Chapter 21 #2
“Not fucking hard enough. He had eight years, Isla. Eight years to memorise your body, learn what got you hot. He wasted them—” He broke off with a sharp groan, pulled straight from his chest. It made my toes curl in my socks.
“Fuck, we shouldn’t have started this conversation. This was such a bad idea—”
“We can forget it ever happened.” I knew it was a lie as I said it.
“I don’t think I can.”
He took several breaths, smoothing a hand over his jaw. “Okay . . . here’s what we’re going to do. If you don’t want this or you don’t feel up to it, tell me. I’ll go back to my place, stick my head in ice water and attempt to scrub the last five minutes from my long-term memory.”
Please let there be an or.
“Or . . .” He watched my face as he spoke. “You could grab that vibrator from wherever you’ve hidden it and bring it back here.”
I could hear nothing but my own heartbeat. “You said kissing would complicate things.”
“Aye, it probably will.”
“You said you weren’t attracted to me.”
“I fucking lied. Isla, look at me.” Wasn’t I? No, my gaze had drifted to his chest. He lifted my chin again, holding my eyes for a long moment. “Grab it or tell me to leave, but this is all up to you. You’ve gotta pick one.”
I swallowed, nails biting into my palms. “And this won’t change anything. You’re still leaving Kinleith?”
There was absolute silence. He looked away and dipped his head. “Aye, I’m still leaving. We do this once. It changes nothing.”
I felt like I was going into cardiac arrest.
He released me to kneel on the sofa cushions. But there was nothing relaxed about his posture. His hands were fisted on his thighs. Jaw locked tight and his cock . . . God. His cock pressed impressively against his jogging bottoms.
He was holding himself back. Letting me decide.
Could I change what this arrangement was between us? Get out of my head long enough to let it actually happen?
“Isla.” A plea.
“This changes nothing,” I agreed. Mind made up.
I didn’t breathe as I rose from the sofa, walking to the hallway, my steps obnoxiously heavy on the hardwood.
My hands shook as I opened the cupboard and dug around between the towels on the top shelf.
How had he figured out I’d been too scared to use it?
When it’d first arrived I’d opened the box, put in the batteries, flicked through every setting with a horrified fascination, then shoved it back in the box, hidden away to one day be found by archaeologists.
Maybe they’d place it in a museum. An ode to a lonely woman’s miserable sex life.
Back in the living room, I paused in the doorway. Heart thundering so quickly, it had to be dangerous.
Alistair hadn’t moved. But his gaze met mine, hot and expectant before dropping to the box in my hands.
“Isla, come here,” he said.
I couldn’t. My mind was a messy, knotted thing. Filled with questions that felt like quick-growing vines, each one leading to another. “You keep saying my name.”
“I can’t help it.” He crooked his fingers. “Come here.”
Should I have changed into something sexier? My hair was wound into a messy braid. I hadn’t shaved or put on lotion. Hadn’t done a single one of the things that Cameron had liked.
When I’d made this arrangement with Alistair, the only thing I hadn’t worried about was the physical side of our fake relationship. Because never in a million years did I think it would actually happen.
He read my hesitation. “Changed your mind?” Yes. I started to nod, but paused. Shook my head.
“Okay,” he said. “What are you thinking?”
Is this a pity orgasm? What if I can’t orgasm? Are my thighs too big? What about my pussy, what if it looks strange – smells strange – because I don’t know what’s normal? What if this ruins things? What if we start and you decide you don’t want this?
“Too many things.”
He tilted his head slightly, looking at me like . . . like I was cute. Someone he wanted to wrap in a blanket and protect. “Tell me one of them.”
“What if I can’t—”
Determination lined his face. “You will.”
He made it sound so easy. “But if I can’t?”
“Then we’ll try something else. Now come closer.” He crooked a finger. I inched a step. “Next worry.”
“I haven’t shaved.”
“Neither have I.”
I laughed, the sound small, puffy. “That’s not the same and you know it.”
“To me it is. And fuck any man who tells you differently.” I watched his face as he spoke, trying to tell if he truly meant it. “You’re a grown fucking woman. Hair or no hair, I’m going to lose my mind all the same. Okay?”
Okay. “What if I—”
He cut me off. “Closer.” We were bartering, I realised. My worries for proximity.
My next step brought me to the edge of the sofa.
He tracked me like a fox might a rabbit. With intensity. Undivided focus. My skin tingled the way it did when I wasn’t looking at him, when I swore I could feel him watching me from across the room.
He held out a hand. For a second I thought he was reaching for me, but he snagged the box instead. Tearing open the cardboard, not even bothering with the little tab, then he threw the remains over his shoulder. It was so un-Alistair. His intention was clear. You’re not returning this.
The Rosebud looked ridiculously small in his hand. He flipped it over with expertise I didn’t dare question, and flicked the switch. A low buzzing filled the room and the petal made a small lapping motion.
We both groaned, the sounds melding together, though vastly different in nature. He looked hungry. Starving. While I was fighting the urge to bury my burning cheeks in my hands.
“I’ve been dreaming of this since the day I opened it,” he said. “Imagining you on the other side of that wall, flicking it over your clit, biting into your pillow as you quietly come.”
I couldn’t answer, literally dumbstruck.
He might be lying. Men lied all the time.
But my gut said no. That admitting this long-held attraction came at a cost to him. One he was willing to pay.
He pressed his thumb over the petal. “One more worry, Isla. Tell me, then come here.”
This was the most embarrassing one of all. Yet he’d been honest with me.
I pressed my thighs together and didn’t look at him as I said, “I want to turn the light off.”
“Why?” The question was hard.
“I’m worried that my – that I won’t look good to you.”
He reached out, quick as lightning, and snagged the end of my T-shirt. Using it as a rope to drag me closer until his knees pressed against my thighs.
“Your tits are fucking glorious.”
“You haven’t seen them yet.” After breastfeeding, they weren’t as full as they’d been before. Cameron had made a joke once, that if we had another baby, we should bottle-feed them because your tits will look like a tennis ball in a pillowcase.
I’d laughed after he said it. A surprised noise that sounded like it had been slapped out of me. When I’d climbed out the shower that night, I’d studied myself in the bathroom mirror, pulling back the loosened skin with my fingers like I could stick it in place and turn the clock back two years.
“Don’t need to. I’ve seen the curves of them. Full and soft. They’re going to feel amazing in my hands.” He hooked a finger beneath my T-shirt. “They’d look amazing with my cum all over them too.”
My breath caught.
Unable to comprehend those words coming from Alistair’s lips.
I’d never ever been spoken to that way. Always assumed any kind of dirty talk would make me feel degraded.
Instead, it made me feel dirty in the best way, like we were going to get filthy together.
“When you wear that little pink summer dress you love so much, it drives me out of my mind.” He stared at my chest like he could see through the fabric.
Not to my skin, but the bruised heart underneath.
He lifted a hand, grazing it softly along the bone from my collar to my shoulder.
“You have this little trio of freckles right here that I think about more than I should. Far more than I should admit to my fake girlfriend.” He dropped his hand to the back of my leg, to the crease of my knee, and drifted higher. Just his fingertips.
“These thighs.” The word was a groan as his fingers delved beneath the hem, squeezing the flesh tight. “Want to know a secret?”
I nodded, incapable of speaking.
“I’ve imagined fucking these thighs. They’d feel so good gripping my cock.”
I must have been living under a rock – a lonely, sexless rock – because my mind stumbled, trying to figure out the logistics. How that could possibly even work. The second he left, my Google browser would be working overtime.
“In my dream, I take my time with you before I fuck you here.” He slid his hand higher, pressing his fingers into the skin where my thigh met my pubic bone. I breathed shakily, already so wet there was no way he couldn’t feel the stickiness creeping down my leg.
The left. I needed him to go to the left. I bit my lip to keep the words in.
Cameron hated when I instructed him during sex.
“Why would I take my time, Isla?” I shook my head. Alistair was talking, but I couldn’t make sense of it. Wasn’t capable of cognitive thought.
“Open your eyes.” He sounded amused, gave my inner thigh little taps that left me shaking until I complied. Barely lucid. “Why would I take my time before I fucked you properly?”
“I – I don’t know.”
“Because your cunt deserves to be savoured.”
“How could you . . . you haven’t—” There was no way he’d just said—
“No arguing.”
Then I was flying. A small cry slipped free as my back hit the sofa. He shoved aside the copious scatter cushions until I lay flat. Arms at my sides.
Alistair propped himself above me, one hand wedged beside my head.
My breaths came thick and fast as I waited for him to touch me. But he just looked at me, eyes tracking over my face as though there might later be a test based on my expressions and he was determined to win.
“I still think we should turn off the lamp.” My lips were dry. My throat felt like I’d swallowed sandpaper.