Chapter Fifteen #4
I don’t know if I’m asking him to stop or not stop, but James takes it as a sign to lick faster, to grip my thighs so tight I wonder if his fingers will leave bruises.
I can feel him moving against the bed in time with his tongue, like he’s absorbing my pleasure into his body and has to find a way to release it.
“You wanted to…” I manage, stopping to try to fill my lungs with air. “You wanted to be inside of me.”
“Not yet,” he growls. “This first.”
“But—”
“No,” he interrupts, and his voice is trancelike. “So beautiful,” he says. “So, so good. You’re so good, Juniper.”
And part of me thinks I should be embarrassed again, but my strongholds are failing with every flick of his tongue against me, and I find myself feeling more and more wanton.
I reach down to touch his head, to push him closer, to hold him there forever if I can.
He moans when I do, and it sounds so inhuman, so primal, I feel myself begin to clench.
“I’m…” I can’t finish the sentence. “I don’t know.”
“Come for me,” he begs. “See how perfect your movements are? How perfect we are together? Fuck. God, fuck me, Juniper. You’re so wet. Let go, love. Just let go.”
I’m not sure if it’s hearing the word love on his lips or if it’s the way he somehow manages to push a finger inside me as his tongue crescendos to an alarming speed, but it undoes me.
The pressure that has been building in and around me bursts, and I’m saying nonsensical things that have no language and my hands are clenching on James’s arms as he raises himself over me once more.
I’m still clenching, still riding my orgasm down the steep drop, when he enters me with a long, low sigh that could be relief or pain or both.
“You feel so good,” he says. “So, so good.”
I don’t know if he’s particularly large or long or whatever, but I feel full to overflowing, pleasantly stretched to my limit in a way that makes me think I’ll be sore tomorrow…especially when he moves his hips back slowly and then brings them forward in an agonizingly long stroke.
James stills when he’s fully sunk into me and leans down and takes one nipple into his mouth, his hand coming up to tweak the other, and the combination of his hands on me and his cock in me is enough to make me want to scream.
“It’s too much,” I tell him, because it is.
“It’s not,” he assures me.
“It is,” I say. “I won’t be able to come again and this will kill me.”
“Oh, you’re coming again,” he says. “More than once if I have any say in the matter.”
He starts to rock back and forth with more frequency, and contradictory to what I just said, I can feel a mounting pressure in my belly.
“I can’t.” It comes out a sob.
James reaches down to where we’re joined and touches my clit again, never stopping his thrusts.
“You can,” he says, and his words are beginning to gasp. “Because you have impeccable rhythm and because you are fucking brilliant at this, Juniper. You’re fucking brilliant at everything. You’re…fuck…”
He rocks faster, rubs me faster, and my heart is speeding along to match it all.
“I’m going to—” He breaks off with a groan, and the hand he has between us is practically vibrating and the way his tendons are strained and the way his hair has flopped forward and his brow is sweaty and—
The books did their best, but none of them prepared me for tumbling over another, steeper edge after already having done so once.
None of them could have told me how absolutely empty your head and body feel when it’s happening, but how you’re still able to see every ounce of pleasure that crosses the man’s face above you as he cries your name and he drives into you again, and again, and again.
James says my name like a litany when he stills and pulses inside me, and I’m not sure if it’s a prayer begging for deliverance or a vow of servitude.
—
Fingers comb through my oily hair, but James doesn’t seem to mind that I’m one day’s missed wash away from being featured in a Dawn dish soap commercial.
“Are you asleep?” he asks.
“Yes.”
James chuckles. “What are you thinking about?”
“You never told me why your checkbook says Moo on it,” I say.
His hand stills.
“It’s stupid,” he says. “Sweet stupid, a little sad stupid.”
I yawn. “Tell me anyway. I probably won’t remember in the morning.”
“It was shorthand between Mom and me.” His hand is back to stroking my hair.
“We used to say moo instead of I love you. I don’t remember how it started—a picture book, maybe—but she bought me a backpack and matching checkbook and wallet for college, and when they asked for monogrammed initials, she couldn’t resist.”
“I like your mom,” I say, stifling another yawn. “We love commitment to the bit.”
I might doze off for a second. I must, because my thoughts are too fanciful to be real and the next thing I know, James is saying, “ Juniper? ” in a gentle voice that suggests it’s not the first time he’s called my name.
“Hm?”
There’s a long pause. I might fall asleep again, just a little. But I’m awake enough to hear when James whispers, “Would it be all right to say moo? Just for tonight?”
“Sure,” I yawn.
He presses his lips to my hair.
“Moo, Juniper.” I don’t hear it so much as feel it in my skull, in the shiver along my ear.
“Quack to you, too,” I say, and if he laughs, I’m not awake to hear it.