Chapter 20
Chapter Twenty
Avery Jane
“You’re shakin’.” Dixon’s whole body vibrated as I led him to my bed. “Are you nervous?”
Unbuttoning his jeans, I bit into my bottom lip while I imagined what I might find beneath. I pushed them down his thighs and to the floor, and when he sat on the edge of my bed, I stepped between his spread legs.
“A little,” he whispered. “But I don’t think that’s what’s makin’ me shake.”
“Then what is?”
His hand slipped up my back as he looked up at me, and I inched closer as he settled it gently between my shoulder blades.
“I want you so much I can barely catch my breath.”
Pushing my fingers through his hair, I scraped my nails over his scalp, and he moaned and breathed out his anxiety. I pulled his mouth to my breast, and his tongue peeked out for a taste.
Slowly, I slid my fingers beneath the waistband of my pajamas and my underwear, and I pushed them over my hips and let the fabric fall and pool around my feet. Dixon’s hand roughed over my skin when I climbed up and straddled his thighs.
“AJ…”
“Yes?”
“I-I don’t know if this is—”
“It’s what we need,” I whispered and smoothed his hair away from his face. The tangles I’d created fell behind his shoulders, which led my curiosity to his chest. I grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and lifted it, and his bare chest beneath was strong and cut.
“It’s irresponsible. I don’t have a condom and I can’t risk—”
“In the drawer.” Casting my eyes toward my bedside table, I blushed. I hoped he wouldn’t judge me for being prepared. Cody had chastised me once for it, but then he never bothered to bring condoms, and then he’d get mad at me when I wouldn’t sleep with him.
And call me a hopeless romantic, but if Dixon and I had to stop now, I thought I might cry. The build up to us being together like this had been going on for far too long. If I was honest with myself, it had been building for years.
Dixon leaned to open the drawer, and my eyes followed the long line of his neck as he stretched.
He pulled out a condom packet and straightened, and I gripped his erection in the tight cage of my palm.
I’d been trying really hard not to focus on his cock and the way it throbbed and pulsed in anticipation, but now I stared. And I was not disappointed.
His eyes rolled closed, his jaw clenched, and it seemed like he stopped breathing.
“Please?” I said softly. “Let me love you.”
The intensity of his gaze when he opened his eyes almost scared me. He hadn’t moved. He still held the condom trapped between two fingers, so I pulled it free and tore it open, and when I rolled it into place, he shuddered.
“Like this?” he asked, looking between us at my extremely expectant body—nipples pebbled and as hard as stone, skin tight, and goosebumps broken out everywhere. “You deserve more than some quick f—”
“You can have me however you want me,” I said, and I meant it, “but we’re already here. I’m ready, and I want you.” Twining my fingers through his, I led our hands beneath me and let him feel how wet I already was for him. His arousing foot massage had done the trick.
I rubbed our hands through my slick wetness, until the slippery glide took on a rhythm, and then I untangled my fingers from his and held steady with my hands on his shoulders.
Reaching forward, I touched my lips to his tentatively and whispered, “Please don’t make me beg,” as I began to ride his hand, my hips surging and retreating slowly, and I savored every sensation his rough skin on mine caused.
I nipped his bottom lip between my teeth, and he groaned and opened his mouth. He tilted his head and inhaled as I exhaled. It felt like every breath I’d ever taken was for him.
“Avery Jane,” he said, “I-I want this more than I can say, but I’m not— You deserve better than me. You deserve good things.”
But his fingers rubbed me faster.
Peppering greedy kisses along his jaw, I whispered, “I deserve you. Someday you’ll see that me deservin’ good things is the same thing. Stop tryin’ to talk me out of this.”
That stopped the delicious rubbing, and his gaze held mine for a long moment.
“You’re smart and beautiful,” he said, touching one finger to my bottom lip. “This smile and these carin’ eyes, they should be focused on somebody else. I’m scarred and sorry and broken. You deserve better.”
“I don’t care about scars.”
“You should. They remember all the bad shit I’ve done.
If you look close enough, they’ll tell you a story about a worthless man who was so scared of who he had become that he ran from his home, and he hid and cowered away while the rest of the world went on with life and faced their problems. I carry so much pain, AJ. I don’t want it to infect you.”
“Skin does not have a memory, Dixon. It’s not your skin that remembers the pain. Those scars have completely forgotten you. They have no idea where they came from, and it’s a good thing because you can’t change your skin, but you can change your heart and your mind.”
A tear fell from the corner of his eye. He didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, his hands gripped my hips harder. He kissed me again, guiding me lower and meeting me halfway, then entered my body slowly, as if he were afraid to break or scar me too.
The connection was immediate, like coming home again, and I imagined I could see inside him, that I could see the deep lake of pain and regret he held in his heart. The lake churned and surged, and I wanted to ride it, to surf and conquer it.
He deserved placid waters.
The shaking got worse. His whole body quaked with it, and I was shaking now, too, silently willing him to move inside me, but I didn’t want to rush him.
“No,” he said gruffly. “Not like this.”
Hope crashed into the pit of my stomach.
“I understand,” I mumbled, and the anticipation I’d been feeling about where we’d been headed splintered apart inside me. “If you’re not ready, it’s o—”
But the words in my mouth died before they could reach my lips because Dixon twisted and took us down to my bed.
Still inside me, the lower half of his body remained unmoving, but he leaned on one hand and used his other to swipe my hair behind my shoulders.
His steely blue eyes took a careful inventory of my body, starting with my lips and slowly moving down the length of my neck.
When he leaned lower and his mouth opened over my breast, I felt his breath on my skin, and my nipples rose even higher and peaked for him. I moaned and arched up to feel his body against mine.
Finally, he thrust inside me slowly.
Whispering, he said, “I wanna fuck you proper, wanna feel every inch of you against every inch of me.”
Breath eased out of my lungs in a moan, and my eyes fell shut.
He was big. He filled me fully, but the way he filled me, every curve and corner of him smoothing every edge and hardness inside me, made me wild. I rolled my hips and tried desperately to pull him in deeper.
The moonlight outside my window brightened our skin and made it glow, but shadows still lurked and lingered in the corners of my room.
They darkened his hair. The soft strands brushed over my skin while he sucked my nipple into his mouth, tugging it gently with his teeth, but as soon as he’d gotten a taste of me, he stopped.
Looking into my eyes, he pulled out and his hard, wet cock slapped against my inner thigh.
“What?” I asked. Oh God, please don’t stop.
He shook his head and moved down my body slowly, so slowly that I began to beg while he kissed every inch of me, just like he’d promised.
“Please, Dixon,” I pleaded, but he wouldn’t answer. Instead, he spread my legs wider and settled between them, groaning softly, Then he opened his mouth.
The first soft lick of his tongue between my legs made me gasp. The second had me digging my nails into his shoulders, and the third made me groan and push up on my heels. He growled and followed my body, then devoured me like I was his last meal.
Squeezing his head between my thighs harder and harder while his tongue dealt faster and punishing pressure to my clit, my hands gripped his hair and I rolled my hips wildly against his face, watching his head surge between my legs and his fingers dig deeper into my skin.
And when he dragged them over my hip and slid two inside me while he sucked my clit into his mouth, it didn’t take more than a handful of pumps before I was coming, giving in to the pleasure and calling out the release of all the doubt I’d been feeling about him wanting me like this.
I didn’t have time to think about it, though, because he pulled his fingers free from my body and licked them, but then he crawled up, planted both hands on the bed beside my arms, and his cock glided smoothly inside me.
The rough sound in the back of his throat when the aftershocks from my orgasm gripped him tightly was feral and possessing, but in the best way.
And then he began to fuck me.
My bed frame squeaked in protest. It hadn’t seen action for a long time, and the headboard began to bang against the wall with every powerful thrust of his hips, as if he could inject every piece of himself into me. Wrapping my arms around his shoulders, I held on for the ride.
The vulnerability etched across his face, lining the edges of his eyes, mesmerized me, and I traced them with careful fingers. He leaned into my touch but never looked away, not even when my hands snaked beneath his arms and my fingernails dug into his ribs because I was so close to coming again.
I wanted to hold out for him, but he noticed the pull of my body on his, and he hissed and fucked me harder. Faster. Wilder.
My breasts bounced and rubbed against his heaving chest, and my mouth popped open, but no sound came out because bliss had overtaken my ability to speak. Pleasure rushed through me in waves, like a steady, rhythmic pulse of some far-off sea in my dreams crashing against a distant shore.
My eyes rolled closed, my thighs clutching Dixon’s hips between them to hold him where I needed him to ride out my waves. But that just made him fuck faster, and my orgasm rose higher and higher until I was coming all over again.
“AJ,” he breathed into my mouth. “Look at me.” When I did and the blue fire of his eyes burned right through me, he whispered, “I’m afraid.”
“There’s no safer place for you than inside me,” I promised breathlessly, tucking wild strands of his hair behind his ears. “We can be afraid together. Let go. You deserve to feel good. To be loved. Come inside me.”
He washed our fear clean as he captured my mouth again with his eager lips and tongue and his breath rushed in.
I inhaled as he came, smoothing my hands over the wide plane of his back and the slightly raised edges of forgotten scars there, listening to his cry into the night, hoping he would never let me go.