Chapter 13 #3
She wanted him to say it. But she also didn’t want to ask him to say it, because that would be pathetic.
But it was like he read her mind. For a moment, he leaned over her on the bed, knee pressed down into the mattress, and he cupped her face. “You’re beautiful, Lila,” he said. And then he kissed her.
She shuddered as that kiss echoed inside of her.
Then he straightened, hands on his belt buckle as he kicked his boots off. And she watched with rapt attention as he undid that belt, tugged it through the loops and threw it down on the floor.
It was only then she noticed that his hands were shaking. As he undressed in front of her for the first time, and she didn’t know if that made her feel better or worse.
Maybe everything.
Maybe this was everything.
Terrifying and beautiful, wrong and right all at the same time.
Something they should have run away from, and an inevitability.
It was about the only thing that really made sense.
He shrugged his jeans down, and that left him wearing only his underwear, which she had seen him swimming in—or a pair just like it—a while back.
But this time, they were coming off too.
Her breath caught in her throat as he pulled them down, as she got a look at Nolan’s naked body for the first time in her life.
She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.
“You okay?”
“I’m great,” she said. “I’m actually so good.” Except to her horror, a tear slid down her cheek.
Nolan sat down on the bed, wrapped his arm around her, palm pressed between her shoulder blades, and sat her up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m okay. I thought. I’m okay. I don’t know why that happened. I don’t know... Kiss me.”
“Lila, we don’t have to rush. We have all night.”
“No. I don’t want to talk right now. I don’t want to talk, I don’t want to wait. I’ve waited long enough.”
He could decide that meant whatever he wanted it to mean.
Whether it might mean that she had waited a very long time to lose her virginity or that she had waited a long time for him.
But she didn’t want to talk. She didn’t want there to be any more delay.
In her life, when she had wanted something, usually she didn’t get it. And that killed her.
She couldn’t be here with the promise of him, the promise of this, and not get it now. Yes, it could all turn out horribly wrong. And with how everything went in her life? Maybe it would.
That wasn’t fair. She had so many good things in her life. But there were so many things that she wanted that she hadn’t been allowed to have. That she hadn’t been able to get.
He couldn’t be one of them. Not after all this.
“Just relax,” he said.
He stroked her face, started to kiss her. Then he moved his hand down between her thighs.
She gasped. She was so slick there, so sensitive. He growled.
“You are so wet.”
Nolan, her Nolan, saying something like that to her. Filthy and profane and glorious all at once. And she wasn’t even embarrassed because he was hers, and it was good that she was wet for him. Only him.
She had watched him kiss that other woman. Had watched him touch her. Maybe not all that intimately, but she had seen it. And she’d wanted those hands on her ever since. Had wanted to know what it was like to be the focus of all that need.
She knew now.
She whimpered, arching her hips forward, and he stroked her, nearly sending her into oblivion.
“I had to go home and touch myself after we kissed,” she whispered.
She felt embarrassed just admitting it. It also felt essential that she admit it.
Like, it would be wrong not to confess it.
He growled. “You did?”
“Yes.”
“Me too.”
Nolan. He had touched himself, and he had thought of her? He had touched himself because he couldn’t forget their kiss? That was a revelation.
She put her hand on his face, and she kissed him while he continued to stroke her. While she shivered beneath his touch.
Then he moved to touch her deeper, sliding a finger inside of her, and she gripped his shoulders hard.
“You ride horses,” he said. “It shouldn’t hurt too bad.”
He was referencing something she had said to him, so it was funny, except it wasn’t really funny.
She was afraid, all of a sudden, and she didn’t quite know what she was afraid of. If it was the newness, the difference in their relationship, or what?
“I got you,” he said.
And he did. He teased her, stroked her, inside and out, until she shuddered, until she shattered, broke apart in his arms, a stronger, more intense climax than the one she had had the other night.
And this time, it was with him.
This time, he was the one who had been touching her.
He slipped his hand from her panties, and slid his finger deep into his mouth, licking it clean, his eyes never leaving hers.
She felt an aftershock of desire move through her.
Then he dragged her underwear down her thighs, leaving her completely naked.
He kissed her lips again, her neck, down her body, positioning himself, his mouth, firmly between her thighs as he tasted her, began to lick her, moaning while he did, like she was the tastiest dessert he’d ever had.
Shock suspended her for a moment, froze her right there, until she lost herself again, and she couldn’t feel self-conscious, couldn’t feel afraid. Couldn’t feel anything but the wild pleasure rolling through her body.
“Come on, Lila,” he growled against her sensitive flesh.
She came again, hard, as his tongue slid over that most sensitive part of her.
And then he was kissing her again, so that she could taste her own desire on his lips.
He must have opened the drawer to his nightstand and taken out a condom, but she had only barely registered it.
Because while he kissed her, he opened it, and she watched, breaking the kiss for a moment as he rolled it over his length.
She wanted to touch him. She hadn’t gotten to touch him before he had put that on.
She moved her hand down and brushed her fingers over the latex.
“Don’t,” he said. “I’m... I’m on edge.”
“But I barely got to see you,” she said.
“There will be time.”
“It won’t just be this once?” She sounded sad and like she was begging a little but she needed this to go on.
How could it only be once after all that waiting she’d done?
He kissed her, moving over her, the blunt head of his arousal probing the entrance to her body, and then he entered her in one smooth stroke.
She winced. It wasn’t painful, it was only unfamiliar. But then that feeling gave way, melted into something else. Into more desire. It didn’t seem possible that she would be able to come again. Not after the other two times. But she could feel it building inside of her.
“Nolan,” she said, almost afraid. She gripped his biceps as he thrust hard inside of her, as the feeling built and built. This was a deeper pleasure, something she had never felt before. And Nolan was inside of her.
The fantasy she’d had for so many years. But she hadn’t really known what it was.
How could you really understand what it was to have another person inside of you until it was actually happening? And, of course, it had to be Nolan.
She had almost given this to somebody else.
He opened his eyes, and they clashed with hers, and that was what sent her over the edge. The intensity of that connection, the knowledge that it was him. That it wasn’t anyone else.
It will never be anyone else.
She wanted to take that vow back, but she came hard as that truth burst through her, and there was nothing she could do. It was an incantation, a prayer punctuated by the amen of her release, and there was nothing that she could do to call it back.
This hadn’t fixed anything.
It hadn’t ended anything.
His strokes felt so good deep inside of her, and the tempo began to increase, he began to lose his control.
And then he came on a shout, her name on his lips, and she knew.
This was only the beginning.
But whether it was the beginning of something beautiful, or a total disaster, she had no idea.
He got out of bed, headed toward the bathroom, and she sat up. She felt dizzy. She was naked, a little bit sore, and her body felt like it was buzzing with a low level of electric current.
When he walked back into the bedroom, her heart felt like it was going to burst. He was so beautiful. She smiled, she couldn’t help it. Because there he was, tall and broad and naked and hers.
He had been hers. For all of her life, and she felt the most profound sense of connection, of possession.
Maybe it was terrible. A horrible thing to allow herself to feel this, but if she kind of knew that, then wasn’t it okay?
If she was aware that she was being overdramatic or overly giddy, then wasn’t it okay to be?
He walked across the room, sat down on the edge of the bed, and she flung herself at his back, wrapping her arms around him and just... hugging him.
He startled for a moment, then settled, his hand going over hers, right where it wrapped around his chest.
“What was that for?”
“I just... I think you’re amazing.”
“That’s the sex talking,” he grumbled.
“Maybe,” she said.
She flopped back onto the bed, lying on top of the blankets. She was naked, but what was there to be embarrassed about? He had tasted her.
She wanted to do a lot more than that. To him.
She had so many fantasies about him. And she really never had been a prude. Of course, it was different in actual practice than in theory. Had been more intimate, more shocking, more alarming than she had imagined it might be.
But now they had done it. They had well and truly done it.
“When did you first notice that I was hot?” she asked.
“Lord. Are we going to do this?”
“Yes, we are going to do this. That was my first time. You are the first man that I’ve ever had sex with.”
She could see him battling pride, and some self-loathing that he felt along with it. She sort of liked that she was capable of torturing him on that level. It was payback for all the time. His mere existence had tortured her.
“Let’s get some food. Downstairs.”
“Does that mean they have to get dressed?”
“No. It’s not like anybody’s out there looking in my windows.”