Chapter 11
eleven
We get dressed to answer the door for groceries, for a set of graduated butt-plugs that I order from LoveBox, and for an afternoon when Ty and Dakota come over to play Dutiful.
We lie around naked the rest of the time, exploring each other until I know every inch of her skin as well as I know my own.
I give her my laptop so she can work when she gets stressy about taking so much time off.
While she works, lying on her tummy on my rumpled bed, her little feet with their yellow-polka-dotted toenails waving in the air, I spread a towel under her and shave her legs, then lube up my fingers and play with her ass until she’s squealing and humping the towel, then work in the first butt-plug before I turn her over and eat her out.
She returns the favor a few hours later when I sit at my desk to finish up the jobs I have on the go for Manny and look for tame security gigs for Logan. She kneels between my legs and sucks me off until I crack my mouse case because I’m gripping it so hard as I come.
She works my dick around in her throat like she’d be swallowing if I didn’t insist on using a condom every time and my eyes roll back so hard my world goes dark for a full fucking minute.
I stroke her soft hair as I pull out and deal with the condom. She watches me, pouting.
“Stop, baby,” I tell her.
Sometime in the last three days, I started calling her “baby” and she started calling me “Maxie” and even though neither feels quite right, neither of us objected.
I don’t want her to call me “daddy” until I’m sure I can be one for her, and although I feel like I’m taking steps in the right direction, I’m definitely not there yet.
We also had the condom conversation. I haven’t been tested since I was with Julie and I let her blow me without one and I don’t want to put Cynnie at risk.
Cynnie says she trusts me. Which makes me fall harder for her.
But like everything about this, I don’t completely trust myself.
Just when I’ve settled into what’s between us so deeply I’m sure she’s never going to leave me and I’m beginning to taste the heaven Logan must be living in, she gets a series of text messages that make her frown.
We’re lying on the floor in front of my couch, in a messy nest I’ve made for us out of towels and cushions and pillows and the winter blankets out of my closet, watching an anime series she’s crazy about and I don’t even try to follow.
I’m too involved with where my cock is: buried in her ass and pulsing like I’ve grown a second heart.
Because hell yeah we have worked up to it and now it’s my new favorite thing.
Fuck gaming. Fuck food. Fuck breathing. I just want that ass.
Cynnie’s a pretty big fan, too, now that I’ve found her G-spot and figured out the motion she needs to give her squealing, squirting orgasms while I work my cock in and out of that warm, tight sheath.
She’s just had one and is still sucking the remnants off my fingers when the texts come in.
She’s mostly ignored her phone, except for a few of those strange, staged photos every day.
But now she reads it, frowns, and snuggles back against me with determination, which makes me groan.
“More grumbles,” she murmurs.
She loves the noises I make when I’m inside her, so I give them to her, moaning and grumbling and finally growling as I work up to another of those insane, blood-vessel exploding orgasms that brush my soul up against hers for a moment until we subside back into our own bodies.
I’m not sure if it’s her being little or the anal sex or just how utterly relaxed we’ve become with each other over the past three days, but I’ve never been as intimate with anyone as I am with Cynnie.
I don’t hide anything from her. If I’m thinking something, I tell her.
If I’m feeling something, I let it show on my face.
If I need to crush her to me so we anchor each other against the spinning world, like right now, I do it.
She wiggles and whimpers happily until I ease out of her and flop over onto my back, panting.
Then she rolls over. “Hi.”
My hard breaths bubble into laughter. “No.”
She pouts and runs her soft fingertips through the sweat beading my breastbone. “I’z hungry.”
“Me, too. I’ll order something in a minute. What do you feel like?”
“Sex in my bottom.”
“Not a cuisine. And you must be so sore, baby. Aren’t you sore?”
“Yup,” she says, popping the “p.” “More.”
“No. My dick’s about to fall off.”
I take care of the condom and wipe us both up. Baby wipes have become my second-best friend in the last few days. Right up there with the lube Emmy recommended.
“Looks okay to me.” Cynnie says, giving it a little poke. I growl at her but she collapses into giggles which make me grin at her like an idiot. Then she pulls out her phone and snaps a picture of it.
“Hey, no,” I object, laughing. “You can take pictures when I’m standing proud but not when I’ve just gone three rounds with a meat grinder.”
She pushes her phone out of our nest and pounces on me. “My bottom’s not a meat grinder!”
We wrestle around. I’m mostly trying to tickle her to elicit those magical giggles but she’s on the attack, biting everywhere I leave exposed, scratching at me with her short nails, until I finally pin her face-down under me, with my hand in the soft cloud of her hair, scritching my fingertips over her scalp while I kiss and nip her neck and shoulder. Her ass lifts under me.
I’m hard again.
“Jesus, you’re killing me.” I slap that soft, tempting little ass she’s rubbing into my groin like we haven’t already fucked three times in the last two hours.
“More!”
“I said no.” I spank her again and something shifts. She squeals and growls her tiny growl and I growl right back at her—she’s fucking challenging me?—then I’m peppering her bottom with hard, flat slaps until my hand is on fire and her ass is glowing.
“More!” she hisses at me.
I fist my hand in her hair and push her cheek down into a pillow while continuing to light up her ass. “No, bad baby.”
“More!” she demands.
“I said no,” I growl back at her even as I’m pulling her hips into the air and mounting her from behind. “You do not dictate when I fuck you.”
“More-more-more!” she howls and throws herself back onto my cock.
I pin her in the pillows and hump her like a madman until she’s screaming as she comes, and I pull out of her at the last minute and spray all over her bright red ass.
I sit back on my heels in horror.
“Oh, fuck. Baby, fuck, fuck. I’m sorry.” I mop her up with a towel.
She turns onto her hip and watches me. “Why’z you sorry?”
“I didn’t mean to hold you down like that. Or fuck you bareback. I’m so sorry.”
“I want you to!” She shouts at me before she jumps up and runs through the kitchen and slams the bathroom door behind her.
I drag myself up to go after her when I see a string of notifications pop up on her phone that she’s pushed to the edge of our nest. Inster. Snapper. Tikker. And a message.
Jun: Call me now. If you don’t come home tonight, I’ll report you missing to the police.
My heart freezes in my chest. Who is Jun? She hasn’t mentioned him. We’ve talked about her parents and her grandmother and some of her fairy kei friends, but not a single mention of Jun.
Come home. They live together.
I scoop up her phone and follow her to the bathroom. I knock on the door. Not hard. I don’t want to scare or intimidate her.
“Cynnie?”
“Go ‘way!”
“Baby, please open the door. You need to call whoever Jun is.”
The door opens and she stands there naked, in the cloud of her own mussed hair, tears streaking her cheeks. I open my arms to her even while I kick myself mentally. I made her cry. I need to fix this, no matter who Jun is or what’s going on.
Instead of coming to me, she snatches the phone out of my hand and slams the bathroom door.
I lean my forehead against it and feel the sharp bite of shame in my chest. I made her cry. I didn’t fix it. And she turned to Jun.
I hear her voice through the door, but I can’t hear what she’s saying, and I push myself away before I do anything invasive like press my ear to the door.
I plod upstairs and climb into the shower.
The first shower I’ve taken without Cynnie in three days.
I make it quick and pull on a T-shirt and shorts before I go back downstairs.
She’s sitting on the couch, wearing the outfit she came in since she doesn’t have any other clothes. Our nest on the floor is gone, everything neatly folded and piled next to her on the couch.
I stop a few feet away, scratching my arm absently and wondering what to say to her.
“My family’s worried,” she says quietly, not looking at me. “They want me to come home.”
She can’t leave me, not like this. Not when we’ve just had our first semi-fight. Not when I’m not sure she’s coming back.
I kneel next to the couch. “Please look at me.”
She lifts watery eyes to me. I reach out and brush away the wetness as she blinks. When she opens her eyes again, I hold out my arms to her, wanting nothing more than to cuddle the sadness out of her.
She shakes her head. “If I do, we’ll end up back in bed. I want you too much.”
That’s both a huge relief and a jab in the solar plexus.
“Please don’t leave like this. I’m sorry I did everything wrong. I’m still trying to figure things out.”
She shakes her head and looks away.
“Baby, please. I’m sorry I hurt you. I know I held you down too hard—”
She stands, her fists clenched at her sides. “You didn’t hurt me! I have a safe word. If you’d been hurting me, I’d have used it. You second-guess us constantly.”
Startled by her vehemence, I stand and back up a step so I’m not looming over her. “I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing! Stop making me feel guilty for wanting what I want!”
“I’m—”
She pushes up into my face and shakes her finger under my nose. “Don’t. Don’t say it.”
“I—”
“I’m going,” she says, turning on her heel and walking away from me.
Miserably, I trail her to the door. She stops to put on the black sack over her little clothes and I reach around to zip it up for her.
“Thank you,” she says quietly.
“Can I give you a hug before you go? Please, Cynnie.”
She nods and turns into my arms. I can’t help but hold her tight to my chest, memorizing the way she feels, the way she smells, the silky brush of her hair against my cheek and over my forearms. Am I really letting her walk out the door? What do I say to stop her?
“Please let me know you got home safe. Just one word if that’s all you want to send me, but I need to know you’re okay.”
“I will.” Her hand lifts to cup my jaw while she presses a kiss to my other cheek. “Thank you for the last three days, Maxie. It’s been really special.”
“To me, too.”
What do I say? Please don’t go? She already nuked that. Please come back? Can I deal if she says this was a one-time thing?
In the end, I say nothing. Not even goodbye.