Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Bax
Bea arched an eyebrow, but she did what I’d told her to.
She hovered over me, her hot hands planted on my shoulders and her knees digging into the bed next to my hips, and I slipped my hand beneath her soft, tight-fitting leggings, my fingers gliding slowly lower over her smooth belly until I reached shaved-short pubic hair.
She hadn’t worn underwear or a bra, and I had no idea why, but that fact excited me more than it probably should’ve.
My other hand wound its way through her hair, and I pulled her lower and kissed her again.
She was right; she was ready. Wet heat coated my middle finger as I slipped it inside her, and her eyes rolled closed as she rocked her body over mine slowly, riding my hand and kissing me like I couldn’t ever remember being kissed.
Her mouth was hot, too, and she tasted like possibility.
Before she’d arrived in Wisper, I hadn’t really thought about what it would mean to kiss someone again, or how soul bearing a kiss could be, but with Bea, it was intense.
The kiss was deep, like she was searching inside me with her tongue for answers to questions she hadn’t yet asked, and I was just searching her.
I wanted to know who she was. Why she’d grown up to be the strong, independent woman she was now.
I wanted to know why she seemed to want me, a depressed dad, a widower, a man whose life had gone completely off the rails.
Granted, two of my fingers were now buried inside her body, pumping and curling to bring her the most intimate pleasure a person could give another, so maybe that was the reason she was kissing me with everything she had.
Her lips tasted sweet, her breath even sweeter, and she played with my mouth, pulling at my lips with hers, her tongue dueling smoothly with mine, but then she’d relent and let me kiss her harder—a sexy push and pull.
She rolled her hips over my arm in slow and determined waves, moaning and arching, then she tore her mouth away and leaned her forehead against mine.
“More,” she whispered.
I lowered my thumb and placed soft pressure on her clit.
“Yes,” she breathed.
My heart raced inside my chest as I watched the pleasure I gave play across her face. I rubbed round and round, pumping my fingers deep inside her, and I closed my eyes and focused on her breath rushing over my lips as it sped and she rocked harder on my hand.
She smelled kind of like cinnamon, spicy and warm, but sweet too, and it surprised me since she so emphatically denied being sweet.
She was though. It was easy to see the way she cared about my kid. The way she’d cared for me.
I couldn’t help imagining burying my cock deep inside her and feeling her body squeeze mine if we came together. She hadn’t even touched me yet, and I was nearly already there. The sound of her soft moans as her body climbed closer to release was enough to do me in.
She panted and begged, “Kiss me,” and I felt her body grasping my fingers tightly.
When I pressed my lips to hers again and slipped my tongue inside her mouth, she gasped, her body froze above mine, and she came as soon as my eyes locked on hers.
She held me there, in the cradle of her surrender, but finally, I slid my fingers out of her, and she blinked slowly, like she was disappointed at the loss of me inside her.
But she leaned over to reach for my beside drawer, and she pulled a condom from the box my brother, Dixon, had thrown at me one day when he’d gotten fed up with my wallowing and told me, “Go get your dick wet. Nothin’ else is gonna pull you outta this slump. ”
Like finding some random stranger on the street to fuck would’ve cured the pain caused by losing my?—
“Bax?”
“Huh?”
“Where’d you go?”
“I-I’m not sure I can do this.”
“It’s just sex.”
I had no response to that, at least not one I was ready to admit.
It wasn’t just sex. There was a connection between Bea and me.
I had no idea what kind of connection, and I had no clue what it meant or if I should be denying it.
I didn’t want to, but there was a part of me screaming that I should.
That I wasn’t ready, maybe I’d never be, and that I didn’t deserve it.
Maybe I hadn’t deserved it the first time around, and that was why Candy and the baby had been taken from me.
“Bax?”
When I focused on Bea’s face, there was no pity etched there. All I saw was understanding.
“I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothin’ to be sorry for,” she said quietly.
“If you’re not ready, you’re not ready. It’s okay.
” She lowered her body over mine, sitting astride my thighs.
My cock jerked between us, still raring to go even though my mind had screeched to a sudden stop.
“But… may I?” she asked, and she looked between my legs, at the hard-on tenting my sweats.
“It wouldn’t be sex. It would only be release. ”
Relief was what it would be. To have Bea’s hand or her mouth around my cock? Sweet fucking relief.
I nodded, and she smiled, her green eyes warm with acceptance. She really was okay with my unreadiness to have sex.
“Should I not kiss you?” she asked. “Does that make it too personal for you?”
“Oh, God no, Bea. I love when you kiss me. You’re really good at it. I want you to get personal with me. I have a feelin’ you don’t do that with a lot of people.”
She shook her head.
“It’s just that sharin’ my body with someone again, actual sex… It scares me.”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “Dunno.”
But I did know. If I had sex with her, I already knew I could fall in love with her, at the very least with the way she made me feel. And if I loved her and lost her?
She watched my face, and she seemed to accept that I couldn’t tell her my reasons. She slid down my body carefully and then moved so that her legs straddled my good one. I spread for her, moving my cast out of the way. My leg didn’t hurt much anymore; it was just a heavy, useless weight.
Bea’s hand lingered on my thigh. She trailed her fingers higher and dipped them below my waistband, swirling them through the coarse hair there, and when she lowered the front of my sweats with one hand and grasped my dick in her other, I moaned so loudly, I worried I’d woken the rest of the house.
Bea smiled softly, pumping gently, and I watched as she scooted lower, leaned down, and opened her mouth.
Her small tits brushed over my leg, nipples hard and begging for my attention, but the warm, wet suction of her mouth around my cock felt like Christmas and the Fourth of July and New Year’s Eve all in one second and I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.
It felt like freedom, and it released something inside me.
Adrenaline coursed through my bloodstream.
“Stop,” I said.
She froze, and my cock fell from her lips. She sat up, wiping the side of her mouth with the pads of two fingers. “Too much?”
I shook my head against my pillow. “Fuck me, Bea. I want you. I’m ready.”
“No, Bax. You just said you weren’t ready.”
“I was wrong. You showed me that. I am ready.” I was the head of my family. The owner of a goddamn business for Christ’s sake, and the father of a teenager. If I couldn’t handle getting my rocks off with a beautiful woman, it didn’t bode well for the rest of my life.
Grabbing the forgotten condom on the bed, I ripped open the package and rolled it over my steel-hard erection. When it was in place, she licked her lips, rolled them, and scooted forward on her knees.
“Are you sure?” she asked, slipping her leggings down one leg, and she pulled some yoga move, stretching back while she leaned on her other leg.
“Yes.”
She pulled at the other leg of her pants, her opposite hand planted on my shoulder for stability, and then the tight leggings disappeared, but I had no clue where they’d gone because she centered her body over mine, descended slowly, and took my body inside hers.
I cried.
All that silent bravado leaked from the sides of my eyes as I realized how much I’d missed connecting with another person this closely. I cried because of what I was leaving behind by being with a woman who wasn’t Candy. I cried because, finally, I had moved on and it felt fucking monumental.
I felt free from the sadness and the despair, from the guilt and desperate hope that I’d ever feel this way again.
Bea had just released me from the belief that I never would.
She brushed my tears away with tender fingertips, and she rolled her hips, taking me deeper inside her body. Desire and euphoria rushed through me. I wanted to flip her. I wanted to take her and fuck her and give her everything I never thought I’d have to give again.
I couldn’t, so I held it all inside and let her set the pace.
For a woman who acted so tough, she was light and soft and perfect, and she handled my roiling emotions with care.
She lifted my hand and placed it over her breast, and when she reached for my other hand, I didn’t need her guidance to know she wanted me to hold her while she gave me what I so desperately needed.
Every movement and action she took showed that she was doing this for me. This was all about me and letting me use her to get over my dead wife, but I hadn’t forgotten that she had things she needed to get over too. A shitty marriage, the life she’d been mourning with her family, and her home.
“Kiss me,” I said. “Take me and let me take you too. We both got no place else to be.”
A soft moan was her only response, but her own sadness flashed across her face. She leaned down and took my mouth with hers, and she watched me as she placed kisses on my lips and cheeks and my nose as she rode me slowly.
My hands slid to her hips, and I grasped them tightly, holding on for the ride.
She rose above me, reveling in the way I made her feel, and fuck if I wasn’t proud of that.
I was just happy to find myself capable of causing her to feel pleasure at all.
If she’d been in my bedroom a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to.
Shit, a year ago, I couldn’t even jack off without intense guilt about feeling pleasure when the person I’d loved practically my whole life couldn’t anymore.
But I wasn’t feeling guilty now.
And I didn’t feel lost anymore, like I was stuck between home and a strange place I’d never been.
I felt whole again. And I felt found.
“Yeah, sweetheart,” I whispered when Bea whimpered above me, and she arched her back. “Take me with you.”
Her hair fell like rain down her back, swaying and swinging with her body, and a rose flush bloomed on her chest. I watched her, wanting her more and more with each passing second, and when I licked two fingers and slid my hand between the apex of her thighs and rubbed her clit, she jolted and called my name.
I came with the sound of her pleasure caressing me in the warm, yellow glow from my lamp, and she collapsed on top of me, kissing my neck and leading me down from Heaven with her lips.