Chapter 40
ZARIAH
IGNORE THE DOOM AND GLOOM
It took me another fifteen minutes to calm Cleo down. I told her about the conversations Denali and I had, especially in the storage closet, and reiterated that he’d changed for the better. I was touched that she was so protective, but I knew she was wrong.
I had to discuss this with Denali. The thing was…when he walked out of the locker room, he yanked me into a bear hug, squeezing me tight. He was so excited to see me.
All of the questions I wanted to ask disappeared.
It wasn’t like I believed what Cleo told me. One, my boyfriend couldn’t lie worth shit. He literally could never lie to me. And two, I didn’t believe Denali could put all of this together to trick me into developing feelings for him.
But the bigger question wouldn’t leave me.
What if he did?
After dinner, we returned to my dorm, and I studied Denali like a specimen. I kicked off my shoes, but before I could put them away, he did. When he saw that my phone’s battery was low, he put it on the charger. And he checked the calendar, dancing the marker between his fingers, smiling at me.
“Guess what I’m making you tomorrow,” he murmured.
“Food?” I suggested.
Denali pulled out my carton of flour. “Pizza. Here’s the trick to a great homemade pizza—you make the dough the night before. The flavors are way better and the dough’s easier to work with. Now, when it comes to vegetables like artichokes? You chop those right before they go in the oven.”
“Artichokes are my favorite,” I said softly.
“I know.” He reached to stroke my side, a quick, teasing movement. “I know everything about you.”
My heart fluttered. I was supposed to talk to him about something serious, something that clearly would’ve gone against my boundaries, but I gazed at this man in my kitchen, making me pizza dough in an oiled bowl because ‘a plastic bag isn’t good enough for my girl.’ He was so thoughtful.
The truth was, my real problem was something else entirely. What Cleo said in the meeting didn’t unnerve me—my response did.
What if I didn’t care that Denali put our relationship into motion?
So he transferred schools to see me again—so what? How romantic was that? Would it be so bad if I fell into a trap I loved being in?
A nice question to ponder but what if Denali took it too far? What if I excused this behavior now and regretted it later? What if Denali shifted to the possessiveness that I didn’t like? Refusing to let me leave, refusing to let me make my own choices?
I couldn’t unravel my own answers because of how I felt about him, past and present. I didn’t want to be on the offensive, waiting for something bad to happen, to be hurt again. I didn’t want to think about Denali like that.
He’d been so good at breaking down my walls, I didn’t want to believe that I’d ever need them again.
I swallowed. “Denali?”
His eyes slid to mine, and the laugh lines crinkled with his smile. “Yeah, honey?”
“Do you want to have sex?”
“What?” Denali straightened up, hands in the dough. “Uh, right now?”
“Right now.” I crossed the distance between us, yanking him down for a kiss. Fuck those thoughts swirling in my head—fuck them. I didn’t want to think like that. I didn’t like how it made me feel about Denali. I didn’t like how it made me feel about myself.
He pulled back, breathing hard. “I’m covered in flour—”
“We’ll fuck in the shower, come on.” I grabbed his hand, bringing him to the bathroom.
I dragged him into the shower to fuck. My kisses were frantic, desperate, I wanted him to brush away my concerns, to make me feel better.
The faster I went though, the more Denali took over the pace.
The kisses slowed down under the steaming water.
He propped me up on the shower wall, softening my anxiety until I let myself be consumed with pleasure.
He nuzzled my neck with soft kisses. The sex was slow and delicious, every thrust of his cock brought me higher and higher.
“I missed this pussy,” he rasped. “You’re so tight, we’re a perfect fit.”
The sounds of wet skin slapping on wet skin made me shiver. I hugged him closer, fingers gripping his hair. The climax was so close, I could taste it at the back of my tongue. “Cumming—I’m cumming, Denali—”
“That’s it, use me. Cum on my cock,” he groaned. “Let me feel it—fuck—you feel so fucking good.” He panted along my neck, over the patches of skin he’d licked and sank his teeth into, piquing my sensitivity. His voice deepened. “I don’t want to cum until you do. Let me cum, baby. Make me cum.”
My moan was so high-pitched it left an ache in my throat as I toppled over the edge, and Denali’s hips stuttered, crushing me against the wall.
The way he groaned my name…what could be better than this?
Gently, Denali set me down. He washed me clean and I ignored the doom and gloom, refusing to give it more attention.
“Thank you, baby,” he murmured. We stepped out of the shower and he smacked my ass.
A sleepy smile crossed my face. “I don’t have enough ass for you to do that.”
I could barely hear his mutter in reply. “I hate when you say stuff like that.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Stuff about your ass.”
“It’s the truth.” I sank to the bed, stretching. I was pleased at his indignant response. How could I think anything bad about him when he was so sweet? I yawned. “If you slap my ass, you could deflate it, and then—poof—it’s gone.”
“I love your body—”
“Okay, okay, body positivity, everything about us is beautiful, we need to appreciate ourselves,” I teased. “Mm-hmm, understood.”
“That’s not what I mean,” he said.
I took out the clip holding up my braids. “What do you mean?”
“I love your body,” he said, his voice low. The towel was wrapped around his hips, chest gleaming in the lamplight. I let my eyes wander until I met his heated gaze. My skin prickled with goosebumps at that look. “I look at you and I want to devour you.”
“Oh my god,” I said, surprised. “You’re doing that look.”
He paused, taken aback. “What look?”
“The look. When you’re about to blurt out some freaky, wild shit.”
“I—what? I don’t do that.”
“You used to. And you just did it.” I gestured to his face. “You get unfocused, like daydream-y, it’s five steps away from your cum face.” I couldn’t believe he was acting like he didn’t know what I was talking about. “What’d you want to say?”
“Nothing,” he said too quickly, a flush creeping up his neck.
“Denali.”
“We had sex, it’s not weird that I’m five steps away from my cum face.”
I studied him, like I could find the answer, but he dropped his eyes, keeping his gaze averted from me. Curiosity burned as much as the adoration I had for him. I wanted him to be honest. What could he be embarrassed to talk to me about?
“Alaska,” I whispered. “Tell me.”
Denali was breathing so slowly, I could count his breaths. “I don’t like how you talk about your ass.”
“Mm-hmm?”
“Because I want to devour you.” A beat passed. “Ass included.”
My eyebrows furrowed, I didn’t understand. “What?”
“I—I want to stick my tongue in your ass,” he admitted.
The blush blossomed across my skin as I grasped his meaning. He wanted to…? A surprised laugh burst out of me, a couple of octaves higher than it was supposed to be, but Denali wasn’t laughing. I shook my head.
“No, you don’t.”
He watched me for a moment. “Why are you telling me what I want to do?”
“That’s something people in porn say,” I explained, flustered. “It’s—it’s not real.”
“No?”
“You don’t really want that.”
“I just said I want to devour you,” he said slowly. “What’d make you think that doesn’t include your ass?”
My pulse kicked up a notch. “You’ve done this before?”
“No.”
After today’s meeting with Cleo and after sex with Denali in the shower, I was overstimulated.
It wasn’t a bad feeling, but it was overwhelming and what little control I had seemed to ebb away.
My fingers fumbled with my towel. “How do you know you’d like it?
You don’t. And it’s an ass. I’m not going to get anything out of it, you certainly won’t—”
“You don’t think I’d like it?”
“How could you?”
“I want to touch you in every way that I can. I want to make you cum in every way. There’s this magnetic pull that never stops, I always want you,” he said, his voice husky. “I want you to use me. I want to use you. That definitely includes your ass.”
I swallowed. “It’d be a waste of time, I don’t think you’d like it.”
“Do you want to try?”
“Here? Now?”
“We just got out of the shower,” he pointed out, eyes dropping to my towel. “You don’t have clothes on.”
“Well, we’re going to—to laugh about this in ten minutes,” I said.
“Are you uncomfortable?”
“No, it’s—it’s embarrassing—and—oh, fuck it.”
I hadn’t been this nervous about sex in a long, long time. It was sex! Humans had been doing it for thousands of years, so what? This was nothing to be flustered over. Why was I so self-conscious?
Because I’d never done this before and I was already vulnerable with Denali, and this bumped up that vulnerability to a new notch.
Gently, he unwound my towel, and I let it fall to the floor. His hands were soft on my skin, caressing me as he directed me into a new position over the edge of the bed.
“Bend over,” he murmured, his words breathy with his excitement.
I couldn’t stop my heavy breathing as Denali splayed a hand across my back, guiding me to press my chest against the blankets. I could hear him sink to the floor, the creak of the floorboards, the soft thump of his knees meeting the ground.
Oh, god. This was actually happening.
His cool breath washed over my ass. My heart hammered away—there were a lot more nerves there than I would’ve anticipated. But that made sense, right? Kind of? My pussy was a couple of inches below. That had to be the explanation.
Slowly, Denali leaned in and pressed his lips to my—
“Oh, fuck!”
Both of us froze and I stared at the blankets, mortified. What the hell was that? I clenched the comforter between my fingers, willing my heart rate to slow. My belly had swooped when his lips touched my hole.
Holy fuck. I was shaking on the bed from just a kiss.
Untouched, my pussy responded like he’d stroked me. I was already slick between my thighs, it was difficult not to rub them together, to search for that friction. Could Denali see how much this affected me?
“Zariah?” he whispered, his voice gliding over my body.
I swallowed. “Mm-hmm?”
“Do you want me to stop?”
“Um…” My bottom lip trembled as I struggled to regain composure. “If you want to keep going…”
“I want to keep going,” he said firmly.
“Then…it’s okay…”
I waited until his breath prickled me with goosebumps again. His hand moved up my lower back, pressing me into the bed, his other hand spreading my right cheek, seeing me in my most forbidden place. With a hard breath, he ran his tongue along my hole.
My body seized, my eyes rolling to the back of my head.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
It was so sensitive. I was so sensitive. Denali worked his tongue along my hole, probing and testing what I responded to until I was writhing under his hand, my pussy soaked. He refused to touch it, he was entirely focused on my ass.
“Denali,” I whined, needy, desperate for more.
His words were a murmur. “Ah, baby. I thought you wanted me to keep going. Are you done?”
He knew I wasn’t, he was toying with me, but it was too good for me to care. “No.”
“I don’t like how you talk about your body,” he muttered. With a long lick around my hole, he kissed it, and I choked out a gasp. “The next time you call your ass too small, I’ll shove my cock inside it.”
I moaned into the blankets as Denali ate me out in the most animalistic way. I had no idea I’d love ass-play but now that we were in it, my mind ran wild. What would anal feel like? Would it feel this good? The intensity inside reached a summit I couldn’t believe.
“I’m going to cum,” I gasped.
“It’s okay, you don’t have to pretend—”
“No, I’m going to cum from this! It’s—it’s building inside, oh my fucking god—”
“Really?” Denali breathed out. “Can I fuck you after?”
“Yes, yes—”
His tongue silenced my words as he eagerly took up the challenge. It was so different without vaginal stimulation. There was a rush that made my stomach clench in anticipation. He tongued my hole, worshipping me. My breathing kicked up and I shuddered on the bed, barreling towards my orgasm.
“Denali—Denali—Denali!”
I shouted his name. It was like no other orgasm I’d ever experienced, and I was shaking in the fallout, incoherent.
Denali stood, dragging his heavy cock along the soaking wet mess of my pussy.
My words leaped out of me, pleading. “Shove your cock in my ass.”
“We’re not doing anal,” he rasped.
Disappointment fluttered inside. “What?”
“That takes preparation, I don’t want to hurt you.”
“It’s supposed to hurt—”
“No. It’s not. It’ll feel uncomfortable at first, but we’ll work up to it with a vibrator and numbing lube. It’s not supposed to hurt.” Denali pushed into my pussy, his voice melting into relief. “Oh, fuck, Zariah.”
My arguments were gone. I let him take over, thrusting into me until he commanded me to stay still. I loved that feeling too. His cock throbbed against my walls, cumming deep inside. I waited with bated breath, feeling every nudge of his cock inside me, every twitch as he filled me.
“Jesus,” he mumbled, easing out. “I love when your pussy’s covered in cum like this.” He rubbed my back, his voice softer. “Do you want a washcloth, or do you want to shower?”
I elected for the shower but was too tired to walk. Denali carried me inside. He did that for the same reason that made him say no to anal right now. He wanted to take care of me.
Was it so wrong to let him?
So what if he might’ve put our relationship into motion behind my back?
I bit my lip, thinking it through. If I was really okay with this, I wouldn’t have been pondering these questions. I needed to talk to Denali.
But would he tell me the truth?