Chapter Twenty
CHAPTER TWENTY
Ellie
Forty-five minutes later, Kieran’s block of the Mission was deadly quiet. It felt illicit. Like I’d stepped out of my proper, responsible life and into something that was just for me. Not that I had the right kind of lingerie for a midnight rendezvous. I’d gotten rid of all the lacy, silky stuff Max liked a long time ago. But somehow I didn’t think Kieran would mind that I was wearing plain black underwear.
At least, I hoped he wouldn’t.
A trash can banged, and a small furry creature skittered away. A cat? Probably not a cat. I shivered. Of course I was shivering. It was cold, because it was almost one in the morning and July fog swirled around the yellow-orange streetlights.
“Stop stalling,” I muttered to myself. When I pressed the doorbell with all the force of my impatience, it buzzed harshly.
“Shit, hang on,” Kieran’s flustered voice said.
A few choice words later, he opened the door. His hair was a wet, spiky auburn mess, and damp patches dotted his blue T-shirt.
He sized me up. “You’re early.”
I sized him up back. “You’re not wearing pants.”
He looked down at his Daffy Duck boxers. “Um, yeah. I would be wearing pants if you weren’t early.”
“Do you want to debate, or do you want to have sex with me?”
He grinned his trickster grin. “I don’t know, arguing with you these days is a lot like”—I grabbed a fistful of soft cotton and tugged him to me—“foreplay,” he got out before my mouth covered his and sweet mint flooded my senses, like all my Christmases at once. He pulled me inside, slammed the door shut, and trapped me between the wood and his strong, tense body. It felt so good to give way, to go soft. I opened for him, and we both groaned when our tongues touched. As we devoured each other, my fingers found his damp hair; his, the hem of my dress. One touch of his fingertips to the soft skin at the back of my knee, and I had to have him closer. I wrapped my leg around his hips, all the yoga finally paying off, and now I could feel him hard and urgent through his boxers and my underwear. He moaned into my mouth when I rolled against him and clamped his fingers on my thigh.
“Nope, nope, not going to bang you against the door,” he grunted.
I leaned over and nipped his earlobe. “But you make me feel so good. Touch me and see.”
Kieran’s hand was the perfect amount of rough as it coasted over my thigh, tugged fabric aside. He growled, “Fuck. How are you so wet already? I thought you’d be…”
“Thought I’d be what?” I slipped a hand under his T-shirt, scored a line across his lower back with my fingernail and his hips jerked against mine. His mouth found my neck, sucked hard, bit. I moaned with how much it felt like his mouth was somewhere else.
“Shy,” he finally said. “Never mind. No blood in my brain.” He kissed me again. “I can’t believe you’re here. I can’t believe you’re this hot for me.”
“I want you so much.” I ran my hands up his chest, giddy with how good it felt to touch him at last. “I want to see all of this. I want to know what you taste like.”
“God, you’re fucking wild.” He shaped my waist and leaned in. “But I have bad news.”
“What’s that?” If he ended things now, I’d die of dehydration.
His grin was enormous. “There’s only one bed.”
My laugh fizzed up and escaped like soda bubbles. I’d forgotten that sex was fun, too. “Oh, no. What a disaster. Whatever shall we do?”
He wiggled his eyebrows. “I have some ideas.”
What he’d said was a bed was actually a mattress shoved in the corner of the room, but I was the opposite of picky right now. We traded items of clothing for kisses: his shirt for sharp nips along his collarbone, my dress for wet, open-mouthed touches of his mouth to my shoulders. He was especially generous when I threw my bra across the room, mixing licks and sucks with dirty compliments that had me blushing strawberry red.
Finally, we were naked under his scratchy blue sheets, me lying back and him kneeling beside me. He was clearly ready to go, but he wasn’t touching me. He was one huge twitch, his eyes darting everywhere.
“Problem?”
He tugged on his hair. “I’ve fantasized so much about what I’d do if I got you naked that I can’t decide. Do I want to start at your toes and kiss my way up? Or do I want to kiss your neck and stroke you between your legs until you’re begging for me?”
He was looking at me like I was some kind of goddess. But what if I couldn’t come with someone new, after all this time? What if he kept trying, and trying, and I was just lying there writing my grocery list for tomorrow? It’d happened with Max even when we were at our happiest, and I’d had to console him.
“I have a better idea,” I said, sitting up.
“What’s that… oh!” Kieran said as I rolled him onto the mattress. He sighed into my mouth as I directed our kiss.
“I said I wanted to taste you, and I meant it,” I whispered.
His lips turned up. “If you’re that hungry, I have snacks.”
I trailed kisses down his chest, and then he wasn’t smiling anymore. He whispered, “You really don’t have to do that. I’ve been so worked up that hugging you almost killed me.”
“But I love doing it.” I sucked his hip hard and he swore. “You’re so sexy and I want to make you feel good.”
“Thank you, that’s great, but are you… Jesus , Ellie,” he moaned when I swiped my tongue over him.
“Yes, I’m sure.” Then I couldn’t talk anymore. But he could.
Kieran
Had I thought I wanted to comfort her? That she was fragile and lost? I was completely off base. This was the woman I’d fallen for, strong and stubborn and not afraid to go after what she wanted. She’d come all this way in the middle of the night, and right now all that strength was focused on me.
“Keep doing that, please keep doing that.” That was my last sentence that made any sense. It all got washed away by wave after wave of hot pleasure that left me with single words like perfect and God and fuck and then her name, over and over again, until she swirled her tongue in exactly the right place and I yelped, “ Stop .”
She pulled away. “Did I hurt you?”
I laughed, high and desperate. “Nope. I’ve never been this hard in my entire life.”
She gave me a slow smile. Fuck, she looked incredible with her curls wild from my greedy hands and that hot light in her eyes. “And you wanted to stop, why?”
I dragged her up my body and hungrily kissed her swollen mouth. “Because, smartass,” I finally said, “I want to be inside you so fucking bad.”
“You want me? Really? Are you sure?” she teased.
I groaned. “ Yes, you. Just you. Please fuck me, I’m dying here.”
“OK, OK, I’ll fuck you. Where are your condoms?”
I stopped cold. “Did you just say ‘fuck’?” I’d literally never heard that word out of her mouth.
She grinned. “You’re adorable when I’ve just blown your mind. Condoms?”
I silently pointed her to the bathroom. When she came back to the bed, she kissed me so hard that I was submerged in her. She was above me, rolling the condom on and making me moan, then against me, then all around me, even more hot and slick than she’d been on my fingers. I ground my teeth into my cheek to force back the urge to come. Instead, I ran my hands up her thighs, and she was so delicious to touch, her skin like a peach.
“Is this good?” she asked, rolling her hips. “Is this what you wanted?”
My body arched under her, totally out of control. “Fuck, you feel incredible. I won’t last.”
“Then don’t.” She rocked faster, squeezing around me.
All the ideas I’d had about taking it slow, making it sweet, disappeared like steam. For this perfect moment, she was mine, and I wouldn’t ever give her up. Not for anyone, or anything. “So good, you’re so good,” I chanted as she moved.
But wait. She was making all the right noises, but she wasn’t getting any tighter. I’d been selfish most of my life, but the thought of Ellie leaving my bed unsatisfied was too horrible to think about. “Come on, love,” I begged.
Her eyes opened. “What?”
I ran my hands down her sides, between her legs, and played with her until she gasped. “What do you need to come?”
Her rhythm stuttered for a second. “I don’t need to. I love this.”
There it was, that shyness. I pulled her down and kissed her hard. “I want you to, Ellie, if you can. I want to feel it.”
Wide blue eyes studied my face, and I stared right back at her. I’d never been serious in the middle of sex, but now I silently promised that I was hers. She straightened and put one hand on my stomach while the other slid between her legs, nudging my fingers out of the way. “You feel amazing,” she breathed when she rubbed, her eyes squeezed shut. “So big inside me.”
She was going to kill me. Ellie touching herself and talking dirty with me inside her was beyond anything I’d ever made up alone and horny. “You’re the sexiest thing ever,” I growled. “Don’t stop.”
We wound each other tighter, and tighter, until all of a sudden the edge was right there, and I dug my fingers into the mattress to hold myself back, willing her to please, please, please…
“Kieran!” My name became a drawn-out cry as she pulsed around me, and I shot up and exploded like a firework.
Ellie
I blinked at the too-bright light bulb in its dingy shade as Kieran panted beside me with his arm slung over his eyes. I wasn’t sure if I was seeing stars from the light or from how hard I’d come. Maybe both? I glanced at the digital clock trailing its black cord across the floor. Zero to orgasm in five minutes. I guess we’d both been desperate.
Speaking of desperate, no wonder he made admiring noises when he came to my place. He had a small bathroom behind a pocket door, and a dingy beige carpet, but otherwise it looked like a room where someone would serve time. But it wasn’t just that it was dreary. There was nothing of him in here. No bookshelves, no posters on the mustard-colored walls, no furniture besides the mattress we lay on and a card table with a single folding chair, a laptop charging on top of it. One wall didn’t extend all the way to the door, and I guessed the kitchen was behind it.
When I came back from handling lady business in the bathroom, having valiantly ignored the toothpaste crust in the sink and the black dots of mold on the ceiling, Kieran was sitting up.
“Sorry,” he said.
I blinked. “Why? I enjoyed myself, didn’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” he said sheepishly, “but I can last longer than that.” He started at the sight of the clock. “Jesus, definitely longer. I’m twenty-seven, not sixteen.”
“No problem.” He’d come, I’d come, it was all good.
Who was I kidding? It hadn’t been good, it had been fantastic. I’d forgotten how delicious it felt to come with my lover urging me on, his pleasure feeding mine, mine feeding his.
But what happened now? The first time Max and I made love, we’d done it knowing our future was certain. I hadn’t realized that was a safety net until I was standing in the middle of this new tightrope, wondering how far I was about to fall if I stepped wrong.
“Um, I should get rid of this.” Kieran held out his hand, latex peeking between his fingers.
“Oh! Of course. Go right ahead.” Smooth, Ellie. I managed to keep my cringe on the inside.
When he came back from the bathroom, I could only stare. He was exquisite naked. A Greek sculptor would have fallen over himself to capture his torso in marble. In modern terms, if there were thirst accounts for Kieran’s forearms, his naked pictures would break the internet.
“So,” he said, rubbing his neck.
Was that my cue? His face wasn’t giving me any hints. “I guess I should go,” I said timidly. I couldn’t be hurt if I suggested it myself.
His shyness evaporated. “You don’t have to.” He knelt on the mattress in front of me. “You could sleep here.”
I smoothed a wrinkle in the sheet. “I don’t want to mess with your routine.”
He cracked up. “You think I have a routine? That’s so cute. Anyway, do you really want to sleep on your tiny couch, when you have IKEA’s finest mattress available?”
Skepticism sent my eyebrows up. “Finest mattress? Really?”
He blushed. “Nope. I said it because it sounded good. But what do you think?”
I thought that I wanted him to fuck me again. I thought that I wanted him to wake me up with soft kisses and caresses.
“I mean,” he interrupted, “you can leave if you want. This isn’t me being creepy. Do you want to go?”
He sounded so uncertain. That’s when I remembered—he didn’t do relationships. Ever. When his parents had called him home, he’d wanted a fake girlfriend. If I wanted anything serious, I’d be the one who did all the emotional lifting. He could hurt me badly, without even meaning to.
But maybe there was another way. I asked, “What would a friend with benefits do?”
His face was suddenly all confusion. “I thought you hated that whole idea.”
“I thought I did. But I just want to enjoy you, and for you to enjoy me. Not to expect things from each other. Keep things light.”
He was going to tear a hole in the comforter if he kept up that thing with his fingers. “No expectations? No plans? Who are you, and what have you done with Ellie?”
“I’m still me, but I want to try something different.”
I thought I saw a shadow pass over his face. But then he smiled. “A friend with benefits would stay. Especially if the other option was getting no sleep at home.”
I smiled back. “Then do you have an extra toothbrush?”
Of course he didn’t, so I brushed my teeth with my finger, washing my mouth out with extra toothpaste to make up for it.
Ten minutes later, we lay in the dark. I was curled up on my side the way I usually slept, but his warmth and breath were a pressure in the air keeping me awake. He was tense again, not like he was aroused, but like he was anxious.
“Friends with benefits would also be exclusive,” he suddenly said.
I turned over to see him staring at me. “No one is lining up to sleep with me here,” I said, surprised.
He growled something.
“Pardon?” I asked. “Did you just say, fight them all ?”
“You need to get your ears checked. Anyway, it would make things less complicated if we don’t sleep with anyone else.”
The thought of him begging someone else made me want to hiss. “Sounds good to me,” I said, totally casual.
“Have you been tested for STDs recently?” he asked.
The laugh surged out of me before I could stop it.
“What?” he said, bemused.
“You’re the third man I’ve ever slept with. The last time I had sex with anyone was Max three years ago. I’m boring. I promise.”
My laughs petered out in response to his silence. “Have you?” I asked uncertainly.
“Yeah,” he said, quietly hurt. “I do it every time I meet a new partner. I want everyone to be happy and safe.”
He thought I’d slut-shamed him? “I’m sorry,” I blurted. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have turned it into a joke.” I put my hand gently on his chest. “I’ll get tested as soon as I can. And I’ll figure out birth control.”
“There you are,” he said, his voice warm again, and my stomach flipped in relief. “I thought you were going to run out and buy a Harley and get a huge spider tattooed on your butt.” He stroked my fingers. “Are you sure about this? I’ve never met anyone who loves a plan like you do.”
“And you don’t like being tied down with rules and expectations. But you were the first to say we should be exclusive.” I kissed his cheek. “I think we’re both out of our comfort zones. So let’s—”
“Keep it light,” he finished.
But his body was still restless. “I’m so glad I came over here,” I said softly.
“Yeah?” he whispered back.
“I was afraid I’d forgotten how to have sex, and you’d be bored and turned off.”
He snorted. “You knew exactly what you were doing. I think you were a little too good at it. Do worse next time so I can last longer.”
“If I was too good at it, it was because it was with you.” I nudged him. “Sex with you is pretty wonderful. It’s like when we work together in the kitchen. We fit each other.”
Suddenly, he was on top of me, and I squeaked, “Kieran!”
He pressed his nose to mine. “Pretty wonderful, huh? What would it take to make it amazing? Fantastic?”
There was my Puck. Teasing and playful and impossibly sexy. My kiss on his lips was all affection. “I don’t know. But I think I’m going to enjoy figuring that out.”
“I have ideas, if you’re game.” He ran his hand down my chest and made electric little circles with his thumb.
“What kind of ideas?” If he kept doing that, I was going to start slurring my words.
“I want to taste all those sexy little freckles on your back while I fuck you,” he growled. The picture he painted made me shiver with sweet possibility.
“You like that,” he said.
He was so smug, and I wanted him everywhere. “Can next time be now? Please?”
A finger joined his thumb and tugged gently, and a moan of “more” escaped me.
He tugged a little harder. “Wild thing,” he said, a laugh lurking in his voice.
I reached down and stroked him. “I make everything groovy.”
He grunted, then said, “Yeah, this is why there’s no such thing as poker dick.”
I couldn’t help the snort that escaped my mouth.
“Oh, you’ll pay for laughing at that.” When he blew a loud raspberry against my neck, a flicker of something golden and bright shot through me as I scream-laughed.
Joy. I’d missed it.