The First Taste (Slip of the Tongue 2)

I nod, and remind myself to unclench. His words alone loosen anything I’ve been holding on to. With a control I can feel in his every movement, he works me open. Soon, I’m taking him all the way, morphing from anticipating each intrusion to craving it. My body accepts more and more of him. After two orgasms already, I should be sated, but they seem to have made me more feverish. I hunger for another one like I’ve been on the verge of it for months. I want to know how good it can be to let him loose.

“Now,” I beg. “I can’t wait anymore. Make me come.”

He doesn’t question me, just pulls out almost all the way and adds more lube. He grabs my hips in both hands and eases in, slow but firm, all the way to the hilt. The pinch of pain from taking him all at once provokes a guttural noise from the back of my throat.

In response, he reaches around to play with my clit. “Help me make you feel good, babe,” he says. “Stay steady.”

I move down onto my forearms to brace myself, keeping my lower half propped up for him. He moves faster. If he was taking my ass before, now he claims it, fingering my pussy at the same time, spreading my wetness around my clit, dividing my attention. My body shudders, overwhelmed, sucking his fingers deeper while both fighting against and accepting his cock.

I pinpoint the exact moment he lets go—he begins to slip and slide out of me, sloppy, no longer self-possessed as he digs his fingers bruisingly into one hip. His hand between my legs gets frantic, searching, vibrating, plunging. Just sensing his control fall away makes me crazy. I push back, and his answering groan is strong and primal, not only filling my ears but rattling my body.

“That’s it,” Andrew grunts, fucking me through the first wave of my orgasm. “Come on, Amelia.”

I dissolve into it, breaking piece by piece, with no choice but to submit to the intensity of my climax. As I finish, Andrew closes his front over my back, pushing even deeper into me as he breathes hotly into my hair. He doesn’t last long in that position and within seconds, he rips at the comforter with two desperate fists and explodes inside me.

He’s out of breath, muttering inaudibly into my ear over and over. My back, damp with sweat, sticks to his chest. He drops his forehead to my shoulder and with a few wet kisses on my sensitive skin, I shudder.

“You loved every second of that,” he says.

“It wasn’t what I expected,” I admit.

“But it was good?” he asks.

I sense a hint of doubt in his voice. I want to reassure him with a look, but we’re in no position to see each other’s faces. “Incredible,” I say. It feels weird to be grateful to him, but I am. He doesn’t know, couldn’t know, how far I’ve come in the last two weeks thanks to him. I thought sex had to come with strings. The last few times I did it before Andrew, it was a weapon, not pleasure. “Thank you.”

“For what?” he asks. “I should be thanking you.”

“Thanks for, you know, being present. And conscious of what you were doing.” It hurts me to say. I never thought I’d be the kind of woman who allowed a man to break her, but I was on the verge of that a year ago. “Thank you for thinking of me first.”

“You’re always first,” he says as if it’s fact. “That’s how it should be when you let someone into your bed.”

I’m suddenly painfully aware that he’s about a thousand pounds of pure muscle on top of me—and that he’s still inside me. “We should clean up,” I say, shifting to get free, “and if you think about it, there’s really only one sensible way to do that.”

“You don’t mean . . .?”

“I think I have just enough Tahitian crème left to make it a good one.”

“Mmm,” he responds. “Well, if taking a bubble bath is the only sensible thing to do, then I guess it would be foolish not to.”

TWENTY

Andrew rests as I head into my bathroom, working the aches out my arms and legs. Once I’ve cleaned myself up and started the tub faucet, I catch a glimpse of my reflection. I’m red in the face, as if I’ve just done sprints, and my hair is tangled and damp around my neck. I look owned, as I wanted to be, and I know Andrew likes that, so I resist the urge to fix myself up.

I pass through the bedroom, where Andrew lies on the bed with his eyes shut, to the kitchen. I pour two drinks before dropping them off in the bathroom.

Andrew’s clearly passed out, but he knows the rule about sleepovers, so I don’t feel bad waking him. “Your bath is ready, sir.”

His answering sigh turns into a soft laugh, but his eyes remain shut. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Sure you weren’t.” I smile, return to the bathroom, and shut off the faucet.

“Or maybe I was,” he says as he comes in, scratching his hair, mussing it in every direction. “Was it a dream?” he asks. “Or was it really that fucking good?”

Something about seeing all of him in the dim lighting, his tall, broad-shouldered frame and colorful torso, makes me warm and fuzzy inside. I put my arms around his middle. “The second one.”

He takes a second to hug me back, an almost imperceptible hesitation. “I hoped I’d end up here tonight,” he says, rubbing my back. “I’m glad I did.”

I smile up at him. “So am I.”

He isn’t smiling. “How glad?”

I loosen my arms enough to pull back. It’s likely my sudden affection has caught him off guard. Me too, a little. It’s hard not to feel closer to him after what we just did—and after spending an evening with his family. That doesn’t have to mean more than it does. It isn’t an invitation to stay the night or anything. I drop my eyes to his chest. “I’m not sure.”

“Amelia.” He waits until I look up again. “It’s okay. I want you to be honest.”

Honesty. It’s what we do. It’s the main reason we’ve made it this far. “Tonight was different,” I admit. “We might’ve broken through a few walls without meaning to.”

He nods. “I think so.”

“It’ll make things harder when we part,” I continue. “Maybe I’m okay with that, though.”

He raises both eyebrows. “You are?”

The alternative is that tonight didn’t happen, and I wouldn’t take it back, so the only option is to be okay with it. “Yes. I mean, it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep going down this path, but—”

“Why not?”

I tilt my head at him. “Because I won’t always be okay with it the next day. We’re already having a nice time tonight, so we might as well just . . . keep doing that. We can’t really go backward, can we?”

He studies me, expressionless. I have no idea if I’ve completely scared him off or if he understands what I’m saying.

I keep talking. “We’ve crossed into different territory. Anything after this would be a conscious choice. I mean there’s family to think about, and work . . .” I’m drowning, and he’s not making any move to join me overboard. With a sigh, I say, “I’ll understand if you want to leave now.”

To his credit, he doesn’t look longingly at the bathtub. I know how badly he wants to get in. Enough to get him to stay? “Do you want me to?” he asks. “Leave?”

I run the back of my hand ov

er my hairline. Our intense sex plus the steam from the bath is making me a bit too warm. “No. Not yet.”

The lines between his eyebrows ease as he nods. “Good. I’m not ready to go. You look hot.”

My cheeks heat, a feat considering I’m already sweating. “Thanks.”

“No, I mean you look hot.” He goes to the bathroom counter and opens the top drawer. “As in, warm. Do you have a hairband or something?”

“Um . . .”

He finds a clip, stands in front of me, and rakes his hands through my hair. He gathers it behind my head, then twists it up to secure it. “Better?” he asks. “And you do look hot, as in sexy, as well.”

I try unsuccessfully to hold in my smile. How can a man of his stature and beauty ever be described as cute? But that’s what he is right now.

Like before, he gets in the tub and pulls me down between his legs, but this time he washes me, dipping my loofah in the water and running it over my back.

“If we were dating,” he says, “I get the feeling we’d be a very clean couple.”

I smile and hug my knees. “It’s nice, though. A bath kind of forces you to slow down. It’s not like either of us gets a lot of free time.”

“I’m not complaining.” He soaps my arms and the back of my neck. “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night. About work.”

“What did I say?” I ask, only partly focused as I enjoy the scrape of the sponge and the goose bumps it inspires.

“That it’s a bullshit industry.”

“Did I?” I close my eyes and sigh. “I was upset. I don’t really feel that way.”

“What about those things you said to Bell earlier?”

“They’re true. Confidence is the main ingredient for beauty. But I make a living convincing people there’s more to beauty than that, and so do thousands of other people in this city alone.”

“Right. Have you ever considered doing anything else?”

“No. Why would I? It’s demanding, but that’s what I want.”

“What if you cut back?”

“For what?”

That shuts both of us up. I don’t blame him for falling quiet. I never used to think hard work and success could paint such a sad, lonely picture. My life is exactly how I designed it. I get to do what I dreamed of as a girl—what many girls would consider a dream job. Fashion, celebrities, parties in New York City. Yet lately, something about the work is missing. It feels less like a dream and more like a job.