Chapter 16 #2
The way his hands moved down her body, the way he unzipped her dress.
“It’s a beautiful dress,” he said as he kissed her neck and pulled the garment away from her body, discarding it on the floor.
She gave thanks for the black lace bra and underwear she wore, which were sexier than her everyday wear. But she had been on a date.
“Damn, Perry,” he said, pressing his forehead against hers, his breathing jagged.
“Are you nervous?” she asked.
He huffed a breath. “ Yes . I haven’t been with anybody in …”
“Me either. I lied. In the car. It’s been at least as long as it’s been for you.”
Because she had lied also in the alleyway. She had put herself in a convent. Because she had been sorting through the disastrous implications of Carson not being married anymore and all of her great and terrible feelings for him.
“But it’s not really that,” he said. “It’s you. It’s you . The first time I saw you … you were mine, Perry. You were mine.”
She didn’t know what he meant by that. But her heart reacted to it. Her whole body did. She felt as if she was going to go up in flames. She wanted to get closer to him. His clothes were in the way. She just wanted to be closer.
She started to tug at his shirt.
She was undressing Carson.
Her hands were shaking violently. She moved them over his bare torso.
Over all his muscles. She had permission to touch him now.
This object of her never-ending fantasies.
She pressed a kiss to the hollow of his throat, then down on his chest. He grunted.
She felt greedy now. Desperate. He was a mirage that might vanish at any moment.
Was this real? Was she just hallucinating?
She’d finally driven herself mad. But he was firm and solid beneath her fingertips. Hot. His chest hair rough beneath the touch of her hand, his heart raging there.
She scraped her fingertips down his abdomen, the hard ridges of his abs. “You are … you are gorgeous,” she said.
She held his face in her hands and stared at him.
She knew that she was being intense and weird, but it was Carson, and she couldn’t help herself.
For years, this was her darkest secret, the one she kept locked away in the deepest part of her soul.
The wall that held it back had sprung a leak, and water had been dripping from the crack for weeks, maybe years.
But now it had burst open. And it was all just pouring out.
There was nothing she could do to stop it. Not anymore.
She didn’t even want to.
She kissed him. Desperate. And he unhooked her bra, kissing her neck, moving down, growling as he took one nipple into his mouth and sucked it in deep.
She watched him. The profile of her best friend’s face as he tasted her.
Her head fell back; her internal muscles pulsed with desire.
She was wet, slick for him. If he touched her now, he would know how much she wanted him. It would be obvious.
She wouldn’t be embarrassed. How could she be?
Because this madness had taken over both of them, and maybe for the first time since they were children, they each wanted the same thing with the same amount of ferocity as the other.
Just like playing pirates.
She was seized with a longing for the recklessness they’d had then. With the desire for that wildness to be theirs. To be his pirate princess. She had never felt closer to that fantasy than she did now.
“Beautiful,” he whispered, kissing her along her jaw, sifting his fingers through her hair.
Then he laid her down on the bed. He kissed right between the valley of her breasts, down her stomach.
The whiskers on his chin rubbed the sensitive skin on her stomach.
He paused at the waistband of her panties.
He lowered his head for a moment, resting his forehead right on her stomach as if he was saying a prayer.
Then he took her underwear down, slowly.
His breathing jagged, tortured, as he revealed that most intimate place.
She had the thought that maybe she should be embarrassed. But she just wasn’t. Because she wanted this so much. She wanted him to see. Her. All of her. She was desperate for this. She had been for a really long time.
He pushed her thighs apart, his breathing becoming labored. And then it became clear just why he had bowed his head to pray.
He moved between her legs and tasted her, his mouth soft at first, then firmer, more demanding.
She gripped his shoulders, gasping. He moved his hand beneath her ass, lifted her up from the bed and started to eat her with intent. Never. Never in all her life had she …
Yes, men had tried. But she had never been all that into it. This was … this was something else. It was personal. It was him. It was her. It was, perhaps, the most direct way they could have ever defiled their friendship. And she was absolutely here for it.
She was clinging to him, hard. So hard that she realized she was digging her nails into the back of his head, and it was probably too much.
She released her hold on him, and everything unraveled inside her.
She shattered. Gasping, shivering, crying out with her release.
And then she realized what she really wanted. To do the exact same for him.
She moved away from him, sliding up to the top of the bed. He went up on his knees, and she moved to him, wrapping her arm around his neck, pressing her naked body to his. His jeans were rough against her hipbones. She started to undo his belt, the closure on his pants.
She was still shaking. Dammit. She didn’t know if she was going to be able to stop. She was about to see Carson, all of him. She already knew she would think he was beautiful.
But when she reached her hand down into his underwear, wrapped her fingers around him, she gasped. Because he was a large man, and he was large everywhere, it turned out.
She let out a shuddering breath. She began to stroke him slowly, pushing the fabric of his jeans and underwear down and freeing him.
Then she lowered her head and took him into her mouth. “Fuck,” he said, his head falling back as she tasted him.
As she indulged herself in the way that he just had. And it was even better, quite honestly. Because she was tasting him. Touching him. Because she was finally, finally touching him like this.
She lost herself, completely.
Until his grip tightened in her hair. “Have mercy on me,” he said. “I’ve only got so much self-control.”
“I don’t need your self-control,” she said, looking up at him. “Perry …”
She moved up against him, kissing him. He wrapped his arm around her waist and brought her down on the bed. He kicked the rest of his clothes off, moved his hand between her thighs and started stroking her.
“I’m ready,” she said, her voice shaky, thin. He pushed two fingers inside her, sliding his thumb over the sensitive bundle of nerves there. She groaned, arching her hips against him.
“Maybe I want to tease you a little bit more. Maybe I want to draw it out. Because when I take you for the first time … It’s the first time.”
And there would be more. That was the rest of it. It wasn’t just tonight. It made her want to weep. But she also wondered how he had just gotten so sure.
It would be wonderful. She knew that. Maybe he did too.
He stroked her inside, and she gasped, her orgasm shocking her, jolting her halfway off the mattress. He claimed her mouth, withdrew his fingers from her, and positioned himself between her thighs. Then he thrust home, his size a shock, but in the very best way.
She raked her nails down his arms as he began to move. Wrapped her legs around his lean hips as he thrust deep. Impossibly so.
“Carson,” she whispered.
“Princess,” he said, kissing her neck.
And she was undone.
He was inside her. Carson Wilder. The boy of her fantasies, the man of her dreams. Hers. Hers.
You’re mine.
And they were each other’s.
She lost herself in the pagan rhythm that he established.
She met his each and every thrust. She drew blood and cried out his name.
She didn’t want it to end, but when it did, it was a blaze of riotous glory, pleasure like she had never known.
Her body tightened around his, and she unraveled while pleasure took her words, her thoughts, and left her only with him.
He cried out his own release, pouring himself into her.
Afterward, there was no sound except for their labored breathing.
He lay down beside her on the bed, staring at her.
And she felt herself losing touch with consciousness. Three orgasms. She was wrung out.
Except she had a feeling it wasn’t really the orgasms. It was him. Having sex with her best friend for the first time.
He stroked her face, and she decided to close her eyes just for a moment.
When she opened them again, she realized that she had fallen asleep. Carson was sitting on the foot of her bed, his broad back to her. He was wearing his jeans. His head was lowered, and his posture was tense.
He was still there, though.
She wasn’t confused, not even for a moment. Because even in her dream she hadn’t forgotten that she’d just had sex with Carson.
She sat up, clutching the sheets to her breasts, which was a silly and belated display of modesty. He wasn’t even looking at her, and he had already seen everything. She touched his back.
“I didn’t use a condom,” he said.
“Oh.”
A pang of something that should have been horror tightened her stomach.
“If you need to get … I don’t know, a pill or …”
“Do you want me to?”
He turned to look at her. “Not especially.”
The odds of her being pregnant, at thirty-two, after a single sexual encounter, were low. But not zero, she knew. He was telling her he wouldn’t judge her if she wanted to make those odds lower. She tried to take a breath.
A baby. Carson’s baby. Actually, she wanted that a lot. But … it would trap them both in a really specific kind of heaven and hell. It would make a lot of decisions for them.
“I don’t want to either.”
He nodded. “I’ll be more careful next time.”
She nodded. “Yeah. You want there to be a next time?”
His face was drawn and haggard. “I don’t think there’s any choice.”
“You sound delighted by that,” she said.
“I don’t know what it means for us.”
It was right there between them. The obvious thing.
They could just decide to be together. He had said that he didn’t even want her to take the morning-after pill.
She knew that she didn’t want to. If they had a baby together …
she wouldn’t leave. She would stay. She would push aside all her hurt about Alyssa.
About not being chosen first. She would let the pregnancy force them together.
They could just decide to do that.
To forget everything that had come before. To be all in now.
Except he’d said he didn’t want to get married again. And he’d said he didn’t think he could love.
And she knew that she loved him in ways that might kill her. She thought about her mother. The way she had been entirely addicted to what her father made her feel.
Carson wasn’t her dad.
But she did know what it meant when a woman loved a man more than he loved her. She knew what it looked like. She knew all the bad and unhealthy decisions that could stem from that. She wouldn’t allow that to happen. Not to them. She cared too much about him.
“The horse has bolted,” he said, his voice rough. “And I’m afraid that things are different now.”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“You’re still leaving Rustler Mountain.”
“I am,” she said, a hitch in her breath. It was her decision. She could decide to stay. She could decide not to put a down payment on that place in Medford. She could decide to just stay with him.
“Remember what you said?” she began, pushing herself up and letting the sheet fall away.
“About how you kept trying to figure out the future. So that you could make it something good and easy. And how maybe you just needed to try to live. Maybe we just have to try to live through this. And see what happens.”
“That sounds really dangerous,” he said.
He would get no argument from her.
“Except it’s you. And it’s me. And the one thing I do know, Carson, is that I can’t imagine life without you.”
“You’re going to make one, though.”
“Not any more than you did. You went into the Army, and you married somebody else.”
His face went blank. “I did.”
“But we’re still us.”
“Yeah.”
“And the way we’ve been us has taken a lot of different shapes, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So this is a different shape that we’re in right now.”
He nodded slowly and moved toward her, cupping her face. “I can’t imagine going back. Because now I know what you look like underneath your clothes.”
As romantic proclamations went, it wasn’t the most florid.
But it was sincere.
“You should move your things into my house.”
Her heart stopped. His house, where he had lived with Alyssa. Yes, they had shared this place for a while, but not this bed. This cabin hadn’t been their home.
“No,” she said. “We’re not doing that. I’m not playing house with you.”
Because that’s what it would be. Playing. This wasn’t really what he wanted. It wasn’t what he was choosing. He could’ve chosen her at any point. He hadn’t.
“I don’t want anyone to know,” she said.
She didn’t want their friendship to be changed everywhere. Suddenly, now that she had the intimacy she had always wanted, she almost wished their relationship could go back to being what it was. Because that had been something she knew how to live with. It had been something comfortable.
“Right.” He chuckled. “I mean, you’re my best friend, Perry. You would be the only person I would tell.”
She understood the weirdness of that. “Me too.”
“I want to kiss you,” he said.
“You don’t have to ask.”
“I just wanted to be sure. I didn’t know if there were going to be times when you needed me to go back to just being your friend.”
She frowned, pain lancing her chest. She put her hand on his face. Then she leaned forward and kissed him. Slowly. Gently. “I was your friend the whole time I was doing that.”
He nodded.
“When we’re alone, we can be however we want.”
For now.
She refused to think about forever, the future, or the date of her next period. She refused to think past the end of her mattress. And when he kissed her again, and it quickly intensified, she decided she wasn’t going to think again for the rest of the night.