“You are, sweetheart. You are.”
Her hands are on my thighs now. She’s playing me. Avoiding the bullseye, making it last.
God have mercy on me.
She cups me in her slippery grip. She’s exploring me, as though she’s spellbound.
Then, her hands ease over my cock. She slides her soapy fists up and down the length of me. It’s an agony-ecstasy so extreme all I can do is watch her. The ecstasy is gathering, deep and low. I feel alight with it. On fire. Like I’m not just about to come but also about to die.
“Is this all right?” she asks shyly.
I can only groan an answer, and she increases her pace and the force of her grip until I can’t handle it. A wrecking ball of pleasure erupts within me and I’m spurting hot cum all over her hands and her breasts and her stomach in thick jolts. It just goes on and on. I have to close my eyes tight and grit my teeth just to deal with it. I have never come so hard in my life.
She’s still rubbing me gently and I almost tell her to stop. It’s too intense. But I don’t. Her hands are infinitely careful, unbelievably soft. I can just cope with these delicate caresses, which prolong the orgasm. My cock is still pulsing, still trickling and spasming with the last of my release.
It takes me a few seconds to recover.
Her hands are still on me, smoothing the water across my body to wash off the soap and the cum.
I take her hand and turn off the shower. I grab a towel and dry her hair. I have this desire to do it carefully, gently. I do my best to control the beast that’s raging inside me. All it wants is to get inside. To take her and own her and worship her with my body.
I dry her neck, her breasts. I use my thumbs and my fingers to play her soft nipples until they begin to bead. Fuck me, she’s gorgeous. I dry her stomach, her legs. Very gently, her soft pussy. By this time I’m already on the rise again and now she’s drying me.
“There’s something I want to tell you, Travis.”
She sounds serious and I stare at her, wary. What the fuck? She has a boyfriend. She’s a Russian spy. She’s emigrating to Australia tomorrow and never coming back. Since none of those scenarios seem at all likely except maybe the first one, which I could deal with by beating him to a pulp while showering her with every affection and gift known to humankind. Then again I don’t want to piss her off, or end up in jail. I’ll think of something, though. I’m up for the challenge. I’m so damn up for it she won’t know what hit her. She’ll never be able to refuse me or resist me. “Let’s hear it.”
“I’m on the pill,” she says.
She’s on the pill? That’s good news. Or is it? Why is she on the pill? Has she banged every redneck between here and Nashville? Did I misread her? I’m never wrong about shit like that. And, I realize, the thing is: I so badly want her to be a virgin. I feel like fucking killing someone. Or having a goddamn tantrum. I want her, now and forever, all to myself.
My sanity is in serious question around this girl.
I need to calm the fuck down.
“Okay,” I say, and I do sound calm. A lot calmer than I feel. Then I ask it before I can stop myself. “Why?”
She laughs a little. “Why do you think? Gigi said they only have to breathe in our direction. It happened to Scarlett and almost to Rose and there’s no way I’m letting it happen to me. I’ve got plans. I’ve got things to do and the last thing I want is to get stuck here. I’d go crazy if I couldn’t go to Nashville and sing. I’m not willing to let anything or anyone get in the way of that.”
I feel my angst and also my amazement affecting my expression. There’s a lot to unpack here. “They only have to breathe in your direction?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s they?”
“You know … men.”
“Which men?” I’m in danger of punching my fist through a wall. “Are you …” I almost can’t bring myself to ask it. “ … getting some wild action around town?”
She looks up at me, her gold-amber eyes flicked with a hint of mischief. “No. I mean, I haven’t been in danger of it before … until … well, now.”
I can’t help myself. “Ever?”
“No, of course not, Travis. Not even close.”
I’m so relieved I feel almost light-headed. We’re still standing here, and she’s holding the towel, drying little drops from my chest. And lower. My erection has fully revived and is so hard—once again—by this point it’s standing straight up and touching my stomach like it wants her attention. It does. So she has to hold it and pull it away from my body to finish drying me. She runs her fingers along my length and I sigh a little: a low exhale that sounds like an animal’s growl. I notice then that the bathroom—and everything else—looks all tidy and clean. She’s cleaned it. This barely registers.
“Why not?” I blurt out. “I mean, how the hell have you not been chased relentlessly by every man within a hundred mile radius?”
She smiles. She’s got the tiniest gap between her front teeth that makes me want to kiss her again, to lick her mouth, to trace along the line of it with my tongue. “I told you. I was at boarding school.”
“You didn’t have vacations? Or weekends?”
“Not very often. I guess that was the whole point of keeping us there, under lock and key. We had summer school in the summers and community service on the weekends. We weren’t allowed out alone. No TV. No internet except for approved websites.” She shrugs a little. “So I’m totally in the dark about the latest pop culture trends, I’ve watched Netflix exactly twice, and I’ve only been out of the state of Tennessee once—for ten minutes. But now that I’m free, I plan on fixing all that up as soon as I can. That’s another reason I’m going to Nashville. To live my life. To get started.”
She’s got this defiant little gleam in her eye, like she’s already visualizing all the living she’s got planned once she gets there. My chest tightens. I want to be there, it occurs to me. I want to be with her as she’s doing all that. Watching movies and discovering the world and listening to music and finding out about new artists (we’ll get to that one soon enough) and meeting people and traveling the world. I want to be the one to show her, and guard her from all the men that will want to charm her and use her and keep her for themselves.
They can’t have her.
She’s mine.
“I just have this feeling it’ll work out for me. You know what I mean? You ever get that feeling about anything?”
“Yeah.” I have. I knew that feeling once. I was sure, too, when we were just starting out. I was sure I could make it with my talent and my drive and there was nothing on this planet that could’ve stopped me. I don’t tell her this. She still doesn’t know who I am and I’m not quite ready to lay it all out yet.
“What about you, Travis? What made you move out to the country? Where did you move from?”
I’m not going to lie to her, I’ve decided. Ever. But it’s true I’m enjoying her total ignorance about the whole fame thing. It’s refreshing. “I … have another house in Nashville. I live there when I’m not hanging out here.”