Thirty-Two #2
‘Stop. Let me get this out, okay? I’m not good at expressing things, and I don’t have all this easy affection.
I’m not easy, I know that, but I don’t lie.
Not about important things, you know I don’t.
I don’t lie and I don’t protect people’s feelings and I don’t embellish, so I know you know that when I say I love you, I really fucking mean it.
I really want you to be my boyfriend. For real this time. ’
With a big spluttering breath, he melts. He buries his face in the crook of my neck, peppering sweet kisses there, whispering sweet words that are incomprehensible beyond their ability to make me feel so fucking good.
‘Is that a yes?’
He laughs like the question is beyond ridiculous. Looks at me like I’m a fool for asking it. ‘Baby, we’ve been dating for real since the first time you walked into the diner and commandeered me.’
‘That’s a big word.’
‘I have a really good tutor.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Hm. Really hot too.’
‘She’s blushing, wherever she is, I’m sure.’
‘God, I hope so.’ He kisses my cheek, nuzzles the flushed skin. ‘So pretty when she does.’
I laugh, and it’s half delirious. I shift to find his mouth, to kiss him, and the moment our lips connect, my whole body just .
. . well, at the risk of sound fucking dramatic, it rejoices.
It weeps. I damn near weep at the rush of comfort, at the familiarity, at this undeniable sense that this is right.
Like a piece of me has been missing all along, and he’s safely returning it.
Groaning, Heath cups my face and tilts it upwards, angling me the way he wants me, to kiss me as deeply as possible.
So urgent, it makes my whole body buzz. I try to return his eagerness, but I’m lost, swept up in sensation, so out of my mind that my injury is even less than an afterthought; I only remember my limitations when I try to wrap my arms around his neck, and the healing muscle twinges.
My tiny hiss sends Heath reeling backwards. He curses and lets me go, stumbles back, clutches the nape of his neck desperately as if he’s physically fighting the urge to touch me again. ‘Fuck. Sorry. I forgot.’
Slipping off the stool and onto wobbly legs, I reach for him. ‘Forget again.’
It’s his turn to hiss. Like a feral fucking cat, he bats me away. ‘We can’t. I’ll hurt you.’
I laugh, groan and whine all at once – the building heat between my thighs fucking aches. ‘You’re hurting me right now.’
‘Fuck.’ His bottom lip disappears between his teeth. Like he can’t help himself, he staggers forward again. That bruising grip returns to my hips; his mouth returns to mine. Against it, he groans, ‘I don’t wanna hurt you.’
‘So don’t. Fuck me.’
I swear to God, his whole body trembles. ‘Are you sure?’ His forehead falls to mine, those perfect eyes flitting between both of my mine, seeking the truth. ‘We don’t have to. You don’t have to want to. I swear to God, I’m not expecting anything.’
‘I want to.’ I can’t believe how much I want to, how much I need to. It must be written all over me, it must be so obvious in my clenched thighs and my raspy breath and my fingernails carving marks into his nape.
Yet still, he repeats, ‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m sure I’m gonna get pissed off if you keep asking me.’
‘In that case, are you sure?’
Scoffing, I lean in to nip his lip. ‘Yes.’
‘If you want me to stop—’
‘Then I’ll say it, and you will.’
God, does that make him groan. Deep and satisfied and so fucking hot. When he kisses me again, it’s different. Slower. Less urgent. Lazy, as if we have all the time in the world, and he wants to use every last minute just doing this.
His fingers graze my chest, and my breath hitches.
Just as leisurely, he takes his time unbuttoning my shirt.
Every button that pops free makes him kiss me harder.
When he undoes the last one and the fabric gapes revealingly, his kisses move to follow the fabric as he slips it off, lingering over my scar and dragging down my arm and nipping at the thin skin of the crook of my elbow.
As my shirt falls to the floor, my head falls back.
My fingers dig into the nape of his neck as he bestows that same gentle, thorough affection across my chest, nips the swell of my cleavage, drags the cups of my bra down, the image of my spilled tits just as obscene as the things his mouth does to them.
I’m panting by the time he gets rid of my bra and drops to his knees.
I cry out as his tongue circles my bellybutton and traces the curve of either hip bone – I almost cry fat, pathetic, desperate tears when he takes his sweet time licking the length of my waistband, teeth catching on the soft fabric and pulling it down an inch before his hands help.
Breathless, mindless, barely functioning, I peer down at him as he strips me completely naked.
Dazed eyes catch my stare. Holds it as he drags wet, hot kisses up my inner thigh. Loses it briefly when our eyes flutter shut in unison at the first swipe of his tongue through my cunt, and we both groan.
One hand gripping the counter, the other grips his crown, holds him where he is – as if I have to.
As if he isn’t more than happy to be there.
Licking and nipping and wasting no fucking time, eating me out like his fucking life depends on it, making me feel things I can’t even describe, I can’t quantify, I just fucking can’t.
I’m riding his damn mouth, right on the cusp of coming, when he pulls away.
‘Need you on the edge,’ he drowns out my groan with one of his own, he hoists me up, and the next thing I know, I’m on my bed, on my back, writhing and whining and watching him strip.
‘Need you there. Too fucking close already.’
His clothes hit the floor, and I see exactly what he means.
His cock is so hard, so red, already leaking from the tip, and he grimaces as he fists the base.
I start to sit up, to reach for him, to return the favor, but he bats off my attempts.
Instead, he shifts us so he’s on his back and I’m straddling his hips, I’m—
‘Fuck.’ His cock slides so perfectly through my wet cunt, hits my clit just right, and it makes me buckle.
Spine arched, I brace one hand on his chest and slip the other between my thighs, holding him in place as I start a slow, mindless grind.
Vaguely, I’m aware of Heath bucking, of him swearing, of him watching me intently while blindly reaching for something – a condom, I recognize when it hovers in my line of sight.
Wasting no time, I rip it open and roll it on, and that alone has Heath arching off the bed. ‘Jesus, Daniela.’ Teeth gritted, he grips my waist hard enough to bruise. ‘Please, baby. Put it in. Fucking please.’
I do. Slowly. Adjusting to the stretch and the sting and the fullness, God, the fullness.
Grasping clumsily at his wrists for stability, I ride him slowly, getting used to it, feeling it out, finding the perfect angle and all but screaming when I do.
All the while, he just gapes at me. Slack-jawed and incoherent, and the second I speed up, he swears and begs for more.
He begs me to come. He begs me to make him come, to let him come, and, God, that does me in.
I break with a cry, and he’s barely a second behind me.
I’m sobbing as I collapse on his chest. Honest-to-God tears drip down my cheeks and pool in the contour of his collarbone, the bone so prominent as he strains against the pleasure wringing him dry.
I cry because it feels so good. I cry because it feels so right.
I cry because I grieve, just a little, for all the times it wasn’t like this and I thought it was my fault.
And as I slowly come down from that lovely, sense-obliterating high, I kiss Heath’s throat, his jaw, as far as my limp, exhausted body can reach, and I repeat the three words I have never meant quite as much as I do right now.
The hands scalding my lower back, pressing our pelvises as flush as they can possibly be, creep upwards. One cups my nape, the other sweeping my sweat-dampened hair away from my face, crooking my chin until our lips meet.
Heath’s cheeks are damp too. Salty when my mouth finds one. Dimpled with a blinding, wonderful smile. ‘This was all an elaborate plan to get out of going for dinner, wasn’t it?’ he jokes, and I laugh.
I sound a little delirious. Raspy. Happy.
I am so happy that I forget about my shoulder, and when I roll onto it like a dumbass, Heath rectifies my pained hiss by cuddling me to his chest again.
So careful – always so careful with me – he wraps his arms around my middle, palms coasting the curve of my ass.
He breathes in deep. Exhales even deeper. Pure relief. The kind of sound you make when you finally sit down after a long, hard day. ‘I can’t believe this is real.’
Neither can I.
But, fuck, I am so glad it is.