chapter twenty-eight
Wren
Two weeks later, a thunderstorm has me kept awake. Angelica hates storms and I soothe her so she doesn’t pluck any feathers out in her anxiety. When she finally settles into her cage that is draped with blankets and the door propped open, I creep downstairs to the sunroom. Storms in the city differed completely from storms here and I almost can’t get enough of them. Everything in the house rattles with each clap of thunder and lightning reflects off every shiny surface in the house.
With the windows open and the lights off, I enjoy the smell of damp earth, wet herbs, and electricity. Only a creamy beeswax candle perched in a vintage crystal candlestick holder lights the room between lightning strikes. I hold a book on my lap, but I can’t bring myself to open it yet. My mind is occupied with thoughts of Jay. It’s been weeks since we stepped over the line in our relationship that separated us from bodyguard and client to lovers. There had been lingering touches here and there, but no more discussions on what we were to each other and no more kisses.
Not that I don’t want it. I do. And I know he does, too. But there is so much that needs to be said, and we had spent so many days busy. I had a charity banquet to help organize for dad’s work and a charity golf tournament to run. Meanwhile, Jay had to take a few days off to be with his mom while she had a procedure. It was successful, and he says she’s doing well, but the stress and worry had captured a lot of his attention. I wasn’t about to add to his stress with a defining the relationship conversation.
This evening, before the storm rolled in, we spent our first quiet evening together in weeks in the living room. He played a video game on the big TV and I read the book currently perched on my lap. We barely spoke other than to goad the other into refilling drinks or making more pizza rolls. I had wanted to talk to him, to kiss him, to touch him. But I didn’t want to shake up the peace of the balmy summer evening.
Tomorrow, we have no plans other than yard work. I have tomatoes and herbs that need to be harvested. Tomorrow, I’ll talk to him. Maybe when he is shirtless and sweaty in the backyard, I’ll pin him down between the rows of vegetables and ride him.
“Are you okay?”
I shriek. My book slides off my lap and noisily hits the floor.
“Oh my god, it’s just me!” Jay says and holds his hands up in front of him.
“You scared me!”
“No shit! What are you doing down here?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I say as thunder rumbles and shakes everything in the room.
Jay nods and sits in the chair next to me.
“Angelica alright?”
“She hates storms. But she’ll be alright.”
We were quiet for a moment as thunder rumbled again.
“You seemed to be engrossed in your book.” He points to the book still on the floor.
“I was thinking.”
“About?”
“You.”
“Oh.”
The chair creaks slightly as he sits up from his lounged position.
“Yeah.”
“What… were you thinking about?” His voice is low and gravelly.
I snort. “Well, I was thinking about pinning you flat between the tomatoes and the cucumbers and riding you.”
Jay makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and choking on his saliva.
“But, I realized we should probably talk first,” I finish and slide my eyes away from the window to look at him.
His body is tense, like he’s about to run from the room or pounce on me. Either being a valid response to me bringing up having a define the relationship talk in the middle of the night.
“Talk.”
“Yeah, talk.”
“About what?”
“Us.”
“Mm,” he makes a sound of understanding. “Like whether you’d be riding my face or my dick in the garden?”
I laugh. “No, I feel… conflicted.”
He says nothing, but his eyes don’t leave me.
“I feel stupid, really. I don’t even know you. But I feel like I know you. See how stupid that sounds? And it’s making me feel like an idiot with how much I’m attracted to you. I can’t even see your face.” My voice is almost hysterical.
His posture relaxes as he takes a deep breath. “What do you know about me?”
“I know you like the blue mug with the bubbles in the paint. The lighter blue is the same color as your eyes. I know you secretly like sugary sweet coffee drinks but pretend not to, so I order it for you and you always finish it. I know which maps you refuse to play on Call of Duty. I know you like fantasy books and you dog ear the pages and bend the spines. I know you like to be bossed around sometimes. I know you like when I bake stuff with fruit in it the best. And I know you dote on Angelica because you’re kind and loyal. Your mom and your neighbor are important to you and you still talk to guys you went through basic training with.” My voice trails off when I make eye contact with him. The yellow candlelight makes his eyes look gray and casts long shadows from his lashes. It makes me pause. I can only see his eyes, as always, but I feel like in that moment I am looking at the man beneath the mask again. And for the first time, he is looking back.
“Sounds like you know me pretty well,” Jay whispers hoarsely.
“Am I a stalker?”
His eyes crinkle at the corners as he smiles. I hear his huff of a laugh behind the mask. “No.”
“I don’t know your name, your face, or how you feel about me, but I know all of that stuff. It sounds stalkerish.”
He bobs his head from side to side and makes a considering sound. “Maybe a little. Or, and hear me out, this might be kind of crazy, but it sounds like a woman with a crush on her anonymous bodyguard that she spends every day with.”
I giggle as some of the tension leaves me when I realize he’s not running away.
“You don’t need to know my name or my face to really know me,” he says, his voice warm. “And you certainly don’t need those things to know how I feel about you.”
My stomach bottoms out as I watch him slide out of his chair and kneel before me. He maintains eye contact with me as he kisses the inside of my thighs and gently spreads my legs to accommodate him. My lacy pink nightdress hitches at my hips where his fingertips lightly caress the waistband of my panties.
“But if you want, I can tell you my name,” he whispers against my skin. I can feel his breath despite the mask and I shiver at its warmth.
My lower stomach tightens and my core warms. I want to rip that mask off of him so badly. “Yes.”
He lifts his mask to expose his mouth and jaw, and his answering grin makes my heart skip. His teeth are white and straight except for slightly turned bottom teeth, showing he didn’t have braces growing up. His lips are plush and smooth. I can smell minty toothpaste and ChapStick as he places a kiss on my skin.
With gentle hands, he slides my panties down my legs before tossing them behind him. He doesn’t break eye contact with me, so the regret at not wearing cute panties lasts only half a second. Now bare to him, he looks down at me. A rumble sounds in his chest like a groan or a growl, but is drowned out by the sound of thunder around us.
I can’t tell if I want him to put his mouth on me or tell me his name more. So, I wait with trembling thighs and heavy breaths for him to stop staring at my pussy. He looks back up at my face and smirks. I could come on the spot at finally seeing that smirk on his lips. But I don’t. I swallow hard and grit out, “Be a good boy and do something.”
His eyes flash with indignant heat, but his smirk doesn’t falter as he leans down and licks a curve into my pussy. He sits back and looks up at me with a raised eyebrow.
The moan that had crept up stops in my throat. “What?”
“What letter was that?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“No, I’m spelling my name. What letter was that?”
My brain is scrambled from seeing his smile and his smirk and one singular swipe of his tongue on my pussy. “Um, an O?”
“Nope, try again.”
He bends back down and does the same curving movement. It curved but didn’t form a complete circle. “C”
He hums an affirmative sound and then licks a hot, flat tongue up my slit. I moan and try to relax back into the chair. He sees me shifting and caresses my hips. Once I stop moving, he looks up at me expectantly and does another curving shape. This time, his tongue makes a complete circle.
“O”
Another affirmative hum and then a flat swipe. The broad movement must be like an eraser on a chalkboard, erasing my nerve endings’ memory of the previous letter. Except instead of erasing the pleasure, it mounts it higher. I bite my lip and look down.
“You better have a short name or I’m going to come before you’re done spelling.”
He chuckles and bites my inner thigh, and I squeak in protest.
He swipes a long line down and then another line. I can’t tell how long or if it goes back up or out because that first line directly touched my clit and my body is lit up and buzzing like a neon sign.
“V”
A negative hum. He repeats the letter, again swiping over my clit.
“T?”
He hums a no and repeats the letter.
“L!” I practically shout.
An affirmative sound before he licks up my arousal before it drips on the chair below me.
A straight line and then another line. Fuck, both times centered on my clit.
“P?”
A negative hum and a repeated letter.
“Y?”
“Are you getting these wrong on purpose?”
“N-no, you just keep touching my clit and I’m about to come.”
“Focus, Wren.”
I cannot focus any more than I am at this moment. My entire body’s attention is centered on my clit. Someone could gnaw off my left arm, and I wouldn’t notice because I am so focused on the man licking his name into my pussy.
“T?”
“Yes!”
What were the other correct letters? The man is trying to tell me his name and I can barely remember my own right now. COLT.
“Colt?” I ask in a whisper.
“Almost,” he replies.
I already know the answer. The one remaining brain cell that wasn’t electrocuted with pleasure is still working. But I am not about to shout out the answer without coming on his tongue first.
He does another circle. This time I guess wrong on purpose.
“U?”
Negative hum. Another circle, this time slower.
“O?”
Positive hum. Flat swipe. One more touch to my clit and I’m going to come. My entire body is tensed and sweating. My core pulsates and I feel myself drip to the chair. He dives to catch it. My hands are trembling as I reach out and hold his head. I want to run my fingers through his hair, grip him and hold his mouth to me. But the mask is in the way.
He zig zags his tongue against me once more and I shatter. I cry out and writhe in the chair, my entire body alight with my climax.
“ Colton !” I shout, and I feel him gasp against me.
He sits up and his hands grip my hips with an almost bruising force. “Say it again,” he growls.
“Colton,” I breathe.
His posture relaxes a fraction of his desperate rigidity.
“Colton.”
He brushes back my hair and holds my face. The expression in his eyes is so unguarded it feels like I can walk right into his heart and make a home there. And I realize maybe I already have and that’s what he’s trying to tell me.
Emotion clogs my throat and I try to swallow as I slide my hands up his shoulders and neck to tangle my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. His hair is soft against my skin, slightly damp from either sweat or lingering from an earlier shower. My thumbs brush the skin in front of his ears and feel the smooth skin of where he must have just shaved. I smell aftershave and shampoo on him and I want to bury my nose in his neck.
“Colton.”
He breaks into a smile and rests his forehead against mine.
“I love the sound of my name on your lips.”
I kiss him. “Colton.”
Another kiss. “Colton.”
He groans and lifts me out of the chair as he stands. I wrap my legs around his hips before we both freeze.
“Wait, the cameras!” Colton hisses, panic in his eyes.
“They face the windows and doors, you know that. But the stairs are in view, so when you sneak into my room, go quickly,” I say as he sets me back onto the floor.
“You go up, and I’ll close up the house and check the locks,” he says before patting me on the ass to get moving.
I blow out the candle and he tsks in irritation behind me in the dark room.
“You could have left that for me.”
“Boo-hoo,” I say and flick on the light switch as I leave the room.