Chapter 24
ELLA
Ry kisses with his whole body and not just his lips. It’s part of the reason I can never get enough of him.
Never, ever, ever.
His tongue sweeps across mine and his hands graze up my stomach, nearing my breast when he suddenly breaks away, leaving me dazed and empty. “Give me just a minute.” He walks several paces away from me, and I watch the movement of his back and shoulders as he adjusts the massive erection straining against his jeans.
“Does it hurt?”
Taking a deep breath, he spins back around. “Does what hurt?”
The sight of him makes my mouth dry. I nod my head at his crotch.
He furrows his brow. “My dick? Does my dick hurt?”
I grunt. He knows what I’m talking about. He’s just being difficult. Just being Ry. “Having an erection and knowing there’s no immediate relief. Ummm…release.”
I’m not sure of the proper word.
He smirks, tugging his mouth into a sly little smile. “Oh, I’ll have release. I always have release. The second your car pulls out of this driveway, I’ll have my fist wrapped around myself, thinking of you.” He props his hands on his waist and tilts his head. “Never mind, I drove you here tonight. Let me rephrase that. The second I drop you back at your house, I’ll pull over on the side of the road and have my fist wrapped around me, thinking of you.”
My face flushes red and my body grows hot. “You do that?”
He laughs. “Of course, I do that, Lulu. I’m a guy.” He takes a step toward me. “You’re telling me that you don’t? You don’t touch yourself and think of me?”
I don’t avoid his gaze. Because that’s not what I do. But I do know that my face must look like I just dived into a plate full of ketchup. Bright red. I can feel it.
His laugh is lower now. “Good. I’m glad to hear it.”
“There are condoms in your glove box.”
He swallows. “Yes.”
“Do you use them?”
“When I have sex, I do.”
Sucker punch. Holy shit, that hurt. The thought of him with another woman makes me sick. Physically sick. “Oh. And do you do that often?”
“Not since I met you.” He holds up his hands, showing me his palms. “These calluses aren’t just from working on cars.”
“So, you haven’t had sex with anyone since you met me?”
“I just said that, didn’t I?”
“What about before you met me? Did you have a lot of sex then?”
“I did.”
I can’t breathe. That sucker punch cracked a rib. I lift my chin, refusing to show how much that answer affected me. “How many girls have you slept with?”
He folds his arms across his broad chest. “Why? Why are you asking me that question?”
“Because I’ve decided that I’m going to have sex with you. Not tonight, of course. But one day, we’ll have sex. So, I think I have a right to know how many women you’ve been with. It’s a responsible and reasonable question.”
I am so bad at this, but he knows by now that I’m nothing if not forthcoming.
He rubs his hand over his jaw. “You’ve decided, huh? You know, Lulu, losing your virginity is a very big deal. It’s not something to take lightly.”
“Who said I was a virgin?”
He rolls his eyes. “Are you serious right now? Come on.”
I wave my hands around in the air. “Fine. Fine. Point taken. But you’re still avoiding the question.”
“Because I don’t wanna answer it.”
“That many, huh?” I bite my bottom lip in thought. He said he never sleeps with a girl who’s high, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t sleep with drug addicts who happen not to be high at that particular moment. Has he had sex with that Christina girl? She looked really nasty.
“Go ahead and ask me. I know you want to.”
He’s right. He’s always right. So, I do. I ask.
And he doesn’t like the question.
“I don’t have sex with drug addicts, no. And I try to make it a point not to have sex with ugly girls.”
“Ry, this isn’t funny. I’m being serious.”
He throws his hands up in the air. “Me too, Lulu. You wanna know my life’s sexual history? Fine! I was a virgin until after I graduated high school. Why, you ask? Because I make it a point to never have sex with a girl who knows where I come from. Who knows my past. Who knows my family.
“I’ll meet a girl at college or at the bar and have sex in my truck. Sex at her place. Hell, I’ve even had sex in a public bathroom. I’ve never gone on more than a handful of dates with someone because that would have them getting too close. And even then, it’s not actual dating. It’s just fucking.
“I prefer to meet a strange girl, have some fun, and she’ll never know that I come from filthy white trash. She’ll never know that I don’t have a home. That I sleep in either a twin bed in the middle of a body shop or a blow-up mattress in a tent in the woods. She’ll never know that, most days, I shower at least two or three times because I’m terrified of physically looking like the white trash I am.”
He’s pacing. Breathing hard. Clenching his fists.
All of that hurt. Every single word. That broken rib just pierced my heart. I hate to think of him with other women. I hate to think that his body has been inside of someone else’s body. A body that’s not mine.
More importantly, I hate what he thinks of himself.
Ry is my world. My person. My soulmate. My one true love.
I wish he could see himself the way I see him.
He stops stomping around and stares at me. “Well? What do you have to say?”
“I hope you’ve been tested for STDs because I need to know you’re clean for when we have sex.”
He bends back, screaming into the night sky. “You drive me fucking mad, woman. I tell you all of that, and that’s all you have to say? And yes, by the way, my cock is absolutely 100% perfect. Condoms do their job.”
I scoff. “That’s not all I have to say, but it’s the only practical thing to say right now. I could tell you what a wonderful person you are and how none of those things you think about yourself are remotely true, but you wouldn’t believe me. It would go in one ear and out the other. I could tell you how I’m terrified that you won’t wanna have sex with me because I know who you are and where you come from. I could tell you that the thought of you being inside of another woman makes me wanna throw up because the only person you’re supposed to be inside of is me . I could tell you that I’m terrified that you’ll grow tired of waiting for me and go find someone else to have sex with. I could tell you that I’m terrified of leaving here tonight and not feeling your body on top of mine. Feeling what I want. Feeling what I need. Because I feel like I’m about to die without it.”
He’s giving me a headache. I grab the tie securing my braid and work my fingers through my hair, shaking everything loose until a pile of waves fall around my shoulders. “So, tell me what you want me to say. Tell me, Ry, and I’ll say it.”
For several long minutes we stare at one another. He’s watching me, studying me. Looking at me like I’m a flower blooming in the middle of the night. Looking at me like I’m the most precious thing he’s ever seen.
And I love it.
“Tell me what happens when you orgasm, Lulu. Do you cry out? Do you shake?”
I don’t know how he hears me. I can barely hear my own whisper. “That’s never happened. You know I’m a virgin.”
“You don’t need to have sex to have an orgasm. What happens when you touch yourself and think of me?”
“It feels good. Really good. But I can’t bring myself that far. It doesn’t happen for me.”
Ry crosses the distance between us, closing the chasm that nearly broke us apart. Stepping between my legs, he bends down, brushing his lips against mine. I wrap myself around him, my arms, my legs. I press his new erection against me.
“Go ahead and ask me,” he presses. “I know you want to.”
“Are you gonna have sex with me tonight?”
“No, you’re not ready.” He leans back and looks into my eyes. “Do you trust me?”
“You know I do.”
He kisses me long and deep, leaving my body swirling in a desire thick as molasses. Fire burns my skin, butterflies dance in my stomach, and need pulses through my core. Unwrapping himself from my legs, he unzips my ankle boots, placing them on the other side of the truck bed. He laughs when he sees my socks—black with pink hearts.
“It’s for Valentine’s Day,” I say.
He nods, stuffing them inside of my shoes.
I shiver when his hands grab the waistband of my black ankle pants. If the feeling of his fingers on my stomach leaves me this affected, what’s going to happen when he does whatever he’s about to do? Nodding for me to lift my butt, he pulls my pants down and takes a step back, admiring my body.
He struggles to clear his throat. “I’ve never seen your legs. It’s winter. You’re always in pants.”
Self-conscious, I rub my palms up and down my thighs.
His hands quickly replace mine, massaging me like he’s trying to warm my body. “Are you cold?”
I shake my head, too consumed to speak. When he grazes the sensitive skin on the inside of my thigh, my head lobs back in ecstasy. He stares at my satin panties. It feels like an entire lifetime passes before he grabs them, slowly sliding them down my body. My bare ass is on the cold bed of the truck, and the temperature difference between it and my scorching skin shocks me. Ry lifts my panties to his face. Turning the cotton gusset outward, he shows me the stream of milky white desire made by my body’s arousal. His tongue lashes out, tasting it. Licking it clean.
Oh my gosh.
Tossing my panties to the side, he grabs my discarded pants and rolls them into a ball. “Use this as a pillow so you don’t hurt your head. Lie down.”
I do as I’m told.
My heart’s beating so fast I think I’m having a heart attack. He takes my legs and bends them, placing the bottoms of my feet on the edge of the tailgate. My body shakes in anticipation.
I close my eyes.
And Ry buries his head between my thighs… definitely making this the best birthday I’ve ever had.