Chapter 9 #3
Leaning into me, her nails digging into my shoulders, she claps her mouth over mine.
Sorrow’s mouth is soft and warm. Her flavor is sweet on my tongue.
Her lips are full and yielding. I thread my fingers in her dark, silky strands and stroke my thumb across her full bottom lip in between our kisses.
The tip of her tongue darts out and tastes the pad of my thumb.
My cock jerks against my abs. Groaning, I slouch in my seat.
Sorrow turned me on with the tip of her tongue on my thumb. My fucking thumb, for shit’s sake.
Her tongue is skilled, tangling with mine. She’s a fast learner. My cock pulses with hot need. My groin tightens. Heat engulfs my body. Her fingers dig into my flesh.
It’s too much. Fuck sakes, I haven’t had sex in months, and her pussy, how wet she is, her heat, how she hangs on tight to my shoulders as she dry-humps the fuck out of me . . . I shoot my load into my pants. A groan rips from my throat.
Out of breath, out of my mind with need, hating myself that she helped me come while she got nothing out of this, I crush her mouth with mine and apologize over and over that she didn’t come. I should’ve had her come first. Taking my pleasure first isn’t me.
“You surrendered.” There’s awe in her voice. I put space between us. Her face softens, and there’s a shy smile. “I like that you, um, came.” Her face flushes a pretty pink. “It was downright sexy.”
“You’re not put out?”
She shrugs. “I’m fine with just one of us coming.”
She lowers her eyes but not her gaze. This girl is . . . I shake my head.
Needing to hold her, to see all of her, I shift us on the couch and get her on her back with my body off to the side on the large couch. I could easily crush her small, thin frame with my bulk.
“We’re starting our experiment early. We’re going really fast.” She circles her arms around my neck and does something I absolutely dig. She plays with the hair on the back of my neck.
“Are you scared?”
She shakes her head. Her dark hair is fanned around her like angel wings. Her glacier-blue eyes shine with an emotion I haven’t seen on her face—happiness.
“If at any time you are, or you want to slow things down, you’ll tell, right?”
She nods.
I bracket her in with my arms alongside her head. “What happened at the party changes the timeline. Remember my lesson when you have dinner with Rush and his parents. Don’t let him get you alone in the dark.”
“Because he’ll take advantage and use it to get into my pants?
” She looks up at me with so much innocence and trust, I could fucking get down on my knees and beg her not to trust the predator in me.
I’m the hawk circling above, and she’s the little mouse out in the open, nibbling on a blade of dew-covered grass.
“True that.” Sliding my arm under her body, I shift her so that she’s on top of me. “Back to the mouth-to-mouth action. I’ll surrender on one condition.”
“You already surrendered.” Her gaze dips between us.
Right. I jizzed in my pants. “I want a do-over,” I clarify. “I want to be better.” It’s a jerk move on my part to use her words against her, but I’m not ready to go to our separate bedrooms. I want this night to last longer.
I want this night to last longer? What’s come over me? I stare up at beautiful blue eyes full of wonder and anticipation. It’s Sorrow. She has me under her spell. A girl has never looked at me with wonderment.
They look at me as a piece of meat, another lay, an easy target because of my reputation for bedding and leaving them.
Not all the girls cry when I refuse to sleep with them again.
They smile with satisfaction. It’s because they did get me to sleep with them, like I have no control or restraint, but I do, damn it.
I can keep a tight leash on my randy beast.
Isn’t that the reason I haven’t had sex in six months? To prove to myself that I am more than a body? That I have feelings, self-respect, and restraint? Sorrow smooths out the line between my eyebrows. “Are you okay? You were staring off into space again.”
“Doing good.” I take her hand and press my mouth on the center of her palm. “Thanks for asking.”
This timid mouse has me, a predator, by my balls. I’ll go along with it for the rest of the night, but come tomorrow, it’ll be a different story. I’ll compartmentalize how good it feels to have her under and above me, with her looking at me with tenderness and awe.
We’re a few hours into this experiment of hers, and already she has the upper hand.
“Oh, good. I’m glad. I thought it was something I said or did. You’d tell, right?”
“Yes, I’d tell. Open communication is important.”
“Thank you, Trace. I need the practice. My parents were, um—” She folds her arms on my chest and rests her chin on them. “They were closed off. I only knew how they felt because of their actions, if that makes sense.”
“It does. Thank you for telling me, Sorrow. Keep talking about them, if you want to. It’s not helpful to keep everything bottled up.”
That’s the great thing about my parents.
Unlike other kids’ parents, my parents and I keep in touch often when they’re away, and we have tough conversations when needed.
The last tough conversation was about Sorrow and how I was treating her like shit since she moved in.
I couldn’t deny what my father pointed out.
Boy, he was pissed off, and rightly so. But how do I tell him he’s been treating my mother, his wife, the same way, taking her for granted and spending way too much time with his secretary?
I ran into them in the town center. Her arm was looped through his, and they looked too cozy for it to be a professional relationship. Do I tell my mother? Do I ream out my dad for cheating on her? It’s not my business, but it is.
I have as much stake in their marriage as they do.
I don’t want to be like the divorced kids in our school, spending time between two homes, sometimes in two cities. And to deal with stepkids and half-siblings. Fuck it! They’re my parents. I want them happy, and that other woman sure made my father’s face light up, while Mom has been quiet lately.
I shove thoughts of my parents’ rocky marriage aside. “I’ll surrender to another kiss in the hope of being even better as long as you accept my one condition.”
“What’s that?” She looks at me with suspicion.
Good. My little mouse shouldn’t let down her guard around the big, mean predator.
“Turn up the heat as high as you want, and make a list of all your favorite dishes or what you’ve been craving or wanting to try. I’ll order them in or cook them myself.” Sorrow will never go hungry or be cold. The temperature will be at whatever the fuck she wants it to be.
“You’d do that for me?”
“Yes.”
“It’s too much for one kiss.”
Not to me. “It’s an equal exchange. My surrender for your own.”
“I don’t like spending your parents’ money.”
Anger builds inside me. I tamp it down. “Ask for what you want. In fact, demand it. You’ve suffered enough and deserve every good thing that comes to you.”
Her eyes water. “The girls at school . . .” Her lips tremble.
I reach up and skim my knuckle over their softness. “Outsmart them. Give as good as they give you.”
“But you won’t help?” She wears down her bottom lip with her teeth, looking like a lost and helpless little mouse.
I shield my heart from the desperation in her eyes.
“As I said, it’s your fight, not mine. You’ll deal with worse in the real world, in those big cities you want to move to.”
“Okay, I’ll work on it.”
“Good.” I nod. “That’s good, Sorrow. Now, kiss me already, beautiful.”