Chapter Eighteen #2
The unconcealed longing in his face sends my pulse staggering.
I pull one foot over his legs, sinking into his lap as his arms curve around my waist. My fingers coil into the damp strands of his hair, and I angle his face up so I can dip my mouth to meet his.
I taste him greedily; the wine on his bottom lip that prickles on my tongue, the vibration as he groans and twists his hands into my tank top.
Want scorches through me as he yanks me closer.
His kisses are slow and a little dirty, tinged with a slip of his tongue, a graze of his teeth, and I find my hips mirroring his cadence with microscopic thrusts that have him grow heavy against me.
Lewis palms my lower back with one hand, urging me to grind into him, his other hand pulling up the hem of my top.
His nails skirt over my abdomen, knuckles rippling against the underside of my breast. The echo of his touch is dulled by the fabric of my bra, and when I gasp into his mouth, he feels around my back for the opening.
“Not there,” I say, breathless. The lace bralette seemed cute when I took it out of my bag earlier, but now it’s all levels of inconvenient. “It doesn’t open.”
Lewis locks his hands around my thighs, before he lifts me off him and up onto the empty side of the table.
He pulls my top over my head, and hooks his fingers into my bralette, but freezes there.
“Is this okay?” he murmurs against my shoulder, his fingers tense against my ribs.
“We can slow down,” he continues, sounding focused.
Strained. “Watch a movie. Play board games. Whatever you want. Tell me what you want.”
“Fuck, no,” I rasp. “I hate board games.”
The feathery exhale of his chuckle hits my collarbone. “Alright, no Settlers of Catan then.”
“I want this. I want… you,” I say into his hair.
Lewis’s palm skids over my breast as he tugs up the elastic.
I arch into his touch, undone by the slow drag of his skin.
My reaction distracts him, I think, because he doesn’t pull the bralette off, just pushes it high enough that he can glide his thumb over my nipple.
My hips tilt forward, lust coiling tightly in my abdomen.
Again, his hand drifts over my breast, but now he studies me with heavy-lidded eyes as if to catalog the reactions in every part of my body. “I…” His chest rises and falls with the intake of his breath. “Is it weird if I tell you that I’d hoped phase two would involve something like this?”
“Getting hyper focused on my nipples?” I ask, as he kisses a path down my neckline. Not that I’m complaining, but it’s slightly humiliating to be so highly strung when half of my clothes—and all of his—are still on.
“Seeing you naked.” His breath ghosts against my nipple, taut after all his attention.
About that.
“Technically,” I remark, unbuttoning his shirt, “I’m not. You know, since you’re so detail-oriented.”
He smiles against my lips as he kisses me, my fingers busy mapping the geography of his chest. And then it’s a competition of who can undress the other first, although it’s unfair that he has a head start.
His thumb finds the button of my shorts, my palms push the linen fabric off his shoulders, he finally drags my bralette over my head.
He wins.
By the time he has me truly naked, I’ve only gotten his shirt off and the buckle of his belt open.
Freckles dot his shoulders, fainter but more densely clustered than on his face, like the point cloud of an imperfect correlation.
Muscles and a trail of hair disappear into the waistband of his shorts, which hang low on his hips, bulged out by the clear shape of his desire.
I reach for him, hungry for the pressure of his leg, and when he slots his thigh between mine and pushes me against the table again, I feel a glimpse of relief, but it’s short-lived.
The index finger of his right hand skirts over my torso, traces over my ribs and to my belly button, but instead of dipping down lower to where I’m unhinged with need, Lewis steps back.
And pauses. And looks at me with hunger, slowing my blood down to a crawl.
Then he gently pushes me back onto the table and kneels. Fingers finding my ankle, he starts a maddening path up the inside of my leg.
“This…” he mumbles, and with his cheek against my thigh, I can feel the stubble of his jaw against my skin. It makes me needy. Greedy.
“What?” I gasp out, only noting how my hips have bowed up when he settles his palm over my abdomen and pushes me back to the table. He dips down his thumb, inches from where desire is strumming out a heavy rhythm.
“… Was my very faint hope for phase three.” He swallows.
I take in the soft curl of his hair, the calm focus of his eyes, the puckered lips.
“Do you know you narrow your eyes in a very specific way when you’re trying to one-up me?
You get this little nick on the bridge of your nose.
And then you say something smart about fucking basket cells and their contribution to the hemodynamic response.
There’s nothing more sexy than when you explain things to me. ”
The confession rushes out of him in a string of breaths against my inner thigh, words slurring as though his discipline is fading. When did I talk about basket cells? Wednesday? I squirm under him, out of my mind for his touch.
Lewis is gentle when he finally strokes me. He slips his hand between my legs, palm and then fingers dragging in one long movement against my clit. His touch sets off quivers everywhere, the tectonics of my body shaking and rearranging even furthest from my epicenter.
“Lewis.” His name is little more than a whimper on my tongue.
“Are you good?” he asks innocently, as his thumb draws tight circles over me. “Or would you prefer the board games now?”
My laugh veers into a choking sound when I feel his tongue on me.
He moves between my legs the way he kissed me: slow and unhurried, even when I move my hips against his face with impatience.
I could stay in this state for hours, drunk on his attention, plied by his fingers and his tongue, but every time he licks my clit, this heavy, empty feeling winds tighter around my spine.
It’s not enough, not even when he slides a finger into me, and I push my hips into his palm.
My fingers in his hair, on the arch of his ear, bring him to a halt.
“Did you bring condoms?”
Lewis blinks at me, dazed, and I can see his brain reboot in the way his stare loses its glazed-over look and pivots into a sharp focus.
“I did. They’re in my bag.” He sits back onto his heels and runs his left hand over his face, the other still palming the pulse between my legs.
After a glance over his shoulder, he rises slowly and walks over to the couch to dig through his duffel bag.
“Is this what you expected for phase four?” I ask him, watching as he steps out of his shorts on his way back to me.
“Shush,” he says against the crown of my head, as I hook my thumb into the waistband of his boxers and tug them down.
“I did not expect anything. I also brought cocoa powder, vegan marshmallows, bath salts, and a copy of your dissertation.” He tears open the packet, then pulls the condom on, fingers twitching once they’re wrapped around him.
For a breath he’s quiet and presses his eyes shut, as if he’s holding on to this conversation only by a tether.
“It’s better to be prepared for everything than end up regretting not bringing the right thing later. ”
I swallow forcibly, gaze catching on his hand. That edge in his voice does something to my body, makes it feel liquid and molten. His eyes flash back up to me and his chest expands with a deep inhale as he runs his hands over my hair.
“Come here.” His voice is soft as he beckons me in for another kiss. He cradles my cheeks, turns my head to one side and bites my earlobe, the underside of my jaw, the curve of my neck.
I lean back onto my hands. Attention unwavering, his hands lift to my ass and slowly, gently, pull me closer to the edge of the table. Closer to him.
“Is this okay?” he chokes out as he lines himself up against me.
Impatient as I am, it takes me a breath to register what he’s waiting for. Then another one to get the word out. “Yes.”
He holds my gaze and only when I nod to emphasize my words, does he finally sink into me.
For a hitch of a breath, the pressure of him satisfies my longing and I let out a moan.
But then he stills, and I spiral back into a wide, gaping emptiness.
Lewis breathes out a sigh, his eyes closing for one long blink, before they come to rest on my face.
I clasp my thighs around him, desperate to increase the tension.
“Is this good?” His words are barely more than a growl.
I nod frantically.
“Frances,” he bites out, but he’s still unbearably still inside me. “Tell me how to make this good for you.”
“Can you…” I look at where his hands are splayed on my leg, suddenly shy to ask. “Can you put one hand on my throat again?”
He lifts his arm and follows my request. The light weight of his hand against the base of my throat is even more delicious than the memory of it when we first kissed.
I swallow thickly, and his pupils darken as my muscles dance against his palm.
My hips roll, almost of their own accord, increasing the pressure, heightening the friction for one mind-bending moment.
We both inhale sharply, eyes flying down to where we’re connected.
He looks like he’s about to fall apart, face desperate and jaw twitching, until he finally begins to move.
I drop down to my elbows and cross my ankles behind his back, chasing the hum that vibrates through me with every one of his strokes, and throwing back my head when it flares into something brighter.
In his hands I feel precious, cared for, enough.
I pant his name as he glides into me again, my voice raw and unrecognizable.
It spurs him on as he locks me against him with one broad hand on my back, the other one tracing over my body.
Greedily, like he can’t decide where he wants to hold on to me, he digs his fingers into my waist, drifts past the swell of my breast and flicks his thumb over my nipples, before he catches my jaw for a kiss.
The lick of his tongue and bite of his teeth is a slick echo of the movements of his hips.
I can feel myself tremble around him, can feel the erratic in and out of my breath, but even as I arch further into him, the deep, aching hunger doesn’t let up.
When I whimper, Lewis slips a hand up my calf. “I’ve got you,” he murmurs against my temple as he opens me wider, then dips his fingers to my clit. His circles grow tighter as he takes me deep and slow, and I curse, sensing how frustratingly close I am to blazing off.
And then he does this thing with his fingers. A tap against my clit, just the right side of forceful.
“Oh.” The sudden jolt makes me come with an intensity that shakes my legs, fuse burning and obliterating my nerves. I pulse around him again and again and the jerk of his hips turns into a stutter, like the force of my orgasm has brought him off course and scrambled up his rhythm.
“Put your hands on my shoulders,” Lewis orders, and when I curve my arms around his neck, he thrusts into me, once, twice. On the third one he sinks in deep, and presses his thumb into my collarbone. His teeth find my shoulder as the pleasure pools out of him.
Gradually, my moans wane and his muscles slacken under my hands.
He leans heavily against me when the tension leaves his body, and I hug him close.
I inhale the warm scent of his skin as he kisses the spot that’s tender from his bite and presses his nose into my neck.
Curved into each other and breathing the same oxygen, I sift my fingers through his hair and think about how each time I’m vulnerable with him, he makes me feel like it’s a good thing.
“I like it when you make plans,” I confess into the hollow below his ear.
“Do you?” He trails his fingers up my arm, and I shiver, hypersensitive after his touch. He clasps my hand and lifts it to his lips, mouth swollen from kissing me. “I like my plans, too,” he murmurs into my wrist. “Especially when they involve you.”
Lewis picks up my limp body and carries me to the couch, where he kisses my forehead before he disappears into the bathroom.
When he returns, my cheeks are still warm from his honesty, and with a relaxed smile on his face, he lies down next to me and smooths his hands over my hair.
Wrapped up in his warmth, I feel at ease.
Like the stress of the last week, months, maybe even years has finally detonated out of me.
“Did you really bring my thesis?” I ask after a while.
He tilts his head. “Do you want me to get it out?”
“I understand the hot cocoa powder, and the marshmallows, probably for drowning my sorrows in chocolate, but my thesis? For what? So we could take a bath together and I’d read you my propositions?” I pause as his mouth crooks up. “Oh my god, is that something that turns you on?”
Lewis watches me silently for a moment. My reaction to the weird mental image of this scenario must play out on my face, because his smirk etches deeper.
“No, Frances,” he says. “I brought it because sometimes it’s good to remind ourselves what we’re doing all of this for, and I figured your thesis would be a good place to start. ”
“Oh,” I say. I consider his words once more. “Why do you even have a copy of my thesis?”
“I took it the other day. There’s a shelf for alumni outside the secretary’s office.” He rubs his neck. “Yours was there. I was curious.”
“Oh,” I repeat. His tenderness and thoughtfulness peel back something, an intimacy I’m not yet ready to think about, especially now when my skin is still warm from his touch and heavy with his scent.
Lewis, I’ve begun to realize, is good at telling from only one look if he needs to shift the conversation sideways or hold the wheel steady and face me head-on. Now, he nudges his knee against my thigh. “But it’s also fine by me if you want to take a bath and look at some of your figures together.”
Sideways, it is.
“Stop it.” I laugh, grateful for his attempt to keep me from spiraling.
“Are you sure? I have some thoughts about chapter four…”