Chapter Forty-Three
forty-three
Lanie
The black cab pulled up in front of Ridley’s house and Lanie looked up at it again. It was so impressive. So symbolic of the sophisticated, put-together man Ridley was. The last time she’d been there she’d been so intimidated by it. Now she was nervous again but for different reasons.
Lanie took his hand as he helped her out of the cab and let him lead her up the front steps as her heart galloped like a wild horse trying desperately to break free of a stable.
Ridley opened the door and pulled her inside. She appreciated his eagerness; she always did. It worked wonders in checking her apprehension. Ridley had a way of making her feel desired in a manner no one else ever had before. She watched him wordlessly from her place in the doorway.
He took off his coat and she followed suit, handing it to him so he could hang them together on the coatrack. Methodically, he loosened his tie, turned on a small lamp and placed his keys in the small glass dish on the nearby console table in the hall. Then he reached past to shut the front door behind her.
“Sor—” She started to apologize for her negligence but stopped, her voice catching as he loomed over her in the entryway, his arm over her shoulder resting against the door.
“Thank you for coming over. Welcome,” he whispered.
They grinned at each other shyly in the dim light as if this was their first time. Lanie fought an awkward awareness as Ridley’s eyes roamed her face. Easing back, he took his glasses off and deposited them on the table.
“Thanks for the invite.” She inhaled as he closed in on her again with intent.
Blocking her body with his, he held her against the wall nearest the door, placing a knee between her thighs, nudging them apart. Sliding his fingers gently along her jaw, Ridley coaxed Lanie into an incendiary kiss that made her toes curl, sucking her tongue into his mouth. He ravished her with a kiss that was heady and flavored with the rum and colas he’d had at the wedding. Lanie’s senses were muddled, so much that it took her a moment to feel his other hand creeping past the expert folds of her saree. His impatient fingers sought out her flesh everywhere as his lips left her mouth, journeying lower, skimming her neck and shoulders.
Ridley kissed her chest and pushed up her snug blouse until one breast was exposed. He held the fullness in his large palm, running a thumb over her nipple until it peaked and she mewled. Then he drew it lightly into his waiting mouth, his tongue toying with it. He tugged at her, knowing how responsive the delicious feel of his hot mouth and fervid licks over the sensitive skin made her. Lanie moaned and squirmed against his face, cupping the back of his head, driven to distraction as his other hand reached the flimsy cotton that covered her heated skin.
“You don’t need these.” Ridley lifted his mouth from her to whisper as he twined the fabric of her panties in his fist to yank them away. It stung as the elastic caught briefly around her thighs before tearing cleanly off, but she was already too eager to care. She needed him inside her.
Pulling her skirt up further, Lanie hitched one leg up on his hip to give him access and pushed against his hand. Understanding, Ridley slipped his fingers between her thighs and feverishly rubbed her exposed cleft until her hips rolled with him involuntarily.
“Relax, I have you all night,” he teased, slowing down, waiting her out, infuriating her by forcing her to match his more leisurely pace.
“Please,” she panted, her head falling back against the wall as the agonized cry parted her lips.
Ridley held her jaw and pressed kisses along the line of her throat, licking as he went. His other hand moved unhurriedly, stoking a fiery need that soon turned her quiet sighs into loud keening. Ridley’s long fingers, one, then two of them, plunged into her slick entrance, working languidly in and out of her until quivers of pleasure in her core became intense spasms that rocked her entire body.
“Ridley!” she cried out as, knuckles deep, he filled all the little spaces in her until she could only whimper. He hit one spot that made her give a tiny sob against his mouth. Then Lanie’s knees buckled as the first concussive wave of orgasm overtook her, making her tremble until only his supporting arm kept her upright.
“Steady,” he said, grinning with wicked satisfaction, pulling her on wobbly legs further into the house. “C’mon.”
“Where’s Bea?” she asked, knowing full well that Ridley wouldn’t have done what he just did if Bea was anywhere nearby.
“At a friend’s for the night,” he explained.
The rest of the house was dark, save light from the backyard, illuminating the entire kitchen through the massive windows that made up the whole back wall of the house.
“The foxes are messing with the motion sensor again,” Ridley explained as he navigated them through the terrain in the semidark, rushing her toward the freestanding stairs in the living room.
“Ouch!” Lanie cried out, stubbing her toe on the stair tread as they started up.
She tripped upward, flailing, knocking into him as she reached for a way to catch herself. Instead, he fell over too. They had both been drinking.
Lanie giggled and soon Ridley did too, out of breath. Neither of them got up, both sitting on the stairs chuckling.
That this man wanted her in any capacity boggled her mind. After seeing what her grandmother, mother and aunt had all endured with the men of their lives, Lanie had been skeptical about ever finding someone like Ridley. She’d struck out so many times. And she thought she’d lost her last hope with Jonah, so her current good fortune was beyond her understanding.
“I—I said something to you earlier on a stupid voicemail that I guess you didn’t get,” she whispered to him. “But if you did, I want you to know, it’s okay with me if you don’t say it back.”
Ridley was silent for an excruciatingly long moment. Then he reached out, helping Lanie up to the same step he reclined on. He kissed her, sliding her across the step toward him. Ridley reached into her hair and pulled out the last of the clips still holding her now-messy hair in a bun, freeing it of its constrictions. It sprang free, surrounding her face.
“Lanie, I...” he started, looking down into her eyes, but she leaned in, kissing him again hungrily in place of words she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear.
The edges of the steps dug into her back as he pulled the voluminous fabric off her shoulder, popping the pin holding it in place . Lanie understood then that before he was done, Ridley was going to ruin her six-hundred-pound saree, so she pushed him off and hurried clumsily up the stairs with him hot on her trail.
“Lanie,” he said again, his voice low and husky. “Wait.” He reached her right as she got to the second-floor landing. She giggled, trying to scamper further away.
“Wait. I—I heard your message.”
She paused, sighing at his words.
“And I admit, I panicked.”
Lanie was disappointed by that and yet still cautiously hopeful.
“At first, I didn’t know how to respond and then I knew what I wanted to say but not over the phone. I also knew I couldn’t speak to you and not deal with what you’d said, so I avoided calling you back. Then tonight wasn’t the right place or time.”
Maybe he was about to be braver than Jonah had been and let her down easy to her face. She could respect that.
“I’m sorry I made you wait.”
They were always sorry.
Lanie was happy that he couldn’t see her rolling her eyes. It didn’t matter what he said now anyway; she’d said what she needed to. And there were no take-backs; she knew that now. But he didn’t need to reciprocate. It wouldn’t affect how she felt about him. Nor would it affect the sex they were about to have or would continue to have for as long as they both remained interested in it. Her experience with Jonah had taught her she could only control her own feelings and behavior, no one else’s.
“It’s okay,” she assuaged.
She couldn’t make Ridley feel how she did. She was a grown woman now. Not that misguided nineteen-year-old girl who imagined sex with Jonah meant love between them. Who had allowed herself to be left hanging for years by him and others, concocting fantasies instead of dealing with reality. She understood that now and she would handle it, however Ridley felt.
“No, it’s not. Because I love you, Lanie,” he whispered, finally. “I do.”
Immediately, Ridley’s mouth covered hers, preventing Lanie from expressing how flabbergasted she was, how overjoyed. Then his mouth was on her neck and his large frame was over hers and Lanie tugged at her garments, trying to free herself of the yards of silken fabric and many folds. Frantic, Ridley fumbled with his own clothes, pulling off his tie, tossing off his jacket, opening his shirt to pull out of his pants. They all tumbled to the floor. Suddenly, Lanie didn’t care either, fighting valiantly to extricate herself, stripping before at last arriving at her bra. Lying on her back though, it was hard to reach behind and unhook it.
“Flip over,” Ridley instructed, then made quick work of unfastening the hooks and eyes of her bra. He hovered above her, as she lay face down on the landing.
“Stay there,” he said before delicately kissing her shoulders. He moved from her shoulder blades to her lats. Then Ridley engaged the flat of his tongue to gently tease and linger in the sensitive hollow just below her spine, moving in behind her. He kissed and licked the soft places on her waist, then her full hips followed by the swell of her buttocks, before nuzzling into the part between. “This never gets old.” His voice was a low vibrating rumble, muffled between her thighs.
He urged her legs apart with strong palms, tipping her up slightly. Just enough to run his tongue up her center and trace a ring around the swollen, sensitive knot of nerves there. She emitted a shuddering gasp into the soft pile of the runner beneath her cheek at the tingling sensation. Ridley probed her entrance with the tip of his tongue in teasing darts until she saw stars behind her eyelids. Lanie clawed at the carpeting, biting her bottom lip to keep from crying out at the sublime feeling, while still pressing herself into his face to prolong it.
“Don’t stop!” she begged, reaching back to cradle his head, holding it there.
And he didn’t, not for long minutes, until Lanie thought she would pass out from the intensity of her pleasure. When at last he flipped her back over, after having made her body pliable with her climax, he shocked her by deadlifting her from the floor with ease.
“I do my best work in a bed,” he joked, licking his lips.
“Yeah, you do,” she concurred to his laughing appreciation. “Though you’re no slouch on the stairs.”
“I do appreciate the compliment.”
In only a few strides he was there, at his bedroom. He pushed the door open and deposited her in the center of a large four-poster bed.
Lanie scooted back toward the headboard, until he caught her foot. Finally, she was able to make out the sharp angles of his face and the long, sinewed lines of his body captured in the moonlight coming through the French doors to his jungle-like balcony.
“You need to prune that,” she said.
He looked down at his nakedness. “I think I’m pretty nicely manscaped.”
“Not you.” She pointed. “Out there.”
Lanie wasn’t certain but an odd look ghosted across his face before disappearing.
Ridley knelt on the bench at the base of the bed, lifting her foot to inspect her polished toes. “Nice.”
“Gemma made us get mani-pedis.”
“I like it,” he said, kissing each toe then her arch, his breath tickling her sole.
Remaining between her legs, he feathered light kisses up her ankle, calf and knee, nibbling along the way until he reached the soft skin high inside her thigh. Then he dropped onto the bed. Lanie stroked his head and shoulders, spreading her palms flat, moving along the lines of hard muscle that were his magnificent body. She breathed out a hiss as he traced concentric circles with his tongue around the soft flesh of her stomach then inside her belly button.
Ridley took his sweet time, lingering in places until she shivered beneath him. Kissing here and licking there as his mouth wandered leisurely around her body. Lanie held his head between her hands as his five-o’clock shadow softly scraped against the tender tips of her breasts, already peaked from what he’d done to them at the front door. She clenched her molars, her nails digging into his scalp as his teeth on her breast caused pinpricks of exquisite pain, nipping then sucking then licking to soothe. He lavished attention there until moisture seeped from her.
He’s so fucking good at this , was her single thought when he finally reached her face, his whole body blanketing hers.
Ridley reached for the drawer in his nightstand, tensing in hesitation, the swollen head of his arousal butting against her entrance torturously.
“You can,” she encouraged him, moving her hips. “I’m back on the Pill now.”
“You’re sure?”
“I am. You haven’t been sleeping with anyone but me, right?”
His eyes went dark, fathomless and hard to read in the low light. But she could hear the smile in his words. “Right. In fact...Melanie, I haven’t wanted to sleep with anyone but you in three years.”
Lanie’s chest tightened. She hadn’t dared ask before, but the knowledge nearly moved her to tears.
“Then yes, I’m sure,” she answered in a whisper, wrapping her thighs around him. “I trust you. I love you, Ridley.”
“Melanie.” He said her name again through an exhale as he entered her with an agonizing slowness that made her body burn. His voice was octaves deeper and suffused with so much desire that she ached at the sound.
He filled her inch by gradual inch until they were notched hip to hip. Lanie gasped at the welcome intrusion, appreciating that each time they did this she swore she wouldn’t be able to take it all, to handle the girth of him. And yet every time, she found herself stretched, rapturously full, until he hit places deep inside her that made her quite literally weep from pleasure. She cried out his name then as he seemed to touch her everywhere, his stubble scratching her face, his soft hands skimming her ribs, every sensation making her nerve endings tingle.
Cheek to cheek, she bit Ridley’s earlobe and inhaled the salt and spice, the almost earthy mixture of his body and cologne, scents that enveloped her like a haze, musky and enticing. His powerful thigh muscles under hers spread her legs as he grasped the edge of the bed for leverage, keeping an unfaltering rhythm, each stroke driving her into the mattress.
Lanie was completely lost in the feel of him. With one hand wedged against the headboard to brace herself, she dug into Ridley’s slick back with the long, talon-like acrylic tips on the other until he hissed. He lapped at the crevice between her jaw and neck as he moved, keeping an unyielding pace. And within minutes, he’d found a blistering stroke that built to a delicious frisson, sending tremors of ecstasy shivering up her spine. Throughout, Ridley continued to hit her unbearably deep. Slipping a hand between them to rub her, he intensified the sensation until it turned her into a weeping, shuddering mess.
“Oh God!” Lanie cried out. It was her last coherent thought as her oncoming climax overwhelmed her.
Her whole body went taut as the orgasmic ripples began to flow through her. Ridley continued to move but soon, as if she’d catalyzed a chain reaction, his orgasm chased hers. He groaned, collapsing on her, panting for air. She held him close, feeling grounded by his heavy body covering hers. She kissed his neck and jaw and listened as their labored breaths evened out, trading filthy praise in amused whispers, until eventually, he rolled away to turn on his bedside lamp.
Bathed in light, Ridley turned onto his side, propped up on an elbow. Lanie moved onto her side too, mirroring him. He leaned in and kissed her sweetly, using his thumb to wipe away the makeup ruined by the film of sweat and tears that covered her face.
“I must look horrible,” she said bashfully, flushed and pushing her wild hair out of her face.
“I think you look beautiful.”
She grinned at his complete and utter lie. “You’re only saying that because you love me.”
He grinned back, giving her one of her favorite kind, where his tiny dimple made an appearance. “I do.”