can leap and for once, for just fucking once, a net will appear.
“Brian, I want you. That’s what I want. I want you to let me make you feel as good as you made me feel the other night.”
“Kodi–”
“Don’t.”
I freeze, my hands clutching to the waistband of his boxer-briefs, his pants having long been unbuttoned and unzipped and pooling around the middle of his thighs. He takes in a shuddering breath as I tilt my head until I’m staring directly down at the tent straining against the stretchy fabric of his underwear, and I see the bulge twitch when I exhale the word. He adjusts his grip in my hair, the pads of his fingers digging deeper into my scalp.
“Okay, baby girl.”
“Okay?” I tug on the elastic the slightest bit.
“Okay.”
With his permission, I finally pull the fabric down and over his swollen cock.
I’m not sure how I never realized the appeal of it before; when all the other girls in high school and college would fawn over the size of their boyfriend’s dicks, I’d always been so confused. What was the big deal, I thought at the time. It’s just a penis.
But staring at the beautiful cock bouncing under my gaze now, bursting forth from a neatly trimmed crop of brown curls, I want nothing more than to wrap my lips around its swollen tip.
I free my right hand from his boxers and circle it around the base of his shaft, and a warm tingling filling my chest as I hear him gasp at the contact.
Yes. This is the kind of cause and effect I need. I crave. With my other hand, I cradle his exposed backside, grasping his cheek and digging my fingers in as I slowly begin to pump my other fist up and down his hardening length.
A groan escapes, and I can feel his chest rumble with it above my forehead. My lips stretch in a grin. It feels so good to know that I’m not terrible at this. Part of me had been terrified my inexperience would have him pulling away from me.
But those thoughts are fleeting as instinct takes over, and I just follow the lusty inclinations of my limbs, basking in the joy of exploring him in such intimate detail. I study him for feedback as I do.
With each pull of my hand upward, I fan my fingers over the crown of his cock, letting my thumb graze over the notch that points to the slit at the very tip. He inhales sharply the first time I do that, and so I repeat the motion with every stroke, until his hips buck forward.
“Sorry,” he grunts, and I lift my head to look up at him. As our gazes meet, I see that his eyes are glazed over and his mouth is parted slightly. He chuckles, a low and throaty sound, and I pause my hand. “Baby girl, you’re killing me.”
My heart sinks. “Am I doing it wrong?”
“God no,” he hisses. “Feeling you around my cock is fucking everything.”
With his praise, it’s like a thousand balloons inflate in my stomach, and suddenly I feel light and giddy with it.
“I want to suck you,” I admit, not ceasing in my stroking up and down. He bucks again.
“Okay.”
“But, um…the angle is…”
“You can’t kneel.” He nods once, gathering the threads I left dangling. If it were anyone other than him, I’d be humiliated admitting that I feel like I can’t even get off the drop table without assistance, but I know I can trust Brian.
In one swiftly smooth movement, Brian shucks off his pants and boxers completely and swings me up off the table and into his arms. One arm below my butt and thighs hoists me against him, and the other secures my back. Instinctually, I wrap my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, reverse-piggyback style, and he adjusts his grip until I can feel his fingers sinking into the sensitive flesh between the tops of my thighs and the crease of my ass.
All the while, the top of his cock bobs and brushes against the hem of my skirt, hiked all the way up to the crease of my hips from the way he’s carrying me.
“I’m going to take you upstairs.” His voice is low and insistent right up against the shell of my ear.
I shiver. Will his voice always send shockwaves down my spine? “Okay.”
He carries me to the stairs, and I tighten my hold around him. As he starts to climb to the second floor, I feel the tip of him rubbing against the apex of my thighs. I maybe moan a little at the contact.
My heart is beating wildly in my chest, my face flushing with the heat rising from his muscly chest and the closeness of him everywhere. His scent is filling all of my senses, to the point where I swear I can taste him, and then I realize that I want to taste him. For real.
I turn my head into the crook of his neck and bury my face there, pressing my lips to his shoulder. I breathe him in, becoming intoxicated on the smell of his skin as I hear his labored breath beneath my kisses. I become lost when I let my lips part against him, poking out my tongue and licking a long, indulgent line across the curve of his neck.
In no time at all, he’s kicking open the door of his bedroom and throwing me onto his bed. In a hazy, horny blur, I see a glimpse of his neatly organized bedroom before he’s hovering over me and crashing his lips down on mine.
Brian’s mouth. Fuck me, if I go the rest of my life never kissing another man and am only left with the memory of Brian’s masterful lips on mine, I’ll die a happy woman. His tongue delves past mine and sweeps into my mouth, tasting me as his lips tease and nip at my own. I lose track of where my next breath is coming from as he devours me, and instead allow my body to return his enthusiastic administrations with my own.
I stroke my arms up and down his giant, strong back, sneaking past his big arms and snaking them down his waist and back around to his naked lower half.
When my fingers grasp his hard cock again, his lips break apart from mine on a strangled cry.
“Fuck, baby girl, you’re gonna kill me!”
“Get back here,” I hiss, craning my neck up to capture his dirty mouth once more. He melts back into the kiss, pressing into my hand while curling his own around either side of my head as we sink into the fluff of his comfortable bed.
“I thought you wanted to suck me off.” He breaks away again, panting, a smirk gleaming in his eyes.
I waggle my eyebrows at him. “Feed it to me.”
His eyes go wide. “What?”
I spread my arms, gesturing to my easy perch with my head against the pillows and the headboard. “We’ve established that I really shouldn’t kneel right now. So you’re gonna have to kneel for me.”
“You want me to…over–?”
“Get up here and give me your cock, dammit!” I laugh, grabbing hold of his amazing ass and pulling him up my body.
Of course, I’m not strong enough to lift him with just my arms when I’m prone on the bed like this, but Brian follows my lead.