Chapter 14
Fourteen
First Time
Xerses
I spent all of graduation dinner trying not to look at Kelly. Every time she laughed. Every time her mouth softened over the rim of her tea glass and I remembered how that same mouth had felt kissing me, telling me her truth, and the heat and then trust that came with that flashed in my mind.
She wanted me. I wanted her. So at dessert, her shoulders tightened first and she stopped drinking her wine.
Hope started telling some story about Charlie falling off a dock when he was twelve and somehow making it everyone else’s fault. Laughter rolled down the table.
Kelly smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
I waited until coffee was poured and the room loosened in that particular post-dinner way, people shifting chairs, standing in clumps, no one paying full attention to exits, and then I came up behind Kelly’s chair and said, low enough for only her to hear, “Come with me.”
She looked up immediately.
The room was warm and gold around us, my mother’s crystal reflecting candlelight everywhere, but the second Kelly lifted her face to mine the rest of it blurred.
“What now,” she asked.
“Walk with me.”
She rose without another word. No one paid attention to us as we left the room.
Outside, the night hit us cool and salty. The side drive lamps were on. The ocean was a dark pulse somewhere beyond the house.
She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows. “You stole me from a dinner party.”
“Rescued.”
“Stole.”
“You were miserable.”
“I was managing.” She smiled and lowered her arms.
“You stopped drinking your wine. You never stop drinking your wine.”
Her eyes had a sparkle as she said, “That is a disturbing amount of attention to my habits.”
“You were counting ceiling tiles.”
She let out small laugh. “I was not.”
“There are forty-seven.”
She stared at me. “You counted them?”
“I had nothing else to look at. You were pretending to enjoy dessert.”
She nodded, as she said, “I was enjoying dessert.”
“You ate three bites.”
“It was very rich dessert.”
“It was profiteroles.”
“Rich profiteroles.”
She watched me. “You noticed all that?”
“I notice everything about you. That should concern both of us.”
“It does.”
I walked her towards the walkway toward our private beach.
She stared at it. Then at me. “You do realize this looks exactly like the beginning of bad decisions.”
“It is the middle of bad decisions.”
“Where are we going?”
“The beach.” I stated as we stepped on the path.
“At night.”
“Yes.”
“Alone.”
“Yes.”
“And you don’t see how this looks.”
“I see exactly how it looks.”
She was quiet for a beat. Then: “Good.”
That got me the smallest, hottest flicker of a smile.
She stepped onto the gravel and glanced around at the sky, then the dunes, then the dark line of the water.
“This place is pretty,” she said.
She followed me down the path. Kelly stopped when the sand flattened beneath us.
“What now.”
The night took edges off everything except what mattered. Her face. Her mouth. The rise and fall of her chest. that she had come here with me knowing what kind of question the night was asking.
“What do you want,” I asked.
Her lashes flickered once. “That is not fair.”
“Yes, it is.”
“No.” She folded her arms tighter, not defensive so much as containing herself. “You know what I want.”
“I want to hear you say it.”
The wind moved her hair across her mouth. She shoved it back impatiently.
“That’s mean.”
“Probably.”
She laughed once under her breath. “You’re impossible.”
“Yes.”
I waited.
Kelly looked out at the ocean, then down at the sand, then back at me. Her throat moved when
Then she said, very quietly, “I want you to touch me again.”
The sentence hit me like a strike.
We were close enough that the heat of her through the wind and I noticed her breathing change.
“Okay,” I said.
That got color into her face.
I reached up and slid my fingers into her hair, cupping the back of her neck. She leaned into the touch before I kissed her.
That was all I had left in me after that.
No caution. No slow tease to build a fire we had both been standing in for days already.
I kissed her hard.
Her mouth opened instantly under mine. Her hands fisted in the front of my shirt. She moved into me like she’d been holding herself together all night and this was the point where she finally stopped trying.
Yes.
This was what I had wanted all through dinner. The immediate heat of her, the honesty of her body, the way she kissed like she’d rather take than be handled.
She made a low sound into my mouth that nearly finished me right there.
My hand slid from her neck to her waist, under the edge of her sweater, over warm skin.
Kelly gasped and dragged me closer.
I broke the kiss long to get the sweater off her.
“Help me with this,” she said, struggling with the hem.
“You’re tangled.”
“I know I’m tangled. Wind and sweaters have an adversarial relationship.”
I helped her pull it free. She threw it into the sand without taking her eyes off me.
“Better?”
“Much.”
Under it she wore a thin little camisole that did nothing to help my self-control.
I kissed her again, one hand at her waist, the other sliding up her spine until I felt the clasp of her bra beneath the fabric.
“Still okay,” I said against her mouth.
“Yes.”
That made this hotter.
I worked the clasp free with one hand and felt her body react when the straps loosened under the camisole. Her fingers dug into my shoulders. She bit my lower lip hard to make me groan.
“Easy,” she whispered.
She wasn’t wrong.
I dragged the camisole down with the bra and stopped long to look at her.
Kelly flushed under the moonlight. Bare breasts. Hard nipples. Wind on her skin. Mouth parted. Eyes dark and direct and unhidden.
“Jesus.”
Her face altered at that. Heat and power. All three at once.
Then, because Kelly was Kelly even half naked in the dark, she said, “That better have been admiration and not concern.”
I laughed against her mouth and kissed her harder.
My hand closed over her breast.
She arched into it.
No hesitation.
Just the clean, devastating honesty of wanting.
I palmed her slowly, thumb brushing over her nipple until she shuddered and grabbed my shirt in both hands like she was trying to keep herself upright through it.
I kissed down her throat, over the top of her breast, then lower until her breathing turned uneven and desperate above me.
My hands were all over her now. Her waist. Her back. The soft curve of her.
And still, under all the heat, there was that other thing.
Attention.
The way she responded to every small change. Pressure and fingers.
Nothing in her felt disconnected from what I was doing. She was there in all of it. Alive in all of it.
I dropped to my knees in the sand in front of her.
Kelly’s breath caught.
Her fingers went to my hair instantly, not pulling, just there, as if she needed somewhere to put the surge of sensation that hit her the second she realized where I was.
“Xerses.”
That voice.
That voice was going to destroy what remained of me.
I looked up at her. “Tell me no if you want me to stop.”
Her chest rose and fell once.
I hooked my fingers in the waistband of her jeans and looked up once more.
She nodded and moved to help.
We unbuttoned them, and dragged the zipper down, and pushed them over her hips with her help until they dropped to the sand at her feet.
Beneath them, soft little underwear. Black. Barely there.
That was more intimate than naked would have been.
I kissed the inside of one thigh.
Then the other.
Kelly’s head tipped back. Her fingers tightened in my hair.
The wind and the ocean and her breathing were the only sounds in the world.
I slid one hand up the back of her calf, over her thigh, under the edge of her underwear.
Hot already.
That did something vicious to me.
“Good girl,” I said before I could stop myself.
Kelly shivered so hard I nearly lost my grip on my own control.
“Say that again.”
I let my thumb brush over her once. Light. Testing.
Her mouth dropped open.
“Good girl,” I said again, lower.
She made a helpless sound and pulled at my hair.
That was enough to push me over the edge of patience.
I moved her underwear aside and put my mouth on her.
The sound that tore out of her hit me straight through.
Yes.
Her thighs trembled under my hands. Her fingers went hard in my hair. I licked into her slowly at first, then harder when I learned the exact way her body jumped for it.
She tasted like temptation.
I wanted to keep her right there. Wanted to drag this out until she was crying for it. Wanted to feel every second of her losing that careful control she wore so beautifully.
I also wanted to make her come so hard she forgot everything else.
My tongue worked her steadily while my fingers pressed into the soft inside of her thigh, holding her open for me.
Kelly’s body responded in immediate, sharp waves. She was so responsive. Every change in pressure. Every circle. Every flick of my tongue over the place that made her body jerk.
“Xerses, ” She said my name like she was half warning me and half praying to me.
I smiled against her and gave her what she wanted.
She nearly folded.
I slid one finger inside her and felt her tighten instantly, hot and slick and so responsive it bordered on brutal.
Kelly cried out.
I looked up.
Her eyes were on me, wrecked and shining and still there.
“Okay?”
“Yes. Yes, don’t stop.”
Not hiding.
I added another slow stroke with my finger and went back to her clit with my mouth, and that was it.
That was the break.
She went tight. One hand left my hair to brace against the dune behind her. Her breath snapped sharp. Then she came.
Hard and beautiful.
Her legs shook against my shoulders. My name fell out of her in pieces.
I kept her there, through all of it, through the first wave and the aftershock and the soft little ruined sounds she couldn’t stop making.