Chapter 18 #2
Her laugh added to the warmth of the space as she reeled off more of her favourites.
Some Clay hadn’t heard so she found them on her Spotify and made him listen to them, and before he knew it they were driving under the arch of the wrought-iron entrance to the ranch.
Shortly after that, he was rolling to a stop outside her cabin, letting the engine idle to the tune of ‘Bless the Broken Road’.
Which could not have been more appropriate.
‘Hmm,’ she hummed happily, a contented smile on her face as she half turned in her seat, her eyes meeting his in the darkened space of the cab. ‘That was a great night.’
It was. And, God help him – as their gazes lingered – he didn’t want it to end. She didn’t either if he was reading it right, her smile slowly fading as the easy-going atmosphere in the cab became… charged. The shift tingled against his tongue and set a sudden frisson skittering through his blood.
‘You wanna stargaze? I think the clouds are going to clear.’
A slow shake of her head added a sizzle to the air. ‘No.’
Clay’s heart thudded like the pound of horses’ hooves on hard ground as he contemplated his next words. ‘You ever… make out in a truck before?’
As far as Clay was concerned, it was a seminal experience that every red-blooded American kid should have. Not sex – just wild, crazy, pushing-the-envelope-but-never-going-all-the-way passion which was fun, heady, harmless and super instructive.
And maybe more Stevie’s pace?
Maybe something so innocuous was passé in this social-media, online-dating, instant-hook-up world (from which he had benefited greatly), but some of the best times Clay had ever had as a teenager involved making out with girls in cars. And he wanted that for Stevie, too.
‘Nope.’
Clay’s breath went thick in his throat. ‘Would you like to?’
A slow smile spread across her face as she unsnapped her seat belt. ‘Definitely.’
Then she was reaching for him as she slid across the bench seat and Clay had time only to kill the engine, the headlights and music cutting out as her body smooshed against his just like that first time in his car, and blood rushed to every cell and sinew of his body, thickening his pulse.
Her hands pushed into his hair, her fingernails an erotic scrape on his scalp as their eyes found each other’s in the dark.
‘I’ve been wanting to kiss you all night,’ she whispered, her warm breath fanning his mouth.
‘Same,’ he muttered as he slid his hands to her hips and hitched her closer in their awkward side-on positions. ‘Same.’
And then their lips met and it was like electricity finding its earth.
Hot, sizzling, showering sparks that lit up every nerve ending.
Clay groaned, it was so damn good, licking up the taste of tequila from the pitcher of margaritas she’d shared with Mags, filling up with the aroma of her perfume and the wild suck of her breathing.
Within a minute, the windscreen was fogged from their ragged pants, two mouths desperately smashing together, exploring and plundering, the nonsensical noises torn from their throats as feral as Clay’s throbbing, thumping desire.
He was an experienced twenty-eight-year-old man with oodles of sexual experience and an almost crippling erection fogging up the car windows like a teenager with a woman of zero sexual experience who was also famous and might not actually want to do anything more than just kiss and touch a little.
And yet nothing short of a grizzly jumping on the hood could sever this desire right now.
Except for the stealth clutch of her hand around his cock.
‘Fuuck.’ Clay tore his mouth from hers, his heart banging against his rib cage as he shut his eyes momentarily to dispel the stars bursting across his vision.
He opened them again, meeting her eyes that glittered with a sexual inebriation that had nothing to do with tequila.
‘Is this okay?’ she asked over the noisy shunt of their breathing. ‘Please?’ She squeezed him then, clamping his nuts in a vice as pleasure stormed his defences and his head thunked back against his seat. ‘I’ve been dying to touch you like this.’
Christ on a cracker. Clay’s dick throbbed at the entreaty in her voice. It took all his willpower not to thrust against her hand.
‘I want to see you.’ Her fingers stroked him through his jeans. ‘I want to feel you. I want to… do for you what you’ve done for me the last two times. You told me to ask for what I wanted. I want this.’
Yeah… he should have known that was going to come back and bite him on the ass.
‘I can’t pretend that I’ve done this before but I know the theory and… you could teach me how you like it?’
Teach her? Sweet Jesus, she was going to kill him.
‘Stevie girl…’ Clay threaded his hand through her hair and pulled her in for a kiss, groaning as her mouth moved hungrily on his, her hand just as hungry as it played over him, her fingers finding the stud of his jeans and then his zipper as they pulled the tab down.
He didn’t stop her – this was, after all, part of the whole making-out-in-a-car experience. Plus, he didn’t fucking want to. This was the third time she’d asked to touch him and he was sick of denying himself.
Denying her what she wanted.
But Clay had not been prepared for the sensation of her fingers reaching inside his underwear and wrapping around his taut aching flesh, tentatively at first then boldly as she pulled him free of his boxers It might be dark, but Clay had no doubt she could see his cock perfectly by the satisfied hiss of her breath.
His body was balanced on the edge of the precipice, his vision blurry, the air in his lungs as heavy as wet sand as he waited for her to do something other than stare at him, her downcast head making it hard to read what she was thinking.
When she finally did look at him it was with the kind of awe a guy with his sized ego didn’t need.
‘So?’ she asked, her expression uncertain. ‘How do you like it?’
Clay hadn’t ever had a preference and he sure as hell couldn’t give a flying fuck now as long as she kept touching him. ‘I’ll like it however you want to give it.’
A little V formed between her eyes. ‘That’s not particularly helpful.’
He gave a half laugh. ‘Sorry, it’s just… nothing is going to feel bad right now, is all.’
‘I can’t… hurt it?’
She glanced down again as did Clay. Her question was fair enough considering even in the muted light his cock was flushed a dark purple-red as it strained against the taut outer casing of his flesh. And it did ache – something terrible – but her hands on him were soothing as well as rousing.
It was a double-edged sword.
‘I meant it when I said it was hardy.’
That seemed to please Stevie, a slow smile warming her face. ‘So I can… play?’
Oh, holy Jesus, he was a dead man. Clay swallowed. ‘You can.’
And that was all the invitation she needed as she returned her attention to his cock, her hand moving slowly at first – up and down – but with increasing confidence, stroking him as her thumb rubbed across his tip.
The muscles in Clay’s stomach contracted, the ones slung between his hip bones quivered and the ones in his ass clenched tight.
His head thunked back against the rest, his neck losing its ability to support, his eyes shuttering as a charge of hot pleasure flicked on all his nerve endings like switches, one after the other.
He was lit up, every synapse fizzing, every cell in a state of excruciating excitability.
Clay vaguely felt her shifting and then her hand was gone, but there was something better, a soft, wet heat swiping over the head of his cock.
Jesus. Clay’s heart kicked him in the chest as his eyes flung open, a guttural cry wrenching from the back of his throat as he looked down to see her tongue circling around and around the blunt dome of his cock.
Like he was a lollipop and she had a sugar addiction.
‘Fuuuuck, Stevie…’ he panted as one hand grabbed the steering wheel and the other gripped her hip tighter.
She made an appreciative noise in the back of her throat which vibrated straight down his shaft, earthing in his balls and causing his eyes to roll back in his head.
But when her mouth took him deeper he opened his eyes again and watched her, watched her lips stretch and his shaft disappear bit by bit, cushioned by the heat and wet of her tongue.
She was tentative at first, exploring, tasting, her head bobbing slowly, those two tight, neat plaits the most erotic-looking reins he’d ever seen, but on her third pass, she went a little further, her hand sliding to his thigh, gripping it hard, the slim band of her purity ring staring him down.
Well hell… Talk about ripping him out of the moment.
Damn it. He wanted to take her to his cabin, lay her on his bed and love every inch of her body. And, he knew now she’d had her mouth on his cock, that’s exactly where this night was heading. But he needed to be sure it was what she really wanted.
Because he didn’t want her leaving the RVR with any regrets let alone one of them being him.
With his last shred of control, Clay muttered, ‘Stevie.’
But she didn’t hear him or, given the depth of his pitch maybe she thought he was encouraging her? Either way, Stevie went down again – deeper – the tight sling of muscles low in Clay’s belly giving a treacherous shudder.
Oh God…
‘Stevie,’ he repeated, firmer this time, his hand on her shoulder urging her off, urging her up until she was blinking at him, her eyes glazed with lust.
‘Am I hurting?’ she asked on a pant, her brow furrowed. ‘It’s taking me a bit to figure out the teeth thing.’
Clay smiled and smoothed back a wisp of hair at her temples before tucking his dick back in his underwear. ‘No.’
More confusion. ‘I am doing it wrong?’
‘No,’ he assured her on a chuckle, leaning in to kiss her, slow and languid, his mouth lingering, savouring the taste of himself on her lips before he pulled away. ‘You’re not doing it wrong.’
‘Okay…?’
She was clearly confused as was his poor dick, although mightily fucking pissed was probably a better descriptor. ‘I’m very close to coming right now and I’d really like to take you to my cabin and be inside you the first time I do.’
She smiled then, relief flooding her face. ‘I’d like that, too.’
‘Are you sure, Stevie? I need you to be sure because… you’re still wearing that purity ring.
’ He tipped his chin at her hand high on his thigh.
‘And I’m not sure if that’s just habit or if you’re actually not ready, like really deep down ready, to lose your virginity just yet which is why you keep it on. ’
‘Oh.’ Lifting her hand, Stevie blinked at her ring.
‘Which is fine,’ he hastened to assure her as she stared at it. ‘If you just want to keep doing what we’re doing – that’s fine.’ He could live with mutual masturbation if that was as far as Stevie really wanted to go.
There were worse ways to pass two weeks.
‘This isn’t me saying if you don’t want to go all the way, we can’t keep making out.
’ He smiled because she was looking uncertain now and he didn’t want that, either.
‘I’m happy to go as far as you want. I just…
don’t want you to have any regrets so I need you to be sure this is what you really want. ’
She didn’t say anything for long moments, her gaze glued to the ring. Then, breaking from her reverie, she slid the ring off her finger and placed it in the tray beneath his radio where his cell phone sat.
Turning back to him, her eyes met his, radiating purpose. ‘I’m sure.’
‘Stevie, I don’t want you to—’
She shook her head at him, cutting him off.
‘Clay,’ she murmured. ‘I’m sure. It’s still on my finger because, yes, as you said, it’s habit and I honestly forget it’s there most of the time.
But also because if I do take it off I might get used to that and not remember to put it back on again when I head back to Boston. ’
Back to Boston. Already, Clay hated those words. But that wasn’t what was important in what she’d just said. He frowned. ‘Why would you put it back on again?’
‘Because my mother would definitely notice if I wasn’t wearing it.’
Hmm. Okay. ‘And you don’t want her to know?’
‘No.’ Stevie shook her head. Vigorously. ‘I don’t.’
Well, that was definitive. ‘Stevie… I don’t want to get between you and your mom and whatever the deal is with the whole purity ring thing but… you’re twenty-two. Is it really any of her business?’
She sighed. ‘I know. It’s just… complicated. With her. And, trust me, it’ll be easier this way.’
Clearly, there was stuff there that Stevie didn’t want to get in to. Either with him or at this particular moment or both. But he meant what he said; he really didn’t want to get between her and her mother. ‘This isn’t some kind of… rebellion, is it?’
Not that he would normally care. Women had used him for all kinds of reasons over the years and if Stevie wanted to use him for that, so be it. But often such acts led to remorse and he did not want to be the implement of her regret.
‘Clay.’ She leaned in and kissed him then, hot and hard, and despite his reservations, his simmering desire flared again.
When she pulled back, her lips were wet and the rich glitter was back in her eyes.
‘I decided when I put this ring on when I was sixteen that, for me, it wasn’t about saving myself for marriage, it was about being particular over who I chose to go all the way with.
And I choose you. I want to go to your cabin and I want to lie on your bed and I want you to show me how a man loves a woman.
I want it for me. I’ve wanted it from the moment I saw you on the back of Electra.
And the only regret I’ll have will be if I leave here not knowing what it feels like to have you inside me. ’
Her quiet, serious words laced with conviction felled Clay like a tree. He wasn’t some impulse for her; she’d chosen him. And fuck if that didn’t hit him like a kick from a horse.
‘Put your seat belt on,’ he muttered and started the engine.