A Mess of Reason (18 page)

“I’m afraid, you know. I’m so scared that if
you touch me… I don’t want to lose you, but this might be too much
for you. I know what you’re used to. I know you’re a…well, you’ve
felt lots of nice…and this, what I am…it’s not… Well, it’s not
anything close to what you’ve had…. So I just…”

“Tess, stop. Sweetheart, you can’t do that
to you and you can’t do that to me. It’s not fair for either of us.
This is only going to bring us closer, okay? This will not—I
promise you with all my heart—scare me away. Nothing about you can
scare me away. Trust me, can you do that? Can you trust me to touch
you? To love you harder, to give you more…to give us a chance at
more?”

“Okay…okay, do it. Do it now…just do
it.”

I unfasten the claps, then tenderly open her
bra in the back.

“Can I take it off you? All the way?”

“Uh-huh.” She’s nodding, but her face is
filled with fear. I will her to echo the thoughts in my mind.

“You’re doing great, baby. I’m gonna go
slowly, okay?”

“Okay, yeah…slowly…really, really
slowly.”

She pulls both of her arms into her shirt
and I loop the bra straps over her hands, then pull it out from her
T-shirt as she slips her arms back through her sleeves. I slide my
hands back up into her shirt, which is very loose and baggy. Above
her breasts, I place my palms against her skin and hold them still,
moving only my thumbs across her uneven flesh. The look in her eyes
is one of panic and distress.

“Is this okay?”

She nods and her eyes bathe me with
question.

“Can I keep going?” I ask quietly. She nods
again.

I slide my hands around to her backside,
feathering them in slow sweeps down her back, then up again. Quick
sharp breaths come from her, and I wonder if it’s good to finally
be touched…or if it hurts.

“Scout…. I…” This time my name on her lips
sounds like a call for help.

“Tess. So beautiful…you feel so good. How
does it feel? Is it okay still?”

“Yeah, it feels…feels like I’ve never been
touched.”

“Good, then?”

“Yeah, really good…keep going.”

I want to cry for her and for myself. It’s
like the goddamned breakthrough of the century. The fact that she’s
not panicking, no longer shaking, and wants me to keep going makes
my guts knot. I slide my hands down around her waist and wreathe it
in the same way I have done hundreds of other times, but this time
is different. This time my skin is on hers—and touching her like
this so intimately triggers all my most primitive yearnings. I
start to slide my hands up toward her breasts, across the plains of
her taut belly, and I’m almost there when her hands stop me and
rest on mine.

“It’s okay, Tess. I only want to make you
feel good…can you let me do that?”

“Scout, I just…my breasts aren’t…you
know…perfect or anywhere close it. They won’t feel like…”

“They’ll feel beautiful. You feel
beautiful…all of you, Tess. Nothing’s changed—you’re still my girl.
I love you for trusting me with this. I know how hard you’re
trying.”

I place a kiss on her lips, and she opens
her mouth for me, kissing me back. It’s electric, sensual, and
urgent. She takes all her breaths from me and explores my mouth
with passion and need, and as she does, I slowly cup her small,
soft breasts in my hands. She feels tiny under my touch, but more
beautiful than I could have ever imagined. And yes, her skin is
melted and textural, smooth in parts, then bumpy and weblike. But
not for a minute is there anything about touching her that is less
than perfect…in fact, it’s my heaven. She’s my heaven. I caress all
of her skin gently, then I find her nipples, which are very
different from each other. I circle them, caressing each with the
smallest amount of pressure. I keep reminding myself that she’s a
twenty-nine-year-old woman who’s having a first-time experience,
one that’s more of a rite of passage than it would be for most
teenage girls feeling this for the first time.

“Beautiful Tess. You feel so good,
soft…exquisite and perfect. Perfect, sweetheart.”

“Scout, oh…”

She presses herself into my hands, making my
heart flip. I’m certain she’s turned on by the way she’s moving her
hips the tiniest bit against my cock, which for about the ninth
time today is rock-fucking-hard.

“Does it feel good, Tess? Tell me. I need to
know if you like me touching you, because to me it’s incredible.
You’re amazing, and I’m so hard for you…so fucking hard.”

“Scout, I…”

“Tell me…say the words, Tess.”

“So good…it feels so good. I didn’t know it
could, I didn’t know it would…I never thought…”

My gorgeous, brave girl sits in my lap,
taking a chance, blessing me with something so dear and fragile.
Something she’d thought she hold forever. Something so terrifying
to her, which made her feel so ugly that she couldn’t even trust
me, her very best friend, with it. The man who loves her more than
any person on the earth. So I, too, decide to take a chance. Not a
huge leap the way she has, but one that I know will be good for us,
one that may help her see me as someone worth making a different
choice for.

“Tess, I want to feel your body against
mine, your whole naked body next to me… all of you. Can you do that
with me?”

“Ohhh, I can’t…I can’t take off my shirt,
Scout. I’m trying but…no, not that.”

“Please say yes. I won’t do anything but lie
next to you and touch you just like I am now. Let me in, Tess.”

“I am, Scout. No one has ever touched
me…this isn’t easy. I’m trying so hard…. I’m trusting…please…”

“Sweetheart, I know. I know how hard it
is.”

“I can’t have you see me…I can’t. it’s
different than touching…you don’t understand. You’ve only seen my
back. My front is…”

“…is beautiful, that’s what it is, and
perfect, and it’s you…and I love you. Can you see how I love
you…all of you, every inch? Tess, let me in…let me love you.”

I feel a shift of energy between us as
though the angels hear and want to answer my prayers, and she again
comes over to my side the tiniest bit more. She finds me…finds
us…sacrificing herself for the hunger we share.

“I want to be against you. I want to be
naked with you.” Her eyes smile at me through her fear, through
tears.

“Tell me, Tess. You can trust me. Tell me
how you want to do this. I want you to be okay with it.”

And while it’s not exactly what I was hoping
for, it’s as close as she is going to be able to move, and that
works for me.

“I need it dark. No lights…dark. Dark,
dark.”

“Okay, you got it. Dark.”

Her determination to find a way feels like a
declaration of her soul. I can do dark. It’s a start…it’s Tess
finding me. It’s her soul making its way to me like water that
etches its way through an impassible rock.

“Don’t move. Don’t take off a thing. Let me
have that, okay?”

Then, for the first time in a while now, she
smiles at me. It’s a coy, sweet smile that sends a shiver straight
down my spine directly into my groin. All of this has been worth
the wait. And maybe, I think…at some point she’ll come around and
really let me in the way I need to know she can.

My only fear is we won’t get there before
it’s too late.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

TESS

The warmth in his eyes says everything.
making my heart swell and spin at once. It’s an unquestioning look
of love, need, and want that leaves me wondering…can I change all
of my plans? Can I be okay with the idea of ending my engagement
knowing that there’s no way in the next week I’ll be able to tell
Scout that I can let him have me exactly as he needs me? Is the
risk too great for both of us? If only I had more time…

I’m just not sure how much more time though
would be enough. Would two weeks help, a month, six months…years?
It’s taken us fifteen long years just to get here. And I just told
the poor guy to make the room pitch black because I can’t bear for
him to see who I really am. In this moment he feels like my oxygen,
my entire world, my rock. Stabs of fear course through my body,
throwing me off balance as he blows out the candles, but my need to
be with him, near him…and against him, flesh on flesh, wins out as
a vow of trust and courage.

The room is as dark as it will ever be. And
still, when he comes to me I see the flash of his eyes. Knowing
he’ll be able to see mine and maybe my body sends my nerves chasing
through me. The outline, I tell myself…. he’ll never see more than
that in this darkness. It makes me feel flustered, ashamed, and
angry about my situation and myself. I’m sitting on my knees, legs
tucked under, as he comes into the bed. I don’t where this is going
but I can’t stop it now. The brakes are off; my fear, though, of a
crash is that it’ll bankrupt us both.

“Hey, is this okay?”

His words are my undoing, and a cloudburst
of tears spill down my cheeks like warm honey. Crazy, right? I want
him so badly, more than anything, but my uncertainty feels like a
strangling weight.

“Come here, sweetheart. I’m only going to
love you.”

His soul reaches out to mine in a dance I’ve
never felt in my entire life with a man. The pit of my stomach
tingles as he wraps me in his soothing words like a blanket,
melting my resolve, finding me through the web of illogical reason
that I try desperately to shut off. I hide my fear from our sacred
union, pushing it to an out-of-reach place in my mind, as I fall
into him with untethered desire for the closeness I crave, allowing
it to engulf me with titanic force.

His fingers are at the bottom of my T-shirt,
his knuckles brushing my hip bones. Slowly he pulls it up my body,
then over my head. My heart is skipping everywhere. My immediate
response to cover myself with my arms as I free fall into my new
awakening.

“Tess… Jesus, sweetheart, you’re
exquisite…just more beautiful by the minute. Do you hear me?
Breathe, my love. Let me in…”

His eyes—though I can barely see them at
all—flicker at me as they dance across my body. I look away in
fear, so that if for one second he changes his mind, I won’t see it
in his expression. He takes my chin in his hand, bringing my gaze
back to his.

“Look at you…you’re amazing. Always have
been…everything about you.”

Goosebumps skate across my skin, chilling my
nipples to stand taut, beckoning his touch as the rawness of cool
air and his gaze startles me. His lips trail down my neck with
kisses and licks as he breathes me in. In tiny, provoking circles,
his fingertips move exquisitely over my breasts, unraveling the
threads of every last nerve in my body. Gently he pinches both
nipples and a mess of luxuriant, erotic feelings lawlessly explode
inside of me, his sexual aura arousing every pore.

“Oh God…” I’m scrambling to catch my
breath.

“Is it okay, the way I’m touching you? Tell
me how you like it…what you want.”

“So good…more…” The beginnings of my new
identity bubble up to the surface of my soul with unabashed
opulence.

My hands trace his face as though I’m blind.
I want so much to know what he’s seeing, what he’s thinking. How
must it feel to touch me, my skin, unlike anything he’s ever had
under his fingertips. Is his craving for my breasts, which are
nowhere close the wonderlands of flesh he’s felt in his lifetime,
meeting his hunger? What’s in his expression; what meaning does it
hold? I run my fingers over his lips, finding his smile—his
soothing smile that seamlessly ties me closer to him. My sweet
lover…my soulful, dear heart…my Scout.

“I love being with you,” he murmured.
“Touching you like this, having you in my hands. My skin against
your warm flesh, all of you next me…do you feel all of this?”

His lips navigate every surface, from
whispering in my ear to kissing my collarbone in ravenous, wet
sweeps that move over my body. His tongue laving my skin, washing
me, testing me, searching for more. Moving rapidly, as though he’s
starved, he finds me. He’s voracious, insatiable, acting as if I’ll
disappear if he skips an inch or misses an undiscovered taste.

My arms hang liquid at my sides. I’m unable
to do anything but feel the heaviness of blood in my pulsing
fingertips as I melt under his roving mouth, knowing exactly where
it’s going next. My reflex, as his lips close around my left,
barely-there nipple, is to stop him. My arms freeze while my body
reacts desirously to his mouth, as I moan in pleasure, praying as
his tongue feels me that he’s not thrown by the texture or
distortion of my skin. His possessive kisses, the sensation of his
mouth on my skin is all so new and euphoric, a claim to everything
hidden in my soul. I feel the flick of his tongue combined with the
pressure of his hands squeezing the top of my breast into his
mouth, torching me. Lingering on my nipple, pinching and tugging,
he sucks me into his mouth, then trails his tongue to my right
breast. I fall into him, the invitation of his lips turning my
world upside down. I rise up on my knees giving him access to my
open legs and to what I hope are his wandering hands as I pull his
head onto me, forcing my breast into his mouth with animal-like
fervor. His touch shatters me—delicate, decadent, rough and rapid,
the bone-deep thrill of it—as I lose control and let my libido
drive.

“Tess…Jesus,” he groans.

I grab his rigid cock in my hands, rubbing
the large drop of pooling liquid over its head, then back down the
length of his shaft as I cup his balls tenderly in my palm.

“I need you…please,” I beg him, the flutter
of nerves in my belly making the air around us feel as if it’s
shifting. I’m lost, I’m found, I’m drunk…I’m drugged by him. His
mouth finds mine and he makes love to it deliciously with his
tongue, with his lips, with his forceful inhalation of me,
releasing every last bit of restraint I hold. He rises up to his
knees, meeting me, thighs pressed against thighs, our combined
hands moving rapidly across wet skin, folds, and plains…no surface
untouched. In and out, over and under, the unrelenting pace between
us making me feel like an orbiting satellite.