Chapter 23 It Finally Happens
Twenty-Three
It Finally Happens
Dallas snapped his head back and froze.
I waited.
He sighed and then flopped onto the futon. “Did Sandra really say that to you?”
“Well.” I sat next to him. “Kind of. She told Emma, and Emma told me.”
“Okay.” He sat straight. “First, I need to do some explaining, and then I can answer the question.” He took his jacket off. “The truth is, last fall, Sandra had a—”
I clapped my hand over his mouth. “If you’re about to tell me that you slept with Sandra, I don’t want to know.”
I felt his lips move into a smile under my hand.
“Sorry.” I lifted my palm away from him. “There are some things I just can’t handle.”
He kept smiling. “Are you jealous of Buford Hall’s gossip queen?”
“No. Never.” I rubbed my hands together. “Well, maybe.”
He put his hand on my thigh. “I didn’t sleep with her.”
Whew. Turns out the thought of it made me want to gag.
“What happened was she had a thing for me and I knew it.” He paused. “And this is the part where I admit I was a prick. I sort of led her on. I didn’t really mean to, but I didn’t quash her fixation either.”
I slipped off my jacket, reached for his hand, and put it back on my thigh.
“Needless to say, one night she was all over me, and I ended up hanging out with a different girl. It was a dick move, I know, but I thought it was a way to make her understand that I wasn’t interested without having to tell her. Now Sandra despises me.”
“But you still haven’t answered my question.”
“Oh. Sorry, no. The answer is no. How would I have thought about someone else that night when all I was thinking about was my next move with you?”
“Your next move, huh?” I threaded my fingers through his. “What was your next move?”
“Reconnaissance.”
“When you asked Jay if I was dating him?”
He nodded.
I smiled. “Then what?”
“Do you really think us talking in the laundry room was an accident?”
“It wasn’t?” The pitch of my voice rose. I hadn’t expected him to say that.
He shook his head. “I wasn’t going to leave things to chance.”
“I thought guys didn’t get worked up about that kind of stuff.” I squinted.
“We don’t, but we do understand the concept of making our own luck.”
From the futon, Dallas tossed both of our jackets onto his desk. He picked up his computer and opened it. “You want to pick out a movie to watch?”
I stilled. “A movie?”
No. There was one thing that was going to happen in this room right now, and it had nothing to do with a tomato-meter or popcorn.
He glanced at me.
“Um…” I said.
He grinned, setting his computer back down. “You don’t want to watch a movie, do you?”
“No.” My heart pumped, and my feet numbed.
He closed the distance between us. “Me neither.”
His mouth was on me, and I slid my arms around his neck. I hadn’t realized it, but he’d taken his shoes off when he entered the room, and I still had my boots on.
I tried my best to kick them off, but they were the kind that zipper up.
“What are you doing?” Dallas mumbled against my mouth.
“My boots.”
He pulled away and looked down.
“I need to take them off.”
He bent down and unzipped them. I watched him intently, his shoulder blades moving in his back. I ran my hands over them. They were perfect in every way.
With the boots off, he sat back up.
My hands were still on his shoulders, so I moved them down to this waist. “Can I take your shirt off?”
He nodded, one corner of his mouth rising into a half grin.
He helped me pull it off, but I still had to contend with another layer—one of those performance shirts.
Grr. So I took that off too. Underneath was much more than I’d expected.
It wasn’t that he had bulging biceps or pecs or a giant six pack, but he had just the right amount of toned muscles.
I ran my fingers over him. His skin was hot, and I wanted to press my cheek against it. “How about your pants too?”
He rested his finger under my jawbone and lifted my chin. “I think we need a different game here. I feel like I’m losing.”
“What kind of game?”
His eyes glinted. “Like I took off my shirt, now you take off yours. I take off my pants, you take off yours.”
“That’s doable.”
Before I could take a breath, he already had the neck of my shirt over my head. Shoot, my bra. This one gave me nice cleavage, but it wasn’t the lacy black one I’d intended for this moment.
He groaned, sliding a finger under a strap. “Have I told you how beautiful you are?”
“Yes, actually you have. The night at the house party when you wanted to get in my pants.”
He paused. “That’s not exactly how I remember it.”
“Yes, it was. You were totally hitting on me.”
“Actually, I wanted to make sure that when you went home you wouldn’t forget me.”
I swallowed hard, gooseflesh traveling across my bare skin. “I’m cold, and you’re a furnace,” I said. “I think you owe me some heat.”
He obliged without complaint, pulling me into his chest and nibbling on my ear.
A shudder went straight into my pelvis.
“The pants,” I whispered. “Don’t forget your pants.”
Soon we were both down to our underwear. Mine bikini. His boxer briefs. He pulled me into his bed, and I wanted to celebrate.
The kissing went into full force. I could have made out with him for hours and hours and not minded. His kisses weren’t the stuff of boys, slurp and tongue. They were all man. Warm, skillful, teasing. His mouth was everywhere and then again nowhere at all.
A tingling sensation started in my core and spread all over my body.
But making out wasn’t why I was here. Well, maybe it was, but we needed to stay on track. We needed to get rid of the rest of our garments, the ones that were just getting in the way, before I chickened out and lost the self-confidence I had.
I put my hands behind my back to unhook my bra.
“Hey.” He pulled his mouth away. “That’s my job.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
His face turned a little redder than it already was.
It didn’t take him much to get my bra off. My breasts were free, and I gasped, in a good way. I’d gone this far before, in high school, but it had been weird and awkward. Now it felt right, natural, like my breasts were there purely to be cupped by Dallas, worshiped with his tongue.
I arched my hips against him. His torso was hard, and underneath his boxers, he was harder.
He coaxed one of my nipples to a peak, and a delightful ache traveled straight to my groin.
I couldn’t stand the anticipation any longer. I needed him completely naked right now. I tugged on the elastic at his waist, over the ridge of his tapered hips. “Can we get these off?”
He helped me, all the while staring down at me with eyes that wanted to gobble me up. It made my heart warm and mushy, my lungs panting for breath.
Then he was naked, and I couldn’t stop looking, at his rigid abs, the deep vee just below them.
On the bus, before the girls and I had plunged, I’d made a joke that everything in Texas was bigger. But Dallas wasn’t huge, and he wasn’t little. He was perfect.
He rested on his side next to me and started tracing circles on my stomach. “Ade,” he said.
I liked him looking at me. The appreciation, the fervor in his eyes.
“Mm,” I mumbled.
“We don’t have to go any further than this. Us having sex is not the only reason I want to be with you right now.”
I pushed him over and crawled on top of him with my underwear still on.
He groaned.
I couldn’t believe how good it felt, having him right there, underneath me. I leaned over, laying my heart on his chest, creating friction between us as I moved. “But I want to.”
A pain shot through me. I’d just lied. Yes, I wanted sex. But I also wanted him in every possible way. And the more time I spent with him, the more I reveled in this feeling of being entangled with him.
I moved up and down along the length of his body, kissing him.
He moaned into my mouth. “So sexy. You’re so sexy.”
His hands rubbed my thighs, my butt, and then he was guiding me along him like I was a train engine and he was my track.
Then a thought came whizzing into my brain. Condoms.
Glancing around the room, I looked for my purse. I had some in my purse. The ones I’d taken from the RA on my floor.
“What’s the matter?” Dallas’s hands were still gripping my hips, but we’d both stopped moving.
I looked down at him. “I think we should get a condom.”
He smiled, rolled me over, and laid me down on his bed. “Good idea.”
The fact that he had to get out of the bed made me feel better. He didn’t keep a pile of them right next to the headboard.
He set the wrapper on the mattress and leaned over me, kissing my belly button and trailing his tongue all the way down to the top of my underwear. I squirmed as a shiver went straight down my legs to my feet, making my toes curl.
Resting his chin on my pelvis, he stared up at me. It was enthralling to see him from this angle, his mouth so close to the heartbeat of my desire. I didn’t want to buck him off, but it took superhuman strength for me not to move my hips.
“I’m going to take off your underwear, and then I’m going to kiss you down there.” He glanced down to the spot between my legs and returned this gaze to me. His eyes were deep and bottomless, and I was falling into them. “You okay?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak, couldn’t make a sound.
Kiss me? There? I thought I might faint.
Not only from embarrassment, but because the mere sound of his voice speaking those words sent me into a throbbing mess.
I couldn’t imagine what having his lips on me like that would feel like, but I wanted it. Desperately. So I nodded.
He pulled down my underwear and tossed them aside. His thumb touched me, and my hips thrust skyward. Breathe. Just breathe.
My hips gyrated in the same rhythm, and my head crashed back into his pillow as I whimpered.
I peeked down at him and saw him moving lower…
and then a flood of sensations almost suffocated me.
His tongue. On me. It was hot and breathy, wet and soft.
My insides were pulsing, and as much as I wanted to keep moving my hips, I restrained myself, afraid he couldn’t stay latched on if I did.
The headiness inside me grew stronger, the weightlessness of my body more prominent.
But then he sat up and fumbled for the condom. “I’m sorry, Ade, I can’t wait.”
Yes, I wanted to scream. Yes. He’d already waited far too long.
He tore the foil wrapper, and I got a quick glimpse of him rolling on the condom. “You want to crawl up on top of me?”
I swallowed. There was no way I was going to get into the saddle when I’d never had a riding lesson in my life. I wasn’t sure it was going to work. I wasn’t sure how to make him fit.
So I grabbed his waist and pulled him to me. “Next time.”
He didn’t protest. Especially when I wrapped a leg around his waist.
Then he entered me, slowly and achingly. My body stretched around him, and he moaned.
I expected a sharp sting or a stabbing pain, but there was nothing like that.
We were kissing again, moving together. He was thrusting deep inside me, filling me with a need I’d never felt before.
“You feel so good, Ade,” he whispered against my mouth. “So tight.”
I was grinding against him, wanting as much as I could get.
He withdrew so only his tip remained inside me. He sucked on his thumb and then slipped it in between my legs.
“Yes,” I pleaded. “Yes.”
He plunged back inside me.
I was on the edge. Hot pleasure kept growing.
He sped up.
I tried to catch him, but I was too far behind.
His last strokes were reckless, and then he shuddered inside me.
My heart was beating so loud it roared in my ears.
So close to the release of oxytocin that I needed. But not quite.