6. Everett
EVERETT
She’s standing between me and the door with her back against it, breathing like she just ran a mile. Meanwhile, here I am in the middle of her bedroom, trying to remember why I came here in the first place.
Right. The chickens, the HOA, all of that.
Right now, none of that is what I’m thinking about.
What I’m thinking about is how small this room is, and how she smells like chicken feed with something sweeter underneath it.
How her cheeks are flushed because she’s embarrassed.
I mean, she pulled me in here like the house was on fire.
“So,” I mutter, because somebody has to do something to break through the tension. “About the HOA.”
“You said you would think about it,” she reminds me. “That means you either have an answer, because you showed up at my house, or you’re here because you like chickens. I’m choosing to believe it’s the first one, because the second one would be weird.”
Says the girl who would sacrifice everything for poultry. “Marjorie is all right.”
“Everett...”
It’s almost enough to make me smile. She’s nervous and rambling, and there’s still a little feather in her hair she doesn’t know about. She’s a mess. The kind I’m finding it harder and harder to look away from.
“I’ll do it,” I tell her.
Her eyes bulge. “You will?”
“That’s what I said.”
“For free?”
“About that.” I lean against her desk, which puts me close enough that she has to tilt her head back to look at me. The height difference is almost stupid. “This might be a bigger job than I signed up for when all I knew was chickens and an HOA. The price just went up.”
She stares at me. I watch her throat move when she swallows. “I told you, I don’t have much money, but you can have it.”
“I didn’t say I wanted money.”
The room gets very quiet. Not silent—I can hear her grandma’s TV through the wall—but the space between us goes still. I can see her processing, trying to figure out what I’m about to say. Every conclusion she lands on makes her face go a darker shade of red.
“What do you want?” she croaks.
I should let her off the hook, right? Tell her I’m kidding, that I’ll do it for free. That’s what a decent person would do.
A decent person would also not be standing in an eighteen-year-old’s bedroom, noticing the way her bottom lip looks when she bites down on it or the way her pulse is jumping in her throat.
Or the way she’s looking up at me with those big brown eyes that can’t decide whether they’re scared or something else.
I’ve never been accused of being decent.
“I want to make you come.”
Her mouth drops open, and her face goes as red as a stop sign before she covers her cheeks with her hands. “You... what?”
“You heard me.”
“I... you... that’s not...” She’s sputtering. She’s actually sputtering like an engine that can’t turn over. “That’s not a form of payment.”
“It is right now.”
“You can’t just... I mean, that’s not... People don’t just—”
“People don’t just what?”
“Say that!” she blurts out. “Out loud! To someone’s face! In their bedroom!” She gestures with her hand around the room. “This is where I do homework!”
“And tonight, it’s where I make you come. Unless you say no.”
She’s fighting with herself. I’m a patient person when I feel like it, and right now, I feel like it, so I watch her work everything out for herself without forcing her in one direction or another.
“Why?”
Good question. Why? Because I’ve been thinking about making her come ever since the first time I saw her dimples, honestly. She handed me a chicken, and I held it like it was made of glass, and something inside me changed—either that, or it was always there, and I just didn’t know it.
Because she’s looking up at me right now with her lips parted, and her pulse going crazy, and I want to know what sound she makes when she stops thinking so hard.
I’d rather bite my tongue than say any of that out loud, so instead, I reply, “Because I want to.”
She’s quiet for a long time. Long enough that I start to think she’s going to say no. “Okay,” she whispers instead.
I can’t help being surprised. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She pushes her glasses up her nose with a shaking hand.
I didn’t expect it to be this easy. She must really love those chickens.
She looks around the room, then looks at me. Right away, her gaze hits the floor. “What do you want me to do?” she whispers. Is she trembling? Yeah, she’s definitely trembling. That shouldn’t get me hard, but this has been a strange day.
I kiss her first, because she’s not going to make the first move. I could stand here until I turn into a skeleton, and she still wouldn’t make the first move.
She’s shaking. Not a lot, but enough that I feel it when I put my hand on the side of her face.
Her skin is warm, and her pulse is hammering under my thumb where it rests against her jaw.
When I lean down to press my mouth to hers, she makes this tiny sound that’s not quite a gasp but not quite a whimper.
Either way, it goes straight through me.
I keep it slow because that’s how she needs it, even if slow isn’t something I’m good at.
My other hand finds her hip, and I hold her there, steady, giving her something to lean into while I kiss her.
Her hands come up to my chest, her fingers curling into my shirt.
I can feel her deciding whether to pull me closer or push me away.
She pulls me closer.
Her mouth opens under mine, and I take what she’s offering, tasting her, feeling the way her breath stutters when my hand slides from her hip down to the hem of her shirt.
I don’t go under it. Not yet. I let my fingers rest there for a while, against the strip of skin between her shirt and her jeans.
“This okay?” I ask against her mouth. Her lips are sweet, but the way she melts against me is sweeter.
She nods without speaking. Her eyes are half-closed behind her glasses, which are fogging up. Any other time, that might be funny. Right now, it’s doing something to me most girls can’t do with their hands and their mouth combined. She looks wrecked, and I’ve barely touched her yet.
I walk her backward until her legs hit the edge of the bed. She sits down hard enough to bounce and looks up at me with those wide eyes, and I have to take a breath before I do something stupid like rushing this.
Slowly, I lower myself to my knees in front of her.
Her eyes go even wider. I put my hands on her knees and ease them apart, and the sound she makes almost undoes me right there.
This quiet, startled little inhale that goes straight to my cock and makes it stand at attention.
“Still okay?” I ask, and now my breathing has gotten rougher.
“I think so,” she whispers. “Yes.”
Slowly, I undo her jeans. She lifts her hips to help me pull them down.
It takes a little coordination since her legs are shaking, and my hands are bigger than they need to be for this kind of work.
I run my thumb along the waistband of her plain cotton underwear, and her entire body tenses. “Lie back,” I grunt.
She does. She stares at the ceiling, breathing fast, her hands fisted in the sheets on either side of her hips. I hook my fingers into the waistband and pull the panties down her legs, and she squeezes her eyes shut so hard her whole face scrunches.
“Dimples. Look at me.”
She opens one eye. Then the other. “I’ve got you,” I tell her.
“Just breathe.” Meanwhile, my hand slides up the inside of her thigh.
Slowly, giving her time to stop me if she needs to.
She doesn’t. When I touch her swollen lips, she’s already wet, and the sound she makes when my fingers find the right spot is the sound I’ve been thinking about since the first time I saw her.
Raw and surprised. Completely unguarded.
I keep my eyes on her face while I work her tiny clit, poking out from under a neatly trimmed sprinkle of curls.
She’s trying to stay quiet, biting down on her lip with one hand pressed against her mouth, but it’s not working.
Every time I shift my fingers or change the pressure on her pretty pink bud, another sound escapes.
Each one of them goes through me like a current.
I understand everything once I start to ease a finger inside her and find how tight she is. I come up against a barrier, and the realization hits me like a fist to the side of my head. I should’ve guessed she’s a virgin.
That changes everything about what I was planning to do next.
Instead of taking her the way my body demands I do, I tease her hole while moving my thumb in slow circles over her clit and watch her face as she gets closer.
Her back arches off the mattress, and her hand finds my forearm so she can grip hard enough to leave marks.
I let her because she needs something to hold onto.
“Let it go,” I whisper while she writhes and tries to bite back her whimpers. “It’s okay. Let go.”
She lets go. Her whole body locks up and then releases, and the sound she makes is quiet and broken, and maybe the best thing I’ve ever heard. I work her through it, circling her clit until she’s trembling, and her hand loosens on my arm before she finally relaxes against the mattress with a sigh.
Meanwhile, I’m dying here. Hard to the point of pain, and let’s not even talk about the pressure behind my zipper.
When I stand, I pull her shirt up just enough to leave her stomach bare.
She’s still dazed as she blinks up at me, then watches with heavy eyes while I free myself and wrap my hand around my cock.
She gasps, but the sound is barely audible over my pounding heart and ragged breaths. She’s probably never seen anything like this. Watching a man stand over her, fucking his fist while he stares down at her quivering pussy, her cum still leaking from her tight little hole.
It doesn’t take long. Not with her lying there watching me, all flushed and breathless. I stroke myself fast, my jaw tight, watching her watch me. When I come, it’s with a deep groan before I paint her stomach in hot streaks.
For a little while, neither of us moves. It’s enough to just breathe before I drop to the mattress next to her. Hell, I might need to remember how to function.
She breaks the silence, because of course she does. “Is that enough?” Her voice is small and hoarse. Maybe a little dazed, too.
“Yeah,” I reply, still breathless and a little dizzy. “That’s enough.”
“Good.” She pulls the edge of her sheet up over her stomach like modesty is something she just remembered exists. “So we have a deal?”
“We have a deal.” I stand up and look down at her one more time. “For the record, I was already going to do it anyway.”
She pops up on her elbows. “What?”
“The whole HOA thing. I already decided I would do it. The rest of this was just...” I shrug. “A bonus.”
“A bonus?” She stares hard at me. “You’re telling me I could’ve just said no, and you would’ve helped me regardless?”
“Pretty much, yeah.”
Her mouth opens and closes a few times before she grabs a pillow and throws it at me. I catch it without trying, toss it back on the bed, and head for the door.
“Need to make sure your grandma’s in her room before I leave,” I murmur over my shoulder, because I’m honestly not sure I can handle much more of that right now. “Stay here.”
I crack the door open and listen. The TV’s still going behind the closed door down the hall.
No sign of movement. No open robes. I slip out, ease the door shut behind me, and practically tiptoe down the hallway.
I don’t think I’ve ever tiptoed in my life, but here I am, trying to act like a guy who definitely did not do what I just did in a girl’s bedroom while her grandma was maybe thirty feet away.
The coast is clear. I make it to the door and go outside, then pull it closed quietly. I hear Brad Pitt making noise in the backyard while I walk down the path to my truck. “Don’t judge me,” I mutter.
Once I’m in the truck, I sit for a minute with my hands on the wheel and the engine off. My head is full of her. The sounds she made. The way she looked at me after. The fact that she was a virgin, which I didn’t expect, and which changed everything about what happened next.
I don’t do gentle. I’ve never had a reason to.
Tonight, I had a reason. The thing that scares me is it didn’t feel like a sacrifice.
If anything, it felt like the first honest thing I’ve done in years.