Chapter 29
“ I t’s a tie,” I say with a proud smirk as I input our last entry into my phone.
Lex groans, disliking that. At the pace I’m going, I’ll be way ahead of him in no time, and it’s thrilling. I finally got good enough to challenge his bedroom abilities. About damn time.
We’re in the kitchen after a particularly steamy session of racing to make each other come. Our evenings usually start like this, then he goes down on me, fingering me until I come, sometimes making me squirt. Then I finish him off, and we go to sleep. In the end, I didn’t bring Jensen with me. When I take a cock again, it’ll be his, not silicone. We are having fun with the plugs, though, and I’m feeling comfortable with the second size now. He slipped the third one inside me earlier, and I still have it in, getting used to this diameter.
He’s scavenging the fridge in his underwear to find us some sustenance while I sit on the counter, wearing nothing but his T-shirt. The gala is in only two days, and while I have the gown and a hair and makeup appointment, I don’t feel ready.
We’ll spend an evening in the presence of the bombshell that is Evora Campbell, and I have to give myself at least a fighting chance. It isn’t a competition, I know that, but I can’t help myself. I need to prove to the world I’m worthy of Alexander Coleman. And beyond that, he’ll get to compare us the whole evening for the first time. The other night didn’t count because I was clearly not myself. This Saturday, though, I have to look the best I can.
“I can practically hear the gears turning in your head. What are you overthinking about?” he says as he returns with food, proving he knows me way too well.
“I was wondering if I really have to wear high heels. ”
He chuckles. “You can wear whatever you want, freckles. If everything goes according to my plan, we go in, spend an hour, and then get out of there.”
“Hmm… I like that. I’m sure we can find better ways to spend our evening.”
“Damn right, we can.”
He spreads the food on the counter beside me and asks, “What do you want? I have bread, so I can also make you a sandwich.”
It’s all very tempting, but I’ve been doing really well losing weight for the past three weeks, and I can’t cave at the last moment. I need to look good for that gala, so no overindulgence until then.
“I think I’ll just have a glass of water,” I say instead.
His reaction isn’t what I expect. “Alright, that’s it,” he snaps, setting down the jar of pickles a little too hard. “What is going on with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve barely been eating, Andrea.”
“You noticed?”
“Of course I did! Your ass is fading before my very eyes, and no matter how much I try to make you eat, you won’t.”
“I’m trying to lose a few pounds,” I protest, offended that he doesn’t appreciate my efforts.
“Why? In all the time I’ve known you, you’ve never been self-conscious about your body. Why is it suddenly a thing?”
“I-I’ve always been self-conscious about my body.”
“Not to the extent where you’d starve yourself. The raccoon I fell in love with never said no to food.”
“I’m not starving myself; I’m being reasonable.”
“That’s bullshit. What did you eat for lunch?”
Fuck, that won’t look good. “An apple,” I concede with honesty. What follows, though, is a lie. “But I’m not hungry.”
“Bullshit, again. Hold your hand out,” he commands. Confused, I don’t comply, unsure where he’ll go with this. “Your hand, Andrea.”
He seems very serious, so I obey to avoid getting into an argument with him. He flattens my hand midair between us, palm down, and releases it. The way it slightly shakes is impossible to miss. I have low blood sugar. I already knew because I can feel it—my head is a little dizzy, my limbs are weak, and I’m tired.
“Why are you starving yourself?” Lex asks. His harsh tone is gone, replaced by worry.
“I want… to look nice for the gala.”
“It started before you knew about the gala. Why do you feel the need to lose weight? ”
Because men like Alexander Coleman end up with women like Evora Campbell, not like me. But he’ll have my head if I remind him of that.
“It’s my body, Lex. I can do whatever I want with it,” I argue.
“Not if you’re being unhealthy. And if you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, we both know you shouldn’t do it at all.”
I don’t answer, obstinately looking at the fridge behind him. My reasons may be shallow and ludicrous, but they are mine. I’ll never be as refined and knowledgeable as she is in the way of their world, but I can at least try to look the part.
“Why are you doing this, Andrea?” Lex insists with an uneven voice. Fuck, if he starts crying, then I’ll start crying, and we’ll be on for another mess.
So, I break before he does and tell him. “I’m doing it because I’m worried you’ll find Evora more attractive than me,” I confess. The truth is so painful to admit that it feels like razor blades coming up my throat.
Lex’s surprise and confusion speak louder than any words. He finds my words preposterous, almost as if I accused him of something outrageous. Which I guess I kind of did.
“Did I say or do something that made you doubt yourself?” he asks, very concerned.
“No, but… I own a mirror. I’m no one’s fantasy, Lex.”
“Fuck that. You’re my fantasy. Isn’t it enough?”
“But I don’t get it. I have flaws from head to toe, and if you—Eek, what are you doing?!” I shriek when he abruptly hauls me over his shoulder, face down and ass up.
He doesn’t answer as he carries me through the apartment like a sack of potatoes. Between the lack of food all day and the blood rushing to my head, everything spins by the time he puts me down. I barely have time to see we’re surrounded by the mirrors of his home gym when he lifts the T-shirt up and removes it from me entirely.
The light is unforgiving, so I cover my tits with an arm and my pussy with a hand. “Never hide yourself from me, Andrea,” he argues, pulling my hands away. Then he flips me around and makes me face the main mirror, standing right beside me. “One flaw. I dare you to show me a single flaw on you,” he demands.
So, this is what we’re doing? Really?
I stare at my reflection, scanning every small part of me. The hardest thing isn’t to find a flaw; it’s to decide which one to start with. He doesn’t mean it that way, but this is humiliating. The mirror sends back such an embarrassing image, with his perfectly carved body next to mine. It only reminds me of how much I don’t deserve him. Tears of shame fill my eyes, but I blink until they’re gone .
“This,” I say, passing a hand over the bump on my lower stomach.
“You have an organ there. It needs room.”
“No, that’s fat.”
“It’s your uterus, Andrea. We both know you’re smarter than that. Next.”
“I have… stretch marks,” I point out, touching my hips and outer thighs.
“Me too,” he reminds me, showing me the area between his pecs and armpits, and then the sides of his ass.
“Yours are because you’re muscular. Mine are because I eat too much.”
“What if I told you they’re from when I was a fat kid? Would you be any less attracted to me?” I shake my head. “Then that also isn’t a valid flaw. Find an actual one, Andrea.”
“Well, I know you disagree, but I have no boobs, and—”
“Why are you so obsessed with that?” he frustratedly cuts me off.
“Because it’s called a complex, Mr. Perfect. Ninety-five percent of women have more boobs than me, and it doesn’t feel great.”
He rolls his eyes, looking much more sassy than he probably meant to. “Who the fuck cares about other women? You have pretty tits that fit in my palms perfectly, firm, round, and almost symmetrical. It shouldn’t matter if—”
“What do you mean, almost symmetrical?” I protest, analyzing my breasts in the mirror to find what’s wrong.
“Your left tit is slightly bigger than the right one.”
“Are you fucking kidding me, Alexander?! In what world is giving me more things to hate about my boobs a good idea?”
“Again, that doesn’t matter.”
“Of course it does!”
“Well, my right ball is bigger than the left one, but that never stopped you from stuffing either of them in your mouth. So why should it matter for your tits?”
His absurd argument has me laughing, immediately releasing the tension that was building up. As crazy as it is, it makes sense in a way.
“You’re going to dismantle any flaw I might find, aren’t you?” I ask once my fit of laughter is over.
“One by one. Because they aren’t flaws. They’re precious details that make you who you are.”
God, I wish I could love myself as much as he loves me.
“Do you want me to tell you what I see?” he rasps in my ear after stepping behind me. I nod, hoping that he can change how I see myself. “You’re soft everywhere, and it makes me want to touch every part of you at all times.” His fingers run up my thighs, as if appreciating the smoothness of my skin. “Your curves are utterly feminine, and your wide hips bring out a primal instinct all men have in them, deeply rooted in our DNA.” His hands graze up my hips and grab onto the flesh there, fingers digging into it. “I like that I have something to hold on to when I’m fucking you, and I’m not scared I’ll break you in half. You’re desirable and sensuous, and the way your perfect ass jiggles when I take you from the back is hypnotizing.” When he comes forward, pressing his hips onto my behind, I can feel the hardened shape there, and it makes me let out a sensuous sigh. “Have you ever seen Cabanel’s Birth of Venus?”
“Uh, I don’t think so. He’s a painter or something, right?”
“A French one. My parents took me to Paris when I was thirteen, to show me around like a circus freak. They took me to a fundraising event at the Musée d’Orsay, and I wandered off into the galleries at some point. That’s when I saw Cabanel’s Venus for the first time—naked, lush, and unashamed. My sexual awakening happened right there, over a nineteenth-century painting.”
One of Lex’s hands has now traveled between my legs, rolling over my clit in slow, lazy circles.
“She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, sprawled for all to see with her soft skin and provocative posture. Her curves are still imprinted in my mind, with her small, perky breasts, wide hips, generous ass, thick thighs…”
His second hand joins the first one to thrust two fingers inside me, making me moan as I lean back into his hold.
“She haunted me for years until I slowly forgot about her. Society is pushing its own agenda, tall, fit, thin…”
Two thick fingers pump inside me with the same languid pace as he teases my clit. I can barely focus on his words, too distracted by the frustrating pleasure he brings.
“Then, one day, I brought this woman back to my place. She had the same maddening body, so womanly and perfect that I could have fucked her for days,” he explains. That catches my attention, and I frown at him in the mirror. Is he really telling me about another woman while fingering me?
“I didn’t get to, though, because she disappeared in the middle of the night,” he continues with a small smirk. “Then I had to put up with seeing her at work every day, so eager to fuck her again that my cock would ache with a single look from her.”
“Fuck, Lex,” I moan, understanding he means me.
I arch into him when his rhythm picks up, the pleasure building up so fast inside me that it makes me dizzy .
“I don’t give a shit what everyone else says. You’re my fantasy, Andrea,” he utters, making my heart clutch and my mind run wild. “Even if I tried, I couldn’t mold you to be more to my liking.”
“Really?”
“Yes. A hundred times, yes. It’s as if your body was made for my hands, my eyes, my lips, my cock… You’re Aphrodite, Venus, Persephone… Hundreds of artists have paid homage to your shape for thousands of years. And I don’t have their talent, but I’ll sure as hell spend the rest of my life worshipping it the best I can.”
I’m tongue-tied. It was all in my head. I need to stop doing this. I need to stop spiraling in my own thoughts. I create nonexistent problems, assuming wrong, filling my mind with poisonous ideas.
We’re the only ones who matter. My body doesn’t have to fit anyone’s standards but ours. And in his eyes, I’m perfect. Not because love distorts his perception of me, but because I’m his exact taste.
The realization triggers my orgasm, so I shatter in his arms while whimpering his name. He holds me against him as I tremble, his hands leisurely prolonging the pleasure.
Once it has passed, he kisses my temple and meets my eyes in the mirror. “Now, my pretty dork, I’m going to order you some Burger King, and you will eat it.”
“Didn’t you say that was garbage?”
“I did, but you love eating that, like the proper raccoon that you are. Before we get there, though, I’m going to fuck you, Andrea.”
My eyes widen, a shocked shiver spreading through me. Did he just say—
I’m off the floor before I can understand what’s happening, and he takes me to a bench by a rack of weights. I’m still stunned as he lays me onto it. Is this really happening? After almost two weeks without slex, are we really about to do it?
Lex shucks his boxer briefs, his obscenely hard cock springing out of them. Then he spreads my legs and straddles the bench between them. I’m frozen, worried I’ll scare him off if I say anything. So I lie there, looking at him and arching my back in invitation.
But he hesitates, looking down at me, conflicted. “You won’t hurt me, baby,” I promise, running my hands over his muscular torso. “Please, trust me. I need you…”
His frown betrays his doubts when I guide his tip to my opening. I slide him against me, torturing myself as much as I’m torturing him. “Look at how wet I am. You couldn’t hurt me even if you tried.” A raw and dangerous vibration rolls in his chest .
Very slowly, he thrusts in, his plump head slipping right into my greedy and drenched slit. “Fuck,” he groans. “I almost forgot how warm you are.”
More of him disappears into me, and shit, he feels so fucking good… Worried he might interpret my moan of pleasure as a whimper of pain, I swallow it back, biting my lower lip hard.
He’s slow and careful all the way to the end of me, and then he stays there, buried to the hilt in my soaked pussy. “Are you alright?” he asks softly. “Is it the plug making you feel this tight, or are you—”
“It’s the plug, I promise. I’m very, very ready for you, baby. And you feel so good,” I breathe out, wanting to reassure and soothe him.
“You too, my love.”
He pulls halfway out of me and thrusts back in. This time, I can’t control the strangled moan that rips out of me. It’s as if the toy in my ass forces his cock precisely where it feels the best. His gray eyes meet mine, and the worry in them saddens me.
“You aren’t hurting me,” I promise, pulling him by the nape to kiss him.
Our exchange is romantic and soft, and it gives him the confidence to finally move. He pulls in and out of me with slow motions, keeping it gentle. There’s no more talking for a long while, only our sweet and careful lovemaking. It’s impossible to say how long we remain like this, but I’m certain the honeycomb pattern of the bench is imprinted on my back.
It feels so good to have him make love to me. And not only physically, but because it’s a big leap toward healing since that awful night. He’s returning to the man he used to be, reclaiming the control of his desires, relearning to trust himself with my body. He still isn’t entirely confident, his pace measured and reasonable. Some part of him is still scared he’ll hurt me again, so he keeps it tender and safe.
“Lex, I need you to go harder,” I beg. This is very enjoyable, but I’ll need ages to come like this—even with the plug.
Unhurriedly, his momentum increases, his shoves growing harder and faster. It’s incredible to have him in charge. I missed this. Missed my beautiful man leading the way and bringing us both to pleasure.
Every time I look away, I find us in one of the mirrors, the reflection so erotic it has me dripping even more. I see him fucking me, I see his passion, his love for me. And I see myself, trapped underneath him, and those flaws I hate so much. Like the bumps of cellulite on my outer thighs, particularly visible when I’m spread like this. Or the way my breasts flatten and almost disappear. But none of that comes in the way of Lex’s adoration for me. Those genuinely do not matter to him .
“You feel so good, baby,” I moan, wanting to encourage him to give more even though we’re both panting and overheated. I whisper sweet praises into his ear, moan dirty promises, whimper scandalous demands… My body jolts with every one of his adamant thrusts, and angled like I am, it moves the plug inside me every time, mimicking penetration. It drives me mad, making me wish there was more there, making me desperate to know what he’d feel like, drilling into the tight hole like he’s doing in my pussy.
“I can’t wait to feel you in my ass,” I impulsively moan, his harsh pace and deep shoves maddeningly good. “I bet you’d feel so good, baby, stretching me with your thick cock.”
His hips buck into me helplessly, his dangerous groan echoing in the room. “Fuck, Andrea… How do you do this?” he asks with awe, granting me long and deep thrusts.
“Do what?”
“Constantly surprise me.”
A smile bends my lips as I kiss the underside of his jaw before nipping his chin. “That’s because you constantly inspire me, mi amor .”
That seems to break the very last of his restraint, and he fucks into me like a man possessed, like he used to before his birthday.
When he twists both my nipples with the perfect harshness, I go all the way off. I come apart with a loud scream that I muffle into his shoulder, biting into it so hard he grunts in pain. He follows me seconds later, moaning my name endlessly. My orgasm is stronger than the ones I’ve had lately, and its intensity brings tears to my eyes. Shit, it’s fucking amazing.
Lex seems to enjoy himself immensely, too, his jerky thrusts hectic, his thick and warm cum filling me until it seeps out from around his cock to trickle down the crack of my ass onto the bench.
Fuck, I forgot how much I love it when he creampies me like this. It has to be a fucking miracle that I haven’t gotten pregnant yet. Is there a point where too much sperm can win against copper? Apparently not, since he’s filled me to the brim many times. Science is fucking amazing.
He lies over me on the bench, as spent as I am, and I don’t make him move even though it’s hard to breathe. “Are you okay, baby?” I ask with a feeble voice, grazing his back up and down.
“I should be the one asking you.”
“Oh, I’m fantastic. Ready for round two when you are.”
He chuckles over me. “That’s the insatiable raccoon I know and love. Let’s get a thousand calories into you first, and then you can use all that regained energy to do the fucking.”
“That sounds like a genius plan, Coleman.”
“Well, I have to use my genius brain for something, don’t I? ”
I giggle, pulling him in for a deep kiss.
Sometimes, I see the man so much that I forget the genius. But he actually is one, so when he says I don’t have to worry about Evora, then I need to believe him. That’ll make the gala a lot more pleasant than I anticipated.
And if people see me on his arm and don’t get why he chose me, then fuck them. It’s their problem for not getting it.
We get it, and that’s all I need.