Chapter 35
Thirty-Five
JESSE
C lara had barely disappeared into the house, and I had yet to get out of the car before Drew started talking.
“Was my side of the bed even cold when you hopped into it?” His voice made my skin feel itchy.
“I haven’t hopped into anything.” My finger started tapping on the steering wheel.
“Then what was today, just a friendly outing?” The sarcasm in his voice was thick.
“Yeah, pretty much. Thought she could do with some time away from the whole group, a sentiment that Becky agreed with. But what with Becky being the bride, she couldn’t abandon her guests and leave for the day. So, I took her.”
He didn’t need to know about the almost kiss or the fact that my blood had felt like fire passing through my veins ever since. But I could tell that me having Becky’s approval surprised him, and rubbed him up the wrong way.
“I’m sure you didn’t have ulterior motives at all.”
I laughed humourlessly. “I didn’t. I don’t. But the truth of the matter is: she’s single now, Drew. It doesn’t really matter what we do. What she does. It’s not about you.”
Like me, Drew’s face gave away what he was feeling, and it was starting to flush red.
“You won’t win, you know. She’ll come to her senses eventually and leave you in the dust. She still loves me, Jesse, and her need to be loved will win. She knows I am the only one who is willing to love her the way that she needs.”
He slammed the door shut before I could respond.
Not that I had anything to say. I couldn’t say with confidence that he was wrong even if it did feel like Clara and I were becoming something different. Something more. The fact was, she had loved him at some point. She might still love him in some way, and against the backdrop of her best friend’s wedding, maybe she would decide that he was a better option for her.
I waited until Drew was completely out of sight before I finally got out of the car and went inside.
* * *
The smell of grapefruit and coconut hung heavy and sweet in the air of our room when I walked in. It enveloped my senses in the same irresistible way it had in the bookshop.
I planned on pulling myself together before dinner, resetting my brain, and trying to calm down. The omnipresence of Clara in the room made that almost impossible.
As I flopped down onto the bed, I started replaying what happened in the bookshop. I could hear the way her breath hitched when I bracketed her against the shelves. She hadn’t been able to stop her eyes from dropping down to my mouth as I got closer. Then I remembered the way her shoulders slowly turned pliant under my touch when I applied sunscreen to her back. Visions of her swimming lengths with an understated strength and fluidity swarmed my mind and warmed my blood.
I could still feel the soft flesh of her thigh under my thumb and the way the muscles twitched whenever I stroked over a certain patch of skin. I wondered how it—how she —would react if I teased it with my mouth before I moved further up. I seemed unable to forget the weight of her leg over me in the hazy morning sunshine, pinning me down to the bed and from there, my imagination truly went wild with all the other ways she could have me at her mercy. And all the ways I would beg her for some kind of release.
At some point, I started rubbing my cock over my shorts. I removed my hand quickly, but my hips, like they had a mind of their own, rocked upwards to try and get some kind of friction.
It was a touch pathetic.
In the shower the other day, I told myself that would be the only time I wanked to the image of Clara, but that was clearly a lie.
I shed my shorts, slipped my hands into my boxers and gripped the base of my cock tightly. My eyes fluttered shut as I stroked my hand up slowly, knowing in the first few strokes that I wasn’t going to last long. Not willing to drag this out for longer than necessary, I started focusing on twisting my hand around the head, and within moments, I felt my stomach muscles start to quiver and my whole body tensed up.
I was so focused on the pleasure coursing through me that I didn’t hear the door open and close.
I did, however, hear a ‘fuck’ whispered into the silence of the room and my eyes flew open. My hand stilled on my cock, the ache of my release so close, yet ebbing away. Clara was staring at me. More specifically, she was staring at where my hand disappeared into my boxers. I loosened my grip and let out an accidental whimper at the loss of pressure.
“You didn’t have to stop.”
Her voice dripped over me like honey, and I squeezed the base of my cock again to stop myself from coming at the sound of it.
“I thought you were with your sister,” I said, sounding surprisingly normal considering I still had my hand wrapped around my dick and was one stroke away from exploding.
“I was, but dinner is soon, so I came back to change. I can go if you want and leave you to finish up.”
She was still staring at the tent in my boxers with a heat in her eyes I had never seen before, not even earlier when I had been moments away from kissing her. My cock throbbed, and despite every thought in my brain screaming at me to finish, I removed my hand from my boxers.
“No, it’s fine. I’ll just hop in the shower.”
I started to push myself up, and that seemed to kick Clara into action.
“You sure about that?” She was looking between my face and my erection, her bottom lip drawn between her teeth. I made an incoherent sound at the intensity of her stare, which made her smile.
I cleared my throat before trying to speak again. “Cold water will work just fine.”
She nodded slowly as she climbed onto the bed next to me, urging me to fall back onto the mattress.
She ran a finger up my covered length with the lightest of touches, and my hips tilted up, desperate for more. “Something else will also work just fine,” she said huskily.
“I’ll go with the cold water,” I said shakily, despite my body’s protestations.
“Okay. I’ll leave you to it and see you at dinner.”
Clara climbed off the bed and started walking away.
“Wait,” I called out. She stepped dead in her tracks and looked back at me, her dark brown eyes almost black now. “If we do this, then there’s no going back,” I said. Now that she was looking at me, I needed to know we were both on the same page.
“I knew that the second I opened the door, heard you moan, and didn’t walk back out again.” My eyes slipped shut again. “What do you want?” Her voice was barely above a whisper, but I heard it.
“I want everything, Clo.”
I’d never called her that before because it had never felt right, but it did now. I heard her sharp inhale at hearing that name pass my lips.
“We don’t have that kind of time. What do you want that can happen in the next ten minutes?”
“I want you.”
It was as simple and as complicated as that.
“That will take too long. You seem like the kind of guy who will want to make sure I come, and I’m not close enough for that to work with our current time constraints. You, however, look like all it’s going to take to get you to come is the tip of my tongue.”
I groaned. “Don’t talk about tongues right now.”
“Why, do you want that?” She sounded eager.
“Yes, no. I don’t know. This is a lot.”
A look of determination fell across Clara’s face. I felt equal parts terrified and turned on.
“Fine, get your hand back on your cock.” I didn’t need to be told twice. “Now close your eyes.” I took one last look at her before following her command. “What were you thinking about?”
“What do you think?” I huffed.
“Just answer the question.”
“You,” I stated.
“What about me?” I cracked an eye open. She was alongside me now, and I could feel the warmth of her body. “There had to be something specific. Give me something to work with.”
“The bookshop.”
I saw a smile break out over her face before I closed my eyes again.
“I’m guessing you were wondering what might have happened if someone hadn’t interrupted us. How one of us would have eventually closed the gap between our lips. It would have been gentle at first, maybe even a little awkward because we’re friends and what if we don’t have chemistry? But it would be very obvious, very quickly, that we definitely do. You can move your hand, you know. In fact, I encourage it.”
I hadn’t realised that my hand was stationary. With the pressure building up in me, it felt like I was moving it.
As I stroked upwards, she continued. “After we move through those first awkward moments, you’d change the angle of my head and deepen the kiss. You’d start kissing me like you’ve been stranded in the desert for weeks without water, and I was your water source. You’d pull me in close, one hand pressed against the back of my neck. The other wouldn’t settle because it wanted to touch me everywhere. But you’re a legs and bum guy, so you’d position my leg around you just right so that you could get a good handful of my bum.”
My breath hitched. I focused on the head of my cock. My stomach muscles flinched when Clara pulled up the hem of my T-shirt before she started teasing the sensitive skin below my belly button.
“How close are you?” Her words brushed over my ear and ignited my nerve endings. I was a powder keg about to explode.
“Close.” My voice was broken, my whole body taut, begging.
“Remove your hand.” I whined at the loss, but I trusted Clara. Sure enough, the moment my hand left, I felt the coolness of her palm wrap around me. I moaned and bucked my hips into her touch as she started mirroring what I had been doing.
“My other leg is pressed firmly against you, feeling you harden underneath me. I keep making these whimpering sounds that you swallow up, and we barely remember to breathe because we’re so caught up in one another,” she continued.
Her hand sped up, and the image she was painting heated my skin and made me feel all the more desperate.
“But you’ve got the perfect angle with me pinned against the shelf. You’re pushing me against it harder, rocking your hips into my thigh. Before you know it, you have to break away from the kiss and bury your face in the crook of my neck to muffle your moans as you grind against me, chasing your release.” She stroked down the length, squeezing at the base before going back up again.
On the twist of her hand at the end, she whispered into my ear. “And then you come.”
I had no choice but to obey. My hips bucked up into her hand, and my back arched off the bed as I came. Pleasure overcame my whole body. I was vaguely aware of Clara’s hand stroking my cock through its orgasm. Just as I was on the edge of becoming too sensitive, she stopped.
“Fuck.” I covered my face with my arm as I tried to get my breathing under control.
“Maybe later,” Clara said as she swept off the bed and disappeared into the bathroom.
I felt the lack of her presence at my side, but it was back moments later, along with a damp towel that she dragged over my sensitive skin.
“I’m gonna leave before I make us late for dinner,” she said, her voice still low and husky as she went to get rid of the towel.
I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure she was looking at me.
“Can I hold you to the ‘maybe later’?” I asked, removing my arm from my face and looking at her. There was a flushed glow to her skin, and her eyes were hooded with lust. She smiled shyly before she left the room.
I gave myself another minute to recover from one of the best orgasms of my life. Then I got ready for dinner.