Chapter Three
I took the flannel off her. She lifted her arms to help, which nearly undid me more than the storm had.
The service shirt underneath was still damp at the collar.
I worked the buttons myself. She watched my hands like they were a lesson.
When I pushed the shirt off her shoulders, she shivered, and it was not from cold.
I kept my clothes on. Boots on the grate, belt still on. If I undressed now, I might forget she’d never done this before, and I wasn’t going to let my impatience rush her.
“Lie back.”
She did. The cot was too short for the way I wanted her. I pulled her to the edge anyway, hooked her waistband, and looked at her once more because I still had not gotten used to the fact.
“Last chance to tell me to stop.”
“Don’t stop.”
Good.
I stripped her pants down and took her underwear with them. She made a small sound and tried to pull her knees together. I put my palms on her inner thighs and opened her, gentle, unarguable.
“Easy. I want to see you.”
She was pink, wet, and shaking, and she’d come on my thigh just twenty minutes ago. Untouched. I still did not understand how that was possible. I kissed the inside of her knee because if I went straight to her, I’d be rougher than she needed.
“Hands on the mattress. You can grab it. You don’t push me away.”
“Okay.”
“Grant.”
“Okay, Grant.”
I put my mouth on her.
She arched off the cot like I’d shocked her. I hadn’t. I was just slow, learning her, and she reacted like no one had ever given her this kind of attention.
They hadn’t. That was the point.
I held her hips down and did it again, then again, until the shocked sound turned into something hungrier.
“That’s it. Breathe.”
“I am— God, I can’t—”
“You can. You already did it once. This is just me working you properly.”
I found the spot that made her thighs try to close around my head and stayed there. Not fast, not yet. I let her feel every slow pass of my mouth. When she grabbed the mattress, I hummed against her and felt her whole body react. She tasted like rain and heat. I could have stayed there all night.
I did not.
I slid one finger through the wetness and paused at her entrance.
“Look at me.”
She looked. Flushed. Willing. A little scared in the way that still wanted more.
“This first. Then my mouth again. You tell me if it’s too much.”
“It’s not too much.”
I pressed in. Slow. She was tight enough that I felt every inch of the first finger, a hot squeeze that made my jaw clench. She gasped and took it, hips twitching toward me, not away.
“Good girl.”
I kept going until she relaxed, then bent my finger and put my mouth back on her at the same time.
She cried out. The radio stayed blessedly dead.
I added a second finger when she started moving down onto the first, stretching her slowly and talking her through it, because she needed the words as much as the touch.
“That’s two. You’re small. I know. Breathe through it. You’re doing fine.”
“It feels—” She lost the sentence. Her hand found my hair and stayed there, not pushing. “Grant. Please.”
“Please what.”
“I don’t know. More. Don’t stop.”
I gave her more with my mouth. I kept my fingers moving, stretching her, getting her used to being filled, and stopped being so careful.
She was wet enough now. She was rocking down onto my hand like she finally understood her own body.
I covered her with my mouth and sucked, then flattened my tongue and stayed there, steady, while my fingers worked her open from the inside.
“Grant—Grant—”
“I know. Let it happen.”
She tried to speak but couldn’t. Her thighs shook against my shoulders, first a little, then harder, the tremor reaching my jaw. I held her there and didn’t let up. The cot frame hit the wall. Her hand gripped my hair, not pushing, but pulling, as if she could keep me there just by wanting it.
“That’s it. Don’t fight it.”
“I’m not— I can’t— oh God—”
The first cry tore out of her, raw. Not small.
Not swallowed into my collar. It bounced off the glass and the radio and the whole stupid empty ridge.
Her back arched hard enough that I had to follow her up with my mouth.
She came shaking, vibrating through the peak, thighs clamped around my head, a broken sound that broke again when I kept licking her through it.
I did not stop.
She sobbed out another cry, higher, surprised there was more.
Her hips jerked. I held them down with my arm and kept going while she pulsed around my fingers, wet and shaking so hard the bunk creaked.
Every aftershock ran through her. I felt them, took them, and kept going until her cries turned into helpless little please, please, Grant, with her only request being that I did not stop.
When it finally broke, she collapsed like someone had cut a string.
She was still vibrating, little helpless twitches she could not stop, breath sobbing in and out.
I licked her once more, gentle now, and she whimpered and tried to wriggle up the cot because it was too much in the way that she still wanted more.
I let her go.
I kissed her hip, then sat back on my heels and looked at her—wrecked, open, still shaking, still reaching for me with a hand that only knew it didn’t want to let go.
“Come here.”
She sat up on unsteady arms. I stood. The height difference put her mouth level with my belt. She understood before I said it. Color hit her cheeks, but she did not look away from the problem she had made.
“I’ve never—”
“I know.” I opened my belt. Unbuttoned. I took her hand and put it on me over the last layer of fabric first, so she could feel the size of what she would soon be taking. Her eyes went wide. “That’s why you’re going to listen.”
I freed myself. Her breath left her in a soft, stunned sound.
“Gorgeous,” I said, because she was staring like she could not help it. “Open your mouth.”
She did. Eager. Unskilled. Perfect.
“Tongue first. Just like that. You don’t try to take all of it. You can’t. Use your hand here—” I wrapped her fingers around the base. “—and your mouth on what you can handle. Slow. You gag, you back off. You don’t prove anything.”
She nodded, then leaned in.
The first touch of her mouth was cautious, wet, too gentle. I let it be. I put my hand in her hair and did not push. She licked, then tried to take the head, then made a frustrated noise because she had no idea what she was doing and wanted to.
“Again. Relax your jaw. Good. Suck. Not with your teeth.”
She adjusted, better this time. Heat ran down my spine so fast I had to steady myself. She looked up at me, my cock in her mouth, twenty-one and untouched just an hour ago, and I suddenly understood why men lost control.
“That’s it. Just like that. You don’t have to go deeper.”
She tried anyway. Of course she did.
She took a little more, gagged softly, pulled off, and went back for it with her hand stroking what her mouth could not manage.
I praised her for the retreat as much as the attempt.
I told her when to use her tongue. I told her when to slow down because I was getting too close and she did not know how to read it yet.
“Grant,” she said, lips wet, voice wrecked. “Is this okay?”
“It’s more than okay.” My thumb brushed the corner of her mouth. “You’re learning. That’s all I asked.”
She took me again, surer, and the wet heat of it pulled a sound out of me I had not planned to give her.
Her eyes flicked up, pleased. Dangerous.
I let her have three more strokes of that mouth, four, because I was not a better man than this, and then I tightened my hand in her hair and eased her off.
She made a small, disappointed sound.
“Not yet.” I was breathing harder than I should have been. I tucked myself away just enough to think. Barely. “That goes in you.”
She sat back on the cot, lips shiny, shirt gone, my marks starting on her throat. She looked ruined already. She looked like she wanted the rest.
I stood over her and forced myself to say the rest before I let my body decide.
“When I say you’re ready. Not before. You hear me?”
She nodded. Then, because she had started telling me the truth tonight, she said, “I hear you. I don’t want to wait.”
“I know.” I thumbed her lower lip. “That’s why you’re going to.”
Rain hammered the glass. The road was still closed. She kept looking at my mouth, and at my half-fastened belt, like both were promises I hadn’t kept yet.
I had not.
I would.