Chapter 9 #2
I wanted pleasure in whatever memory she carried from that night. I refused to let her first time become only nerves and pain because I had been too impatient to care what her body needed.
So I learned her.
The pressure she liked. The way her hips tried to lift and run at the same time. The change in her breathing when she got close. The way she squeezed her thighs around my head when something felt too good. How much wetter she got once she stopped thinking long enough to let herself feel.
Her fingers rubbed over my close-cut hair.
“Dre, I—”
“Let it happen, baby.”
She shook beneath my mouth, then broke open on a cry that went straight through my chest. Her thighs closed around me, her hips lifting, one hand flying to her mouth like she could catch the sound after it had already left.
I kissed her thigh and looked up at her.
“Why you hiding?”
“I was loud.”
“So?”
“I screamed your name.”
“Do it again later.”
Her hand came down so fast I laughed.
“You are pleased with yourself.”
“Very.”
“You’re irritating.”
“And you still naked in my bed.”
That got me the look.
I loved that look.
I stood, pulled my shirt over my head, and her eyes moved over me in a way that made everything male in me get stupid for a second.
I was used to being looked at. Admired. Wanted.
But Imani looked at me like my body was connected to my heart, like wanting one meant she had to be careful with the other.
That did something to me I wasn’t grown enough to name.
I finished undressing slowly, mostly because she was watching and I liked the way her nerves kept mixing with hunger. When I pushed my boxers down, her eyes dropped, and her mouth parted.
Then she looked away.
I smiled. “You can look.”
“I did.”
“Look again.”
“Dre.”
“What? It’s yours tonight.”
Her eyes came back to mine.
I meant it more than I probably should have.
I rolled the condom on, then moved over her. All that mouth she had disappeared. Her eyes went to mine, and I kissed her before she could talk herself into being scared.
“Hey.”
“I’m okay.”
“I’m going slow.”
“I know.”
“You need me to stop, you tell me.”
“I will.”
I guided myself against her and pressed in slow.
Her body tightened the second I started to enter.
I stopped with my teeth together and one hand braced beside her head, because wet or not, she was tight enough to make my whole back tense.
“Breathe for me.”
She did.
Her pussy fluttered around the head of my dick, nervous and slick and trying to take me at the same time.
I had gotten her relaxed, had made her cum, had her wet enough to slide my fingers into her with no fight, but this was different.
I was bigger than my fingers. Bigger than anything her body had taken before.
And she felt it.
So did I.
“Eyes on me,” I said.
Her lashes lifted.
There she was. Brown eyes glossy, mouth soft, trying to be brave for me.
I kissed her before pushing in another little bit. Her nails dug into my shoulders. Her thighs tightened around my hips, then eased when I circled her clit with my thumb.
“That’s it,” I murmured against her mouth. “Let me in slow.”
Her breath broke.
Mine almost did too.
Every inch was work. Good work. Torture too. She was hot and wet and gripping me so hard I had to keep stopping before my body forgot whose first time this was. I wanted to sink all the way in and feel her take every bit of me, but wanting it didn’t mean I got to rush her.
So I didn’t.
I kissed her mouth, her jaw, her cheek. Took her nipple into my mouth again because it made her hips soften and her pussy open around me. Rubbed her clit until the tension in her thighs loosened and she gave me another inch.
Then another.
“You want me to stop?”
“No.”
“Mani.”
“I mean it.” Her arms wrapped around my neck. “I want all of you.”
I groaned, forehead dropping to hers. “You cannot say shit like that while I’m trying to be careful.”
She laughed, and her body tightened around my dick hard enough to make my eyes close.
“Fuck.”
“What?”
“You laughing with my dick halfway inside you.”
That only made her laugh again.
“See? Now you doing that shit on purpose.”
“I am not.”
“Mnhmm.”
The joking helped.
So did patience.
I stayed right there, buried partway inside her, letting her body learn me without forcing it. Her breathing evened out first. Then her thighs opened a little more. Then her hips shifted beneath mine, small and curious, like she was testing whether pleasure could live inside the stretch.
“There you go.”
Her eyes met mine.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
I pushed in deeper, slow enough to feel every place she had to make room for me. Her mouth opened on a quiet sound, and I stopped again, jaw tight, chest tight, my whole body shaking with the effort it took not to move like instinct wanted me to.
“Tell me if that changes.”
“It won’t.”
There went that confidence again.
I smiled and kissed her, and when her body finally softened enough to take the rest of me, I held still.
All the way in.
Her pussy clenched around me like she could not decide whether to let go or keep every inch.
My breath left me rough.
“Dre,” she whispered.
“I know.”
I did.
I felt all of it.
How much trust was in the way she looked at me. How much want was in the way her body held me. How much restraint it took to stay still while she was wrapped around my dick, wet and tight and mine in a way I did not have enough sense to be casual about.
I waited until her hand slid up the back of my neck and her hips moved beneath me again.
Only then did I start moving.
Small strokes at first. Barely leaving her.
Letting her feel me without losing me. She started telling me what she liked instead of making me drag every answer out of her, and I listened.
I told her what I noticed. She got wetter every time I did, tightening around me like she wanted to prove my point.
I learned that too.
Beneath all the heat, beneath how good she felt and how badly I wanted to lose myself in it, something quieter kept moving through me.
This was Imani.
The woman who argued with professors and remembered my mother’s birthday.
The woman who knew when my shoulder hurt before I admitted it.
The woman who looked at my future and kept asking where I existed inside it.
She was under me now, trusting me with something she could never give anyone twice, and the responsibility of that didn’t make me feel trapped.
It made me want to be better.
I lowered my forehead to hers.
“I love you.”
Her eyes filled. “I love you too.”
I kissed her before either of us got too soft to survive it, and when she came again, she was looking directly at me. I held her through it, watching pleasure take over her face, feeling her body pulse around me until I couldn’t hold back anymore.
I followed her with my mouth at her temple and her name caught somewhere in my chest.
Later, after I cleaned up and came back with a warm cloth, she looked at it.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
I took care of her anyway.
When I climbed back into bed, she curled against me like she had been sleeping there forever, one leg over mine and her head against my chest. I pulled the blanket over us and rubbed my palm along her back.
“You sore?”
“A little.”
I frowned.
“Dre, I’m okay.”
“I could’ve gone slower.”
“You went slow.”
“Could’ve stopped.”
“I didn’t want you to.” She flattened her palm over my chest. “I wanted you.”
I kissed the top of her head.
After a while, she said, “That was a lot.”
I smiled into her hair. “Good a lot?”
She lifted her head and looked at me. “You know it was.”
“Wanted to hear you say it.”
“You are so irritating.”
“And you love me.”
Her face softened. “I do.”
She settled against me again, and I lay there at twenty-one wanting more nights exactly like that. More of her everywhere. At games. In my apartment. Sitting beside me while I studied. Building whatever big life she kept talking about while I tried to figure out what mine would become.
I didn’t know shit yet about how hard loving somebody could get once real life started asking questions.
I only knew I wanted her in mine.