The Problem with Lust, page 19
I kiss his hand. It must be strange, to have such gut-wrenching memories of his childhood, to not know the reasons for his birth mother leaving him, for having her severed out of his life. Max’s life is made up of shattered fragments of his past, from memories that cut deep. He has scents, and stories, and hugs and kisses, and he has scars as daily reminders, too. My life is nothing like that, and I can’t truly begin to imagine what his loss must feel like.
“She sounds like a woman who loved you more than life itself,” I tell him. He’s been let down all his life. My heart is breaking when I think of the women he has lost and the pain he has gone through. “Hey,” I say, lifting his chin up and making him look me directly in the eye.
His lips start to move upwards at the corners, but it’s a flimsy attempt at a smile which never reaches his eyes. I don’t expect him to smile, I don’t expect him to put on a brave façade for me.
His eyes are sad and shiny, and all I want to do is to put a smile on his face. I want to hold him, and love him, and make him feel not so sad.
So I kiss him.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
TRINITY
* * *
His lips crush mine and we kiss so hard that I won’t be surprised if we have bruises tomorrow.
He gets up slowly, with our lips still joined, breaking the kiss a little to adjust himself until he’s sitting up; his back ramrod straight against the couch. I move so that I’m straddling him, and our kiss lengthens and deepens, and maybe it’s the way we’re sitting, the way we’re face-to-face now, and maybe it’s because he opened up and bared his heart to me, but I kiss him as if my life depends on it. His hands slide under my blouse, his fingers skittering over my stomach, tickling me.
I can feel his hardness between my legs, and I instinctively press against it. He is hard and needy, and I am soft and wet.
I get up off him, then stand in front and start to undo the buttons of my blouse. He will go too slow, hold back, make excuses. It’s odd how I’ve become the seducer, and he’s the shy, hesitant one.
“What are you doing?” he asks, even though it’s perfectly obvious. His eyes shift from my fingers to my eyes.
“Take me to bed,” I whisper, remembering a line from a movie. I don’t know where his bedroom is, otherwise I’d lead the way, but knowing me, I’d probably accidentally end up in a closet. And there’s a questioning gaze on his face, as if he’s not sure I know what I’m doing, and for a microsecond I feel slightly embarrassed, knowing how I must look; knowing how this must sound to him. But a throbbing deep in my sex keeps me in the moment.
Max gets up, then takes my hand and leads me to his bedroom.
We fall onto his bed, kissing and rolling around like animals. Energy surges through my veins as his strong body sends a signal deep inside me. He kisses me again, and my no-sex stance disappears into a fog of desire. He presses harder against me, there’s no mistaking the size or hardness of his erection as it sears my stomach.
I’m suddenly desperate to touch him. I want to examine him, and run my hands all over his body.
Desperate for more than kisses, I shrug out of my blouse.
“Aren’t we moving a little too fast?” he asks, sitting on the bed, his lips wet, his eyes shiny.
“I want you, Max.”
He lifts his head up, his eyes darting across my eyes as if he’s trying to uncover something new, as if he’s trying to decipher what I’m doing. “But you’re…”
I place my hand over his hardness and squeeze gently, then hold my breath because I don’t know how he’ll take it.
In answer, he pulls me down towards him and seals my lips with his then thrusts his tongue into my mouth. This kiss is different; it’s carnal, dirty, deep. He sucks my tongue long and hard, and a pulsating, throbbing sensation steals my senses. I feel ready. I am ready.
I have never been this aroused before, and I shake and shiver with giddy anticipation.
“We should…” he lifts his head, “We should take this ….slowly Trinity. We don’t have to rush.”
He’s talking too much. I don’t know how much slower he wants to go, but this is agony. “I need you,” I moan. “I need more.”
“I don’t want you to do something you’re not sure of,” he tells me.
“Don’t you want me?” I ask. Maybe he doesn’t want this? The thought stabs deep in my chest, lacerating my heart.
“Of course I want you. It’s killing me to not be able to…”
He does want me.
That’s all the reassurance I need. In my desperation to have him inside me, I stroke him again, and try to lever my hand so that I can pull down his zipper, but I can’t quite do it.
His mouth dips down and he kisses me again, and somehow, he’s managed to unhook my bra too. While he moves lower and showers my breasts with kisses, I try to shrug off my pants, which isn’t easy given the way we’re lying.
I accidentally kick him.
He yelps in agony and rolls away from me, lying on his back, his hands over his package. I raise a hand to my mouth in shock and watch his face contort with pain.
“I’m sorry,” I gasp in shock to see him grimace in pain. I don’t know what to do, so I lean over him. “Max.”
He pants out loudly. “I’ll…be…fine,” he bites out.
I want to touch him, and kiss him and make him better. More than anything I want to touch him where it hurts.
We stay like that, me on my side wincing, because I can see his pain, and him on his back, breathing through his pain. “Aw… shit…that hurts,” he wails, lying there in agony. I wince, and think how constrained he must feel, so I gently lower his zipper, then pull down his boxer brief enough to free his member.
It pops up. Straight as a rod. Purple, and engorged, and so big. I’ve never seen one so close up before. Previous boyfriends have tried to thrust my hand down there. I’ve fooled around with guys before but not to the point that I ever had this staring me in my face.
My insides turn to hot liquid.
“I’m sorry.” I reach out gingerly and touch the tip.
He groans.
“Does this hurt?” I ask, sliding my hand lightly over it. He laughs, then pants out and lifts up on his elbows. “It doesn’t hurt.”
I touch him again, rubbing his silkiness over him. He lets out a low guttural moan. I grasp him in my hand. I’ve never done this before, but I can’t seem to stop now. I stroke him gently, up and down, with my thumb sliding over his tip, because he seems to like it.
I want him to put it inside me, but I also have an urge to put him in my mouth.
It scared me that he will see how inexperienced I am on both accounts.
“You’re going to make me come, Trinity,” he says, his voice tight.
“Sorry.” I stop stroking, but my fingers still remain around his shaft. I pump him gently.
“You’re killing me softly.” He sits up, then lifts his arms and takes off his T-shirt. Then he stands up, and my hand falls away. I’m better positioned, sitting on the bed, so I peel his jeans and boxer briefs all the way down.
I look up at him, and he’s completely naked. An inferno rages through me.
“I’m sorry if I hurt you.” I don’t know what to do next. Maybe it’s about time he made a move and took things over from this point on.
He crouches on the floor, flicks his finger over my hardened nipple. His mouth is so near to me that I’m breathing in his breath. “You have to stop apologizing, Trinity.”
I look at him, not knowing what happens next.
“Seems a little one-sided to me,” he says, “Me being completely naked, and you only half-naked.”
“How did we end up like this?”
He reaches for my hand and pulls me up. “You tell me,” he whispers. “Fuck.” He cups his hand around my neck.
“No swearing.”
“We’re in the bedroom, not your classroom,” he reminds me. “And I recall you asking me to take you to bed.”
Yes, please.
“You’re so damn sexy, so damn sweet, I don’t deserve someone like you.”
“I want you to make love to me. I want you to be my first.”
His thumb glides over my lips. “Are you sure?”
I’m sure, surer than I’ve ever been. We kiss deeply again, our bodies pressed tight against one another. His hardness jabs me in my belly, and I love the feel of it.
His hands shuffle around with my zipper and button, and I shrug off my pants. Then he hooks his fingers on either side of my panties and rolls them down. I forget to breathe. It’s intimate, and makes me feel vulnerable. And nobody has ever done that to me before.
Nobody has ever seen all of me.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmurs, kissing the top of my thigh. Another first for me. My breath turns shallow, and it becomes harder to breathe. Max’s fingers skim along my thigh and come to a rest on the part of me which no one has ever touched.
Embarrassment courses through me when his fingers slide lower. I am slippery wet, and he can feel it.
“Lie down,” he says softly, and I obey him, scooting up on the bed. He lies down so that he’s on his side, staring at my nakedness. I can’t cover up. There are no sheets, because we’re lying on the bedspread. It’s just me and him, no clothes, no barriers, skin-to-skin.
I can’t hide anymore.
“Are you sure?” His lips brush mine and our breath mingles. It’s intoxicating.
“Can’t you tell?” I ask him. His fingers dance around below and I let out a gasp. He slides them over me.
“So wet,” he murmurs, pressing his lips to mine. Then he dips a finger inside me and I mewl in delight.
“You’re so tight,” he says, as if it’s a problem. His finger stills. Being tight is a good thing, I thought. If anyone should have any hesitation, it should be me. I’ve seen the size of his erection.
When he slides another finger in, I let out a sound I don’t recognize as mine. His thumb slides easily over my folds and I almost lift up off the bed. It feels…divine, as if my nerve endings down there leapt up and jumped for joy.
My heart races.
The pulsating beats are as loud as a drum, and I’m convinced he can hear them. He gives me another long, drawn-out kiss, and I start to buck against him. He immediately stops. “Slow down.”
“It feels so good,” I moan softly.
“I’ve got something that will feel even better.”
I arch again, because his words are so potent, the promise so great, and my ache is so deep.
I reach down and touch him again, and he lets out a groan, then rewards me with his finger again. We pleasure one another slowly. It’s sultry, and sensual, and deliciously dirty. I don’t want to ever stop doing this. He draws sounds out of me which I don’t recognize as my own. I pump him gently, my eyes on his face, observing his reaction as he grows harder still in my hands.
I’ve imagined these moments before, before Max came along, but so much more vibrantly and in detail ever since he collided into my life.
Now I get to experience it all for the first time and I’m a bundle of highly excitable nerves.
My legs fall apart as he rolls on top of me and we become a tangle of wet mouths, hot tongues and roaming hands. He touches me everywhere, leaving a trail of fire as he moves all over, sucking and licking my breasts and my neck. We do this for the longest time, until I feel as if I might explode. Or he will. Each time his fingers move, I’m closer to the edge. Everything is so new, so heightened, that my senses feel as if they might overload and combust. I can only take, and absorb, and feel so much.
And then he stops. He rolls off me and reaches for a something in his bedside cabinet. Then he returns to me, and kneels on the bed. His erection is practically inches from my face, and I’m oddly excited by it. I reach out to touch him when he rolls the condom on.
He lowers himself down on me, and I feel him poised at my entrance. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he murmurs, sucking my lower lip. And then I feel him moving slowly inside me, feel my body stretch as he fills me.
I sigh in gratitude, unable to contain myself as he slowly slips and slides his way deeper, inching into my slipperiness. I’m so wet that it doesn’t hurt, and when he gives me a slobbering wet kiss, I am so aroused that I buck my hips.
“Are you okay?” he murmurs, his lips skimming over my cheek. I respond with a smile, and a sigh, my eyes almost rolling back into my head. I don’t see, as much as I feel, and what I feel is being filled to the hilt. The slow-burn friction sends shockwaves through me.
He thrusts into me then, a short sharp pain pinches me. It barely registers before a tsunami of pleasure rolls through me. I hear a sound, like a wounded animal, and then I realize it’s me, crying out in ecstasy.
My brain short-circuits as my inner muscles clench around him. My back arches, and I jolt and jerk in a spasm. It’s involuntary, but Max sliding in and out of me feels so, so good.
I have no control over my body, and when he plunges his tongue into my mouth, mimicking the motion of his member deep inside me, it blows my mind.
I feel completely claimed by him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
MAX
* * *
She picked me to be her first. Me.
She’s snuggled up against me, her arm over my chest as if she’s claimed me. I want her to claim me. I want her to feel that way about me, because it’s dawning on me slowly, that I want her in my life, not as a friend-with-benefits—she’s not that kind of woman—but because she makes me feel whole again.
“You waited all this time, and you were saving yourself,” I say, running my fingers through her hair. “I’m not the marrying kind, you know that, don’t you?” I have to say it, because I need her to know. Maybe I should have told her before, but it honestly didn’t come to my mind.
She holds a finger to my lips. “I don’t expect you to marry me, silly.” Then I need to know if she took pity on me.
“It was because of what I told you, wasn’t it?”
She lifts up slightly, puts her hand to my cheek. “What happened to you is heartbreaking, but us making love just now has nothing to do with pity. I’m falling for you.”
I let her words sink in.
What is she saying?
She lifts up the sheet that covers her, and holds it tight against her so that it doesn’t slip. “I want you to know that I love you, and I wanted to make you feel happy. I can’t sleep at night because I think of all the things I want you to do to me.” She drops a quick kiss on my lips, then snuggles against me again, leaving me to savor her words.
She’s lying naked in my arms and she thinks I’m the best thing she’s ever had. She thinks I deserved to be her first one, and she thinks I can give her a happy-ever-after. I don’t want to hurt her, but I don’t do happy-ever-afters.
I want to tell her that I’m not boyfriend material. That I have done things she would disapprove of. I wanted her to know about me, and I started to tell her the truth, that one time, about how I treat women, but she looked so disgusted that I had to pretend I’d been joking.
But today I told her stuff that nobody knows, not even Al, definitely not any woman. The fact that I could tell Trinity already tells me that she’s special to me.
And now this. I never intended that our evening together would end up like this, with her in my bed.
I don’t want her to go.
We snuggle together in our little bubble. I feel complete, in a way I never have after sex. This didn’t feel like only sex. It was something more.
Trinity makes me feel calm.
She grounds me.
I like her being around, and I want to hold onto her for as long as I can, even though she deserves someone who can give her more, someone who can be more.
“Are you sore?” I ask, looking down at her.
She grins happily. “No.”
“I didn’t hurt you too much?”
She shakes her head.
I shift away from her, and lie on my side so that I can see her face.
She turns to her side too, with her head propped on her hand, so that we’re facing one another.
“You have a gorgeous figure,” I tell her, and rest my hand on her hip. Sure enough, the expected frown lines appear on her forehead and she squirms, as if she’s not sure if I’m saying it because we just had sex.
“It’s true,” I insist, resisting the urge to sneak my head under the covers and sprinkle her with kisses. I’m ready for more, I always am, but with Trinity, it’s more than sex and making out. I don’t want her to leave.
“I need to lose some weight.”
I give her a look of displeasure. “You don’t need to lose anything.” I cup her buttock gently. “You’re perfect and beautiful exactly as you are.”
“What were they like, your past girlfriends?”
She always wants to know about my previous girlfriends. I try not to think about the conversation I need to have with her when I tell her that they weren’t exactly girlfriends.
I don’t want to have any secrets between us, yet telling the truth might be the thing that pulls us apart.
“We can talk about that another time. Now that I have you in my bed, I want to make the most of it,” I say. “Ready for round two?”
Her eyes widen, her lips curve into a smile. “Could we have round two?” she asks, as if she’s Oliver Twist asking for more porridge.
“You can have anything you want.” I feel myself harden again, just thinking about it, and all the things I can teach her, and do for her, and how much more satisfying it is to have someone for whom everything is brand new.
“I like the idea of round two, but I should go. I have some work to prepare for tomorrow.” Her face turns somber. “I can’t believe this is a school night.”
Damn it. Tomorrow is Friday, and I lose her to her crochet class and her friend. I won’t get to see her again until the weekend.
“Stay,” I say, the word falling out of my mouth without thinking.
She gives a surprised laugh. “I can’t stay. I have school tomorrow.”
