Mutual Appreciation #2
“Okay.”
He was quiet a moment. Then: “The way you looked just now, when I was looking at you. That’s not something to be embarrassed about, or apologize for. That did something to me too. You understand?”
I looked at him.
“Whatever you felt in that moment, I felt it too. From my side of it. We’re not in different places here.”
“I ruined it,” I said flatly.
“You didn’t ruin anything.”
“I started crying.”
“I know.” The edge of his mouth moved, softer than a smile. “I was here.”
I made a sound somewhere between a laugh and something more fractured. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
“I cried during sex.”
“We haven’t had sex yet.”
“I cried before sex.”
“That’s allowed.”
He pressed into me just enough that I felt him against my thigh. He hadn’t gone anywhere. “You didn’t ruin anything. If this is what you want.” He kissed the corner of my mouth.
“I want it,” I nodded. I could feel my heart still unsteady and the embarrassment still hot on my skin, but underneath it something was loosening.
He kissed me again. “And for the record, Lyss?”
“Hmm?”
“This probably won’t be the last time you cry in this bed.”
My eyes went wide and my mouth fell open when he leaned back down and took it with his. Then his hands closed over my hips and moved me, arranging me exactly where he wanted me. There was something undoing about being handled like that, like the only thing being asked of me was to let him.
When I felt him tease against my entrance, my whole body tensed in anticipation. He paused, eyes on mine. “Breathe, Lyss. We’ll go slow.” His voice broke a little in the quiet. “If it’s ever too much… tell me. I’ll pull back. Okay?”
I nodded. “Okay.”
His first push stung sweetly as my body stretched to adjust to him. I gasped and dug my nails into his back.
“Relax, Lyss. Breeeeathe with me, baby.”
I took a deep inhale, and a shaky exhale as he gave me more. My thighs trembled and I began to realize he was reaching places that had never been touched. The sting eased as I adjusted, warmth flooding in as my body caught up to him.
“Julian!” I gasped, startled at how desperate it sounded.
He stilled, searching my face, his own expression overcome with effort and restraint.
“Too much?”
I shook my head. “No. Don’t stop.” I rolled my hips up to meet him and wrapped my arms around his back. “All of you.”
He groaned and answered with one slow, final push until he was buried. I cried out, back arching, the fullness so much I couldn’t exhale for a second.
“G—od!” I whimpered. The exclamation came out stretched, the way I was being stretched around him.
He held still, breathing shallow, looking at me. Then smiled, kissed me, and began to move, watching my face the whole time.
“Mmph,” he grunted. His mouth crushed mine again, his groan swallowed between our lips. Then he moved in slow long glides, making sure I felt every stroke and every tremor that shot through me.
“Alyssa,” he panted. “You’re unbelievable. Gorgeous.”
My legs locked tighter around his waist, pulling him in. “Mmm,” I moaned.
He continued slowly rolling his hips, back and forth. “Tell me what you like.”
I gripped his arms. “Harder. You won’t break me.”
His focus shifted, and I understood then, that every careful thing before that had been him holding himself on a leash for my sake. Now that I’d asked, the leash was gone.
He rocked me faster, then harder, and I squeezed him, clenching hard, drawing him in with every thrust, making his breath still for a second.
I did it again.
He cursed under his breath, faltering just slightly in his rhythm. “Mmph,” he muttered. “You don’t play fair.”
I smiled, proud of the reaction I pulled from him. “Neither do you.”
He looked at me like he was accepting a challenge, and then he was on the move.
He gripped my waist, shifted me down a bit while grabbing a pillow, and slid it underneath my hips, tilting me up, then pressed back into me.
That slight shift in angle allowed his next stroke to hit a place I hadn’t known I had. My back came off the bed.
An “Oh!” tore out of me, loud, and the second I heard it, I swallowed the rest, clamping it back down.
“Nuh-uh. Loud as you need to be. Let me hear you.” His mouth found my left breast while his hand fondled my right, sucking and licking as he rocked me, and I arched, gasped, and moaned.
“Ohhhh, yeeeeesssss!” I wailed.
“They’re sensitive?” he said against my chest, smiling.
“Very,” I hissed, breath gone.
“Lucky me.” He continued to worship them, tongue, teeth, fingers teasing, while never stopping the deep thrusts of his hips.
He kept moving, smooth and relentless, like he had no plan to stop until he’d wrung me out. I felt like I was floating above myself. An out of body experience, every nerve down to my toes tingling. The most exhilarating feeling I’d ever had.
He braced himself, muscles flexing beneath my fingertips as they dug into his back, dragging down over damp skin, desperate for something to hold on to.
“Why do you feel so damn gooood,” he choked out, voice strained.
His hips slapped faster and I squeezed around him again, without meaning to that time, chasing the friction.
He planted one hand on the headboard, shifting his angle and the bed rocked beneath us, headboard tapping the wall.
“You like that?” He stared into my eyes.
“Yesss… right there,” I moaned, breathlessly. “Mmmm.”
He moved like a metronome, in and out, over and over, like he was fucking me to a beat only he could hear.
I closed my eyes and let my head drop to the side. He took my chin and turned my head back to look at him.
“At me, Lyss. Eyes on me, gorgeous.”
I opened my eyes and there he was staring at me. Looking into my soul, and that, more even than what his hips were doing, was what sent me over.
“Julian! I’m… I’m gonna—”
“I know, baby.” His body slapped against mine, slap, slap, slap, slap, each sound sending more waves rolling through me.
They crashed up through me at once, the way your entire body locks and trembles in the middle of a long, satisfying yawn and stretch. That helpless, shaking, almost-too-much tension that you don’t want to end. I convulsed around him, shaking, as cries pulled from somewhere deep.
“Oh my— Oh! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yeeeeeeeees!” I exploded. My hands scrambled for something, sheets, skin, him, anything to anchor me as the wave took over.
A grunt tore out of him the moment I let go, like he’d been holding out long enough for me to release first. His hips slammed into me once more before he tensed and pulsed.
For a moment I couldn’t do anything but gasp. Every nerve lit and exhausted and overwhelmed. I hadn’t known my body could feel like that.
He kissed my temple, my cheek, my jaw, my lips. Then he eased out, both of us slick and spent.
I was still catching my breath when he pulled back, hovering, and looked into my eyes. We lay there breathing into each other.
His expression softened. “Stay there.”
He got up and went to his bathroom, then came back with a warm cloth and a bottle of water from somewhere, set the water in my hand, and gently propped me up like I was something that needed arranging carefully.
Then he wiped me down, slow and careful, his hand steady on my still-trembling thigh while he tended to me like it was the most natural thing in the world.
No one had ever done that. Not once, in my entire life. I drank the water and let him. Unraveling a little bit more at being cared for, with nothing asked back. It was a thing I had not known I was allowed to have.
When he was done he slid in behind me, and pulled me against his chest like that was simply where I fit now.
I still couldn’t breathe right. How was I supposed to, when I’d just learned that I’d been deprived my entire sexually active life.
Not just in the years of celibacy after the marriage, but inside it, and before it.
My entire adult life. What Julian had just given me didn’t deserve to share a name with any of it.
I groaned and threw an arm over my eyes, laughing quietly into it despite myself. This is how women lose their minds. I could end up one orgasm away from snapping like Lynn Whitfield in A Thin Line Between Love and Hate, swearing up and down he belonged to me.
Julian’s head lifted. “What’s funny?”
Damn it, Alyssa. Lie. Fake a sneeze. I smiled, just enough to soften it. “Just realizing you might have ruined me for anyone else. Don’t let it go to your head.”
The corner of his mouth lifted. “Might’ve?”
I laughed and shoved at his chest. “Don’t get cocky, Mr. Wade.” Then I mimicked him in exaggerated bass: “Why do you feel so damn good.”
He laughed. “Mutual appreciation, then.”
“Mutual appreciation.”
julian
We lay together quietly. Nothing but our breathing and the distant hum of the night outside my window.
“How many do you have?” she asked, tracing my skin.
“How many what?”
“Tattoos.” Her fingertip circled one on my shoulder. “I keep finding new ones.”
“Seven.”
“Seven?” She lifted her head. “How have I never noticed them all?”
“They’re not exactly in obvious places.”
She settled back down and took that as permission to keep looking. “Well, you said seven. I’m at four.”
She traced along my ribs, checked my other shoulder, then found the inside of my upper arm.