34. Thirty-four
Thirty-four
The night I met Bo, I was fueled by defiance. The stress intimacy usually causes me didn’t exist because it was a planned anomaly. A small wrinkle in the otherwise smooth fabric of my life that I would iron out later.
Tonight, as Bo lifts my shirt over my head in the candlelight of his bedroom, there’s no defiance. This isn’t an anomaly. I know saying yes to this, with my notebook filled with temperatures and notes, means I’m not saying yes to once. I’m just saying yes.
I’ll still never have kids. I won’t stop avoiding chemicals and living by my lists. But now, someone on this planet wants to be part of it—me. Entirely. Without changing.
The way he looks at me is the way he kisses me: tender. Like he sees me. Like he loves me.
My hands trace the lines of his chest, down his hard stomach, and unbutton his jeans, sliding them down his legs .
There are countless things I’d like Bo to do to me, but right now, all I do is stare. This man, this beautiful man, is looking at me and my scarred, ink-covered chest, like I’m perfect. It’s a truth that I would never have known to believe in if not for him.
He follows my lead. Rough palms on my hips, slipping under the hem of my underwear. As he starts to slide them down my legs, his kiss moves from my mouth to my throat.
To my chest.
To my belly.
Lower.
He slides my last item of clothing down my legs, grips my hips, and pulls me down to sit on the bed as he drops to his knees in front of me. There, he drags me forward until I’m on the edge of the mattress, naked, him kneeling between my legs on the floor.
Our gazes collide, and I know something transcendent is about to happen. Like whatever he’s about to do to my body will leave it forever changed. As ruined as one of Mabel’s heroines.
“I want to learn every part of you,” he says, voice like gravel. He lifts my leg slightly and his mouth finds the inside of my knee.
“I think I’d like that,” I reply, weak, as the sensation on my skin goes from being lips to tongue. Bo licks a straight line up the inside of my thigh. A flame to a fuse. Burning.
Up.
Higher.
His hands wrap around the backs of my thighs until his fingertips grip into the tops of my legs, holding me in place as my body starts to struggle to stay still. I know exactly where I want that mouth.
My fingers tangle in his hair as he moves his blessed tongue across my skin.
Closer.
“Birdie, I’m going to worship you,” he says, dark eyes looking up at me for a split second.
My tongue is too heavy, throat too swollen. There are no words to respond with how much I want that.
So I don’t.
Not as he moves to where I need him with his beautiful mouth.
Not when he tastes me like he’s savoring it.
Not as he pulls back slightly, close enough I can feel him breathing. There .
I expect his touch again, but he doesn’t give it; he waits.
Blowing against my skin.
Teasing.
Making my body tighten and struggle with want.
In an exodus of restraint, “Bo, please,” slips through my lips. I’m begging and I don’t care.
He blows again, grazing me with his mouth. “Tell me what you want, Birdie.”
Just the slight vibration of his voice against my skin pulls my hands out of his hair and forces my upper body to drop back onto the bed from the heaviness .
Another blow of his breath, taunt of his mouth. “Say it.” Now there’s a teasing finger involved, and I swear I wouldn’t know my own name if somebody asked me.
“Bo,” I choke. “Put your damn mouth on me before I die.”
That’s all he needs.
With a growl, he licks, working his tongue until it pulls my back off the bed and a permanent whimper from my lips.
He’s hungry. Carnivorous, even.
Moving.
There.
Swirling his tongue like some kind of magician.
Over and over and over.
My whimpers turn to curses then to begs. A loop of saying, “God. Bo. Please.”
Hands wrapped around my thighs, his fingers grip.
Tighter.
Licking.
Faster.
Close.
Closer.
Gone.
Choppy breaths and curses come out of my mouth as his tongue—slower now—helps me ride out every drop of euphoria.
My legs jerk against his palms, but his grip keeps me in place.
Panting.
His mouth moves.
Up my belly.
Across the ink on my chest.
The column of my throat.
My ear.
My. Ear.
My mouth.
I taste me on him .
Then before I can take a full breath, he’s over me, ripping open a condom with his teeth.
“I love you, Birdie,” he whispers, kissing my collarbone before sitting upright. Hard between my legs, he rolls a condom on. “But now I’m going to wreck you.”
My just-satisfied body responds to his words like a thirsty traveler at an oasis. Needy.
Again—“I think I might like that,” is all I can say. But in truth: I know I will.
And there he is.
No hesitating.
Hips driving.
In.
He adjusts himself so his body molds against mine. A melding of our flesh when he fills me completely.
My hips chase his as he pulls back—earning a slight smile from him as he hovers over me—before the refilling.
Again.
And again.
The spot he’s hitting with every movement straddles the line of pleasure and pain .
Head back, my fingernails dig into his back.
“God, you feel good,” he says, teeth clenched, hair hanging over his face as his dark eyes lock onto mine.
He kisses my neck, now slick with sweat, and slides out of me—slow—causing my hips to chase his until he gives me what I want.
Once.
Twice.
Then.
Three things happen at once: he pulls out completely, hooks an arm around my waist, and flips me to my belly.
He pauses, kisses the space between my shoulder blades, and whispers against my skin. “I love you, but hang the hell on.”
When I start to respond, it comes out as a yelp because he’s back inside me, making my fists clench the sheets at the same time his hands grip my hips, and he lifts me to fit him.
This time when he drives into me, it’s hard. And I scream—loud.
It’s good. He’s good.
I push my palms to the bed, back arching, him moving, barely able to see straight.
Thrusts turn to slams—the wrecking. His promise a fruition.
Grunted curses and moans scattered between kisses are punctuated with his unrestrained movements and a desperate sounding , Now, Birdie , from his lips.
With one final drive of his hips and as if my body is completely under his control, now it is. With him .
A shaky, sweaty, whimpering impact of pleasure as his fingers grip tighter somehow, last slow movements finishing us both.
Our panting in the dark forms a kind of sexy song I never want to end.
A staccato of breaths and pounding hearts as we crumble onto the mattress.
When I drop to my belly, he’s lying next to me, kissing my shoulder. Tender. Both of us working to come down from the highest of highs.
“Tell me something you like,” he says as I roll to my back, and his fingers immediately find the lines of my tattoos in the low light.
I laugh under my breath. There are many ways to answer that. His magical tongue that I probably need to tell Mabel about. The way he flipped me over and effortlessly destroyed me. Or, perhaps, the fingertip-shaped bruises that I’m sure will be covering my body when I wake up in the morning.
Instead, I smile. “You molesting my earlobe with your tongue.”
He vibrates next to me with his own laugh, finger still tracing the flowers on my chest.
My smile hurts my face as I turn to look at him, barely illuminated by the candlelight. He’s goodness embodied. Every single piece of him.
“You?”
“You loving me,” he says.
He means it, and that sends a million butterflies fluttering through me.
“I like that too.”