26. Twenty-six
Twenty-six
Wearing only a pair of boy short underwear and a lacy shirt formerly known as a bra, I stand in the warm glow of my bedroom, shaking. Every way I imagine this ends with me humiliated. Yet here we are, staring. Me at Bo, Bo at me.
I am every bit of the descriptive words that are used in Mabel’s books. Heaving, heavy, achy, starved.
The book, dog-eared and closed on the bed, seems way too small to be able to make me feel all these big things.
Bo stands next to me, fully clothed, and runs his knuckles lightly down my arm. A wave of chills wash over me like a mountain waterfall.
When he drags his hand back up, his fingers trace the thin strap of my top, making my throat close at the proximity of his hand to my chest .
“Birdie,” he says, kissing my shoulder in some way that makes fiery desire rush down my arm and out of my fingertips. He tugs the strap gently. “Can we take this off?”
Panic replaces desire immediately. For twelve years, I’ve been covered—protected. This isn’t about hiding my nakedness; this is about hiding my brokenness. The ugly cracks that define my life: past, present, and future.
A shaky breath.
A—slow—lifting of my eyes to his.
“Please,” he says, clearly reading my hesitation.
Another shaky breath.
Then, a nod.
I don’t want him to see, but a very real part of me wants to know that someone has seen. Someone that I’ve chosen in this life to, just once, see all of me, even the ugly, before I die.
He stands in front of me, eyes laser focused on mine, and slips his fingers under the lacey hem at my waist before lifting it.
Slowly.
A peeling.
My arms raise, he pulls the fabric across my skin, and the shirt is over my head. On the floor.
The moment the air touches my skin—panic. My arms snap across my chest, hands covering the spot where breasts should be. I’m not sad, but a single tear falls down my cheek as my entire body turns into my own pounding heart.
Hand to cheek, he thumbs the tear away, lightly kisses my lips, and his eyes search mine. They move like he’s reading the lines to a secret text that nobody else knows about, and I’ve told him something important without saying a single word.
His gaze holds a question, his worry, so I nod. Because, Yes, I’m okay.
Gently, he pulls my arms down to my sides. I close my eyes, not able to look at him while he looks at me—all of me—and force myself to breathe.
His fingers, rough and worked, trace the lines of the flowers that cover my chest. I don’t have the sensitivity of my breasts like I once did, but in this moment I don’t need it. His finger on my skin sends pleasure, want, and need across every cell in my body.
He sits on the bed, pulling my hips so I’m standing—quivering—between his denim-clad legs.
“You’re beautiful, Birdie,” he whispers.
Fingers gripping into back of my thighs, he leans toward me, mouth landing on my sternum. A trail of kisses, scratchy and warm, drag across my chest. He covers every scar, every dot of ink, with lips and tongue. Somewhere between being so scared I might die and him familiarizing himself with every mark on me, my hands slip around his neck until my fingers tangle into his hair.
My head drops back, and there’s a moan that escapes my lips that’s as unfamiliar as it is lust-filled.
When his mouth has marked every part of my chest, he moves deliberately.
Wrapping one hand around my hip, he grabs the book with the other.
Stands.
Positions himself so he’s behind me, fully pressed against me.
He rounds slightly so his mouth is at my ear. I close my eyes, trying to keep myself standing upright from the intensity of it all.
I hear him work his way to the dog-eared page, and my breath stops. I know what comes next. I’ve read those pages many times.
“ She wondered what he was going to feel like, this stranger named Bo, ” he starts, gravelly voice against my skin, Bo Mountain Breeze making me drunk. “ Would he work her body the way he worked the timber—with rough hands and jaw set—or would it be something different? Wild even? She imagined his hands, no matter how callused, would feel like velvet on her skin. Expensive silk.”
His hand moves from my hip and drags up the line of my waist, ribs, chest. He stops at my neck, where he slips his fingers into my hair, twisting it around his fist, before kissing the spot where my neck slopes to shoulder. Slow.
Then, “ She’d known men, but never one like this. Seeing him—naked and hard—made her want things she’d never imagined. She wanted him in her mouth, in her body—just in her.” Bo pauses, and he hardens more against me. “There was a pressure building, a wetness forming, just by seeing him this way. She couldn’t stop it any more than she could stop the way she was looking into his dark eyes .”
Another pause. Another audible, tension-filled swallow that slides down my own throat.
I lean into him, knowing what comes next will likely cause my bones to disappear.
He continues.
“‘ Bo, I want you to use me how you please. Wreck me. Worship me. I don’t care which, but I’ll take either one,’ she said, breathy and desperate .”
Another pause, but this time he doesn’t read. “Which one do you want, Birdie—to be wrecked or worshiped?” he asks.
I nearly choke on my own thoughts. Somehow, I manage a, “Both,” and I mean it. Worship or wreck, they seem one and the same in this very moment.
He turns the page, but before he continues, his mouth is on me, tongue swirling circles up and down the side of my neck. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’m about to orgasm from the reading and the kissing alone. Like instead of feeling his mouth on my neck, I feel it there and another needy moan escapes my lips.
Then his mouth pulls away and my skin tingles where his lips just were as he starts reading again. “Bo looks at her, eyes somehow going even darker as he drinks in her voluptuous nakedness. ‘I’ll wreck you then worship you,’ he says, growling. Without letting her respond, he hooks an arm around her waist, pulling the softness of her ass against his own hardness and bends her over. Finding her wetness, he growls again, then fills her without warning. They both cry out in pleasure. His first thrust comes slow, a stretching, but the next comes without reservation. And the next. And the next.”
Bo’s own hardness twitches against my lower back, and my body is a powder keg ready to explode. I’m trembling, tense, and so turned on I wonder if this is what death by desire would be like.
The book drops on the floor, and both of his hands grip my hips. Tightly. An undercurrent of restraint in the way he touches me.
“What do you do now?” he asks, voice low and husky.
“I—I—” I can’t form words, at least not the honest ones.
He brings a hand to my throat, slowly dragging his fingers down.
Down my chest.
Down my belly.
Down to the waistband of my underwear.
He stops.
“Do you go here?” he whispers.
I nod, but my mouth won’t work. Because yep. That’s absolutely where I go.
His fingers slide under the waistband, teasing me without touching me exactly where I need it, before sliding out and resting his palm just below my belly button.
“Show me, Birdie,” he says.
Pause.
Swallow.
“Please.”
It’s almost a beg.
I put my trembling hand on top of his, guiding it down again. This time, there’s no teasing, his fingers—our fingers—find the spot that’s begging for him.
I’m too weak to do anything useful. I realize as he starts to make small circles and well-hitting strokes that I’m just along for the ride. This is all Bo. Melting me. Ruining me.
The release that’s been building since the moment he picked me up tonight is about to explode. It scorches me. Everywhere .
“Bo, I…” There’s no finishing the sentence. Pleasure rips through me and steals every word and thought. My back arches off the wall he’s forming behind me, and a cry escapes my lips. Bo’s fingers work me to the point of no return while my entire body shakes and softens with wave after glorious wave.
When it’s over, he turns me to face him, a wet noodle in his arms.
With his mouth hovering over mine, he says, “I like that book,” and smiles against my lips. Before I can laugh, he kisses me. It’s slow, stoking the fire that’s already burning.
Again, like some kind of fool, I moan.
I can’t ignore how turned on he is against me or the desire I have to pull him into the bed and let him, quote, fuck me until I can’t walk for a month , my new favorite idea. I want him over me, in me, and showing me what he looks like when he comes undone.
But I know it can’t happen.
Instead.
I pull back from the kiss.
Unbutton his jeans.
When he says, “Birdie you don’t have to…”
I take the rest of the sentence with another kiss, and a breathy, “Let me.”
When he doesn’t argue, I slide his jeans down, then his briefs, and drop to my knees.