Chapter 17
Seventeen
CLARA
I knew from the steam coming out of the shower that the water would scald, but I didn’t care. I stepped under the spray and tipped my head back, letting the water soak my curls. I could tell my skin was starting to flush, so I reached to turn the temperature down.
As the water cooled, I felt my muscles relax, and my eyes slipped shut. The steady fall of water was the perfect balm to the day.
I didn’t know how long I stood under the water getting the knots out of my hair, but I knew the exact moment I was no longer alone. I opened my eyes and saw Jesse leaning on the far side of the spacious shower, looking at me.
“Hey there,” he whispered as his eyes dragged up my naked body until he reached my eyes.
Two words, barely audible, and I felt like I was coming undone.
“Ask me how my day was,” he continued.
I obliged. “How was your day?” My voice sounded breathless as I finally noticed that he, too, was naked.
“Tortuous,” he growled as he took a long stride forward. I was instantly surrounded by him.
“How come?” My lips nearly brushed against his as I spoke.
“You were wearing a leopard print bikini for most of it, and it’s been driving my thoughts into overdrive. On top of that, I’ve had your legs wrapped around my head, but I was facing the wrong way . And then, to add to my torture, you lay next to me in your little bikini while the sun warmed your skin, and all I could think about was picking you up, taking you somewhere quiet and peeling the thing off with my teeth before I had my way with you.” His lips were brushing against my ear, my neck, the top of my chest, and leaving goose bumps in their wake.
I felt a smile break out on his face along my collarbone. I shivered against him.
“Do you like the idea of that? Me using my teeth? Getting you to fall apart?” he continued. I could only nod as he nipped at my earlobe.
“Turn around,” he whispered into my ear.
I turned around quickly, resting my hands on the shower wall to steady myself. Jesse crowded me. His warm chest pressed against my back as his hands gripped my sides, forefingers resting on the soft skin under my breasts. Once again, his thumbs were sweeping up and down, this time underneath my shoulders. I could feel his cock hardening against me. I shifted my hips and was rewarded with a broken groan.
“Are you going to let me make you fall apart now?” He rolled my nipple between his fingers, making me gasp. “What was that?” His voice dropped even lower.
“ Please ,” I pleaded. My voice sounded wrecked, and he’d barely done anything.
The first touch against my clit, though barely there, made me moan with pleasure.
“Is that what you want?”
Instead of answering, I grabbed hold of his wrist and pressed his fingers against me harder. The pressure was just what I needed, but he made no effort to move them. I slipped one of my fingers in the gaps between his and tried to take matters into my own hands. He pinched my nipple enough to get me to stop and then moved my hand to rest back on the wall.
“Use your words, Clara.”
“Touch me. Please.”
“I technically am.”
Trust him to be pedantic when he had his dick nestled in the crease of my arse.
“Touch my clit. Hard. Fast. Just please touch me.”
Jesse seemed to deem that sufficient and pressed two fingers against my clit, moving them in quick, hard circles exactly as I asked. It still wasn’t enough. I shifted my hips against his hand to see if that helped me get what I needed.
It didn’t.
“Words, Clara.”
I shivered at his husky voice right against my ear.
“I need a finger. Inside,” I managed to get out, groaning in relief as his ring finger slid into me and started fucking me slowly. It was good. It was almost perfect, but it still wasn’t enough to get me where I wanted to be. Seeming to sense I needed something more, Jesse changed the angle of his hand so that the heel of his palm was pressed against my clit and two fingers fucked into me.
I grinded my hips down against him, whining that I was so, so close but still couldn’t quite get there when I so desperately needed to.
“What do you need, baby?” Jesse asked, his head hooked over my shoulder watching my hips fuck down onto his hand. His other hand was still splayed on my waist.
“Play with my nipples. I don’t care how. Just play with them.”
His hand moved up my waist so slowly, I almost took matters into my own hands. But my legs didn’t feel stable enough to keep me upright, so I couldn’t take my hands off the wall. I could feel Jesse’s smile against my neck as his fingers started drawing circles over the side of my breast, getting closer and closer to my peaked nipple.
“ Jesse ,” I panted, and he finally touched my nipple, pinching it hard before rubbing it soothingly and then repeating it on the other side.
“You close?” he asked with a crook of his fingers inside me, making me choke on a breath as I tried to say yes.
He smiled again, and his fingers picked up the pace. It was the next pinch of my nipple that sent me over the edge…
* * *
I let out a strangled moan into my pillow as I woke up, shaking from the aftershocks of my orgasm. My thighs squeezed together as my hips rocked against the duvet that I had trapped between my legs, and a weaker, second orgasm washed over me. I buried my face into the duvet to catch the little gasps I couldn’t stop myself from making.
When the height of it was over, I rolled onto my back. My hand brushed up against a thigh, and I remembered that I wasn’t in the bed alone. Panic rushed through me as I turned my head to look at the body lying next to me. Jesse was on his side, his T-shirt stretched over his shoulders, the white material thin enough that I could see the outlines of another tattoo between his shoulder blades. I watched the steady rise and fall of his ribcage, which seemed to indicate that he was still asleep, and relief replaced the panic.
I looked away and picked up my phone.
6:53 a.m.
I didn’t usually wake up this early. I didn’t need to. Usually, I would roll over and fall back asleep. But I knew there was no chance that was going to happen with my pussy still trying to clench around nothing, and the man whom I had dreamt was filling me was lying mere centimetres away.
It was probably best if I got out of this space that was so full of him so I could regroup and try to figure out a way to be able to remain normal around Jesse despite my brain working against me.
Fortunately for me, I knew there would be one person awake right now who might be able to help me get out of my own head.
Becky.
* * *
Becky was pottering around in the kitchen making coffee when I walked into the kitchen.
“Are you unwell?” she asked as a way of greeting when she spotted me.
“No. I woke up and knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep,” I responded, my voice still thick with sleep.
“What happened?” she asked.
“When was the last time you had an orgasm in your sleep?” I answered.
Becky quirked an eyebrow, and the beginnings of a smile broke out on her face. “Not any time recently, why?”
“I was just pulled from the depths of sleep by a god-tier orgasm.”
The smile was now out in full force as she slid a cup of coffee in front of me.
“And what was the cause of that?”
I felt my cheeks heat as I took my first sip of coffee. My thighs squeezed together subconsciously. “Well, I had a sex dream, Bex.”
She snorted into her coffee cup. “I got that much. Do I get details?”
“What more do you need other than the fact that I had a sex dream about Jesse?”
The silence that followed felt heavy until it was sliced by Becky’s cackle.
“Fuck, I was kind of joking yesterday, but if he is giving you god-tier orgasms in your sleep, then maybe I should be worried for you when he gets his hands on you properly.”
My immediate reaction was to try and once again deny the notion that Jesse and I were a ‘when’ and not an ‘if’, but I couldn’t.
The evidence was damning.
“Fuck.” It was all I could say.
“Ask him nicely, and I’m sure he would. Happily. You didn’t see his face when he had you wrapped around his head, but his pupils were fully dilated. He seemed very flushed as well, and I don’t think it was because of the sun.”
I took a sip of coffee to try and distract myself from the memories of my dream that rushed over me with full force.
“You’re blushing. Do I get details? There hasn’t been this kind of juicy gossip on any of our sex lives for years. I forgot how fun it could be. And before you say no, please remember that I am the bride and what I want, I get this week.”
I chuckled. “Who am I to deny the bride?”
“Exactly.”
I took another sip from my mug. “So, I’m in the shower, rinsing out my hair, when I sense that I am no longer alone. He comes in, spins me around, and then there was one hand downtown and another on my chest. Then…awake.”
Becky slammed her mug down. “Those are not details!”
“Those are all the details that you are going to get. I came down here to try and clear my head about the whole thing so that I can look my friend in the eye without blushing like a schoolgirl because my imagination has turned against me for the first time in my life.”
“Or it’s showing you what you really want. Need . It’s not like you’re doing anything wrong. You’re both single and clearly attracted to each other. What’s the worst that could happen?”
“I lose a friend,” I said simply. “I lose a good friend that I like having in my life.”
Becky nodded. “Fair. If that’s the worst that can happen, it would be shit, but you’d survive it. Would you survive having him show up in your dreams every night but not in real life? You can’t always run off to clear your head. He would start to notice, and then what? You create a web of lies or build a wall that he can’t climb over, and he stops trying, so you lose him anyway? I don’t think you’d survive that. He could be good for you. You just need to let him be.”
I hated that she was right.
“Take the morning. Do what you need to do. But you’re going to have to pick a side of the friend line eventually.”
“Yeah, I know.”