Hooked On a Feeling, page 21
When he could no longer stand the remaining constraints of clothing he took her to the bedroom and stripped the bedspread and blanket away. He never let contact with her body go, a hand, his hip, his foot in contact with her while he moved around the room. He turned a bedside lamp on in place of the overhead light and watched her breathing quicken at the threat. He felt a ripple of sympathy for her, but he wasn’t giving up the sight of her coming apart in his arms for her misplaced sensitivity.
She let him undress her, the whole time trembling, twitching. He should’ve kept it simple and clinical to spare her anxiety, but the scent of her, midnight jasmine and untapped need, robbed him of sensibility. He made a meal of her skin with his hands and lips and by the time he laid her on the bed she was a mass of shudders and sucked in breaths, and he was strung tight like a guy rope between the potent need to claim her fast and the desire not to overwhelm her. Anticipation ran so red-hot and bundled tight inside him he had to look away from her to slow his heartbeat.
She read that wrong, she fumbled for the sheet to cover herself and he had a moment of exasperation that she could be so beautiful and not understand it, not have experienced the physical joy of it. He said, “Don’t,” hard like a command and her eyes snapped closed, her hand stilling and bunching the sheet at her waist.
She opened her eyes again when his belt buckle clinked as it hit the floor with the rest of his clothes. She breathed fear and desire and she would not look away from his face. He knew he needed to talk to her, soothe her, but he couldn’t think past the tribal drum beat in his head sounding out his need to be inside her, now, now, now.
When he knelt on the bed she closed her eyes, let her hand drop away from the sheet, making a kind of offering of herself, a sacrifice. It ended his patience. He wanted the girl who would’ve let him take her on his desk, not this woman who was frightened to feel, and he would have her back.
He pulled the sheet away, knelt over her. “You are so fucking beautiful.” Her mouth dropped open on his curse, but her eyes stayed closed. He cupped her breasts, thumbs rolling over her raised nipples, and she surged into his hands but tried to bite back her gasp of pleasure as if it was wrong.
“I want to hear you. Let go.”
As if his request was permission, his instruction consent, she sighed deeply, her body softening, and opened her eyes. In them was the question no man had a right to put there.
He would answer it, once and forever. Give her back the confidence Max stole away from her.
There was no part of her he didn’t want to touch, to draw on. She was a work of art and he would learn the blueprint of her body, map the constructed secrets of her heart. And she let him. She wrapped her arms around him and opened herself to the brush of his hands and the suck of mouth. She touched him cautiously, experimentally, then increasingly without thought.
Only when he slid a finger inside her, panting into her collarbone, straining against her hip, did she resist, tensing, her whimper a sob away from panic. He kissed that fear out of her and she relaxed again, letting him use a second finger and circle his thumb over her clitoris. He ached to put his mouth where his hand was, but her whimpers became sharp trills, wide-mouthed gasps. She tried to stop him, her hand grasping his wrist, her body bowing off the bed.
“Ray!”
He held his lips over a pulse in her neck, that frantic flutter and the sounds she made anchored him. She was so close and every jerk her body made, hooked his own release and dragged it to the surface, where he let it thrash through him, holding on for her.
“Please!”
He was up and over her, hands braced either side of her ribs, eyes locked on their joining before her cry settled. The remnant of his reason made him slow down, enter her gently, give her time to adjust until he was seated deep, cocooned in her slick heat, surrounded by the sound and smell of her excitement.
“Oh, God! Ray.”
He looked down at her face, eyes blown out in astonishment, skin coloured pink, lips trembling, and a spasm of pure pleasure shot with hope and greed and pride wracked though him. He possessed her. He surged into her, his own grunts of relief a counterpoint to her near shrieks. She dug her nails into his back and he let go an animal roar, thrusting harder, faster, once, twice, a third time raggedly and out of control, tumbling them both, one after another though glossy black satin bliss and exploding starbursts.
Gayle cried.
She tried to climb inside his heart, meld to his skin. She sobbed hard, her tears on his face, her arms bandaged around him. He rolled them sideways, his body throbbing, his energy sapped. He was conscious enough to understand the tears were her comedown, a twisted form of afterglow, part shock, part grief, part reward for him. He held her close and let that storm rumble through her without judgement, and when she stilled, when her breathing evened out, he kissed her with a tenderness made from so much more than the primitive rites of brain-shaking sex. He kissed her with a burn building behind his own eyes, a rawness in his throat.
He kissed her with love.
25: Owned
Gayle woke to Ray’s hands tugging her hips back to fit to his, making them warm spoons in the drawer of her messy bed. She captured his arm and dragged it across her ribs, snuggling him closer. It was dark outside, the room still lit by her bedside lamp, shaded by the nightdress Ray draped over it when he saw she was nervous about leaving it turned on.
She wasn’t worried about him seeing her, touching her, taking her over anymore. He’d broken something inside her, torn away all her secret fears, all her reticence and reluctance, the feelings of being left behind, left out, unworthy, that her marriage taught her. She felt like she’d been admitted to the club. Like she’d finally seen the light, and ripped through the veil of shame that’d stopped her experiencing the brain re-setting delight that was great sex.
She wasn’t even ashamed about crying, they were happy tears. She felt light and glittery, magical, like dew on a spider web, ready to cling to Ray as the maker of this new freedom, as the re-maker of her adult life.
“You okay, baby?” He kissed the back of her neck.
She was transformed and she needed a way to tell him. She wasn’t frightened to touch him now. Though still newborn to the ways of pleasing him, she was no longer reluctant to try. He wouldn’t let her fail, he’d guide her, let her learn him. She didn’t want to tell him she was fine, she wanted to show him.
She turned in his arms and her heart climbed up and sat on her tongue when she saw his expression. Half asleep but lit with lazy delight, with awe. For her.
She wound herself around him and kissed him. She pushed him over on his back and draped her leg across him, bracing on her elbow, her other hand exploring him. He was lean with his strength, his muscles long and taunt, not bunched like Steve, not slight like Max. There was an easy economy to his body, nothing spare or overdone, nothing lacking or incomplete. He had muscles and tendons, hollows and curves she couldn’t name but luxuriated in touching, rubbing against. Under her hand his skin was hot, like his blood was close to the surface, like it ran with licks of fire. There was crisp dark hair on his chest and over his arms. A trail of it softer, finer, dissected his abdomen and drew her hand down his body.
He grunted as her fingers went to the hair at his groin, but the sound was all expectation because he shifted, his hips lifting to her touch. He wasn’t sleepy anymore. Almost afraid to hurt him she touched his penis, surprised by its satin solidity, its pulse of life. Her fingers danced away, to the safety of his flat belly.
He laughed, palmed the back of her head and brought their lips together. His tongue explored her mouth, while he enveloped her hand and drew it back to where he wanted it. He showed her how he liked to be touched and his kisses got more demanding, noisy, filling her stomach with a delicious ache. She felt wetness and he stopped her hand.
“Come up on top.”
An invitation, a request, a commitment. She shifted to sit over him, knees at his sides, an inferno of heat and moisture from both of them where they connected.
He groaned and flexed against her, she knew to move, to slide over him, though she’d never liked this with Max, felt exposed by it. It was different with Ray, her body knew what to do, her brain didn’t censor. She wanted him to see her. He grasped her backside and helped her glide on him, curling his torso off the bed to watch, making muscles ladder across his abdomen.
“Fuck, Gayle, don’t stop.”
Ray’s voice was shredded, cut by shuddering breath and drugged by lust. It was another request, but it put power in her hands, in her body. She could please him. She did know how. It put mischief in her hands, made of her limbs a confluence of confidence and coquette. She ground her pubic bone against him, writhed with increasing need and growing desperation. He knew it. He moved his hands, one to touch her inside, an electric shock, one to pinch a nipple he then rose up to suck, making her arch into him with a scream that shot her power theory all to hell. She was Ray’s slave and she would beg with every molecule of her body and soul for him to take her out of the world and throw her into a spiral of light, again, and again and again.
This time when he moved inside her it was fierce. They were flying on a fine wire of need and desperation, control and mayhem strung together with salt-slicked skin and grasping hands, reaching the summit with sliding bellies and glancing kisses. Breathless, unwound and crashing together.
Gayle saw those bright white stars under her closed eyes again, felt the wave of otherness shudder through her body, leaving behind it devastation, annihilation and sweet, sweet surcease. She lay on Ray’s chest, replete, feeling him draw heaving lungful’s of breath, all her bones melted to mush, all her muscles starved of motion. She might’ve moved; flowed off him like water, dripped onto the bed beside him, but he was still holding her, one hand so tangled in her hair she might never be able to brush him out, would never want to.
Was it always like this for everyone else? Was this just luck? Was Ray some kind of sex guru? She should care about the answers. She only cared to listen to his breathing calm so it’d be all right to kiss him again, and when she did, the questions no longer mattered. She had this enchantment with Ray. It was hers, theirs, right now. There were no guarantees and she didn’t need any. A guarantee in a gold wedding band had made her old before her time, and Ray had given her youth back.
She welcomed sleep, tangled in his arms and the bedclothes, enwrapped in the sense that in this one night she’d become strong and whole again with a man who’d shown her the way.
When she woke next it was light, but only just, and Ray had made tea and Vegemite toast, the butter all melted right to the corners. He was a sex guru and a mind reader. They ate and drank leaning into each other, contact at hip and thigh, foot and shoulder, then exchanged Vegemite flavoured kisses.
“I should clean my teeth.” She should shower, her body was filthy with their lovemaking. She should be worried about that; she’d always washed after sex with Max, never slept covered in him. She’d never slept naked before either, or not worried about getting crumbs in the bed. All that was so petty, so irrelevant, it was hard to imagine why those things were ever important.
“That would mean getting up.”
“You got up to make the tea.”
He tightened his hold around her shoulder. “But I’m back now and you were asleep when I was gone. We have about three hours before I have to head home. I don’t want to waste a second without you. I can handle your Vegemite breath if you can handle mine.”
She laughed. “I think you’re wonderful.” He was her private miracle and she didn’t know how to tell him that without frightening him away or coming off like a dumb love-struck kid, like Sally who was so clearly infatuated with Ray, who so clearly knew it and was careful not to encourage her.
Ray chuckled and she felt it though her chest. “It’ll wear off. You’re all post-orgasm happy.”
She walked fingers up his breastbone. “I feel like I’ve been spring-cleaned. Like you blew all the dust out of me.”
“Not sure I’ve ever heard it described like that, but I’ll take it.”
She nuzzled the side of his face. “I meant it as a compliment. I know what I’ve been missing now. I didn’t think it was possible, but with you…” she let the sentence drift off. Ray didn’t need to hear about her hang-ups. That Max called her frigid. That she’d believed him.
“I didn’t do anything special, baby. It’s easy to love you.”
Ray also didn’t need to see her crack up again, but her eyes were hot. She knew he probably meant ‘make love’, not love by itself. What triggered the emotion was less the little thrill that he might grow to and more the thought that Max was wrong. “Why do you say that?”
“Because it was simple to learn what you like, and you’re effortless to please.”
She shifted so she half lay across his chest, so she could see his face. If she was so easy, why had sex with Max been more an obligation, a chore, like the washing up, than a pleasure?
Ray stroked a hand down her back and pulled the sheet up to keep her warm. “You like it when I whisper in your ear. You like it when I nibble your lobe.” She did, she smiled down at him. His hand went to the side of her neck. “You have this pulse here that I can see when you’re excited. You like it when I suck you there.” When he sucked her neck she felt it deep inside her body, like a lure, a magnetic pull. He moved his hand to cover her breast, she sighed. “You particularly like when I do this.” Oh yes, she liked that, so very much. “You go a little mad when I flicker my tongue over your nipples.” Oh God, that was mind-numbing, just thinking about him doing it made her squeeze her legs together. “You have these freckles on your shoulder, if I bite you there, it makes you squirm to get closer to me.” He demonstrated, licking first then scraping his teeth over a cluster of freckles on her shoulder and she jerked, grasping his arm. He laughed. “Yeah, like that.”
She stroked his face, her miracle man. Max had never found the pulse in her neck or eaten her freckles, he’d never used his hands or his tongue like Ray, but he’d done some of the other things and they’d never felt like this.
She was a freshly made bed with hospital corners Ray was unmaking for more comfort, a carefully planned party he was crashing to bring the fun, an ice princess fairytale he was warming up in the re-telling.
“You like it when I put my fingers inside you, when I spread you open.” She dropped her mouth to his neck, rested there, breathing him, hearing him write her a new story, one where she wasn’t discarded and lonely. “You like it when I slide inside you. No, not like. You love that. You love it slow and fast, even when I can’t find a rhythm because you’ve got me all out of control. You like to give me this sultry look that drives me insane. You make that oh sound and I just about lose it every time. I’m doing goddamn yoga breathing so I don’t blow it too soon.”
Ray moved, sat cross-legged facing her. His body was a study of strength and flexibility. She reached out to touch his arm, needing the contact, needing the reality of him. “Whatever you thought you were, whatever Max had you believe. This is what I’ve learned about you Gayle.” He reached for her and she shifted to sit in his lap, her weight on his legs, hers crossed behind him. He took her face in his hands. He was seriously going to make her cry again.
“You’re beautiful. You make me want you just by smiling at me.” He kissed her, soft and dry, like he was scared he might damage her. “You’re a great mum. You have a son who’s going to grow up knowing what’s right and wrong, knowing how to be kind and when to fight for others. You’re stronger than you think you are, smarter than you give yourself credit for.” He wiped a finger over her cheek, and she knew her eyes were leaking. “I don’t know what Max had you believe, but any man could learn what I learned about you, and God help me I hope they don’t because I want you all to myself.” He pulled her forward so she was flush against his erection and they both groaned.
He held her hips, tilted into him. “This is what I’ve learned Gayle, that my life was all business before you came along. That I’m happier being near you than I ever thought possible, that I don’t want to be without you.”
She held her breath, her fingers pressing into his sides, against firm muscle and soft skin. He was saying things that were already in her heart, things she was too scared to say to him.
“That after last night, I’m not sure I can be.” He lifted her again, positioning her over him and lowered her slowly, hissing as she opened around him, adjusting to this new deeper posture. “God, Gayle!”
She gripped his shoulders to give herself leverage, to give herself security. Her head was spinning; from the intensity of their joining, from the words he’d said and the way they’d burrowed inside her, altered her. He flexed his hips and brought his mouth to hers and it felt like he’d made a home inside her.
They were both too breathless to kiss, but breathed each other’s air, greedily. Ray used his hips and his hands to drive inside her, she could feel his body shake, her own was unravelling. When it was almost too much to bear, and she was sobbing out her pleasure, he lifted her, still wrapped around him, over him, and dropped her to her back.
“If you let another man in this bed,” he withdrew, “in this body,” he pushed home again, “it’s going to be a problem for me.” He withdrew again, almost all the way and she cried out at the loss. “This is mine now. I won’t lose you and I won’t share.”
