Chapter 38
Nikita
The fresh memory of the orgasm Calvin gave me earlier replays in my mind. There is a throb between my legs as my body relives the memory, all the previous reactions returning as if it is being experienced for the first time. I have the memory of this guy eating my pussy. How the hell are we supposed to go back to normal? What is normal now? How am I supposed to look at him and not find myself wishing I was riding that face of his?
This is a bad idea.
Even the cold shower I took right before bed wasn’t enough to put out the flames that burned in my bloodstream.
Fucking Calvin is a bad idea.
Yes. Fucking Calvin.
Imagine what it will be like to fuck Calvin…
No! Get it together.
Calvin and Jay are best friends and that in itself has enough complications. No matter what, I’d always run the risk of bumping into him and the Calvin I knew back on American soil is one I can barely tolerate.
But this Calvin? This Calvin is reassembling himself before my very eyes. There are layers to him that he hadn’t shared until this trip and had I never agreed to come along, I wouldn’t have ever known that.
And that would have been a damn shame.
This Calvin is one I can’t seem to shake. I find myself drawn to him, and now that he lies inches away from me, I am increasingly more aware of that fact.
The rest of the night continued as normally as it could for two people who just hooked up. I may appear confident or in control, but I am the furthest thing from it. I can still feel his lips on me, his tongue tasting me as he sucked on my clit. The way I melted against him, seeing stars in my vision as he added his fingers to the mix, sending my brain into a frenzy.
I stare up at the ceiling, but it’s dark ahead of me, the only light coming through a couple slits of the shutters. The only sound coming from his breathing beside me.
I pinch my eyes closed, begging for sleep to find me and for those memories to leave me alone. He lays away from me, but I can still feel him. There has to be space the length of a ruler between us. Yet, it still feels as if he is brushing his skin up against mine, incinerating any nerves in its path of destruction.
His body shifts, the duvet over us moving with his movements. I freeze, holding my breath - not wanting to let him know that I am awake, but still his voice cuts through the darkness.
“You still awake?”
“No.”
“Same.”
I smile to myself, the nerves rolling inside my stomach along with a dash of frustration. I hate that he has the ability to make me feel this… off-balance.
“Do you usually struggle to fall asleep?” Calvin asks, insisting on making this a conversation rather than time to be left alone with our inner-monologues.
“Nope. Once my head hits the pillow, I’m out. At least that’s how it usually is. You?”
“Only when there’s a disruption to my sleep routine.”
I snicker in the dark, “You do not have a sleep routine.”
“Of course, I do.” I feel the mattress dip as he shifts, “And that usually includes listening to the sounds of dolphins.”
I wait to see if he’ll add anything else, but he doesn’t, “No way. You don’t listen to that.”
A beat.
“No, I don’t.” He chuckles, “But I don’t usually have this much trouble falling asleep.”
“And yet here we both are.”
“I wonder what that’s about.”
There is a flicker of teasing in his voice, alluding to exactly what is repeating in my own mind. He has to be thinking of what happened. Calvin with an erection is a different beast and not just with what he has to offer, but the person he becomes. This in-control, spontaneous, risky person that can, in fact, make me cum. Multiple times. I try to shake the thoughts from my mind, but I can feel the continuous pressure between my legs at just the thought of it.
“Have you been on a boat before?” I ask, switching the conversation to a safer, more neutral topic. What’s on the agenda for tomorrow is the first thing that comes to mind.
We are taking an early afternoon boat ride through the Benagil Caves and since that is something I had missed out on the last time I was in Algarve, I am excited to do it. I have always wanted to see dolphins up close and that is one of the highlights of the outing.
“Yes. Quite a few, actually. Both Britney and Kenneth have their own yachts.”
“Of course they do.” I shift my body to the side, turning to face his direction even though I can’t see him. “Do you enjoy being on a boat?”
“It’s not my favorite,” he admits.
“Just to clarify, you don’t like airplanes or boats?”
I feel him shift, his voice a little louder now with where he has moved to. “Correct.”
“Which mode of transport do you like?”
“Any that I can be in control of.”
“Of course - you and your control issues.” I keep my tone playful but there is no secret that Calvin has control-freak tendencies, whether they are intentional or not.
“I won’t deny that.”
“You know, women don’t like a man that’s controlling.”
“I’d like to think that’s context dependent.”
I chuckle, fresh arousal flickering inside of me at his insight. Of course, my mind can’t think of anything but Calvin and all the ways I would enjoy him taking control.
“You’re right.”
His soft chuckle surrounds me, pulling the corners up of my own mouth, “And here I was thinking I would never hear those words from you.”
“If you tell anyone, I’ll deny it.”
“I’d expect nothing less.”
There is a light flutter deep in my stomach, sending a rush of warmth to my chest. I have an opportunity to pick at Calvin’s brain with the protective barrier between us that is the darkness. Speaking like this makes it easy to keep my thoughts in tact - I don’t have to fight the distraction of his intense gaze, or the sudden rugged improvement to his jaw that occurred with the growth of his five o’clock shadow. His thick lips that he pulls between his teeth in a motion so quick that you’d miss it if you blinked, but I see it and I want nothing more than for him to take my lip between those teeth of his.
I shake my head, banishing those thoughts from my mind while I suffer in this forced-proximity.
I have the self-control of a saint right now.
“What did Jay want earlier?” Calvin asks.
I shake my head, my eyes pinching shut as my mind returns to the fresh memory. “No. I can’t talk about my brother, Calvin. Not after what we did.”
He laughs, “You’re focusing on the wrong thing. All you need to remember from that moment is how I made you come.”
“I am impressed that you managed to live up to the expectations. For a moment there you had me thinking you were all talk and no action.”
“Nikita, if you keep challenging me, I’m going to have to keep showing you all the reasons why you shouldn’t.” His voice is low and thick with seduction.
“Don’t threaten me with a good time, honey.”
He laughs, the sound wrapping around me with its warmth. I am enjoying that sound far more than I should. “You really are trouble, princess.”
Without meaning to, I blurt out a question I’ve asked him before, but was never satisfied with the answer. That word has the chance to unnerve me. “Why do you call me that?”
“Princess?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve already answered that question.”
“Never honestly.”
I wait to see how he will respond now that we’ve been a lot more intimate with each other. Pair that with the moments we passed deep secrets between us that we keep hidden from the world and our connection deepened - there is no denying that.
“I can’t remember exactly when, but back in college, you visited for the weekend. What I can remember is an eighteen year old Nikita Da Silva making a lot of demands to your brother. You were acting like a princess back then and when I called you that, you didn’t like it, which only made me want to keep doing it,” he admits with a soft laugh, “If I remember correctly you told me to mind my business too.”
I know exactly what memory he is referring to. That weekend was the anniversary of my mother’s death and I went to visit Jay after he decided to go back to college. I spent most of the weekend partying it up with anyone else I could befriend. Jay gave me an earful the next day when he wasn’t able to get a hold of me, and being as hungover and fragile as I was, I snapped and told him off. Calvin just happened to pass some comment that I can’t remember now and yep, I told him to mind his business. I was immature as hell, but I was young and didn’t know any better.
“You caught me at a bad time that weekend,” I tell him, “I’m nothing like that.”
“I know that now. I’ve realized that I was wrong about a lot of things when it comes to you.”
Satisfaction warms my chest at the same time my stomach dips with butterflies.
“And here I was thinking I would never hear those words from you,” I repeat his words back to him, rewarded with another rush of his laughter. That sound is quickly becoming one of my favorites.
“So, what should I call you then?” He asks, “Since princess isn’t an option anymore.”
“I didn’t think you’d stop using it.”
“You don’t like it, so I’ll stop.”
I am not sure how much longer my heart is going to last with its incessant beating against the walls of my chest.
“I like European Calvin. He’s much better than American Calvin,” I tease.
“He’s new to me too.” His playful tone matches mine. “You’ve only got a few more days with him, you should probably take advantage of that.”
I laugh, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
A comfortable silence settles around us again, there’s never any pressure to fill it. There are very few places where I feel I can be exactly who I am and somehow, lying in the dark in bed with Calvin, is one of those.
“Calvin?”
“Yes, linda?”
The correct pronunciation of the word he has gotten wrong previously has me laughing with glee and putting my question on pause, “I see that word has caught on.”
“Your pronunciation tutorial was wildly helpful.”
I laugh at the memory of how much frustration I was feeling when I corrected him after he rudely cut off my conversation with Blake. I hadn’t expected him to retain that information though.
“Now, the question is, do you remember what it means?” I ask.
“Yes, which is exactly why I used it.”
I gulp, my breath getting caught in my throat. I am used to being unphased by things like this, but for some reason, Calvin is capable of eliciting any kind of reaction out of me.
“Were you going to ask me something?” Calvin asks.
Yes.
“No.”
“Don’t lie.”
I scoff, “How do you know I’m lying?”
“I can feel it.”
“You don’t strike me as the kind of person who would be that in touch with their emotional side.” I deflect, but he is there to call me out.
“I am, but that’s not what we’re talking about. You’re deflecting.”
I want to ask him about what happened between us but as soon as I open my mouth, I chicken out. There is nothing about this scenario that makes me feel like I am in control. He completely unnerves me and I don’t know how I feel about that.
“I need you to tell me that what happened between us wasn’t an act,” I get the words out before I can change my mind, “That wasn’t part of the pretense… was it?”
“You mean when you were riding my fingers?” He chuckles, “I think it was pretty clear that I just did that to make Violet jealous.” Playful sarcasm drips from his words causing me to reach out and find a part of his body to shove.
I laugh, “You’re an ass.”
The feeling of his fingers brushing up against mine has me darting my eyes in that direction, even though I can’t actually see them. I feel him though. His hand moves to hold mine, his thumb resting on top of it.
“That wasn’t part of the pretense, Nikita,” he murmurs, “I wanted that to happen. I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”
Tension thickens the air as it moves between us. Even in the dark, I can still picture the way his deep eyes found mine with a deeper intensity that had every part of my body awakened beneath his gaze.
“Me too.”
He shifts his body, until I feel him close to me. “I can’t believe we thought we could have a no touching pact.” His voice is a low whisper as he laughs.
“To be fair, I used to think a cactus would be a better fuck buddy than you.”
“Ouch!” he says with a laugh, the vibrations of his chest buzzing against mine, “I should be offended.”
“You’ve since redeemed yourself.”
His fingertips brush over the lining of my thin booty shorts. “Seems like one orgasm was all it took for you to change your mind.”
“I’m a very simple girl.”
I feel a finger slip beneath my underwear, teasing me as he runs his finger further down between my legs. “Does this mean you’re going to let me touch you again?”
Reaching over, I stop his finger from moving any further, slipping both our hands between my legs as I squeeze.
“I was thinking I can return the favor instead.”
I need to have Calvin at my mercy. I have caved beneath his touch, and as much as I want him to do that again, I’m more interested in seeing what I am capable of doing to him.
Moving my hand to cup the outside of his pants, I’m pleased to find that his erection is waiting for me.
“You wanted to see if I could put these lips to good use?” I murmur, using my other hand to move his head closer to mine, feeling his lips brush up against mine, “Lie back and enjoy, Rhodes.”