17. Anthony
CHAPTER 17
anthony
I couldn’t fucking believe it. Shoua actually agreed to let me kiss her on the corner of her lips later tonight. I thought she’d be more opposed it when I casually suggested during lunch that we should practice later. I expected her to frown and complain at the thought of me putting my lips on her.
But no. She agreed to it.
With us going out as a couple tomorrow night, we knew we needed to kiss in front of everyone, especially Evelyn and Kelvin, at some point. It had to look natural. Maybe a little smooch at the corner of the lips would keep the two cousins far away from us this time. Evelyn would be off my chest about making me hers and Kelvin would hesitate to be Shoua’s shadow.
“Shoua?” I shouted after entering her home.
“Hey,” she answered from the kitchen.
I quickly took off my shoes in the foyer and headed to where she was. I wasn’t sure what was for dinner, but she was insistent we eat something healthy tonight. I’m not a good cook and I kindly asked her to do all the cooking ever since we became neighbors. Since she was the chef, I offered to pay her back by covering all our groceries and takeout meals.
For tonight, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was some healthy kale salad with chicken breasts on the side, which I didn’t mind. I just didn’t want her to stress out over losing weight because we were going to the lake.
She already got enough shit from her mom for not being stick thin. I didn’t want her to believe that she had to lose weight just to look good in a goddamn bikini when she was perfectly beautiful the way she was.
“Since I’m lazy, we’re having a chicken kale salad for dinner. If you’re opposed to it, you can make something else for yourself,” she said as I walked into the kitchen.
I snorted. “Why would I never say no to your amazing salads?”
“You complained last time I checked.” Her answer was dry and matter of fact, making me laugh.
“You can’t blame me! We ate nothing but salads for a week for dinner and I got bored of it! Besides, that was at over a month ago. I’m good now.”
Shoua begrudgingly handed me a big bowl of salad after I grabbed two cans of mango flavored seltzer water out of the fridge. She knew me well and gave me extra servings. I always ate the most for dinner after a long day of work.
As we settled across from each other, I glanced at her. I wasn’t sure why I was nervous now , but I hesitated to bring up the kissing practice we needed to do tonight.
“You got something to say?” she piped up without a single glance at me.
I stiffened in my seat and quickly shoved a forkful of salad into my mouth. “Nothing,” I answered as I chewed with an open mouth to prevent her from giving me a knowing look.
I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t just be forthright because she always knew when I was bullshitting. She immediately looked up. “I know you too well, Anthony. I know when you say ‘nothing,’ something is actually bothering you.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.” I lamely sipped on my seltzer, making it even more obvious that I wasn’t being honest. Shoua wordlessly raised a brow at me. Her lips parted and my eyes immediately flickered to them for a second too long. “Okay, fine. So about later . . . Should we do it after dinner or?—”
“Do what?” Confusion colored her features.
“The kisses.”
Her brows furrowed. “What kisses?”
“We were supposed to practice our kisses on the corner of the lips tonight. I asked about it earlier right after lunch, and you agreed. Remember?”
She stared back like a deer in headlights. She clearly forgot. Behind her eyes, I could see her reeling about what we agreed to during lunch. My stomach dropped a bit, taking me by surprise as well.
“Did you forget?” I asked.
Shoua cleared her throat softly as she averted her gaze back to our dinner. In a stiff voice, she answered, “Yeah, sorry about that. But why tonight?”
“Because we’re going to go out with everyone tomorrow. We’re going to have to fake our kisses on the lips at some point. I mentioned that earlier.”
“Right.” She gave me a rigid nod. It was clear she didn’t want to do it.
“You know what? Forget it. Maybe we can just do it tomorrow.” Or never . My whole body burned from the embarrassment. I should’ve probably never asked her to do such a thing. It was stupid of me to.
“No, we should do it after we brush our teeth after dinner.”
I shook my head. “If you want to be polite, why don’t we just wait until later before we go to bed?”
“Don’t tell me you’re going to sleep over again?” She let out a throaty groan of frustration.
“Why are you hurting me like this, Shoua?” I placed my hands dramatically over my chest with a pout, feigning disappointment and despair. “First, you forgot how we were supposed to practice kissing. Now you’re telling me you don’t want me to sleep over?”
She looked at me, amused. “You live right next door, Anthony.”
I smiled back. “Okay, fine. We’ll kiss later. Get it over with and then head to bed.”
“And you won’t sleep over?” she quickly clarified.
“Nope. I’ll head back home.” I nodded.
After dinner, I helped rinse the dishes and started the dishwasher. Afterwards, I didn’t bother sticking around. It seemed like Shoua wanted to wind down with some alone time with an episode of her cheesy Korean dramas, so I left her to it.
I was ecstatic to start a new furniture renovation project. I planned to strip down the thick, old, and yellowing white paint all over a vanity I recently found. After selling a dresser for 800 dollars last week, I was quickly out on the bend for another piece of furniture to refurbish. I found a beautiful 1920s vanity table for fairly cheap online and went out of my way to grab it before coming home today.
I headed to the garage, slathered on bug repellent, and started going to town after testing if there were any traces of lead in the paint before I sanded it down. There was no lead, and I spent a good few hours on that baby before I got a text. I didn’t bother checking my notifications over the loud music booming through my wireless earbuds. That was until I got a call.
“Hello?” I answered, slightly irritated anyone would dare interrupt my workflow.
“It’s about time you stop for the night, Anthony,” Shoua said. I walked out of my garage to see her peeking out from her living room window.
I smirked. “Sounds like someone’s excited for some good night kisses.”
“It’s almost eleven.” Her matter-of-fact voice made me cackle hard.
I checked the digital clock on my tool bench in the back. Turned out she was right. “I’ll be over in twenty minutes.”
The moment I got to her place after a refreshing shower and brushing my teeth, I was surprised to see a half-filled wine glass on the coffee table. She even had a few candles burning.
“C’mon, Shoua, don’t tell me you’re trying to set the mood?” I teased, picking up the glass of wine and finishing it in one gulp. It was a sweet red, as expected.
She scoffed. “No, I was simply setting the mood for myself to go to sleep. Besides, there’s no way I can kiss you sober.”
I winced as I reached out for her. “You sure have a way of hurting me today. First, I come home from a long day at work to you forgetting about the agreement we made during lunch—which I brought you. Now this? Why do you keep doing this to me, hm? Hurting me and twisting my heart around your finger like this.”
She rolled her eyes as she stepped up to me. Her cheeks were bright red despite trying to act nonchalantly, and I couldn’t help but grin. “All right. Let’s just get this over with.”
I leaned down just as she got up on her tiptoes. Her cool fingers grabbed my face and before I knew it her soft, pillowy lips brushed the corner of my mouth.
I let out an unexpected sigh, and right when I was about to lean into her, she pulled away. Unlike a few days ago, she wasn’t stiff or rigid. She was so natural about it I even forgot we were practicing for our performance for tomorrow night.
I blinked slowly, looking down at her and her shorter frame. Her eyes were twinkling with the yellow glow of the candlelight. Her fingers on my jaw loosened and were about to slip away when I placed my hands over them.
“Again,” I whispered.
She let out a small sigh but didn’t fight it. We leaned back into one another, and her lips pressed softly against the same spot she kissed earlier. She shuffled to pull away when I gently tugged her back with my hands on her hips, pulling her flushed against me. We were chest to chest with a mere two inches between our faces. I stared back into her warm, gentle eyes as she watched me.
“My turn,” I announced softly.
I leaned in and kissed her on the corner of her lips as she let out a shaky shutter against my cheek. I kissed her again on the other side and pulled away to see her reaction. Her sun-kissed skin was cherry-red from head to toe. I could feel her heart pounding, and it wasn’t until then that I realized my heart was beating at the same rate as hers, as if we were one. We shared one gulp of breath together before I jerked my body away from hers as if I just got burned by the fire.
I nodded stiffly. “Yup,” I mumbled, stupidly. “Yup, that was g-good.”
“Y-yeah,” she responded weakly. “I’m going to head to bed soon so?—”
“No worries. I’m heading out.” I was awkward as hell as I turned on my heels and headed out her back door. I only ever used it when I didn’t want Mrs. Turner to see me coming and going out of Shoua’s place. She could be a little nosy at times. “Good night!”
Before she could say the same, I was already off and running to bed. It had been a long and exhausting day, and I was tired. Yup. Yeah, that had to be why I asked her to kiss me twice. I was simply exhausted and needed to rest.
In bed, my heart continued to race. All I could think of was the way her lips felt against the corner of my lips. She was so close yet so far away from kissing me on the lips, and I felt my cheeks become hot.
I shut my eyes and forced myself to sleep.
It had to be because of those stupid kisses before bed. I should have never had a dream of Shoua . . . of the way she was laid out in front of me.
Her velvety soft skin practically shimmered under the moonlight as the sexy curves and dips of her body cast shadows over her skin. My hands itched to fill my palms with her full and supple breasts, and my mouth watered at the thought of sucking on her sweet, brown nipples. She parted her legs for me, showing me those beautiful glistening wet folds of hers, and I almost couldn’t control myself.
I wanted to kiss her until she was sick of it. I wanted to kiss her until she was pleading me over and over again to take her. I wanted her so fucking bad as my cock ached for her touch.
She motioned me over to her—to slip into her—and I did.
With my face buried deep into her neck, she let out a whimper followed by a small moan with the flex of my hips. Her summer coconut perfume filled my nostrils with every breath and drove me crazy. My throbbing cock was buried deep into her slick, wet, and pulsating pussy. I thrusted into her with the crack of my hips, and she let out a scream as I groaned.
“Anthony,” she called out breathlessly.
I swallowed thickly as I pulled away to find Shoua with her eyes rolled back and her wet, pink lips parted. She finally looked up at me with dark lust in her eyes, making my cock harder than before. I pulled out my shaft completely, leaving her a begging and crying mess, and only returning to her with a deep-seated thrust. A weak scream tumbled out of her as my momentum quickened.
I grabbed one of her hands, sucked her fingers sloppily wet, and brought it down to her clit. “Come for me, Shoua,” I demanded.
She let out a shaky whimper as she started to pleasure herself. Her pussy tightly contracted, and I let out a shaky moan. Jesus fucking Christ. I was never much of a moaner, but with the things Shoua was doing to me, loud groans started rumbling out of me.
Her legs quaked around my hips, signaling she was on the brink of coming. Immediately, I pried one of her legs from me and pinned it to the mattress to reach a new angle. Her throaty moans filled the air as I pummeled viciously in and out of her and she came without a single warning. Her core clenched and gripped so firmly around my cock that I also ? —
I jolted myself awake with a loud gasp. My room was dark and there was no Shoua laid out in front of me, fully nude. Thank god. It was barely three in the morning; the city was still quietly sleeping away. But there was one very apparent problem I had to deal with at that very moment and that was my erection.
My dick was hot, thick, and already throbbing achingly, as if my very own body wished Shoua was really here. With a shaky sigh, I tugged down my boxer briefs. I spat into my hand and slicked back the saliva onto my shaft with my tight fist.
Don’t think about the dream. Don’t think about the dream.
When you tell someone not to do something, they do exactly that.
I thought about the dream with each sensual stroke. Sweet shivers traveled down my spine as the sound of Shoua moaning my name echoed in my ears, cajoling me to continue. With a thick swallow, I got onto my knees as my hand stilled. My hips thrusted into it just as I did to her in a dream that felt more like a tucked away memory.
I methodically clenched and tightened my hand the way her pussy did in my dream. Then I quickened my thrusts. Once meticulous, each pump was now sloppy and eagerly edging me closer to my release. Just as Shoua came unexpectedly, so did I with a low groan. My milky release sprayed all over my bedsheets probably just like it would’ve been across her sexy torso if I hadn’t woken up.
I slumped over my mess and let out a trembling breath, realizing who I not only masturbated to, but who I also had a dirty dream of. My neighbor. My business partner. My best friend .
I’ve officially fucked up.