Chapter 38
ANNIE – MID NOVEMBER
I Imagine Him
I draw feathers along the outline of his strong features. His eyes are closed, his skin smooth. He exhales a sighed breath and his body relaxes under the light touch.
There are none of those creases in his face that give me pause sometimes. The kind that confused me when we almost kissed earlier. That told me how conflicted he was about what happened between us in Dallas.
I like you, Annie.
I still don’t know what us liking each other looks like, or how this thing plays out between us, with the mess of Auston and the complication of my sweet baby boy.
Tanner makes me laugh like no one else can. He looks out for me in a way nobody ever has. We get along better than any friend I’ve known, and the fire inside me every time I so much as look at him…
Do I dare? Do I dare push him and see how far this could go? Because I want to. I want him so much every part of my anatomy is aching for him and has been since that hotel room last weekend.
I hadn’t been touched by a man in nearly two years. Arguably, I’ve never been touched by a man. And there’s only one man I want to break the curse, over and over again.
Leaning closer to him, I bring the feathers down his jaw, his neck and the muscles that sit tightly beneath his hair, down to the hollow that sits invitingly above the neckline of his shirt.
I have no idea what I’m doing besides turning myself on, indulging in the sight of him as his head falls back into the sofa and there’s the subtlest tilt of his hips, a lift under his shorts that draws my attention and makes me dig my teeth into my lip.
I’m not asking for a diamond ring. Right now, I’m not capable of processing what comes tomorrow or what a mess I could be making of a friendship I treasure. But I know the pulsating ache between my thighs will only be sated by one thing.
One man.
His eyes dart open and they’re the darkest I’ve ever seen them. Darker than when he looked up at me from between my legs in Dallas. Lazy, heavy lids. Pupils dilated. I may not have graduated in psychology yet but I know enough to recognize mutual pull.
I don’t have to put my hand between my thighs to know that my body is melting over the way he’s watching me.
I yelp as he grabs the feather tickler and flips me onto my back, lying me down on the sofa.
Those lines come back to the sides of his eyes and I know he’s worrying his way through reservations.
There are walls – people, relationships, geography and careers – between us that won’t be surmounted by a moment of passion.
But I part my knees a little wider as Tanner watches me, swallowing deeply, that shift in his shorts growing more noticeable.
He’s thinking about this, the way I imagine him sometimes.
Too often. In my dreams, in moments of semi-lucidity in my bed, during lectures, any darn time my mind drifts to him in the day.
I want him. I want this.
“Annie, what are you doing to me?” he says, voice deep, rough and quiet, as if he’s speaking to himself but he’s looking at me, into me, liquidizing me with the blaze I know is inside us both.
He brings the feathers to my face, forcing my eyes to close and when they do, I picture him. His soft touch, the kiss of his skin against my cheeks, the slickness of his tongue against my sweetest spot.
I lick my lips where I want to taste him. His breath hitches above the quiet sound of music and the gentle hum of the electric fire.
He moves over me without making contact, knees either side of me as I slip my legs between his thighs, wishing they were on me. The feathers trail down my cheek, my neck, leaving goosebumps in their wake, the fine hairs of my arms standing on end.
This is insane. I know it even as my body reacts so fiercely to Tanner’s nearness, but it feels too good to question.
So I keep my eyes shut as he traces the line of my collarbone, the sensitivity making me press my head back into the cushions.
As I do, his freshly showered scent seems stronger, darker, more decadent than ever.
A heady concoction that consumes my sense of smell.
I want to reach out to touch him but he’s not doing the same, so as the music in the background intensifies, and with the sensation of him sliding the feathers like silk over my top, puckering my breasts beneath, my fingers find the hem of my shirt.
I’m not sure if it’s my breath or his that hitches as I lift my body enough to take off the garment and bare my chest to him. I briefly open my eyes, pulling myself from the reverie of whatever is happening here because I’m throwing myself at him, I know it, and I oughtn’t to be.
I’ve done this before and it ended catastrophically.
My cheeks flame under his watchful gaze and I swallow deeply, afraid that this will end here, again. And when nothing comes of it after the ecstasy has subsided, I’ll feel like I did in Dallas.
But he looks over my body, pausing on my breasts and digging his teeth into his lips. “You’re fucking perfect, Annie.”
Then he drops his head back and squeezes his eyes shut again, fighting this, still. But what I saw, what I heard, makes me braver, more confident.
I lie back into the soft cushions and wait for his next move, almost squirming with the anticipation of it.
Then it comes. The feathers, not him, but the grace and lightness of his stroke around my breasts and finally across the nipple drives a wild sensation between my legs.
He repeats the same move on my other breast, then draws the feathers down my stomach. South… south… further down.
I’m tentative in the move but too far gone to stop myself as I push my shorts and panties over my hips, rolling them down my legs.
His focus is laser sharp and fixed on mine. Groaning in a way that makes me as hot for him as when he was eating me out, he slips the feathers where my underwear was and drops one foot to the floor, as if he knows I need to spread my own wider.
Then the feathers touch the most sensitive part of my body and expunge the air from my lungs.
“Tanner,” I whisper and draw a ragged breath, twisting my body on the sofa, desperate to touch him, hold him, feel him, on me, over me, inside me.
“Don’t say my name like that, Annie, I’m begging you.”
I hear the words but they don’t register because I’m on the edge, the precipice of white light, and he hasn’t even touched me with his hands, or his mouth.
“Have sex with me, Tanner.”
“Don’t ask me to do that, Annie. Fuck.” He growls and the restraint he’s showing, the thought of what I know he can do with his tongue and the havoc he could wreak on me if he’d only give in to us, is enough to tip me over the edge.
He’s muttering something about lines and crossing but bright spots burst into the darkness of my closed eyes.
My hands reach out for something to hold, nails digging into the softness of the sofa and the thick, hard muscle of Tanner’s thigh as my hips buck out of rhythm and his name leaves my mouth with a round of expletives.
“Tanner, please. Please take me there.”
My sense of balance, place, spatial awareness are gone. I could be anywhere, flying, soaring with him. It’s light and intense, it’s cool in its blaze, it’s passion and compassion, embarrassment and sheer unadulterated bliss.
In the moment of my climax, he’s everything to me. Making me feel everything, all at once.
“Jesus, Annie. Fuck.”
I open my eyes to see him sitting back on the sofa, his neck taut as his head digs into the back cushion, one hand in his hair and over his face, the part of his anatomy I’ve been craving rock solid, his other hand pressing down onto it.
I kneel up. “Let me finish you.”
The heel of his hand is grinding down through his shorts, even as he shakes his head. His pelvis is subtly rolling and he looks so deep into my eyes, there’s no doubt his mind is only on me.
I don’t understand his logic. He’s given me two incredible orgasms, but if he has a line and that’s sex, I respect it.
“Let me touch you. Please?”
He doesn’t say yes but swallows so deeply, I see it in his throat, and he moves his own hand aside. Tentative at first, making sure he’s okay with it, I reach into his shorts. The guttural sound that leaves him when I contact him is enough to keep my own orgasm high.
The length and width of him are every bit aligned with the size of him. I straddle his legs and wrap my hand around his thick cock, rolling his pre-cum down the part of him that makes his hips thrust under me.
He’s strikingly attractive. I want him badly enough that I could come again, grinding into his thigh as I pump him.
I know he’s close when he grips my butt and moves me against his leg, fingers deliciously rough on my body. “Fuck, Annie, I’m there.”
Right before he reaches his peak, he drives a hand into my hair at my nape and pulls me to him, kissing my mouth like he’s fucking me, as he spurts his hot pleasure over us both. And I come again.
Our mouths become gentler as we fall from a high. Or more truthfully, crash. Because even as his lips softly peck mine, his forehead pressed to mine, our eyes locked, he doesn’t look happy and as satisfied as I feel. He looks… tormented.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, suddenly feeling extremely exposed.
He turns his head to look at me, his forehead creasing tighter. “Annie, don’t ever apologize to me for… that.”
I come up to sit and Tanner beats me to collecting my T-shirt, panties and shorts from the floor.
He moves to his knees in front of me and pulls the top over my head.
As I poke my arms through the holes, he slides my underwear over my feet and up my legs, gaze down.
I stand to finish the act and Tanner holds my shorts for me to step into.
Neither of us speaks. The romantic music suddenly hits differently, making me… sad.
He glides my shorts up my legs, intentionally trailing his fingers over my skin as he goes, eyes finally connecting with mine right as my body shivers. He holds my hips and presses his mouth to the sliver of skin between my shirt and shorts, then presses his head into my stomach.
“I’m sorry, Annie.” I put my hands in his hair, knowing I can’t respond. “I don’t want this to happen the way it is.”
“What does that even mean?”
His hands slide up my back and he holds me to him, still on his knees. “It means I fucked up,” he mumbles. “I keep fucking this up.”
Then he stands and we’re face to face, a thousand unspoken words hanging in the air between us. I don’t know what to do or say next.
He pushes my hair back from my face with such tenderness that it’s a stark contrast to the words he says. “I’m going to get something to clean us up.”
I’m left in the lounge alone, watching his back as he walks away.
I’ve done it again. Thrown myself at a man. A man who could have any woman he wants and I’ve been foolish enough to dream that she could be me.
I’m a woman. A mother. In some ways, more confident and surer of myself than ever.
But right now, I feel young and naive. The girl I was the last time I watched Auston leave my bedroom.
I turn off the music and the fire and make my way to my own ensuite, wanting to turn my stupid back on today. How did I judge this so wrong? Again?
I’m in bed for ten minutes or so, willing the silent tears that leak from my eyes to stop. I cried enough tears over Auston to last a lifetime and this, tonight, is my own making. I forced something Tanner didn’t want.
There’s a soft tap on the door and Tanner appears in the doorway, silhouetted by the low hue of floor lighting in the corridor. “Are you asleep?”
I don’t answer. Even if I knew what to say to him, I’m not in the place to have a conversation right now.
His weight sinks into the bed behind my back.
“Can I sleep in here with you?” he asks, aware I’m not asleep. How could I be when my mind is racing?
I pull aside the bedding. He slips under and moves over to me, his front to my back. When his arm comes across my waist, I interlace my fingers with his and hope that, despite our apologies and clear regret, we can come back from this. Again.
“I don’t want to lose you,” he whispers into my neck.
I squeeze his hand tighter. At least we both want that much. But where we go next, I can only hope sunrise brings the answer.