Chapter 43 THAT’S NOT YOUR BRAIN YOU’RE THINKING WITH
THAT’S NOT YOUR brAIN YOU’RE THINKING WITH
Oliver
Stop kissing her.
It’s the order my head is giving my mouth, but my mouth doesn’t want to listen.
She still tastes like pecan pie.
And that pecan pie was the craziest, sugariest, most terrible, most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted in my life.
In the sweets category.
Don’t ask me to compare it to fast-food fried fish.
“You’re out of practice,” she says in a wispy breath against my lips.
“Clearly need so much help.”
“For the future.”
“Yes.”
This isn’t practice for some future concept of a woman.
I don’t need practice, though I’m happy to play the part if it gets me what I want.
And what I want is to kiss Daphne because I’m drunk on pecan pie and grits and anxiety born of tasting freedom and peace this afternoon before realizing that I’m doing my escape wrong, and kissing Daphne is settling everything that’s wrong.
Even though kissing Daphne is inherently wrong.
Stop. Kissing. Her.
I hear the order again, and once again, I ignore it.
Because she’s threading her fingers deeper into my hair, adding her other hand to hold me in place while she sucks at my lower lip and scrapes her teeth over it, and the only thing to do when a willing woman is kissing you is to kiss her back.
It’s a rule.
Or something.
And when you’re kissing a woman back, you’re morally obligated to run your fingers through her hair too.
Scoot closer.
Lose yourself.
And that’s what I’m doing.
I’m losing myself. Letting myself go.
The way I’ve wanted to for years.
But I never knew I’d want to lose myself with her.
That she could be the answer to all of my worries and inadequacies and questions about if I belong.
“This isn’t personal,” she murmurs through the kiss.
“Practice,” I agree.
She tugs, and I follow her down onto the bed, deepening the kiss until our tongues are teasing each other.
I’m hard as steel, my cock pressing against her thigh while she holds me closer and slants her mouth to kiss me more thoroughly.
This is wrong.
But also right.
Forbidden.
Necessary at the same time.
I need—I need to do something bad.
Something wrong.
Something that finally makes me feel free of the shackles of my old life.
With someone who can show me how to live.
“If anyone asks, this didn’t happen,” I say.
“We’re not actually here.”
“I’m stopping right now.”
I’m not stopping.
She’s not stopping.
She doesn’t push me away.
That leg looping around my hips is definitely not her pushing me away.
Nor is the way she’s sucking on my tongue.
Fuck me sideways, is this what euphoria feels like?
No.
No, simply kissing her isn’t euphoria.
Sliding my hand under her shirt and following her hot, silky skin from her waist to her bra is euphoria.
Is a woman’s skin supposed to feel this good beneath my fingers?
Or is this still the pecan pie and the grits and the aftereffects of anxiety?
“You should definitely practice taking my bra off,” she gasps against my mouth while her hands stroke my neck and over my shoulders and down my back to my ass.
“Good skill.”
“You have a lot to learn.”
“Terrible teacher.”
“Best teacher.”
“Bossy. No real instructions.”
“Practice—best way.”
I would like to continue playing at practicing whatever this is that we’re doing—the kissing and the stroking and the teasing and the lying to each other—for an eternity.
Clearly I need practice at something, given the way I’m fumbling through trying to get Daphne’s bra unhooked.
“Try harder.” She slaps me lightly on the ass, making my cock throb in new and unexpected ways.
But she’s not being an asshole.
She’s being hilarious and sexy and fun and inspiring and everything that I’ve been starved for my entire life.
I straighten on the bed, grab her shirt by the hem, and tug it over her head, getting it stuck when she doesn’t move her arm right.
So I leave it like that.
With it shoved over her head, one arm stuck with her elbow bent, and I roll her onto her side so that I can see what I’m doing.
Her belly shakes with laughter. “Oh my god, Oliver, I’m stuck.”
“I prefer you this way.”
She laughs harder.
Until I touch the fairy dust sprinkles tattooed across her belly, tracing the little dots up over her chest, to her shoulder, where the first tattooed fairy is touching her wand to Daphne’s collarbone, making all of the sprinkles fall down.
Now she’s sucking in a breath, goosebumps rising across her chest and abdomen.
I bend and lick a path of them between her breasts.
“Oh my gaaa,” she whimpers.
“Is that a good oh my gaaa, or a bad oh my gaaa?” I rub my stubbled chin between her breasts. “I need context to properly learn anything.”
I’d like to say I’m better than adequate in the bedroom, but I’ve had maybe a half-dozen one-night stands in the past few years, generally at someone else’s urging and insistence that it would relieve some of my stress. It never did.
My life and I didn’t get along.
Probably still don’t, but this—this is fun.
It is.
It’s fun.
She fights with her shirt and finally gets it over her head, then slides her bra all the way off too, lying there with nothing on top but a smile and two pillowy mounds that I want to squeeze while she runs her fingers through my hair again and I nibble at the side of her breast.
“You’re terrible at undressing a woman,” she tells me, but her words don’t match the irregular hitches in her breathy voice.
I slide a hand up her ribs and indulge in flicking a thumb over the tight pink nub at the tip of her breast.
“Clearly awful,” I agree while her eyes cross and then her lashes flicker shut.
“The worst.” She finishes the word with a gasp when I scrape my teeth over her nipple, and when I glance up at her, she’s smiling.
Belly quivering.
Breath coming quickly.
Nipples pebbled.
And still smiling while I tease her breasts with my mouth and my hand.
Fun.
Easy.
No pressure.
I trace the line of fairy dust on her tattoo again. “Am I doing this right, or am I supposed to be playing with your elbows or your belly button too?”
“My elbows?” She cracks up, and I glow inside.
I made her laugh.
She shoves my shoulder and pushes me to my side, then tackles the buttons on my shirt.
I kiss her collarbones. “Aren’t you supposed to rip it off?”
“Not when you’re poor and don’t know how to sew.”
It has clearly been too long since I’ve seen a naked woman because I can’t stop drinking in the sight of her breasts as they sway between us and the fairy tattoos all over her skin. “I’ll save a few million for myself so I can afford new shirts when women rip them off me.”
She giggles.
Giggles.
I nip at her neck, and the giggles disappear behind another catch of her breath.
She shoves one side of my shirt off my shoulder, her fingernails trailing down my bicep, and I go cross-eyed.
From a woman touching my arm.
Am I oversensitive, or is this—
“Less thinking, more touching.” She shoves me onto my back.
I arch one brow at her and roll so she’s beneath me again, her neck under my lips, her legs hooked around my hips again.
Her skin is addictive.
It’s—
I snort with laughter as I suck harder at her neck.
“You gonna share with the—ooooh, right there—class?” she asks.
“No.”
Even when I’m losing my mind, I’m absolutely not telling her that her skin tastes like coffee and pecan pie.
My two favorite things in the world.
One old, one new.
Like—like whatever this is.
Old me, new me.
Old her, new her.
Old—holy fuck, that’s a good angle with her pussy.
My eyes cross again while she tightens her legs around my hips and rocks her center against my cock.
Why are pants?
Sincerely, why do humans wear pants?
Tremendously inconvenient.
Need to go.
All of the layers.
When did I start kissing her mouth again? How—what—where did she learn to—just whoa.
Her tongue is my new favorite toy.
Her tongue, and her arms, and her breasts—god, her breasts—and that whimpery little noise in the back of her throat when I squeeze them and tease her nipples.
“Pants—” she gasps.
“Why pants are?” I agree.
Can’t talk straight.
She giggles again, but then she’s moaning as I drop my head to her chest and suck on her nipple while I tug at her waistband.
“Oliver—”
“Be useful,” I tell her breast.
Why does it make me harder to swirl my tongue around this tight pink nub?
Oh. Right.
Pecan pie, anxiety, and—
I forgot the last one.
Freedom.
That’s it.
That has to be it.
She wiggles beneath me, and my pants slide away.
She wiggles again, and her pants are gone.
“Magician,” I whisper against her breast.
Those fingers thread through my hair again. “Are you drunk?”
“Happy.”
She grins at me, and yeah.
This?
This is all good things.
Naked.
Kissing.
Touching.
Daphne.
New life.
New start.
Freedom.
No going back after this.
It’s a line.
I’m crossing it.
For the first time in my life, I’m being bad.
I’m off course. I’m off schedule. I’m lost. I’m happy.
I’m—“Condoms?”
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
Her eyes are dancing. “All out.”
“Fuuuuuuuck.”
“IUD,” she says.
I stare at her a minute while the letters sink in.
Her grin gets grinnier. “It’s birth control.”
“I know that, you little pain in the ass.”
She wiggles beneath me, teasing my cock, but now with her bare pussy, and fuck me fuck me fuck me, what’s control again?
“This is where you confess if you have any STIs that I need to worry about,” she says while she glides her fingernails over my shoulders again.
I shake my head into her breasts. “No fooling around for—I’m clear.”
“Who would’ve thought we’d have that in common,” she murmurs.
And it’s the freaking funniest thing in the world.
Grits.
The grits were spiked.
That’s the only explanation for my mood.
Other than—
Nope.
Doesn’t matter.
Daphne tightens her legs around me and scrapes her nails up my neck, and absolutely nothing else matters.
Nothing but her sweet pussy and my raging hard-on and kissing her pecan pie coffee skin and breathing in the scent of freedom and new beginnings and her arousal while listening to the sound of her sucking in another breath as I scrape my teeth over her nipple.
“Good,” she gasps. “A-plus.”
I want to bite a path down the fairy dust on her soft belly too.
Next time.
“I must be a natural.”
Her laugh is far more breathy this time.
More breathy.
More turned on.
Aroused.
By me.
Boring, simple, plain ol’ me.
I flex my hips, and my cock sinks into her hot, wet core.
“Oh, fuck,” she whispers.
I pause. “Good fuck?”
“Good fuck.” She pulls me tighter, taking me deeper with a soft moan. “Keep good fucking.”
“Good fucking,” I agree.
I inch deeper.
My brain melts.
My hips buck.
Her pussy squeezes me.
I can’t breathe.
Can’t think.
Can’t do anything but exist right here, thrusting deep inside Daphne with her gasps and moans and cries guiding me, switching angles, rotating my hips, my balls getting tighter with every thrust and gasp and moan.
I catch her lips with my mouth again, bucking completely out of control, desperate to keep going.
Make it last.
Live in this feeling forever.
Her hands—her tongue—her pussy—her legs—her breasts—every bit of her.
I want to soak it in.
Revel in her.
Imprint this on my soul.
Carry it with me forever.
“More—there—practice—good fucking,” she gasps as I rock into her.
“I’m—best—student—ever,” I gasp back.
I’m not wild in bed.
Not usually.
But I feel completely out of control and absolutely as I should be while I slam into her over and over, deeper and harder, straining to hold myself back so I can live here, in her pussy, in this bed, in anonymity but where I’m welcome.
Where she’s suddenly arching her back and tightening her legs around my hips, her pussy clenching around my cock so hard that my last ounce of control slips away.
“Oliver, I’m—oh my god,” she gasps.
Yeah.
Hell yeah.
She’s coming, her strong legs holding me tight, deep inside her, my eyes crossing while I come too, harder and faster and more out of control than I’ve ever come in my life.
My cock jerks inside her, coming and still needing to be deeper.
Can’t stop.
Can’t end.
Can’t stop.
I strain into my release, into her, groaning and grabbing the sheets on either side of her in my fists.
“Daph—”
I cut myself off.
Can’t talk through catching my breath.
Through the tremors in my legs and ass.
Through the overwhelming mix of emotions crashing together in my chest.
Because shiiiiiiit.
We did that.
And it was— I swallow.
Good.
Better than good.
Fucking fantastic. Life-altering. Reality-shattering.
Perfect.
Is it Daphne?
Or is it freedom?
Or am I feeling the freedom to make a massive, massive, massive mistake with Daphne and realizing freedom still comes with consequences?
Because not all of this is full-on post-coital glow.
There’s some panic.
Panic, and—
A siren blares in the stillness, cutting off all thoughts and sending me scrambling off her and away from the bed.
“What the hell?” I yell over the noise that probably should’ve come a few minutes ago.
She blinks at me like she’s forgotten what reality is, and then she cracks up.
“Fire alarm,” she yells back. “This would never happen in an Aurora Gardens brand hotel.”
I stare at her a moment longer while the blaring continues murdering my eardrums.
She grins while she throws my shirt at me. “So much more exciting here, isn’t it? If it doesn’t stop in the next minute, we have to go outside.”
Or the world is telling me that we made a mistake.
A horrific mistake that we can’t take back.
Daph has her back to me while she hops into her shorts and pulls her shirt on, but I can see her in the foggy mirror over the wobbly desk, and her grin isn’t without regrets too.
Awesome.
This is gonna get awkward.