50. Helen
After a strained couple of minutes of dancing around the awkward conversation we just had, I excuse myself to go back to my room. When I return, Thad is finishing adding all the ingredients for the gumbo into the pot, his back turned toward me. At my reentrance, he glances back over his shoulder. “Hey, we have a little time to kill while we wait for everything to set. Do you want to?—”
He stops, doing a double take back at me, and I hold my breath as I wait for his response.
I’ve tousled my hair and put on lipstick, but that isn’t why Thad is staring. I’m wearing the sheer red panties and the same white tank top from the sexy selfie I accidentally showed him on the road trip.
And nothing else.
Thad looks almost afraid as he takes all of this in. When he meets my gaze, his expression is grim. “What are you doing?”
“I’m seducing you,” I tell him with more bravado than I feel. A few minutes ago I was absolutely certain this was the right call, but it’s hard to hold on to certainty in sheer red panties.
Thad seems to be exercising Herculean effort to keep his eyes on my face, and that at least is a confidence booster. He swallows. “Why?”
“I need you to understand that I’m not who you think I am.” I advance a step toward him, and he presses back against the counter, trapped. “You’ve been acting like I’m Lola, but I’m not.”
I don’t need to tell him that I’m referencing Double Indemnity, the movie we watched together on the road, and the character Lola. The good girl. He shakes his head at me, smiling an indulgent little smile, like it’s cute that I’m trying to be so sexy. Except, when I take another step toward him, he convulsively grips the edge of the counter.
“So who are you, then?” he challenges, trying to recover. “Barbara Stanwyck?”
The femme fatale. I shake my head. “No. I’m not her, either. Not all the time.” I’m trying to channel some of her confidence now, but no one can be that uncomplicatedly one-dimensional. “Sometimes I am.”
“Helen.” That pitying, mildly condescending tone is back. “You’re not a femme fatale. You’re just not. You’re a good person. I like that about you. I respect you for it.”
I flinch away from his words. “I don’t want you to respect me from a distance. I don’t want you to leave me for my own good. If you don’t want to be with me, then don’t be with me. But don’t act like you’re doing some noble thing by keeping me at arm’s length. Don’t pretend that’s my choice.” Taking in a deep breath for courage, I plough on, summoning the spirits of Lana Turner and Ava Gardner and Marilyn Monroe for strength and resolve: “I’m in love with you, too. I want to be with you. I want to kiss you. I want you to be insane with jealousy at the thought of me going on a date with Barry or anyone else. I want to feel you inside me again. I want you to rip these panties off me and fuck me on the counter.”
Thad gapes at me. “Helen!” The word is a shocked exclamation, with no trace of that gentle pity from before. Good. I don’t want that from him. I don’t want his pity, his condescension. And I don’t want his friendship if it’s just some form of self-flagellation.
“Maybe I seem like a good girl to you. I guess I have the whole nun-virgin thing working against me. I try to be a good person, and I’m happy if that’s how I seem to you. But I don’t want to be punished for being too good, whatever that means. I don’t want decisions made for me. If there’s some other reason you don’t want to be with me, that’s fine. But if it’s up to me, I want to be with you. Please respect me enough to let me make that choice.”
I’ve advanced on him little by little during this speech, so that by the end of it, I’m mere centimeters away. My braless breasts are straining against my tank top, my bare legs close enough to brush up against him if I move any further. I see Thad take all of this in, see the war across his features.
After a moment’s hesitation, he reaches up, gripping my hair near the base of my head, rougher than he’s ever touched me before. I’m surprised how thrilling it is, this sudden gruffness. I meant what I said. I don’t want to be treated like porcelain. I’m tougher than that.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he tells me in a strained voice.
“So don’t.”
A moment passes in which I think he really isn’t going to kiss me, that he’s really going to let me go. I start to retreat, but he stops me, pulling me back, and fuses his mouth to mine. He releases me only long enough to flip our positions, so I’m the one now standing with my back to the counter, the edge of it digging into me. His big, muscular frame crowds me in, caging me in place. This time he doesn’t hesitate before kissing me, even more forcefully than before, hard enough that my head knocks back against one of the cabinets.
It should hurt, but it doesn’t—or, at least, the thrill of being manhandled by him outweighs any temporary smarting. For the first time, I feel like he’s letting himself lose control with me, not holding back and playing nice with Sister Helen.
His hands release my face, moving down to grip my breasts through the thin material of the tank top. It doesn’t seem to be enough for him, though, because he lets out a frustrated grunt, pulling down the neckline of my shirt so my breasts come popping out. “Goddam, you have the best tits. Do you have any idea how hard it’s been to be near you and not be touching them all the time?”
I blink at him in dazed amazement. He honestly never gave me any indication that he was struggling at all. “You can touch them whenever you want.”
He takes one in each hand, kneading them, looking deep into my eyes. “They’re mine?”
The brutal possessiveness in his tone makes me feel weak in the knees, and other places, too. “They’re yours,” I confirm breathlessly.
He growls in appreciation, leaning in to take one nipple into his mouth. His tongue lavishes it, teeth lightly grazing over the sensitive tip. I grip his shoulders to stay standing. “Oh my God,” I sigh.
As if in answer to my prayer, he raises one of his thighs between my legs, pressing up against my throbbing core. The feeling of the rough denim through the flimsy material of my panties creates a delicious friction that’s almost painful against the softest part of me, but somehow feels incredible. “Thad,” I half gasp, half whine.
He releases my breast from his mouth with a lewd popping sound and grins up at me, wolfish. Any sense of hesitance or holding back seems to have disappeared completely. “Is this what you want? For me to—what did you say?—fuck you on this counter.”
I manage to nod. “Yes.”
“If you’d gone on that date with Barry, you would have been thinking about this the whole time, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes.”
“But I’m not gonna let you go,” he tells me gruffly, smile fading as something fierce and possessive flashes through his eyes. “Because this is mine, too, isn’t it?”
He lowers his thigh so he can cup my pussy with his hand. I whimper, my head falling back against the cabinet again. “Yes. Yes.”
“No one else gets to touch it.”
“No,” I vow.
He angles his hand so his thumb can stroke at my clit through the mesh material, and I mewl and howl like a wild creature, head banging from side to side as my pleasure builds and builds.
When I feel like I’m on the brink of losing my mind, the pressure releases from my sensitive place. With my eyes still closed, I moan in protest, clutching at his shoulders. “Thad.”
“Mine,” he reminds me, and I feel him yanking down my panties, hard enough that I hear the fabric tear. I gasp as he hoists me up so my ass is resting on the edge of the counter, and he pushes my legs open so my pussy is exposed, wet and throbbing with need.
I expect him to put his finger into me, but I’m surprised when there’s a delay. Dazed, I open my eyes to find him rolling on a condom, his eyes locked on to my spread center almost hungrily. A moment later he thrusts into me, sliding in easily, and groans, swearing under his breath.
The same pressure that has been building and then ebbing awakens again, mounting to a new frenzy as he moves in and out of me at a frantic pace. This is not a gentle bedding. This is an I-won’t-be-able-to-walk-tomorrow fucking and I love it. I can’t believe I’ve spent my whole life without this, deprived myself of this holiest of communions.
I scream out his name as I break, and a moment later he follows, groaning as he finds his release inside of me.
For a moment we stay that way, sweaty and clinging together. Then he lifts his head, grinning at me with an almost woozy happiness before he playfully nips at the top of my breast. “I never realized you were such a bad, bad girl.”
I laugh quietly, running my hand over his spine. “You love it.”
“Yeah,” he agrees, his eyes heavy with emotion as he strokes my face. “I do.”