Chapter 8
Eight
EMBER
I 'm boiling over with a crazed confusion of emotions and sensations. Chief among them at this exact moment is utter relief—I haven't had an orgasm in nearly eight months, and I don't think I really allowed myself to feel the need. I have a tendency to dissociate from my body in times of stress or feeling emotionally or physically overwhelmed. When I'm concentrating on something, I can forget that I have to pee for so long I've gotten UTIs. I'll forget hunger, thirst, pain, anything.
So the last eight months I've dissociated from my body entirely. I had to make myself eat after Dutchie died. Had to force myself through the motions of caring for myself physically, telling myself it's what he would have wanted. And then it went back to being habit—eating because that's what you do, you eat in the morning, afternoon, and evening. You take showers. You use the bathroom. I never felt any of it, I just…forced myself to do it.
But physical pleasure? What a joke. Until I met Felix, I'd legitimately forgotten what that was. I'd shut that part of myself off, divorced my psyche from my innate needs as a biological, human female. I haven't been a sexual being since the moment that doctor said the word "cancer."
And then Felix happened.
Maybe when I whacked my head on the engine compartment, I knocked something loose, I don't know. I just know the moment I saw him, physical sensation came flooding back into my body. It was truly bizarre.
I was no longer just a Gordian knot of sorrow floating through the world.
I was a woman.
I had a body.
I had toes and fingers. Legs and arms. Feet and hands. Hair, nails, teeth. Organs.
Skin.
Breasts and buttocks.
I was a woman, and I needed sex.
At first, it had felt sort of…divorced from emotional need, which is weird for me. I'm on the demisexual spectrum, normally. I don't feel sexual attraction unless I feel an emotional one first. It's connected to my comfortability with nudity, perhaps. My mother's commune was one of open sexuality and nudity. It wasn't at all unusual to enter an RV or bus or van and find a couple in the throes of sex. People would walk around the camp naked. I've never tried to sort out the psychology of it, but I know that there is a connection between how I grew up and my demisexuality. I spent almost three months getting to know Dutchie and falling in love with him emotionally before I felt even the slightest glimmers of physical arousal. And then, it developed slowly. He was so patient, so kind, so understanding, even though he was a normal guy with a normal sex drive. But he never rushed me, never pressured me. It was over a year after we met before we slept together.
Then he died.
I shut down.
And Felix…quite literally turned me back on. Why and how, I have no fucking clue. I just know that I saw him standing there on the dirt road, all muscle and masculinity and sexiness, and I felt an instant and overpowering attraction to him. An arousal that I couldn't even begin to fathom, because it was so intense, so sudden, and so fucking strange. So unexpected. I barely knew him, but I wanted him. I was barely able to hide it. I wanted to rip his clothes off right there in the middle of the road and climb on his dick.
It had shocked me stupid, and I’d been so confused that I'd had to meditate until it passed, and even then, if I let my mind go to him, that attraction would crop back up.
I’ve tried everything—pot, meditation, mantras…everything but leaving town.
That was not an option.
And then he'd appeared again. At that beach. Shirtless. Dripping wet. Ripped, jacked, and fucking gorgeous. A rippling six pack dusted with fine golden hair that was thicker on his chest and in a line down his belly, darkening and thickening as it delved under those tight, short swim trunks. Brawny arms. Hard, round, massive shoulders. Thick, hard thighs. A bulge that swayed with every step, promising a cock that could show me a sinfully good time.
My arousal had been so complete and so disorienting that I hadn’t known how to handle it. It was beyond my experience—my desire for Dutchie had grown as I got to know him. He hadn’t been my first, but because it had taken so long to open up to him that by the time we made love, my emotional connection with him had been immense and soul-deep, and so my physical connection to him had been as equally intense.
Felix…
He's cipher to me. A totally alien and unknowable thing. My feelings for him are confusing. I barely know him and yet suddenly I'm wildly horny for him? It makes no sense. I crave him to the point of lunacy. I dreamed of him every night after I first met him, and they were not innocent dreams. They were filthy, sinful, depraved dreams. I'm embarrassed—and turned on—even thinking about it.
Through force of will, I kept myself from acting on those feelings, and hopefully hid them from him while I tried to sort out what the hell was going on inside me.
He took care of me, the bastard. Rescued me from my dead bus. Towed it. Brought me here. Says he's going to help me get it fixed. Held me without a word as I had the emotional breakdown I'd been denying myself since my husband died. Asked for nothing. He just wanted to help. Showed me kindness after kindness, and when his own desires and attraction to me cropped up, he left the situation rather than let it affect me.
And when I saw him outside on his deck, I was…god, I don't know.
Half asleep and emotionally depleted. Maybe, for the first time since Dutchie's death, I was free of the weight of my long-pent grief. I don't know. I just that I saw him there lounging in dark blue Adirondack chair in the shape of Michigan’s lower peninsula, and I was totally fucking gone for him.
Need was a savage mistress within me, raging and pounding on the bars of the cage I'd kept her in for so long.
And when he kissed me?
Fuck.
The man can kiss .
And again, rather than allow his needs to take over, Felix had fled. The instinct was both sweet and frustrating. Because my needs are complex. I don't just want to be touched. I don't just want to be kissed, held, caressed, and given orgasms. I want all that—need it. But just as much as I want to receive them, I want to give those things. I want to touch. I want to kiss. I want to lick. I want to taste. I want to give him an orgasm that makes him forget his own name.
Which is where I am right now: laying sideways on his bed, naked from the waist up, shaking with orgasm aftershocks—from an orgasm he gave me exclusively through nipple-play.
I came close to it a few times with Dutchie, but never truly got there.
I don't dare examine that particular thought too closely—my emotions are still locked up at the moment, rampaging behind a very thin shield. My guilt over enjoying this will burst through sooner or later—probably sooner. I'll be a fucking disaster, and it'll likely happen pretty explosively.
But for now, I'm determined to force myself to enjoy this moment of quasi-normality. Feeling pretty. Feeling female. Feeling wanted.
Being touched.
Held.
Kissed.
It's fucking amazing. Like droplets of water dripped onto a cracked, parched tongue. But like someone dying of thirst, I dare not drink too deeply all at once.
That's the idea, at least.
Desire has other plans.
Felix is half-kneeling on the bed above me, one foot on the floor, the other knee bent and braced into the mattress while I lay with my torso and ass on the bed, feet dangling just above the floor…since I'm too damn short to touch.
His eyes are ice chips, palest blue and glittering, shockingly intense, piercing and heated. His eyes are on mine, searching me—for signs of upset, probably. He must know I'm on the verge, and he's being so careful not to push me.
It only makes me want him all the more.
It makes my belly burn, my core heat. My nipples harden and my skin tingles.
I crave his touch. His skin. His muscles. His hands.
"Kiss me," I breathe. "Kiss me and don't stop."
The words are not mine. They didn't come from my mind or my heart, but somewhere else. My soul? From my very core—from my pussy. My aching nipples. My pulsing sex.
"Fucking kiss me, Felix."
His tongue darts out and slides along his lower lip, and I lift swiftly, knot my fingers in the shaggy hair at the back of his head and kiss him.
And oh, oh god, the man can fucking kiss. Have I mentioned that, yet? His lips are pillowy soft in contrast to the masculine hardness of his body everywhere else. Wet and warm and soft, they scour mine with relentless verve, and his tongue is nimble and slippery and insistent.
I groan into the kiss, and I feel him tense at the sound, feel his hands twitch on my tits, squeezing involuntarily—drawing a gasp from me.
Need more. Need him. Need to touch.
Need to escape the maelstrom of emotions inside—all the things I haven’t dealt with. I can't deal with them right now, and the only way to avoid doing so is physical sensation.
Some part of me niggles with guilt, knowing I'm using him to escape my feelings.
Knowing he wants more—he wants my feelings. He wants my story. My truth—the fullness of me.
Most women would sell an ovary to have Felix Crowe in this position—craving not just their bodies but their hearts.
I'm not ready.
He knows this, yet here he is, letting me take advantage of him.
And I can't stop myself.
I need his skin and muscle—pulling at his shirt, I work it up his body. He breaks the kiss long enough to let me tear it off and throw it aside, and then his mouth is savaging mine, kissing me with starving intensity, all tongue and lips and breath and growls.
I clasp his shoulders, dimpling my fingers into the hard give of muscle, and then explore his shoulders, his back, my fingernails carving lines down his lats and obliques until I get to his jeans.
I delve under, find skin, find muscle. His ass is a work of art, hard and taut, a big round firm pair of perfectly formed bubbles, smooth and warm and soft to the touch yet harder than iron. I clutch and play, squeezing, digging my nails in until he grunts and then petting it and smoothing away the sting.
God, I need more—this need is all-consuming and relentless.
I push his jeans down, and he lifts without breaking the kiss, and we work together to remove them. I shove them past his butt and down to his knees, and then he balances on his knee in the bed and yanks them off his extended leg, and then switches his weight to kick them off the rest of the way.
I take claim of his abs and pecs, raking them with my nails and exploring them with my palms and fingertips, tracing the outline of his pecs, running my fingertips in the grooves of his shredded abs, tracing the thick line of hair down his belly to the band of his underwear. I slide my hands under the elastic again and explore his magnificent ass some more, because holy fuck, it's amazing.
But then Felix plays a mean, dirty trick on me.
He breaks the kiss, panting, and stutter-trips his mouth down my throat, over my breastbone, down between my tits to my belly, tickling my navel with his tongue until I shriek a giggle, feet kicking. He pins my legs with his body and yanks open the fly of my jean shorts, and oh, oh fuck, He's going for it. And I'm going to let him—my need to touch him takes a backseat to the promise of another orgasm.
I play with his hair as he kisses my belly while his hand cups my tits. My fly is unbuttoned but the zipper is up; he tweaks my nipples until I shriek, bucking off the bed as a lightning bolt of arousal sears through me, and then he tugs down the zipper. I lift my ass and he takes the cue, yanking them off inside out—the only way to remove shorts as tight as those.
"Fuck me," he growls, his voice farther away now.
I snap my eyes open to see him staring down at me, pure awe in his eyes, his expression painted with peak male appreciation. I forget which panties I put on, and glance down—oh.
They're the only ones I had clean…a red lacy thong, the triangle just barely wide enough to cover my seam, the strings sitting low.
He seizes my hips and before I know it, I'm on my belly and looking back at him over my shoulder as he gazes with reverence and adoration at my ass.
"Fuck me," he growls again, reaching for my ass.
Restless, eager, delirious, I hold still, resting my cheek on my forearm as I watch him cradle the outside of my ass in both hands.
I don't think I've ever been looked at the way he looks at me.
Again, I have to file that feeling away to examine later. Because I know I haven't. No one has ever looked at me the way Felix is right now—not with possession or jealousy or love, but raw need.
Unfiltered, savage, primal lust.
It's fucking intoxicating.
"Felix," I whisper.
He grips a double handful of my bare ass, making a rough sound of aggressive appreciation in his chest. "What?"
I try to roll over, but he prevents me.
"Not yet." He hooks his fingers in the string sitting low on my waist. "Wanna rip this thing off."
"Don't," I whisper. "I haven’t done laundry in a while. I don't have any more clean underwear." His growl is so frustrated that I can't help but laugh. "What if I promise to let you rip my thong off me another time?"
"Fine," he mutters.
His hands are busy, petting, caressing, kneading, squeezing—worshipping. He spends as much time just appreciating and exploring my ass as he did my tits, and all the while, my core is boiling with need, desire pooling low in my belly, heat building more with every minute I'm denied the release I need.
Because I'm starting to understand that the orgasm he gave me was just the beginning—for as much as it provided relief, it also only served to underline the true depths of my need.
Which is…borderline rabid.
I don’t know myself.
This is so utterly unlike me that I don't know what to do, how to behave, and I have no control over myself, over my words, my hands, my thoughts—all I can do is hold the shield around my emotions in place and let my body take over.
"Felix," I murmur, wriggling impatiently. "Please."
He rumbles wordlessly. "Tell me what you want, Ember." He kisses the small of my back. "Tell me what you need."
The kiss slips down, hopping the line of my thong to touch the upper swell of my ass. Lower, lower. Everywhere. His hands scratch my back in soothing circles, at odds with the fiery kisses he presses to my bottom. He rakes his fingers, splayed out, down my back, and this time he doesn’t stop, but keeps them sliding down, taking my thong with them. I tip my hips up, and the thong pulls free, slipping out from the catch-point of my touching thighs with a snap. He drags it down to my knees, and I lift my feet to let him pull it off; I'm naked with a man for the first time in nearly a year.
His palms rake up my thighs, burn over the backs of them to sear against my ass cheeks, and then up my back to my shoulders, and now his weight is above me, hovering over me, and he's nuzzling my ear. "What do you need, Ember?"
"I need to come again, Fee," I whisper, the truth tumbling out of me, bold as you please.
He flips me to my back as if I'm no more than a porcelain doll, and I land with a bounce that has my tits rolling side to side; his gaze follows their movement hungrily, and he bends to kiss one, lick the other. I gasp, catch at his hair.
He suckles at my nipple, and a line of lightning sizzles from nipple to clit, forcing a whimper from me. That sound I make, the helpless whimper—it makes him crazy. He snarls like a lion, teeth nipping my aching, rigid nipple until I whimper again, and now his hand skates down the outside of my hip to my knee and slides back up between my thighs. Willingly, greedily, wantonly, I part my legs for his touch.
But he doesn't give it to me right away.
Anticipating it, needing it, I pant, waiting, wanting. When it doesn’t come, when his hand carves up my hipbone to my belly, I growl in frustration. Tip my hips, indicating what I need.
His finger trails down my belly, over my mons pubis—My lungs seize, my eyes shut. He trails his touch over my seam, a delicate, tender quest of his index fingertip, barely touching. I gasp.
"Fee!" I whimper. "More. Please."
"Look at me, Ember." His voice holds a note of command.
In another extraordinarily unlikely turn of events, I find myself obeying. "What?" I whisper.
"I want you to look at me when I make you come." He fits his hand between my thighs, an inch or so down from my sex.
"Felix," I whisper, my riot of emotions noisy and demanding behind the shield. "Please." I can't put any of it into words.
I can only shut my eyes, shake my head.
He slips his finger down my seam again. "Ember."
I shake my head. "Don't make me."
Once more, his finger teases down my seam, trails down my lips, leaving a burning line on my skin. "Ember…"
I shake my head, swallowing hard. Build up the shield, push the emotions away. "Don’t make me, Fee, please. I fucking can’t .” I put my hand over his. "Please, Fee. Please. Just…touch me, please. Make me feel. Make my body feel." I whimper as his finger ghosts down again, this time delving in between my plump lips a tiny bit. "I can't bring my heart into it, Fee. Not yet. Don't make me. Please."
"Okay," he whispers. "I get you. I hear you."
Tears burn behind my eyes, guilt at feeling like I'm using him searing through me. "Fee, I…I want to. But I can't."
His weight shifts. His lips nuzzle mine. "Hey, it's okay. It's fine. I understand."
I shake my head. "You don't. You can't." I force my eyes open, knowing they shimmer wetly. "I'm using you, Fee. I need to—I need this. I can't explain it. But I need it. And I can't give you what you want. I'm sorry, Fee, I'm—I'm fucking—"
His mouth slams painfully into mine, shutting me up instantly as he kisses me—a hard, greedy, bruising kiss. I groan into his mouth at the sweep of his tongue, desperately lose myself in the kiss, throw myself into it. Heat builds behind my chest, swells behind my navel, spreads to my core, throbs in my sex, pulses in my clit.
He teases my slit with his finger, swiping up and down in short strokes against the lips with his fingernail, and I twitch at each slide, shiver at each touch. I whimper again as he sucks my tongue into his mouth and then opens his for me, offering himself to me, growling as I take his mouth, taste his tongue, his lips, his teeth.
He adjusts his weight to free his other hand, and now he's kissing me and teasing my pussy and caressing my tits, and my whimper becomes a gasp, and the gasp becomes a moan. When I moan, he growls, biting my lower lip, and then kisses his way down to my breasts. His mouth seizes my nipple while his fingers roll and tweak the other one, and now I'm gone, hips bucking as that searing shaft of heat and electricity crashes through me, lancing straight to my clit as if there's a live wire connecting my nipples to my clit.
When he nips one and pinches the other, I nearly come right then, crying out in a shrill voice—that's when his finger slips inside me, one thick digit penetrating my slick flesh.
His finger hooks and curls, expertly finding my sensitive, sacred place and massaging it with his fingertip, while his mouth and other hand lick and twist, suckle and pinch.
I scream through gritted teeth as an orgasm rips open inside me, and then Felix is sliding his lips down my belly and his mouth fuses to my pussy and his tongue slithers against my clit, and my scream goes hoarse and then silent as my climax detonates into fiery fury.
I arch off the bed, grinding my pussy against his ravenous, relentless mouth, and my hands bury in his soft cool hair and I clutch him to me and scream and gasp and whimper and moan and flex and fuck and thrust, lost in the enthralling mayhem of an orgasm unlike any I've ever felt in my life.
He adds a finger, and then a third, and now he's fucking me with his fingers, slicking them in and out and in and out, curling them in against my G-spot with each thrust, and his tongue is thrashing my clit side to side and up and down and circles in a patternless assault, and my pussy clamps around his sliding, plunging fingers and my screams are wild and loud and hoarse. He finds my nipple with his unoccupied hand and pinches it with sharp, rough pressure in a pulsing pattern timed to my clamping, clenching inner walls, and the orgasm shatters once more inside me, and I can't breathe for the intensity of it, can't scream, can't move—I'm bowed up off the bed, only my shoulders and heels pressed against the mattress.
I fall, crunch inward, sucking in a sobbing, overwhelmed, shuddering gasp of oxygen, but his tongue swipes against me and his fingers fuck into me. I'm shaking all over, shuddering and spasming and curling inward and arching upward as wave after wave after crash through me.
Weeping uncontrollably, I none too gently shove Felix away from my pussy and clamp my legs closed, curling into a tiny ball as the waves wrack me like the aftershocks of an earthquake. He scoops me up in his arms and settles on the bed with me on his lap, sheltered in his arms, and he cradles my face on his bare, hard chest and his heart thuds steadily and comfortingly under my ear, and I cannot stop crying.
He just holds me through it—yet again.
When I come back to myself and my eyes are dry, I realize I must have passed out.
I blink up at him. "Did—did I pass out?"