Chapter 24 #3
“Mm. You were so desperate a minute ago, couldn’t even find me. Now look at you.” I pull it back slowly, agonizingly, then push it home again. “Practically perfect when you’re not thinking, aren’t you?”
She whimpers.
“Was that a complaint?”
“No!” She grabs the counter harder. “Don’t stop, don’t—”
“Wasn’t planning on it.” I pull it out and circle her clit again, and she writhes. “You’re so responsive. You know that? Every single thing I do, and you just…” I push back inside, and she arches, and I lose my train of thought entirely. “Yeah. Exactly like that.”
Her hand finds my wrist, not stopping me, just holding on.
And God do I let her.
“More,” she breathes out. “Please, I need to finish.”
“Finish?” I keep the pace exactly where it is, unhurried, even as she tries to roll her hips and rush it.
I stop playing with her clit and pop the candy back in my mouth, savoring her taste, then use my free hand to press flat against her stomach, pinning her lightly to the counter. “Greedy. I just got here.”
I’m so hard it hurts, and the only thing keeping me from coming in my jeans is sheer stubbornness.
She makes a sound that’s a half-moan, half-frustrated whine, and something about it pulls at every single thing in me.
“Please.”
“There it is.” I let the lollipop disappear between one breath and the next, then lean down and let my mouth brush the curve of her breast, not quite a kiss. “Say it again.”
“Ridge, please—”
I suck her nipple into my mouth and groan against her. My tongue and fingertips on her soft skin at the same time are too much. I’m shaking as hard as she is, fighting not to rut against the edge of the counter for some sort of relief.
She cries out, her whole body arching into it, the hand on my wrist tightening, and I work my finger deeper while I drag my tongue across her, enjoying how she’s shaking, and that I’m the one doing this to her.
“That’s my girl.” I pull back enough to speak. “You’re so good. Look at you, taking it so well.”
“I’m going to—” Her breath stutters. “I think I’m going to—”
“I know.” I pick up the pace, just slightly, just enough, watching her face go slack with it. “Let me see it. Come on, sweetheart, show me.”
“I can’t—” Her hips are working now, chasing it, all that careful restraint dissolved entirely. “I can’t, it’s too—”
“You can.” I add another finger, curling upward. Her whole body jolts when my thumb brushes her clit. “There.” I press my mouth to her jaw, her cheek, the corner of her lips. “Right there, yeah?”
“Yes—”
“Then stop thinking and give it to me.” I curl my fingers again, finding the spot that makes her gasp and staying there, working it slowly in time with her clit. “I want to feel you come on my hand. Can you do that for me?”
She’s shaking.
“Yes.”
“Prove it.” I press my lips to her temple, lingering there, breathing her in. “Show me how pretty this pussy pulses when you come.”
I don’t speed up. I don’t need to, keeping that exact pressure—curl, stroke, circle—while my free hand slides up her side, thumb brushing the underside of her breast, then cupping the soft, heavy weight of it.
Lennon comes apart with my name in her mouth, clenching around my fingers, and her thighs clamping around my wrist. She’s loud, moans fracturing into whimpers while her nails rake down my arm.
Her whole body pulls tight and then releases in waves.
I work her through every single second of it, careful and completely unable to look away from her face.
She is…
Fuck, she’s beautiful like this.
I want to memorize every tremor and sound, because if this dream ends and she never looks at me again, at least I’ll have this.
But, of-fucking-course, the dream collapses just when I think that.
Not gradually. All at once, the way dreams do when the emotion gets too big for the architecture to hold.
The kitchen dissolves, including the Shaw boy, the counter disappears from under her, and I feel the sudden wrench of being pushed out, like a hand flat against my chest, shoving me back through the membrane of sleep and into—
Ceiling.
My ceiling.
I’m in my bed.
I lie there, staring up at it, my heart hammering and every nerve in my body still lit up by her. Holding up my hand, I count my fingers, even if I know with a certainty like never before that this is waking life.
Five.
Five normal, boring, non-dream fingers.
I exhale through my nose, trying to shove some of the adrenaline back down where it belongs, and listen.
The wall between our apartments is not thick.
I’ve heard her moving around the last few days, heard the soft sounds of her settling in, the occasional murmur of her talking to someone that I fear was probably the Shaw boy.
Right now, from the other side of it, I can hear panting.
Soft, breathless, and gradually slowing as though she’s coming down from the exact same high I just got shoved out of.
My pulse kicks harder.
She’s going to knock. Any second now, she’s going to sit up, walk the few steps to my door, and knock.
I wait.
The panting evens out before going quiet.
I keep waiting, keep staring at the wall to my left.
Nothing.
No footsteps. No knock. No soft curse under her breath as she second-guesses herself and decides to come over anyway.
She’s not coming.
My arm is still tingling where her nails bit in—phantom crescents I can almost see in the dark.
Every nerve is still buzzing, skin too tight, my dick surprisingly still aching and throbbing with the phantom memory of her clenching around my fingers.
I can still taste lemon and salt on my tongue, can still feel the exact shape of her nipple under it, how her thighs shook when she came with my name in her mouth.
The thing about lucid sex dreams is that they feel fucking real, which is one of the reasons so many people love to use lucid dreaming for sex and sex only.
I had sex in my dreams, too, often, but they’ve never once followed me back.
I’ve been doing this for years. I know exactly where the line is between dream body and waking body, and they have always, without exception, stayed on their respective sides of it.
Apparently, that rule no longer applies.
I reach for the nightstand and grab a lollipop, unwrap it in the dark, and put it in my mouth.
The first hit of tartness mixes immediately with the ghost of her taste, and fuck, it’s instant.
Her moan vibrating through the candy, the wet sound of her sucking it, her tongue curling as though she were starving.
My hand drifts down my stomach and wraps around my dick.
I don’t rush.
I don’t want to.
I want to drag this out, stay suspended between what just happened and having to think about it, where it’s only her taste on the lollipop, the memory of her voice, and my own hand. I let it build slowly and thoroughly the same way I’d taken my time with her.
Ridge…
Please.
I need you.
My grip tightens, but my pace stays lazy, teasing myself like I teased her, because if I go faster, it’ll be over too soon, and I’m not ready to let her go yet. Not when I can still see how her back bowed, feel the way she gave it to me like she’d been waiting to fall apart like that.
My breath hitches at the thought, and my balls draw up as heat coils low.
The orgasm hits me like something I didn’t see coming, which makes no sense because I was building to it deliberately, but it still catches me, hard and sudden, my upper body locking up with it, her name leaving my mouth before I can stop it.
“Lennon—”
I moan as my cock pulses in my fist, spilling over my stomach in hot ropes that seem to go on forever. I’m gone, completely fucking gone, teeth clenched around the lollipop stick, vision whitening out for long seconds while her name echoes in the dark.
From the other side of the wall comes a gasp.
Her gasp.
Fuck.
I lie there, chest heaving, cum cooling on my skin, lollipop still clamped between my teeth, staring at the ceiling.
She heard that.
She was right there on the other side of the wall, awake and listening, and she heard me say her name like that and…
What the fuck did we just do?