Chapter 4 #2
The air changes. I recognise that, even if I don’t know what I should do with it.
Then she does something I would never have predicted and that, at the same time, proves every instinct right:
She takes her shirt off.
She doesn’t rush, or give me any striptease theatrics. Just casual, efficient fingertips at the hem, lifting the Sleep Token T-shirt up and over her head, dropping it to the floor like it’s the most natural act in the world.
Underneath, she wears a delicate white lace bra that makes my brain blue-screen. It frames her breasts beautifully, sure, but what really fries my circuits are the details I hadn’t seen before.
Her left arm is a full sleeve of colour: wildflowers and dancing skulls, eyes and constellations, a tiny rocket ship disappearing into a swirl of blues at her wrist. When she moves, the artwork moves with her, like it’s alive.
As she turns slightly, I catch just enough of her back to see the top curve of inked angel wings, soft grey lines disappearing under the strap.
I don’t have the wits to say anything. Or move. Or blink.
One particular part of my body appears to be happy enough, though, once again making decisions without me.
“Is this OK?” she asks. She steps in closer, lifting her hand to hover just above my chest. She doesn’t touch until I answer. My mouth refuses to cooperate, so I nod, sharp and probably too eager. I want her to touch me so badly it borders on physical pain.
Her palm lands over my sternum, warm even through my shirt, and I’m convinced she can feel the way my heart is ricocheting off my ribs like a pinball machine. Her gaze studies my face, then drops to follow the path her other hand takes as she trails a finger up the line of my buttons.
“I’ve been thinking about you all day,” she says softly. “About doing this.”
Record scratch. My brain helpfully supplies static and absolutely nothing else.
Tippi planned this. She walked into the arena tonight intending, at least as a possibility, to be here in my hall taking her clothes off.
I make an incoherent noise. Her eyes flick back to mine, checking.
“Everything still OK?” she asks.
I drag in a breath and count silently to three. My body is buzzing, my thoughts flailing.
“Jacob,” she says gently, taking a small step back to give me more space, “are you a virgin? It’s totally fine if you are, I just like to know what I’m working with.”
The mortification is instantaneous. “No,” I say, perhaps too fiercely. “No, I’m not.”
Her head tilts, considering. “Are you… not attracted to me?”
The expression that crosses my face must answer for me, because the idea is so absurd it almost drags me out of my own panic.
“I - I find you… very-attractive-indeed,” I manage.
Understatement of several centuries. I put my hands lightly on her bare shoulders and draw her closer, clumsy but sincere. Warm skin under my palms. Real. Here.
Her smile brightens, slow and delighted. “Likewise,” she murmurs. “And, in the interests of full disclosure, I’d really like for us to fuck each other senseless right now. But only if you fully, enthusiastically want the same thing.”
The seriousness in her face steadies me more than anything else tonight. There is no pressure hidden under the flirtation. I know, beyond doubt, that she’d stop if I asked.
I don’t want her to stop. Now, or ever.
She lifts her brows, mouth quirking. “So. Do I have your wholehearted consent to rip all your clothes off, slide onto your dick, and ride you until your eyes roll back, or not?”
It’s possibly the most surreal multiple choice question I’ve ever been offered, and a hell of a thing to be asked by the most magnetic woman in the known universe.
“Yes,” I say, teeth catching on the word. “Yes to all of it.”
The relief in her exhale is genuine. Then she smiles like the sun coming out, and I lean down to kiss her.
It’s not elegant. I misjudge the angle; our noses bump.
But she adjusts, taking over the lead with easy assurance, and within seconds we’re wrapped up in something deep and dizzying, our lips lightly pulling on each others in a steady but intoxicating rhythm.
Hers are soft and confident, and when her tongue brushes mine, a groan escapes me before I can stop it.
She fists her hands in my shirt and tugs. Buttons scatter across the hall floor. I don’t care. I’d happily donate my entire wardrobe to this glorious cause.
At some point - later I know I won’t remember how - I steer us to the sofa. We fumble with each other’s belts, half laughing, half breathless, and my shirt is undone, and then we are suddenly skin and heat and closeness in a way I haven’t experienced in far too long.
It’s overwhelming.
All of it: the sensation, the reality, the fact that she is here, choosing me. My body surges ahead of my mind, desperate and grateful and terrified.
Almost for something grounding to do, I start feverishly undoing her jeans for her and dragging them down her legs along with her white cotton knickers.
I wish I could steal them, put them in my pocket and keep them forever, but I don’t, of course I don’t.
She lifts her hips to make my job easier, and I wince as pre-ejaculatory fluid leaks from my almost painful erection.
I have never been so hard in all my life.
It’s not helped by the sight of her bare mound, the dainty little slit, the knowledge that for a few precious moments it’s mine.
I need to calm down.
Zero chance. Not when I start to remember the things I need to do to make this good for her. I didn’t think it was possible, but even more blood surges into my shaft at those thoughts, as I take in the impossibly gorgeous sight of her on my sofa in just a bra.
She reaches for me, as comfortable under my gaze as I am astonished under hers, and wraps her arms around my neck. “Your turn,” she says against my lips, and her breath is so soft and sweet…
Christ.
Sending a silent prayer, to any deity that’d care to listen, for me not to disgrace myself and for my penis to work as it’s supposed to, I kiss her once before standing and haphazardly shucking off the rest of my clothes.
When she pulls me down so she can crawl on top of me, I steel myself further, keenly aware that my shaft is hard enough to damn near rocket right off my body.
Her navel is somehow mesmerising, a perfect whorl with a glinting silver piercing.
I try to focus on that, and not let my eyes wander any further down.
Once she’s situated in my lap, I bury my face in her cleavage, tugging her tight, pale pink nipples out over the top of the bra cups and tonguing them mindlessly.
Her breath catches, and I take that as evidence that she likes what I’m doing.
I was hoping doing this would give me an opportunity to calm myself and get it together, but she starts gliding her hot, soaking wet core up and down my length, and it’s hopeless.
I’m holding on by my fingernails to keep from coming just from that feeling alone, and how is this happening when normally I have to really strive to get to this point?
It’s almost woefully easy, and it’s disorienting.
Tippi’s appreciative noises are another aphrodisiac in their own right, and it’s overwhelming, but she’s enjoying these moments with me in this unbelievable here and now, and I don’t want to let her down, I must NOT let her down…
“Hold up.” I stop what I’m doing instantly, staying stock still, and she leans backwards to pick up her jeans, her taut body as lithe as a gymnast’s.
She retrieves a red foil packet from her back pocket and calmly rips it open with her teeth.
Condom. Good shout; I think I might have a box in my bedside cabinet, but I couldn’t swear to it. It’s been such a long time.
Oh my god, oh my bloody god, this is really happening.
I stifle a whimper when she rolls it onto my erection, which jumps in time to the racing beat of my heart.
God, look at her. Luminous and lovely. From some far corner of my consciousness, I find the wherewithal to guide her mouth back to mine and kiss her.
I hope the alacrity of it communicates to her just how amazing I think she is.
“You have a really, really nice cock,” she murmurs against my mouth, before grasping it, lining me up at her vagina, and slowly, oh, JESUS, achingly slowly sinks down all the way until I can feel her at the very root of me…
No no no no no NO -
Instinct takes over, full force and unstoppable, and I grip her hips, unable to stop myself from thrusting up into her once, twice…
…and it’s over.
I blew it. Literally.
And it’s not just that I came laughably quickly.
I also cried out in ecstasy like the most pathetically grateful loser, because that was easily the most stunningly intense orgasm I can remember having in a good long while.
“Oh, Jesus… I’m so… terribly sorry…” Mortified beyond anything, I gently withdraw and move clear to the other end of the couch. I don’t even bother taking the condom off in my rush and grab my trousers, pulling them on to have something between me and the world.
“Don’t give it a second thought, it’s fine.” To her credit, she sounds sincere as she stretches comfortably, covering herself with the nearest throw as if we’ve just watched a film and got a bit carried away. “We can try again later, depending on your refractory period,” she adds lightly.
I rake a hand through my hair, wishing I could climb out of my own body.
Here she is, this unbelievable woman who makes me laugh and think and want things I’d quietly filed away under ‘not for you, Jacob,’ and I…
ruined it. After spending so long unable to maintain arousal, in the first situation where I desperately want to take my time my nervous system decides that’s the perfect time to sprint for the finish line.
If my body doesn’t betray me one way, it finds another.
“I think…” I start, then swallow, forcing the words out evenly. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather call it a night.”
There’s a small pause. “OK.” No dramatics. No guilt. Just acceptance, like she did earlier with the overconfident rider. Like this was nothing more than another leaf on the tree of her life, there and then gone.
She dresses quickly and quietly, glancing at me now and then. I sit there, shirt ruined, half-dressed, feeling like something inside me has turned to dust.
“It really is OK, you know,” she says, coming over and resting a gentle hand on my shoulder.
My instinct is to flinch away, but I manage to stay still. The last thing I want is to add rudeness to the list of things I regret.
I take her hand and press a quick, awkward kiss to her knuckles, still not quite able to look up. “I’m really sorry,” I mutter. “It’s… a me problem. Not you. You’re so…”
Words fail. None of them seem big enough.
She squeezes my hand once, then lets go. “Take care, Jacob,” she says quietly.
Then she walks out of my house with the easy lightness of a summer breeze.
Or rather, as my mortified brain insists on pointing out, as quick as I was.
All I can do is sit there, dragging my hands through my hair, over and over, as frustration and shame cycle through me. Wondering, not for the first time, why I ended up with a body that either refuses to respond when I need it to, or races ahead and leaves me behind.