Chapter 14
Tippi
We walk back to Jacob’s place after pizza.
When we reach his front door, he fumbles his keys only once this time while picking the right one. Progress. Inside, the familiar monochrome calm of his hallway wraps around us. I kick off my boots, suddenly very aware of just how many times I’ve been here in such a short space of days.
We drift towards the living room as if pulled there by the same tide. He shuts the door behind us, and the air shifts into something less domestic, more charged. Familiar territory for me, and considerably soothing.
His eyes linger on my thighs, up to the hem of my shorts.
“I’ve been thinking,” he says, voice low.
“About what you said outside earlier. About being honest. About not pretending.” His gaze meets mine.
“So I want to be very clear that I w-would like to take your clothes off now, if that’s something you also want. ”
I grin, delighted by this more direct version of him. “Look at you. Gold star for my good boy. And yes, that is something I very much want.”
Relief loosens his shoulders at getting the tone right. He steps closer, hands coming up to frame my face, and kisses me like he’s thanking me for existing.
It occurs to me how much his kisses have changed.
They’re still careful, still attentive, still Jacob.
But there’s a new undercurrent now, a thread of confidence woven through the hesitancy.
He’s not waiting for me to lead every second; he initiates, pulls me closer, nips at my lower lip with a soft, surprised sound when I moan my appreciation.
By the time we make it to the sofa, we’re both breathing hard.
“Bed,” I murmur against his mouth. “From previous shenanigans, you’re too tall for couch acrobatics.”
“Fair point,” he whispers, and then he’s threading our fingers together again and tugging me towards the stairs.
His bedroom is exactly as I remember it: with the bed made with hospital corners, and his glasses case sits next to a worthy looking paperback and a coaster, everything aligned.
It shouldn’t be sexy.
It is, though. Because it’s him. Because this is the ordered space where he unravels for me.
He hesitates by the bed, suddenly shy. “Would you like… um… music? Or silence? Or…”
I slide my arms around his neck. “I’d like you. Everything else is optional.”
“Oh.” His throat works. “Right. Yes. OK.”
We undress each other in a slow, fumbling sort of way that feels strangely intimate.
Less frantic than the first time, more exploratory.
He peels my top off like he’s unwrapping something rare, eyes going dark when my bra comes into view.
I take my time with his buttons, slipping each one through its hole, enjoying the way his chest rises and falls faster under my fingers.
“Still like the bra?” I tease as I reach behind me to unclasp it.
His gaze is molten. “I like everything.” His voice roughens. “Can I touch you?”
“Always,” I say softly. “You don’t even have to ask, unless I say otherwise. But I like that you still do.”
There’s warmth in his smile besides any carnal heat. “Good to know.” His hands come up, reverent and sure, cupping my breasts, thumbs circling my nipples until they pebble. The low sound he makes when I arch into his touch goes straight between my thighs.
I’m becoming addicted to the way he focuses.
A lot of people touch you while they’re still half in their own heads, thinking about themselves, about performance, about how they look in the moment.
Jacob touches like he’s entirely present, like how he looks in the moment is irrelevant, and each new response from my body is data he’s thrilled to collect.
We end up tangled on the bed, skin on skin, his bird tattoo brushing my hip as he braces himself over me. He kisses a line down my throat, across my collarbone, over the swell of my breast.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs against my skin. “I know you hear that all the time, but you really, seriously are.”
Heat blooms in the pit of my stomach. I’ve been called beautiful so often it usually slides off me now, just another transactional descriptor designed to persuade me to grant access.
Nothing more significant than ‘blonde’ or ‘American’.
Coming from him, though, it lands. Maybe because he says it like he’s slightly baffled I’m letting him see me like this.
“Flatterer,” I manage.
Jacob smiles into the curve of my breast, then kisses his way lower. When his mouth finally finds me, my hands fist in his hair and all coherent thought takes a back seat.
He’s better.
That’s the other thing that’s changed. The first time, he was enthusiastic and attentive but hesitant, second guessing his every move.
Now? Now he’s still attentive, still checking in, but there’s a newfound sureness in the way his tongue moves, the way he responds to my breath hitching, to the way my hips jerk.
He makes me come more than once with his mouth, slow and deep, my back arching off the sheets as insistent pleasure rips through me. He doesn’t flinch when I wail and swear loudly enough to probably alarm the neighbors; he just holds my thighs and rides it out with me, humming softly.
When he rolls the condom on, his hands shake hardly at all.
He lines himself up, looks into my eyes. “Still OK?” he asks.
“Yes.” I reach up, cup the back of his neck. “God, yes.”
When he pushes in, my breath catches. He fills me so perfectly that for a second my brain just blanks. All I can feel, all I want to feel, is heat, stretch, and the solid weight of his body braced over mine.
He pauses when he’s fully seated, eyes screwed shut, jaw clenched. “Give me a second,” he pants.
“Hey.” I squeeze his hips with my thighs. “Look at me.”
His gaze is glassy with restraint.
“Jacob,” I say gently, “you don’t have to prove anything. If you come in thirty seconds or thirty minutes, I’m not going anywhere. We’ve got condoms for days and I like making you feel good. This isn’t a test.”
His face melts with something like gratitude. “You’re going to ruin me,” he whispers.
“Already working on it,” I murmur. “Now move.”
He does.
Slowly, at first. Testing. Finding a rhythm that works for both of us. His hand slides under my lower back, lifting my hips a little, and the new angle has me gasping. He watches my face like it’s a map, adjusting, fine-tuning, until he finds the exact thrust that makes me moan without meaning to.
“There,” he says hoarsely. “That’s… yes.”
“Quick study,” I manage, breathless.
He smiles, shaky but so proud, and keeps hitting that spot, a little faster now, a little harder. Our bodies fall into sync in a way that feels shockingly easy. Like we’ve been doing this far longer than we have.
Like we’re meant to.
Dangerous thought. Abort. Abort.
But it’s hard when your whole body is lighting up with pleasure more intense than you could ever have foreseen. When his fingers lace with mine on the pillow, squeezing tight. When he murmurs things in my ear he never would have said a week ago.
“You feel… so good,” he groans. “I think about this all day. About being in you. About you… using me. However you want.”
“Oh, fuck.” I shudder. “Who are you and what have you done with my shy professor?”
He huffs out something that might be a laugh, then thrusts harder, and that’s it.
I go, sharp and hot and sudden, my next orgasm crashing through me in jagged waves.
I hear myself cry out his name, feel myself clench around him, and somewhere in the distance I register his strangled “oh, god” as he follows, hips stuttering, burying his face in my neck.
For a few seconds, the world is just white noise.
Then sensation filters back in: the rasp of his breath against my skin; the slick slide of sweat where our bodies are pressed together; the way his hand clasps mine (when did that happen?); the faint hum of traffic outside; the thud of his heartbeat slamming against my chest through his ribs.
He’s heavy on top of me, in that delicious, grounding way I’ve come to like.
I wrap my legs around him, holding him close, enjoying the aftermath, the warmth, the little tremors in his muscles.
And then, because my brain is an asshole, it decides this is the perfect moment to spin a little movie.
This room, empty. The bed, neatly made. The pillow next to his untouched, nights in a row. His reading glasses where they always are, his book on the nightstand, but no extra mug, no extra bra slung over the back of the chair, no blonde hair in his shower drain.
Me, in some anonymous hotel room god knows where, scrolling through my phone, seeing his name pop up on my screen and knowing I won’t see him again in person for… who knows. Months? Years?
Ever?
Coming here for Christmas, maybe, if I happen to be in Europe.
Watching Rhiannon grow taller each visit.
Watching Jacob grow more comfortable, more sure, but from a distance.
Getting updates about his life through Sadie and Leo.
About the woman he’ll eventually meet who isn’t a nomadic sex blogger with a pathological fear of permanence.
The thought punches me in the chest so hard I forget how to breathe and heat blooms behind my eyes.
No. Nope. Absolutely not.
I do not cry after sex.
Except apparently my tear ducts did not get that memo.
A rogue tear slides out of the corner of my eye and into my hairline. Then another. And another. Suddenly my vision is shimmering and my chest is aching and I’m clinging to Jacob like he’s the only solid thing in the room.
He notices instantly.
Of course he does.
“Don’t leave,” I beg nonsensically, even though I’m the one planning to depart. “Please, don’t leave me…”