Chapter 23 #2
“Is this enough?” he whispered against the shell of her ear, sending shivers all over her.
“No,” she said. It wasn’t. It might never be. How would she ever go back to her life before this, before Robbie?
“What do you want, baby?” he asked, pulling back to look at her, his eyes soft and his jaw tight.
She stroked his cheek with trembling fingertips.
“Everything you’re willing to give me,” she whispered back.
“It’s been a while,” he said.
“Fifteen years,” she said.
“Three years,” he answered.
“Really?”
“Really. Hasn’t been a priority. I don’t have a condom.”
“You don’t need one.”
“My last test was clear, but I always wear a condom.”
It felt like the kind of exchange one might have at the bank, a brass-tacks back-and-forth that conveyed all the necessary information without anything remotely personal.
“I can’t get any human diseases, and I can’t get pregnant.”
“Ever?” Robbie said, his hands stilling on her lower back.
“Ever,” she said, worrying about that fact for the very first time.
“Okay.”
“Is that a problem?”
“Not for me. Is that a problem for you?”
“Nope.”
They sat there, staring at one another. The raging heat of the moment cooled to something else, something that was somehow even more intimate.
She couldn’t get pregnant. He was fine with that.
He didn’t have a condom. It had been years for them both.
For some reason, that had her back in her head, worrying.
She bit her bottom lip and wondered about the timing, about how much of this was pre-shift hormones and how much of this was genuine desire and—
“Nadja,” Robbie said, his voice just a little bit hoarse, quiet but somehow loud in the silent car.
“Yeah?”
“You’re in your head. Are you still with me?”
“Are you still with me?”
He smiled again, that crooked grin, higher on one side than the other, a scar on his upper lip more visible in the filtered light of the car. “I’m with you.”
She blew out a gusty breath. “Okay.”
“Okay,” he repeated, rubbing up and down her back once, twice, before slipping his hands under the hem of her shirt, touching the skin of her back.
So gently. She felt the calluses on his hands, the strength of his fingers as he traced the line of her spine from the waistband of her sweats, over the lace of her bralette, and higher, to the collar, before skimming them down the way he’d come.
She closed her eyes, relishing the feeling of being touched so gently.
And then his hands were at the hem of her shirt, pulling it over her head and tossing it behind him. On his next pass up, his hands reached the demarcation of her bralette and traveled around, tracing over her ribs and further forward still, until he was cupping her breasts.
She showed her breasts all the time on camera.
Men liked to touch themselves while she did normal, everyday things with her breasts out.
Knitting. Cutting out cookies. Hemming a pair of pants.
Typing an email. Somewhere along the line, her breasts had become business tools.
So much a part of her business, in fact, that she’d divorced them in her mind from being something that she could enjoy.
“Can I take this off?” Robbie whispered, awed.
With JJ, she’d always kept her bra on. It had been a necessary boundary for her, something that felt like armor, even while she took part of him into her literal insides.
With her other encounters, sometimes she hadn’t even taken her shirt off.
But she found that she wanted Robbie to have access to all of her.
She wanted to give it to him. She nodded her head.
He was so careful, pulling the elastic forward, away from her ribs, drawing it over her breasts without abrading her nipples.
She was surprised to find that she was slightly disappointed by that.
She lifted her arms up, and he pulled the bralette over her head, tossing it back with her shirt.
He skimmed his hands down her raised arms, over her chest, before cupping her breasts in gentle hands that only trembled a little bit.
“You’re so beautiful, Nadja,” he said, and she believed him.
His thumbs grazed over her nipples slowly, gently, a slight touch. She leaned in, putting herself more fully into his hands. He leaned down, bent his head, and sucked gently on her left nipple.
“Robbie,” she whispered.
He looked up at her through his eyelashes, his mouth latched to her breast, his tongue rubbing against the underside of her nipple as he sucked softly.
She grabbed the wrist of the hand cradling the other breast and squeezed it.
He pinched her nipple between thumb and forefinger, rolling it at the end before starting again.
“Fuck,” she said, her voice pained.
“Is this enough?” he asked.
“No,” she groaned, diving down and taking his mouth with hers, kissing him with the wildness she craved.
He met her, his hands against her shoulder blades now, holding her tight against him, her sensitive breasts chafing against his chest. Had he been wearing a shirt?
She couldn’t remember. But he wasn’t now, and she looked down to see the way her uninked skin looked against the tapestry of his.
“Robbie,” she said, breathless, as he kissed her neck, her chest, her breast, before latching onto the other and sucking so hard that she shoved her hips forward instinctively, driving against his erection with such force that she felt the vibration of his answering groan through the soft tissues of her skin.
“Nadja,” he said, his forehead pressed against her sternum.
“Pants,” she said.
His pants were around his knees but he still wore his boxer briefs, and her own sweatpants were back in place after he’d fingered her half to death.
She climbed off his lap, sitting on the seat next to him, and shucking her sweats. They both sat there in nothing but their underwear.
“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Robbie said with a smirk, and she laughed.
“Count of three?”
“One,” he said, hooking his thumbs into the waistband of his briefs.
“Two,” he said, and she did the same.
“Three,” he said, and they both moved at the same time, lifting hips off the leather seats, sticky skin clinging to the material.
And there he was, thick and ruddy, maybe the only part of him that wasn’t tattooed. She’d told many men in chats and in private sessions that they had beautiful cocks. It was something they liked to hear, she’d found.
But when she said that to Robbie, when her eyes went wide and she said, “Robbie, your cock is so beautiful,” it was the first time she’d really meant it.