Chapter 15 #2
She froze. She just couldn’t quite do that. She couldn’t quite manage something that brazen. Something that... sexual.
She looked up at him, their eyes clashing, and he smiled, a sort of amused look, and she knew that he knew.
That he knew she was too embarrassed. Shame crept over her then, and she despised herself for it.
She fought through it. She took a deep breath, and spread her legs wide, touching her clit with her middle finger as she circled it gently.
She bit her lip, color flooding her cheeks, embarrassment and desire fighting a battle to see which would win out.
When she looked up at him, she saw that his eyes were glazed over.
He was no longer smug and satisfied, was no longer the leader of the game, and that was why she had needed to do this.
Because she needed to prove to herself that he wanted her just as badly, that he wasn’t in control. No. He wasn’t in control.
She flexed her hips upward, and moaned as she added a second finger, pushing them through her slick folds and feeling just how wet with need she was.
She wasn’t big on self-pleasure, mainly because she had been living with Alan for years now, and it was hard to find moments alone.
She had a vibrator, which she liked because it was nice and efficient, so when she did decide she needed to get off, she could do it without a whole lot of time or hassle.
But touching herself like this, exploring herself with her own hand while he looked at her? That was a kind of hedonistic decadence that she had never even fantasized about, and now here she was, tossed into the middle of it.
And loving it.
Even though that sharp knife’s edge of shame was still there, pressing itself to her throat, it somehow managed to be more erotic than awful. And she wanted to celebrate that. By touching herself some more.
And then she looked down as she stroked herself, then pushed her own finger deep inside, flexing her hips up off the bed.
Only then did she dare look back up at him.
There was a fire in his eyes unlike anything she had ever seen before. His jaw was clenched tight, the veins in his neck standing out, the intensity there, shocking. Glorious.
His own hand was moving up and down over his length, slow and measured, almost more like he was keeping himself in check, rather than pleasuring himself.
She swallowed hard, then with her free hand reached up and touched her own breast, squeezing it before sliding her thumb down over her nipple.
“Fuck,” he said, taking a step toward her.
And she felt like she had won something far greater than any battle. She felt like she had won a war. Because as much as she had wanted him for all these years, he wanted her too. As much as she had despised that desire, he probably had too, and now here they were, giving in to it.
And it was glorious. Absolutely glorious.
She arched her hips up off the bed, and he suddenly moved quickly, practically diving toward his nightstand and jerking the drawer open. He grabbed a strip of condoms and tore one off impatiently. Then he wrenched the package open, rolling the condom over his hard length.
“I hope you’re ready,” he growled.
“Yes,” she said.
And before she could take in another breath, he was down over her, kissing her fiercely as he positioned himself over her body, as he wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her hips up off the mattress, positioned himself at the entrance to her body and thrust in deep and hard.
She cried out, arching up against him, sensitive nipples brushing against the crisp hair on his chest, sending an electric shock through her, even as his glorious cock filled her to capacity.
She had never been with a man this big before, and it was... a revelation.
She saw stars.
When he began to move, it was undeniable, all glorious friction as she felt every inch of him thrust, then retreat.
She whimpered as he claimed her, over and over again. Over and over again. Cried out as he worked dark magic deep inside of her, as he fulfilled every last fantasy she’d never quite let herself have.
And suddenly she felt like she was spiraling.
Like panic had burrowed its way into her breast. Because how long would this last?
Would they have time to explore every glorious thing?
She had always thought she wasn’t sexual, but this was sexual, and so was she.
She didn’t want it to end. She wanted time.
Time to actually let herself have the fantasies. Time to try it all.
She wanted to taste him, wanted to feel him thrusting into her mouth, wanted him to take her from behind, wanted to ride him like the cowgirl she’d never been.
She was suddenly inundated with the overwhelming variety of her need, and the sense that she would have to devote herself entirely to being his to reach the end of it.
And who had that kind of time?
Certainly not somebody running a mayoral campaign. Certainly not someone trying to outrun the reputation of her mother, a woman who had given up all of her responsibilities for sex.
And Addison suddenly understood.
That was the very worst part.
She suddenly understood why a person might do that. Why they might be powerless to do anything else.
And then her thoughts were lost again, blown away on the wind of her need as each thrust of his body inside hers carried her higher, faster than the one before.
She clung to his shoulders, arched up against him as her orgasm roared through her.
Her internal muscles worked his hard length, and she flexed her heels into the mattress as she gave herself up to him, to this, completely.
And as he lowered his head, pressing his forehead to hers and growling out his own release, she suddenly understood what he had said.
She hated to admit it, wanted to avoid telling him that he was right, that she suddenly knew what good sex was, and it was far and away beyond any other experience she’d had before.
What she’d had before had been mediocre at best. Sex that had barely taken her to a whimpering summit, not quite a climax. And that almost made it worse than bad. Because she had been willing to accept it because it was all right.
She realized that now.
She hated him for that. For understanding something about herself that she hadn’t. For knowing something about her experiences that she just... hadn’t known.
She was hoping he wouldn’t say anything. That he wouldn’t lord it over her, wouldn’t make her feel small now.
He didn’t say anything. He got out of bed and walked straight into the bathroom.
She lay there, staring at the unfamiliar ceiling.
He reappeared a moment later, standing as relaxed as he might if he were wearing a T-shirt and blue jeans, completely comfortable with his nudity, which almost made her want to burrow away under the covers, but that was silly, considering that he had seen it all, touched it all, tasted it all.
“You win, I guess,” she said. “So there’s that.”
“Was it a competition? Because if so, you definitely won. Considering you came twice.”
She blinked. “Oh. Well. I suppose so.”
He sat down on the edge of the bed, and she looked at his back, glorious and well-muscled, and she wanted to touch him. So she decided that she would. She reached up and traced the line of his spine, and he let his head fall back, a satisfied sound in the back of his throat.
Maybe he wasn’t just going to transform back into the same man he’d always been with her. There was something sincere in that sound, at least. Something that told her they were still closer to the space they’d been while they were making love than they were now.
Making love? Was that what that had been?
She had a feeling that was sanding off the raw edges of that experience.
“Aren’t you going to tell me that you told me so?” she asked, her fingertips still tracing shapes on his back.
“Why? You know it.”
“Well, I thought you might want to be a dick about it.”
He turned toward her, his eyebrows lifted. “Not particularly. But I suppose it’s fair enough that you expect it of me.”
“Just as fair as you expecting it of me, I guess. Or maybe, to be fair, I was worse to you than you were to me. I’m really sorry about all that.”
“I know you are.” He shook his head. “You really didn’t know you were doing it, did you?”
Sort of. But she also didn’t want him to let her off the hook like that, because she really didn’t deserve it.
“I did, in a way. I would never have characterized myself as a mean girl, but that was because I was so focused on my own motivation. Isn’t that how that works, though? I knew what I wanted, so I didn’t think about the consequences for anybody else.”
That also brought her mother back to the surface. She was having a harder time villainizing her after the intensity of the experience with Walker just now.
Was that what had happened to her? Everything had seemed doable and bearable because what she had felt mattered more than anything else? Because she knew what she wanted, and it seemed like the only way to get it?
Addison loved her dad.
But what if her dad had been her mom’s Alan? She had married him, and she had felt stuck in it, and then she had met somebody who lit her on fire, and maybe she hadn’t known how to even resist it?
Addison was sad to admit that she more than fully understood that now.
“High school messes with all of us.”
“It’s not really just high school, though,” she said. “I think especially when I stopped living here for a while I understood that people weren’t necessarily my enemy. I think... I think you had the very bad luck of making me feel things that I didn’t want to feel.”
“Alan is a shithead for using that against you, by the way.”
“I know. I do. I also can’t really blame him, all things considered. Thinking about how I treated people when I was defending myself. When I was being a bitch to you. Yeah, I can’t really blame him. He lashed out at me because I hurt him.”
“Don’t forget that he left you at the altar. He doesn’t actually have any right to be hurt by you.”