I seek out his mouth and kiss him as I arch into his touch, rubbing against him, trying to turn the caress into something that works for me. But no matter what I do, I’m left unfulfilled and aching.
“Bed,” he says roughly. “Need to get you in bed.”
Without warning, he picks me up and carries me to my bedroom, where he lays me down on the mattress. He touches the side of my face almost reverently and kisses me, but his kisses are different all of a sudden. They lack the intensity from earlier. They’re tentative, distracted.
He goes to shut the door, shrouding us in darkness, and when he doesn’t return to me right away, I sit up in bed. I can see his silhouette in the middle of the room, standing, motionless. Something is wrong.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says, but there’s undeniable tension in his voice.
After a long drawn-out pause, I hear hushed sounds as he removes his clothes, the unzipping of his pants, the soft brushing of fabric against skin, the muted thuds as his garments hit the ground, so I undress as well. I am not the kind of person who enjoys being naked, and the coldness of the air on my skin makes me anxious as I wait for him.
The mattress depresses next to me, and I sense his nearness. I feel a charge in the air in the instant before he stretches out beside me. He gathers me close, warms me with his own heat, kisses my forehead, and my mind and body unravel and relax.
I expect to feel the insistent prodding of his erection against my belly. But I don’t. He’s gone soft in the minutes since we came in here. And now that I’m paying attention, I notice the fine tremors claiming him.
“You’re shaking,” I whisper.
“Things suddenly got really noisy in my head,” he says.
“What are you thinking?”
He releases a heavy breath. “Stupid stuff.”
I edge forward and kiss the first thing I encounter—his nose. Then his mouth, his beautiful perfect mouth. “I think stupid stuff sometimes. What kind of stupid stuff is it?”
“That I have a lot to prove tonight, to you, but mostly to myself. That I need to please my woman like a man should,” he says.
My heart clenches painfully at his confession. “You do please me.”
“You know what I mean,” he says, and he grabs my hips and pulls them flush with his, where his sex remains flaccid. “How can I with this? So fucking embarrassing.” His voice is gruff with mortificatio
n, and I hate that. I never want him to feel that way with me.
“You’re not a robot. You’re a person. You have nothing to be embarrassed about,” I say firmly. “It’s not like you can dick me to orgasm anyway. I don’t work that way.”
He makes a choking sound before he breaks into laughter. “I can’t believe you just said that.”
I grin before I laugh along with him, strangely proud of myself. “Well, it’s true. You’re the one who made sex between the two of us about me. For my part, I’ve always been more interested in you liking it.”
“We have the same exact problem,” he says. “How is it that I’m only realizing that now?”
“Because we’re so different.”
He hugs me tighter and presses his cheek against mine, and for a stretch of time, that’s all we do. We breathe together.
“Where do we go from here?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Where do you want us to go?”
He kisses me on the lips, the chin, my jaw, and nips my ear. The sharp bite of his teeth, coupled with the heat of his breath, covers me in goose bumps. “I want to kiss you.”
“Just kissing?”
“Just kissing.” His mouth opens against the side of my neck, and his tongue touches my skin, making my breath catch.
“Kissing is good,” I hear myself say.