I’m not sure how we got here in just the space of a couple of days, how we went from a year’s worth of swiping at each other to this hot, desperate sense of rightness, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t grateful. If I tried to pretend that I wasn’t enjoying every single second of having Miles’s beautiful, hard body covering mine.
I slide my hands under his shirt in silent entreaty, then lift my hips against his in an invitation he can’t ignore.
But he doesn’t take the bait. Instead he pulls away—not far, but it’s still enough to have me whimpering in protest. To have my fingers clutching at his shoulders and my legs tightening around his hips as I try to keep him against me.
“Shhh,” he murmurs, pressing soft kisses to my cheeks, my collarbones, the tips of my breasts. “I’ve got you, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
And he does have me, completely and absolutely. Normally, that would be a difficult pill to swallow, but it’s hard to resent how much of myself I’ve given—how much I’m giving—to this man when the way he’s touching and kissing and looking at me says I have him just as completely.
I don’t know what to do with that—what to do with him. But that’s okay, because right now he seems to know enough for the both of us.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, his hands slide over my body, his fingers skimming my collarbone, tracing the tops of my breasts, smoothing along the waistband of my yoga pants. It feels good, so good that I’m already panting even though he’s barely touched me.
“Please,” I whisper, my hands twining around his biceps as I try desperately to pull him closer, to make him go faster. There’s a vulnerability in the word—and my voice—that I hate, but I can’t do anything about it. Not when Miles is holding me, touching me, like I’m the most precious thing in the world.
“I’ve got you,” he repeats as he kisses his way across my collarbone. “I promise.”
And then he’s slipping my tank top over my head, sliding my yoga pants and underwear down my legs. Flipping me over so that I’m lying facedown on the sheet, my legs spread and my body wide open to him. Completely defenseless.
With any other man, I’d be rolling over. Rolling us both over so that I was the one on top. The one doing the teasing. The one in control.
But from the moment Miles took me in his arms on that dance floor the other night, I haven’t been in control. Of him. Of my life. Of anything.
And while I hate it—hate the vulnerability and the uncertainty of it—I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want this with Miles. Because I do. Just this once, for just this one moment, I want to open myself to him and see where it goes. And if the thought makes my hands tremble just a little, so what? Miles never needs to know what it is that’s making me so shaky.
He leans over me, presses a string of hot, wet kisses along my spine, from between my shoulder blades to the dip at the bottom of my spine. I melt all over again, my whole body going lax as he straddles my hips and digs his thumbs into the tight muscles of my neck and shoulders.
I start to question him—to ask why I’m getting a massage when I thought we were going to fuck—but he’s really good at this. So good that it scrambles my synapses and renders me unable to do anything but moan as I turn boneless beneath him.
He laughs a little as he works his way down my body, his callused inventor’s hands finding and destroying every knot of tension my muscles have manufactured in the last few days. At the same time, he’s leaning forward, licking and kissing and nibbling his way over my shoulders, down my back.
I giggle as he presses kisses to the backs of my knees, the bends of my elbows, the dimples at the base of my spine. He grins, his lips curving against the sensitive skin of my hip as he kisses me yet again. Then he’s moving down between my legs. Moving me up onto my knees. Resting his hands on my inner thighs and spreading them even farther apart.
We stay like that for long seconds, me waiting for him to fuck me and him just looking at me. Just waiting, though I don’t know for what.
I turn my head, glance back at his face. There’s an intensity there that takes my breath away, a need so powerful that I can feel it, his eyes nearly black as he stares at my body. At my sex.
It terrifies me, the intensity of that scrutiny, even as it turns me on. I want to cover myself, want to bring my thighs together, want to roll to my back and pull him over me. Anything to take this vulnerability away. Anything to make me feel less exposed.
He’d let me move—I know he would.
If I voice just the beginnings of a whimper, Miles will turn me over himself. He’ll cup my cheek in his hand and press kisses to my face as he whispers nonsense to me. As he takes care of me yet again, instead of letting me take care of him.
I don’t want that for him—or me. Not now, not this time. If we ever have the chance of working out, I need to trust him to understand me. Need to prove to him that I’m his equal, not some fucked-up mess he needs to take care of.
And so I wait, just as he intends. Just as he wants me to. It might be the hardest thing I’ve ever done, kneeling here as he studies me, my sex, my body—my soul—completely open to him. More than once, I think about closing my legs, think about rolling over, think about doing something, anything, to make his scrutiny more bearable.
But I don’t. I hold myself still and let him look his fill in what is the most intimate experience of my life.
“You’re so beautiful, Tori,” he tells me, voice aching, as he strokes his thumbs down my sex. As he spreads my labia and opens me even more to his gaze. “So goddamn beautiful.”
A whimper—high-pitched and desperate—escapes my throat despite my best intentions. This is too much—he’s too much and I don’t know how much more of this I can take. How much more vulnerable I can let myself be.
“It’s okay,” he soothes. “I’ll take care of you.”
I want to take care of you. The words are right there, on the tip of my tongue, but before I can get them out he leans forward and licks a long, hot path along my slit.
I gasp at the sensations rocketing through me, at the pleasure that lights me up from the inside. My shaky arms finally give up the fight and I collapse, hitting the bed so hard I bounce.