Chapter 23 #3
“Paul,” she whispers.
That voice.
That’s the one I listen to as I lean in and kiss her.
If our earlier kiss was a question, this one is the answer.
The world slows. Her mouth is warm and soft as she kisses me back without hesitation, like she’s been waiting too.
There’s no rush in it, just this long, unhurried press of lips, her breath mixing with mine.
Wings beat against the inside of my ribs, actual, honest-to-God butterflies, which I haven’t felt since I was a teenager who didn’t know yet how disappointing love could be.
This doesn’t feel disappointing.
This feels like the opposite of every disappointment I’ve ever had.
When she pulls back, I reach up with both hands and pull my glasses from my face.
I set them somewhere on the couch behind me without looking, not willing to take my eyes off her for a full second, because she’s looking at me the way she looked at the yellow roses.
As though she wasn’t expecting this and isn’t sure yet what to do with it, but doesn’t want to put it down.
I know exactly what to do with her.
My hands clamp on her delicious thighs, and I pull her to me. She makes a soft, startled sound as I settle her across my lap, her knees bracketing my hips. Her hair falls forward, curtaining me, and her chest moves fast right in front of my face.
Before I can get too distracted by that, I cup her jaw, tilt her face down, and bring her lips back to mine. I take my time with it, learning the softness of her mouth, the small sounds she makes low in her throat when I deepen it, and the pressure of her hands when she grips my shoulders.
“Lennon, my beautiful Lennon.” I kiss the corner of her mouth and her cheek before returning to her lips. After several long, intoxicating kisses, I pull away to catch my breath, but she chases me, pressing her lips back to mine as if she can’t do without.
Something about that undoes me more than anything else has.
Her hands slide from my shoulders up into my hair, and I feel the exact moment her self-consciousness fades away entirely. Her body relaxes into mine and is completely here with me, in this moment.
I could do this for a very long time. I am, in fact, doing exactly that, my hands moving up her thighs to her waist, when she shifts.
It’s barely anything, a small, restless movement of her hips, but I feel it everywhere, that tiny involuntary grind, and the sound she makes against my mouth is so soft and wanting that every coherent thought I’ve had for the last five years arranges itself into a single very clear message.
She survived me, but I will not survive her.
She does it again, this time more deliberately. Her hips roll, and she presses down. I feel her heat through both layers of our clothing, and I have to break the kiss to breathe, my forehead to hers, my hands gripping the outside of her thighs hard enough that I’m certain it’ll leave fingerprints.
Think, Paul. Think.
I have two parallel problems, and I am a man who solves problems in order of urgency.
One, I am extraordinarily aroused, and she is sitting directly on the evidence of that fact, undeniably aware of the situation.
Two, she’s moving against me with the restless, frustrated quality of someone chasing something just out of reach, and I am unable and unwilling to ignore that. But I’m also not going to take her to bed on our first date, regardless of how persuasively her hips are arguing the case.
This is the biggest problem of the two, but there is time to solve it, and I intend to use it. I will give her something today.
“Do you trust me too?” I ask.
“Yes,” she answers between pants.
I shift her again with both hands at her hips, guiding her off my lap and back down so that only one of my thighs is between hers. She makes a confused little sound, and I lean in close to her ear.
“Here.” My hands on her hips apply the gentlest pressure, coaxing, a suggestion more than a demand. “Use me, darling. Let me help fix that ache.”
She shudders against me but starts to move. Tentative at first, then, as I keep the pressure at her hip, guiding the rhythm with more intention, she buries a whimper against my jaw.
I feel my cock strain so hard against my jeans it’s becoming genuinely difficult to hold a sentence together. I try it anyway for her sake.
“That’s it. Let me take care of it. Let me take care of you.”
These thighs. My free hand slides up the outside of one under her skirt, and I feel the soft give of her, and I think, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that I have a serious problem. A beautiful, catastrophic problem in a cute skirt, grinding herself on my leg.
Her fingers curl into my shoulder.
Fuck.
“I want you to make the biggest mess on my thigh.” I press my lips to the side of her face, just below her ear. “I want you to leave a wet spot on my jeans, darling, I want—”
She stops. All at once, she goes completely still, and ice shoots straight through me.
I pull back immediately, both hands moving, one to her hair, the other resting at her shoulder, stroking slowly, trying to give her space without letting go entirely, but when my eyes find hers, I notice that she isn’t scared or pulling away.
No, she looks ashamed?
The ice in my veins turns even colder.
“Too much?” The words come out carefully, but I can hear the apology already building underneath them. “I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I… fuck, I got carried away, I shouldn’t have—”
“I have PCOS.”
Well, that’s not what I expected. My clinical brain reaches for what it knows, which in this case isn’t much. Hormonal. Beyond that, I’m aware I am at the edges of my competency, and I make a mental note to not be at the edges of my competency for much longer.
“Okay,” I say carefully. “Do you want to talk about—”
She shakes her head, then drops her gaze. “No, I just… God, this is so embarrassing.”
I grab her chin, bring her eyes to mine, before I press a brief kiss to her lips.
“Nothing is embarrassing between us.”
She looks at me, like she’s deciding whether to believe that.
Then she exhales.
“Because of my PCOS, I have… problems with getting wet. And reaching… I mean, it’s not always, but it’s…” She stops. “I have a hard time with orgasms.”
I am processing this information while my cock is straining so hard against the inside of my jeans that I’m mildly concerned for the structural integrity of the zipper, but I manage to keep my face very steady.
“So what you’re telling me is—”
“That I probably won’t be able to make a mess of your jeans.
” The color that floods her cheeks is extraordinary, a deep pink, all the way to her ears, and under any other circumstance, I would find it purely delightful, but right now, she is shrinking, folding herself smaller in real time, and I hate it.
“And I don’t know if I’ll be able to come,” she continues. “On your thigh or… or anywhere, really, it just… it takes a lot, and sometimes it doesn’t happen at all, and I know that’s probably boring and—”
“Did you enjoy what we were doing?”
She blinks but doesn’t open her pretty mouth.
“Just now,” I prompt. “Did you enjoy it?”
“So much,” she breathes out, then her eyes drop again. “But I don’t know if it’s even good for you, because I’m not really… I’m not doing much, and you seem like you have a lot of experience. I mean, sure, I’ve had sex before,” she adds, and a wholly inappropriate spark of jealousy ignites at that.
I do not want to think about anyone having her.
I am aware that it is irrational.
“But it was never… not like this. It’s not anything like this, and I mean it’s not even sex, we’re just… I’m just riding your thigh. Oh my God, did I say that out loud?” She puts her hand over her face. “I’m probably doing it wrong, and I—”
“Eyes on me.” I reach up and slide my hand into her hair. My fingers curl at the roots, and I tip her head back until she has no choice but to look at me.
I hold her gaze, making sure I have it. Then I take her free hand and guide it, slowly, giving her every opportunity to pull away, and press her palm against the front of my jeans. She feels me, and her eyes go wide, and the sound I make when her hand makes contact is not something I’m proud of.
“You feel that?” I ask, my voice rougher now.
“That’s what you do to me.” I keep her hand there for one more second, then I lift it away and bring it to my mouth.
I press my lips to the center of her palm while she stares at me.
“You don’t owe me anything,” I tell her, against her still-scraped skin.
“That’s not why I did that. I just needed you to know that I’m very much enjoying what we’re doing as well. ”
Some of the shame seems to loosen, and then she shifts on my leg, a tiny, restless movement, almost like she can’t help it. “So, can we… do it some more? Even if it doesn’t result in a wet spot—”
I cut her off with another kiss, and she kisses me back with both hands now gripping my shirt.
“You’re so sexy,” I breathe out against her lips, between kisses, because I need her to hear it, need it to stick, need it to be louder than whatever voice in her head has been telling her otherwise.
“You have no idea. I’m losing my mind here.
” I pull back far enough to see her. “You’re so beautiful.
You’re stunning.” A kiss to the corner of her mouth.
“Do you know that I have not been tempted once, not a single time, in five years? Five years,” I say. “And then… there was you.”
She reclaims my lips and makes a breathy sound against my mouth, and her hips shift forward again. The primal, entirely unreasonable part of me takes the information she has just given me and does something unhelpful with it.
She’ll never be left wanting with me.
I know that’s not how it works. I know bodies are complicated, and none of this is about wanting or trying hard enough. I know all of that with the rational part of my brain, which has a doctorate and understands psychophysiology.