Chapter Thirty-Six #2
I took the decimated cake from her lap and set it on the bedside table before crossing my legs and turning to face her.
She shifted a little so that she was doing the same, our knees touching. I knew I couldn’t have her. I knew that. But I couldn’t let her wake up in the morning with this thought in her head.
“I don’t hate you, Vera. You piss me off sometimes because you can’t let an argument die.
And you don’t see how smart you are. In big groups, you say smart things under your breath instead of out loud.
Sometimes your hair gets so frizzy that I wonder if it’s a cry for help.
I also wish you’d put yourself first.” I nearly added over Brody, but that wasn’t going to help anything.
“Sounds like you have a growing list there.” She twirled her finger around a loose curl. Her veil sat discarded next to the TV, but she still wore the ring. “I don’t hate you either.”
“Well, that’s good, because we’re legally bound together.”
Her finger danced along the blanket and then across my kneecap, tracing circles there. I didn’t know a knee could have so many nerve endings, but I felt her touch coursing up my leg like a rapidly spreading burn.
I cleared my throat. “Um, I just wanted to say that I can call my family attorney tomorrow and I’ll cover the cost of the annulment. You don’t need to worry about that.”
She nodded and then looked up at me, her brown eyes heavy with something that felt like curiosity. “Let’s not worry about that tonight, okay?”
“Okay.”
Her touch expanded from one finger to her whole hand as her palm slid up my thigh.
I watched the path she made and inhaled sharply.
“It is our wedding night,” she said, and then glanced behind me to the closed door of the bedroom.
I agreed with a nod, because if I spoke, my voice just might crack like that of a boy in the throes of puberty.
The truth was some days I didn’t like Vera.
Some days I was so angry with her for making me feel this uncertain and uncontrollable.
My whole life had fit into tidy boxes before her.
My feelings took up just enough space without becoming tyrannical.
My dreams were given to me the moment I was born, and I didn’t feel the need to consider much beyond that.
And then Vera appeared in my life on Halloween and she was everything I wasn’t supposed to be interested in.
She was aimless and unrefined and I thought I was jealous of her.
But that wasn’t the case at all. I wasn’t jealous of Vera.
I was jealous of everyone who knew her better than I did.
Who held more pieces of the puzzle that made her.
Her other hand, the one with my ring—the ring that promised she was mine, if only for a night—slid up my thigh until both hands were at the critical juncture of my hips. Just inches from the fly of my baby-blue trousers.
“Some people say a marriage isn’t legitimate until it’s consummated.”
“I think the whole point of the annulment is to prove—”
She pressed a finger to my lips like I’d done to her earlier tonight in the souvenir shop. The moment felt like a decade ago. Like we’d lived a hundred lives since I’d bought that display case of crystal trinkets.
“Vera, I need you to know that I’m not a good person and if you are implying what I think you’re implying, you shouldn’t expect me to be a gentleman. I won’t say no.”
She rocked forward onto her knees and braced herself on my shoulders so that I was at eye level with her breasts. I nearly leaned forward and ghosted my lips over the fabric covering her nipples, but I needed to know first if she was certain.
I tilted my head back, looking for a response.
“Good,” she said. “I’m not saying no either.”
With that last bit of encouragement, I reached up and snaked my arms around her, and pulled her into my lap. I pressed my face into the crevice of her cleavage and breathed her scent in. Cucumber melon and the slightest bit of sweat.
Her back arched forward as she surrendered to me.
I lay back and pulled her on top of me so that she straddled my hips.
“I don’t want to put too much weight on you,” she whispered.
I held her glorious, full hips in my hands and looked into her eyes with the utmost sincerity. “I cannot stress this enough, Vera. I want to feel you everywhere. I want you to let go.”
Her brow creased as she considered the possibility.
I nodded slowly, encouraging her.
“Okay,” she whispered as her body eased against me, and I groaned as the full weight of her pushed against my cock.
“You’re so good,” I told her, and watched her cheeks flush in response.
Our lips found each other, and she tasted like sugar, the frosting still fresh on her lips. My fingers traveled up her spine until I found her zipper.
She froze and reached over me to switch off the lamp.
“Leave it,” I told her.
She shook her head. “I don’t want the light on.”
I took her wrist, but she pulled out of my grasp.
“That’s nonnegotiable, Eli. I only fuck with the lights off.”
I hated that. I wanted to ask her why so that I could poke holes in her theories, but I was too scared of ruining this moment.
She flicked the light off and I was at least thankful for the Las Vegas glow that illuminated the dips and curves of her body. After that, she let me resume unzipping her dress, and she slid off the sleeves so that the dress bunched around her waist.
Her beautiful porcelain breasts hung right above my mouth and I greedily licked and sucked.
“No bra,” I managed to say.
“It was built into the dress,” she said breathlessly as her head rolled back.
“You’ll find no complaints from me.”
With trembling fingers she unbuttoned my shirt and tossed my already untied bow tie to the floor. Her hands ran a course up my chest before she leaned back down again to nip and lick the space below my ear.
“Fucking hell,” I said on the tail end of a moan. I was fully hard now and based on the way her hips circled over my erection, I wasn’t alone in how badly I wanted this. “I need to get this dress off you.”
Together, we pulled the filmy fabric over her head until she sat astride my lap in only a pair of white cotton panties with a lace band around the waist.
“I know it’s nothing special,” she started, “but—”
“Stop,” I said firmly. “I literally want to tear these off with my teeth. They’re plenty special.”
She gasped quietly and in a sliver of light, I watched as she took a gulp of air and worried at her lip.
Vera needed someone to turn off her brain. I was willing and able.
I held her to me as I sat up and then rolled her onto her back.
Leaning back on my knees, I watched as a passing light swept over her body, and I saw exactly what I was so scared of missing out on.
Her brown curls radiated from her head, her full breasts rose and fell to the rhythm of her breaths, and her nipples were so hard that I was tempted to see how she would react to me simply blowing on them.
I wanted to make this good for her, but I was in serious danger of coming in my pants.
It had been a few months, and the last time was with my high school ex-girlfriend, who my father was convinced would make the perfect partner.
She’d said something about how she knew we would come back to each other, and I had to stop things right there.
Because I didn’t need her to confuse that hookup as me going back to her.
I was simply an asshole looking for a lonely fuck while I was visiting my parents.
It wasn’t fair to her or to me, especially since when I closed my eyes, I saw Vera there on the backs of my eyelids like a flickering movie screen.
So even that last time hadn’t ended in satisfaction.
Vera began to writhe under me as we explored each other with open, panting mouths. I pressed my thigh against the warmth of her core and she let out a low moan.
“Do you like that?” I asked. It had been moments since I’d heard her voice and I already missed it. The girl normally couldn’t shut up and the moment I needed to hear her voice the most, she was all too quiet.
“Yes.”
I ground my thigh against her again. “Talk to me, Vera.”
“About what?” she asked. “I can’t even—what are words?”
“Tell me the plot of your favorite Christmas movie.”
“Love, Actually,” she said as I peppered kisses up her sternum before moving on to her clavicle and then her neck. “It’s about . . . it’s about people.”
She reached between us and began to tug on my belt buckle.
My hand slithered down her stomach to cup her still-clothed cunt. I pressed hard, hoping the fabric created a torturous kind of friction.
“You need to take your pants off. This isn’t fair.” Her head lolled to the side and she let out a high-pitched whine.
I almost told her to be quiet, but Brody was either draped over the toilet bowl or passed out so hard he was bordering on the edge of a coma.
“I don’t have my pants on,” she said.
“You never had pants on,” I corrected her, then treated her to another tight grip that mellowed into a circular motion.
“You should fuck off on med school and become a lawyer. You argue too much.”
“Only with you.”
She laughed and something in my throat burned at the sound.
I leaned back for a moment to unzip my pants and kick them off. I’d barely undressed before Vera was sliding her warm hand past the waistband of my boxer briefs and over my stiff cock. The tip was already wet with precum.
“What else about Love, Actually?” I managed to ask through a throaty groan.
“I changed my mind,” she said. “I hate Christmas movies.”
My fingers slipped past the lace waistband of her panties, but she gripped my wrist, stopping me.
“I want you inside of me. We can do more . . . some other time. But right now I need you inside of me.”
Some other time. Was that a promise? Could this be more than a onetime thing? Or did she just mean later tonight after both of us had recovered? Surely not. It was nearly three in the morning.
She rubbed a finger over the tip of my penis and I was quick to oblige.