37. Nora
CHAPTER 37
NORA
He’s standing between my splayed knees, hands on my waist, his honey eyes a deep color. His words make it hard to breathe. Hard to think. “You want to…”
“I want to see you.” His hands slide up my bare thighs.
I’ve never been naked with a man before.
He kisses me again, the deep, searching touches that set heat off like slow-moving honey through my veins. I’ve touched him. He’s seen me half naked, he’s held me as I came… this is what I wanted. This is what I’ve always wanted.
I nod, my lips brushing his. “Yes.”
“I need to know I can trust you.” His hand comes up, plays with the fastening of the silk slip by my neck.
“Trust me?”
“Yes.” He tugs on the knot, and it falls in a ribbon of silk. Goose bumps race over my bare breasts. “That you’ll be honest with me. That you’ll say no, yes, stop or more. To push me away like you’ve practiced so beautifully.” He runs a thumb over my hard nipple, and there’s something drugged about his gaze, his eyes glazed. “Can you do that for me, my clever girl?”
“Yes, I can do that,” I promise. There’s a pulsing between my legs, so close to where his hands are inching my fabric up. I’m not sure I can handle it if he touches me there.
I’m not sure I can handle it if he doesn’t.
“Good. Because your body tells the truth too.” He kisses down my skin, and I have to brace my hands behind me on the velvet table to keep from falling over. “Your nipples get hard. You might get wet for me. All of that is honest.”
He kisses along my tits, my nipples. He pulls one into his mouth, and the wet, warm feeling makes my breath stutter.
“When I did this last time, while you used your vibrator?”
“Yes?” I struggle to find the word. It’s a hard one. Just one teeny syllable.
“I wanted to see all of you. Wanted to touch you more than I wanted my next fucking breath.” His hand slides up between my legs and brushes over the fabric of my panties. “Right here.”
His fingers stroke up and down in slow, exploring touches that make me shiver. And when he brushes over my clit, my breath catches. “That’s where you usually touch yourself?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Tell me if I can keep going. Tell me if I can pull these panties down and look at you.” He brushes his lips against my ear. “Do you remember your safe word?”
I nod, and I think this is it . I’ve wondered what his hand would feel like, if it was him and not my own and not a vibrator. His hands slide up beneath the silk of my dress.
He grips the sides of my panties.
“Good. Lift up for me, sweetheart.”
I do what he says, and he slides them down my legs, hooks them over one of my feet, and then leaves them on the other.
My knees close on instinct. I’m still covered by my silky dress, and there’s nowhere to run, but I don’t need to run. Because he’s him, and I’m me, and there’s trust in this.
“Lie back for me… Just like that. That’s my girl.” He stands between my bent legs, and I’m stretched out on the pool table. It’s hard beneath my back, the velvet soft under my fingers. “Look at me.”
I do. At the width of him, the dark eyes, the scar through his eyebrow. He looks like a man ravenous. He looks at me in a way that would have made me nervous if it was anyone but him.
Any situation but us.
I asked him what he wanted. I pushed him, and here he is, showing me just how much he wants me.
His hands are warm on my knees. “Open for me.”
I do, my bent knees splitting, and I can’t look at him, but I can’t look away either.
“A bit wider… and there you are.” His eyes are locked between my legs, and the world ends. But then it restarts with his rough voice. “Fuck, you’re so pretty. Look at that. Look at you .”
But I’m watching him instead, and the look on his face. His large hand runs down the inside of my thigh. “So fucking perfect. You’re already glistening a bit for me. That’s what I meant, baby. Your body doesn’t lie. Your perfect pussy is honest.” He brushes a finger along me, and my breath catches. “Look at all that pink.”
“West…”
His hooded gaze meets mine. “Does it feel strange, being so exposed to me?”
I nod. Heat pools in my stomach, the only part of me covered by the scrap of silk I made to tease him. I put it on and felt brave, and wanted, and daring. “But good too.”
“You’re doing great. So brave, showing yourself to me.” His fingers feel like fire against my bare skin. No one has ever touched me there, no one but me, and it feels so different when it’s not your own hand.
When he brushes over my clit again, and I moan at the sensation, his lip curls. “Perfect little clit,” he says. He makes a soft drumming motion over it, and the sudden rhythm makes me gasp. “That’s it. See how beautifully you’re reacting? It lets me know what you like and what you don’t.”
He starts circling, a steady motion that slowly makes my joints relax and pleasure spike through me. It’s better than when I do it. It’s better because it’s his hand, and his hooded gaze, and he’s murmuring to me, telling me how good I’m doing. How much I’m pleasing him, stretched out like this in front of him, how pretty I am. How me getting wet for him is making him hard.
I didn’t know that it could be like this.
I hoped. I wanted.
But I didn’t know, and now that knowing settles beneath my breastbone, rearranges something inside me. This is what it’s meant to feel like. To be wanted and to revel in that wanting.
I’m close when he slides his finger down, brushes it along my entrance. “Look at you. You’re soaked now.” His voice is hoarse. “I need to taste you. Want to try that, trouble? My mouth on you? We can see if you can come that way, and if not, we can grab your vibrator.”
Nerves shoot through me, but there’s excitement too. “Yes.”
“Yes, what?” He runs large hands along my thighs, spreading me farther. “Tell me.”
“Yes, I want you to… go down on me.”
His lips curve. “That’s my girl,” he says again, and I love it. I love all of it.
He starts by kissing down my thighs in slow, open-mouthed kisses. He’s warm against my skin and he’s there. Kissing across my sensitive skin.
I look up at the lamp in the ceiling and focus on breathing. West Calloway is eating me out.
The absurdity of it makes my head swim. That I’m actually here, letting someone do this, enjoying someone doing this, and that it’s him.
My teenage crush. My grown-up annoyance. My fake boyfriend and protector. And he’s groaning against my skin like there’s nothing he would rather do than be pressed against the most intimate part of me.
West’s tongue flicks against my clit, and I look back down at him with widened eyes.
“Stay with me, sweetheart,” he says. “Don’t go off in your head.”
“I’m here,” I whisper. He’s bracketed by my bare thighs, his eyes darker than I’ve ever seen them.
He takes my hand and draws it toward his hair. “Hold on to me. Can you do that for me?”
I nod. My voice isn’t strong enough for speech.
“Good. You’re doing so good.” He kisses my clit again and uses his tongue to tease it from the sides with a steady pressure. It’s intoxicating to watch him do this. To see his brown hair between my thighs, his forehead. My fingers tighten in his hair.
“That feels… good.”
There’s a faint chuckle against my skin that makes me gasp, and then his tongue resumes its movements. His free hand holds my thigh back and open for him as he works me over, and every now and then, he’ll lift his lips to tell me how good I taste. How pretty I am. How he could do this all night.
My body feels heavy and taut at the same time. It’s good he’s holding my thighs spread, or I wouldn’t keep them bent.
His fingers stroke over my pussy, and then he slides one inside me to the first knuckle. He groans, like he’s the one being touched to an inch of orgasm. “You’re clenching. Can you relax for me, sweetheart?”
I take a deep breath, and he slides in another inch. The intrusion is delicious, too much and not enough at the same time. He keeps sucking on my clit, and I’m so close it should be illegal. “That’s it. Let me inside…” He groans. “Fuck, this is my new obsession, your tight pussy around my finger. Pink is absolutely my new favorite color.”
It feels like my insides are aching, and the slow pump of his finger is the only thing that can soothe it. “West,” I tell him, my fingers tightening in his hair. “I think… I think I might…”
“That’s it. Be a good girl and come around my finger.”
His tongue speeds up over my clit, flicking back and forth against the sensitive underside, and it’s all it takes to send me tumbling.
My breath catches and my thighs tighten around his face. I let go of his hair, stretch my arms out wide on the pool table. I brush against the cool weight of a billiard ball. It’s too intense and it won’t stop and I never, ever want it to.
West’s mouth stays on me through it all. He kisses me slowly after it’s over, avoiding where I’m most sensitive.
I smile. It’s a wide, lazy one. “I think you like giving me these lessons,” I tell him, and watch as he stands up. He hooks his arms underneath my knees to keep me spread for him. “I think you like being a teacher, Calloway.”
“Calloway again?” He looks over me in a slow sweep, and there’s that confident, arrogant look on his face. I hate that I love it so much. “Of course I do. Do you know what a thrill it is, that I’m the first man you’ve let between your legs? The first man you’ve truly wanted this way? I want to make every single experience earth-shattering for you, to set the bar too high for anyone who comes after me. I want you to be disappointed in them all.”
I laugh a little and lift up on my elbows. “In that case, maybe I’ll reach my deadline after all.”
His smirk doesn’t disappear. But it freezes, and he smooths the silk back down over my thighs. “Not with me.”
“What do you mean?”
He gathers me up, pulls me against his body and off the pool table. I slowly glide down his body until my bare feet land on the oriental rug.
“It can’t be with me.” He finds the edges of the silk and lifts them up, ties them back around my neck until I’m covered again. My legs feel weak and maybe he knows that, knows how wrung out I am, because he holds me close.
“West…”
His whiskey eyes look dark brown in this light. “You want a relationship. You want love. That’s what you told me, right from the start.”
For the first time since he touched me, I feel too bare. “Yes. That’s my… that’s the end goal. One day. With someone.”
His jaw works. “Your first time should mean something.”
The sudden embarrassment that floods through me makes my eyes prick. “I didn’t ask you to sleep with me, you know. I just said that maybe?—”
“I know that. I’m not implying anything.” He kisses my temple, my cheek. “But the day you do it, it should be with someone you love. Someone you won’t regret.”
I wouldn’t regret it with you , I think. I won’t regret anything we’ve done. But I can’t find it in myself to admit that to him. Not now.
“You know I want to.” He tips my head up. I do know that, and he’s not letting me run away. Not letting me close in on myself. “My beautiful girl. You know that. And look at you. You just did so well.”
“I did, didn’t I?”
“Yes.” He slides his hands down and lifts me up. I wrap my arms around his neck to avoid tipping over. “Let’s go upstairs. It’s been a long day.”
I hold on to him as he walks us through the library and out toward the stairs. “Thanks for staying with me the last few nights. If you would rather move into your own room, I get it.”
He doesn’t answer. I close my eyes against his shoulder and wonder if that’s that. If he’ll take this moment to retreat back to his wing. Create space between us.
“I’ll stay,” he says.