Truly (New York Trilogy #1) (29 page)

“I’m not a pervert.”

“No? You got all spacey watching me with the bees. And then when I told you about the shower … I think you’re a closet pervert.”

He dropped down lower on the bed and shifted closer, rolling his thigh on top of hers. His mouth brushed her ear. “So can you come from my cock or not?”

She buried her face in his neck. “If you’re on top, maybe. Or if I’m on top, definitely. Not …”

“Not?” he prompted.

“Not from behind.” Her face was so hot. “I need an ice cube.”

“What for?”

“My cheeks. I’m going to have a stroke.”

“No you won’t,” he said. “Don’t move.”

He went into the kitchen, and she heard kitchen noises. Something on the countertop. Glass clinking against glass. He returned with two fresh glasses of ice water. Stark naked.

His penis bobbed when he walked. Objectively, it was absurd-looking, but when she really
looked
at it, her mouth started to water.

Carnal
.

The word came to her, a memory of seeing herself in the anaconda pants with her hair loose and her eyes clear.

This is who you are. Truly who you are
.

He set the glasses on the bedside table and fished out a small ice cube. When he lay down beside her again, she inched away.

“I was joking,” she said.

“I’m not. Where do you want it?”

“I don’t.”

“No bullshit, May-Belle. You want it. Tell me where.”

She closed her eyes. “My cheeks.”

He placed the cold cube against her face and drew a melty trail. A drop of water made a track toward her ear, warming as it fell. Pooling on her neck.

Now get out of the way
.

“Kiss me,” she said, and he did. Warm, wet tongue, heat and pressure, his thigh coming between hers again, his cock on her stomach. She put her hands on his hair, nearly dry in the back. She felt the span of his shoulders, the tight muscles in his arms holding his weight off her body.

“Where else?” he asked.

“My breasts.”

She closed her eyes and waited for it, and it came. A shock of cold against her nipple. Warm heat as he bent his head and took it in his mouth. He did it again, a circle of melting cold, a deep ache she felt between her legs, followed by the molten pleasure of his tongue, the sucking pressure of his mouth turning the ache into a spear of need.

“Again,” she said. He got another ice cube. Her hips lifted off the bed this time, pushing into him. “Come here,” she begged, but he only chuckled.

“Not yet.”

A third ice cube, and this time he was playing with her, tracing patterns on her breasts and over her stomach. Following them with his mouth. “Where else?” he asked, and she didn’t hesitate.

“My pussy.”

She could hear his smile when he replied. “I have been
waiting
to hear you say that.”

He took her mouth first, kissed her hard and deep until she started spinning with lust or lack of oxygen or some combination of the two, and then his hand parted her thighs and discovered all the swollen contours of her labia. Thoroughly. He was nothing if not thorough.

Get on with it
, she thought, and then she remembered and said it out loud.

“Be patient.”

“I thought if I said what I wanted, you’d give it to me.”

He looked up at her, grinning. “I never said I’d give it to you right away.”

He took his sweet time about it. Kissing her mouth, her breasts, learning how much pressure she wanted, where she liked to be stroked, what made her impatient, what drove her wild. The ice cube came into play again, but she squirmed away from it, no longer interested.

“Your mouth,” she said.

“Tell me again.”

“Give me your mouth.”

“I love it when you’re bossy.” He spread her thighs and held them open behind the knees, and he licked her and nibbled and bit like he’d been starving, and she was exactly what he wanted to eat.

Disgusting and amazing
, she thought, and it was, oh, it was. Her back arched, her hands grabbing at his shoulders, digging into his hair and pushing his face where she wanted it.

He knew what he was doing, but he made her say it anyway. “Here, May?”

“No, higher.”

“Like this?”

“Softer.”

“Still like this?”

“Harder now.”

He teased her, little stabbing worthless motions of his tongue, and she smacked the crown of his head, which made him laugh.

Then he did it properly, and her eyes rolled back in her head.

“Anything else you need?”

“Your fingers.” And then, a few seconds later, “Oh, goddamn it, not
one
, you prick.”

He laughed at her, laved her with his tongue, gave her two fingers and then three. Gave her heat and pressure and bliss, curling her toes, gathering in her belly and focusing in, in, tighter and tighter until she had to push up hard into his mouth, and he lifted away.

“Ask nice,” he said.

“Let me come.”

“Say please.”

“Make me come
now
, or I will do it myself.”

That made all the lines crinkle around his eyes, his dimples crease, but he lowered his head again and did as he was told, each rough stroke of his tongue accompanied by thrusting fingers. She bowed off the bed, sweating, overwhelmed. She might have shouted. It seemed entirely possible that she’d died, and he made it last forever, like he knew some secret orgasm-extension formula she’d never discovered on her own. Finally, she had to wiggle away from his mouth and turn on her side, or she
would
have died. She definitely would have.

He spooned her from behind, and she panted and steamed, limp and wet and terribly, frighteningly happy.

Ben nuzzled her ear. “That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen.”

“I probably looked like a dying whale.”

“I thought you might be an octopus for a second there, you got so handsy.”

She laughed, turning over onto her stomach and smiling into the pillow. Ben stroked one hand down her back, over her ass, and left it there.

“If I don’t fuck you soon, I’m gonna die,” he said conversationally.

“Climb aboard,” she offered. “I’ll try not to bother you.”

He straddled her butt and gave it a smack.

“Did you just
hit
me?” she asked.

“You ever been spanked?”

“Not since I was six.”

“I bet you’d like it. You have so much shame anyway. Shame and sex are good neighbors.”

“You have sex with your neighbors?”

“Not lately. Get up on your hands and knees.”

“I can’t move.”

“You can, too.”

She did as he asked, and she found that her body still worked after all. That his hands felt good, stroking over her hips and legs. His gaze felt good when she turned and caught the expression on his face, abstracted with lust, surveying the shapes of her naked body.

“Get me a condom from that drawer in the table,” he said.

“You’re issuing a lot of orders.”

“I know. Let’s see if you follow them.”

She crawled over and found the condoms, separated one, and handed it to him.

“On your back.”

“I thought you were going to … you know. From behind.”

“Did you want me to?”

“Yes.”

“Good to know for next time.”

There would be a next time. A cheering thought.

May flipped over, and Ben put the condom on and moved on top of her, his cock settling warm and hard where she was still hot and wet.

“Fuck,” he said, with a pleasurable grimace. “Come here.”

She kissed him, wondering if it was his turn to make the requests. Was that how it worked? Partners dictating the terms of their pleasure, taking orders when they felt like it, obeying slowly or with their own creative twists when they didn’t?

He lifted her knee, pushed against her heat, and kissed her deep. His hand found her breast, shaping and squeezing it. More for his own pleasure than hers, though she liked that, too. She liked him taking what he wanted from her.

He tore his mouth away and breathed against her neck as he positioned himself and entered her. Heat and intrusive pressure, a partial thrust, and then he was all the way in with a dark groan that made her clutch at his back.

“Fuck,” he said again. “You feel so good.”

She lifted her knees higher, wanting him deeper. Wanting everything.

When he began to move, his pubic hair put friction on her clit and lit a hundred little sparks of need. May gasped.

“Can you come again?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe means yes,” he said.

“Probably.”

A slow, disreputable smile. “I’m a lucky man.”

He started slow, with chaste kisses, the featherlight meeting of his mouth with the tip of her shoulder, her collarbone, her chin. He kissed her like they were too young to know how to kiss yet, all the while sinking into her body and withdrawing, a dirty secret happening below
their waists.

And then she caught it from him—the need. The heat. She picked up the tempo, digging her fingers into the muscles of his lower back.

“So good,” she said, and he kissed her with more intent. Openmouthed and urgent, rocking into her faster now. Harder. He worked one hand beneath her ass and cupped it, lifting her so he could penetrate deeper, which made him press harder against her clit.

“Oh my God.”

He tongued her nipple. Scraped his teeth over it. Nothing so organized or purposeful as before, and she thought if she could see his eyes they’d be glazing over, losing focus. She looked down to where their stomachs met, ghosting her hands over his quickening hips.

So hot.

And it was like she transmitted the thought to him, because that’s when he lost it, tripping over some threshold of need. He pushed up onto his hands suddenly, braced himself over her and thrust, fast and almost frantic.

May met him stroke for stroke, letting his frenzy infect her, fill her with a hurried demand that pounded in her clutching hands, her hot skin, between her legs, everything united in her body and her head saying,
Yes, yes, this
.

He tensed and came with a low moan, every muscle in his torso drawing taut. The grimace on his face like agony, but better.

May slid her hand between them, her fingers on auto-pilot answering the demand of her body that it be now, that she go with him, that they do this thing together. Five fast pulses of her fingertip, Ben still hard inside her, and she came. An ugly, beautiful feeling. Dirty and bright, all at the same time.

She never looked away from his face.

She startled awake, straining for breath.

“May?”

The room was dark, unfamiliar, and she was trapped, a band around her ribcage, unable to get—

“You going somewhere?”

His low, sleep-rough voice dulled her fear, transforming it into bewilderment.

Going somewhere? Was she? She’d been dreaming about a mountain road. Driving a bus. Water rising.

A bad dream.

She was in Ben’s bed, his arm draped over her chest.

Collapsing into the soft mattress, she laid down her head. “No.”

He scooted closer and tightened his arm. “Nightmare?”

“Yeah.”

“Poor May.” Warm fingers brushed her hair away from her neck, and then she felt his lips on her skin.

She closed her eyes, savoring the heat of his mouth and the press of his hard body behind her. Her butt fit neatly into the cradle of his hips, and his knees produced a hard pressure against the backs of her own.

“You have a lot of bad dreams?”

“Not a lot. Some.”

“Is my arm too heavy?”

“No.” She interlaced her fingers with his and closed her eyes. “Do you have them?”

“I can never remember my dreams.”

“I think I was driving a bus in South America.”

He chuckled. “That’s a nightmare?”

“The road kept getting narrower, with this steep cliff on one side, and I didn’t know how to drive the bus, really. And then there was water running over the road. I couldn’t decide what to do.”

“Were there people on the bus?”

“Yeah. And they were all trying to give me advice, but I don’t speak Spanish. And I think I didn’t have a driver’s license.”

“If I had a dream like that, I’d probably be driving around the neighborhood trying to find a parking spot and end up having to parallel park the bus.”

“Can’t you parallel park?”

“I can, but I hate it. And you have to do it a lot, parking around here.”

“I didn’t know you had a car.”

“Mmm-hmm. A van.”

“I have the bus dream pretty often.”

“Fear of failure.”

“You think?”

“And being judged. All those passengers.” His stubbled chin scraped over her shoulder, making her shiver. “You worry about that a lot, huh? What people think of you?”

“I guess.”

May listened to the sound of their breathing and the noises from outside. Every now and then, a car drove by, the headlights illuminating the window, throwing faint light on the room.

The bedside alarm clock read 5:09.

Tuesday.

“You can’t do anything about it,” he said. “People think what they think. They do what they’re going to do.”

She wondered if he was thinking of his father or his ex-wife. Or of the old lady in Sardinia—Bibiana.

“It’s early,” Ben said. “We should go back to sleep.” The comforter shifted, cool air finding its way beneath it as he rose behind her. His hand moved down to her stomach. He left it there, a flat weight against the softest part of her. A declaration that he had no real interest in going back to sleep.

Heat crept outward from his palm, settling deep between her legs.

In the U.P., her family would be waking soon. Her mom always rose early on the last day. She’d be packing the household, making lists of last-minute wedding tasks, fretting about getting Dan on a plane to Jersey, and wondering just what May was doing.

May would have to get up soon. Face the day, shower and dress, borrow Ben’s laptop to book a flight. That flight she should have looked into days ago.

All those phone calls she should have made.