I nodded. “Do my best.”
“Were you still holding back?” Her eyes, this close, were so complex, so multihued, multilayered. Half a dozen shades of brown, shades of green, shades of blue. And as complex as the hues were, even more complex were the emotions I saw there.
Worse yet was the kaleidoscope of emotions in me. I didn’t want to answer. But I did. I nodded. Swallowed hard. “Yeah. I was.”
She nodded. “How?”
I shrugged. “Just…tempered things, I guess.” Went for a risky bit of truth. “I want you and want things with you in a crazy, crazy, wild fuckin’ way, and it scares me. Scared I’ll scare you.”
“You won’t, Ink.”
“How do you know? How can I know?” I shrugged, shook my head. “If I hurt you, I’d—I don’t know. If I scared you—I don’t think I could handle seeing you look scared of me. I can’t go through that again.”
“You won’t scare me, Ink. You won’t.”
I shook my head. “Wish I could just believe that. Not that I don’t believe you—I do. I know you believe it.”
“But you don’t.”
“No, I can’t. I just fuckin’ can’t, Cassie. I simply can’t fuckin’ afford to. What you did, who you are—getting me to let myself feel anything at all is a win, don’t you fuckin’ see that? Getting me to see you as a sexual being, giving in to being attracted to you. Giving in to thinking about you—jerking off to thinking about you…that’s a fuckin’ big goddamn deal, Cass. This? What we just did? What I let you do? What I let myself do to you? So fuckin’ huge, for me. You don’t even know. So yeah, I still held back. But it ain’t all just gonna go away all at once. It’s a lot of years of painful shit all callused over, babe. Can’t fix it overnight.”
“I’m not trying to fix it.”
I sighed, rubbed my forehead. “But you are. You are. That’s okay. I get it. I appreciate it. You just gotta be patient.”
She laughed, an amused bark. “Yeah, not so good at that.”
Silence.
I lay on my back, she on hers—we were side by side, my hands folded over my stomach, hers curled together over her diaphragm, just under and between her lovely little breasts, fingers tangled and curled and twined together. God, those pink nipples, pert taut firm little nipples. I wanted them in my mouth again.
She caught me staring, and a slight smile crossed her lips. “What? You see something you like?”
“You know I do,” I said, rolling toward her.
She bit her lip, watching me, not moving. “You…you don’t mind that they’re small?”
“Mind?” I wedged my body against hers, leaning partially over top of her.
I palmed one breast as I kissed her shoulder, her breastbone. Slid my tongue around the underside of one breast, my thumb flicking her other nipple. She moaned, gasped. Head tipped back, eyes closed. I suckled her entire breast into my mouth, and then let it out and circled her nipple with my tongue, tweaking and twisting the other between my finger and thumb. Her moans became louder, and her hips lifted. I leaned across her, using my mouth on the other breast now, and flicking and tweaking with my fingers the one I’d mouthing moments ago. Sucked, tweaked. Twisted, licked. Cassie moaned, murmured, whimpered. Her hips began flexing, and I gave her a rhythm—pinch, twist, lick, flick, flick, pinch, twist, a complicated rhythm.
She rose to the occasion, spine arching and her voice calling wordless encouragement to me, as I switched mouth and fingers from one side to the other until she was mad with it, hips driving, seeking.
Finally, when she was crazed and gasping and moaning, I palmed both breasts and pinched her nipples hard, so hard she screamed, and at the moment of the pinch and the moment of her scream, I devoured her clit, sucking it into my mouth and twiddling it with my tongue and thrashing it side to side, and Cassie’s scream broke, shattered, became ragged and breathless and she was arched off the bed, spine bowed up, all of her weight on her neck and heels, thrusting herself against my mouth, seeking the heat and pressure and movement I was giving her as fast as I could move my head and tongue.
Until I ached, until the delicate, complex flavor of her arousal was seared into my taste buds and her essence was smeared on my mouth and cheeks, until she went limp, gasping, panting, utterly spent and stunned.
“Fucking hell, Ink. I have never, ever, ever…” a pause to suck in oxygen, calm her pulse, “EVER in my life come as hard as you make me come.”
I grinned, moving up her and kissing her belly and then her ribcage and then her breasts again, until she cackled and pushed me away.
“Too sensitive, too sensitive! I need a second. Jesus.” She pushed me away from her nipples, but yanked me by my beard up to her mouth, used her palm to wipe away her essence, and then pulled me in for a kiss. “God, all I can taste is my own pussy.”
I laughed. “Me too. And I’m more than okay with that.”
She laughed with me, kissed me again. The kiss deepened, and then she rolled into me, pressing me onto my back. She broke the kiss, still gripping my beard under my chin in one hand, the other cupping my cheek. Kissed me once more, a swift peck on the lips. And then she grinned, wickedly.
Shifted down my body.
“Cass, wait.” I caught at her. “Don’t. Not that.”
She transferred my blindly groping hands to her hair. Kissed her way down my belly. “I want to.”
“It’s…I’m—too much.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” She hesitated as she settled between my thighs, grinning up at me. “What if I want to taste you as much as you like to taste me?”
I groaned, because I ached. Hard as a rock again, ready again. More ready for her than I’d ever been in my life. Wanting her. I wanted her. I didn’t want to come in her mouth, I wanted to be buried inside her.
I needed it.
Nothing mattered to me except the need to feel her sweet tight hot sex clamped around me, her breathing raw in my ear, whimpering my name.
I felt it, saw it. Saw it happening. Needed it.
“Cass, I need—”
She cut me off by taking me into her mouth. I lost the ability to speak. To breathe. To think. To exist outside the sensation of her warm wet mouth sucking hard around me, plowing downward. Taking me. Accepting me deeper. I felt her breasts sliding against my quads. I groaned, aching, throbbing.
“Fuck, oh fuck, Cass.” I heard my voice, but it sounded alien. From someone besides me. It sounded hoarse, raw and ragged and weak and whispery and destroyed.
Sweet unholy blissful hell.
Her mouth, god her mouth.
It was too good.
Too much like heaven. Too much like a perfect home for my cock that I never wanted to leave, ever. Could it just go on forever?
How was she breathing? She hadn’t stopped. She was just plunging her mouth down on me, swallowing around me, sliding her lips up and swirling her tongue all over me, and her hands were everywhere, cupping my balls and squeezing and massaging, a finger sliding along the tenderest underside, then clasping around my base as she spent a moment with her lips wrapped around the head and sucking and licking and bobbing hungrily, eagerly, almost desperately.