26. Photo Finish #4
Laughter colors her tone, sucking all the seriousness out of our hotel room. Lake doesn’t seem disappointed in the slightest. Of course she wouldn’t be; she’s never made me feel guilty for voicing my anxieties or wanting to take things slow.
“Honestly? I barely take nude pictures myself. I’ve seen too many documentaries about them getting leaked for revenge. I guess I just thought this would be something nice for you to have, if that makes any sense,” she blabbers, hiding her face in her hands.
I crouch down so I’m eye level with her, carefully pulling her fingers away. “Of course I want to have them. Especially because you want to give them to me. It’s an act of trust that I don’t take lightly.”
“You don’t have to spare my feelings. You can be honest.”
“I am being honest, Lake. We’re together a majority of the time, but when we’re not, I look at pictures of you to keep us connected. The ones we’ve taken together, the year-old ones on your Instagram, anything.”
She pokes me in the arm playfully. “Oooh, you miss me.”
I rest my head against her naked thigh, staring up at her through thick lashes while her hands perform calming ministrations in my hair. Deft, slender fingers corkscrewing overgrown strands.
“Like hell every time we’re apart,” I whimper.
I’m not a particularly clingy person. Well, I wasn’t before Lake. I’ve come to realize that a lot of my befores are void now. There’s no denying the fact that this girl harbors half of my heart in her chest.
“Because you love me,” she jokes.
Because I…love…her.
Oh my God, I do. Why has it taken me this long to tell her?
I’m literally the only card-carrying member of the Lake club.
I’m so in love with her that my friends can see it.
Hell, the whole world probably can too. Just thinking about her makes my heart skip in some primordial way.
My body feels like a furnace, and my train of thought course-corrects to whatever avenue she occupies in my lovesick brain.
“I have since the moment I met you,” I reveal, more than willing to scream it from the rooftop.
Her eyes double in size. “Not possible.”
“Very possible. I love you, Lake Capitano.”
“I love you, Sutton Whittaker.”
Thankfully, she doesn’t hesitate to reciprocate my sentiment, and the gasp of relief that exits me sounds a lot like a squeaky wind-up toy.
A sincere smile puffs out her cheeks. “Since you’re so in love with me, does this mean you’ll stick my Polaroids in your hockey helmet like a soldier sticks pictures of his loving wife in his helmet before going off to war?”
“If I did that, I think I’d be too distracted to focus on the game,” I joke, nuzzling my nose into the soft meat of her leg, mentally picturing myself on the ice as I’m hyper fixated on the sexy Polaroid haunting my every move.
I’m practically the poster boy for pussy-whipped.
She clucks her tongue. “Hmm, you do have a point. I am pretty showstopping.”
“You are,” I affirm, rising back to a stance, letting every reservation roll off my shoulders like rain off river rocks.
I have no reason to be nervous. Lake has proved to me time after time again that my body is deserving of the same love as everyone else’s, and the fact that she wants a picture of me, when I’m at my most vulnerable, means that she truly values me in a way no one else ever did.
“And I want you to have some pictures for yourself.”
Lake perks up. “Of you?”
“Yeah, baby. Of me. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but it’s impossible not to give you what you want.”
She snorts, and it’s adorable, and I still feel like we’re a week into our relationship despite having known each other for months.
I’m experiencing the world with her for the first time.
On paper, we’re so different from each other that we shouldn’t work, but we do.
She gets me to do the hard stuff that I’d never have the balls to carry out without a support system.
Not every relationship has the necessary scaffolding for such deep-rooted trust.
“Are you sure?” she asks quietly, making direct eye contact with my dick, which, I’ve now realized, has been out for this entire heart-to-heart.
“I’m sure.”
I situate myself so my legs are flush with the edge of the mattress, my soft belly pooching out slightly over my semi-hard cock.
The crown glints with excess arousal in the slash of fluorescent lighting overhead, and Lake grips my hips like they’re the only anchors keeping her from melting into a puddle on the bed.
She licks over my length, inspiring a shiver to accordion-fold through my body. She breathes on the skin with little awareness that anything she does, at this stage, has the ability to make me take off like a rocket.
“God, you’re so big. Like, you have to be in the one percentile. Your flaccid penis size is a dude’s dream hard size.”
“Thank you. I think?”
“Has nobody ever complimented your dick before?”
“Uh, I can’t say that they have.” Minus my friends, but that’s, um, a conversation for another time. We’re not a part of a circle jerk or anything. We just see a lot in the locker room.
“Then”—she presses her lips to my throbbing erection—“let”—kiss—“me”—kiss—“compliment”—kiss—“you”—kiss—“on”—kiss—“behalf of women everywhere.”
Fuck me.