* * *
The fountain in Michelle’s front yard balanced on immaculately packed stone dust, inlaid with pastel baubles. Tiny lights twinkled wirelessly along the rim and in the basin of the fountain, and I had to assume they were solar powered. Surrounding the lazy arc of the water fan was a retinue of porcelain fairies.
I couldn’t help but smile softly as I strode by. I could tell that she’d worked hard on this all by herself—and kicked Chet completely out of the picture early on. I remembered group projects with Chet. He had to be completely ostracized, or he would become the dictator.
I knocked gently at the door.
Maybe I should have had some more faith in her.
The front door fell open and she leaned her side into it, emphasizing the dramatic curve of her hips. She’d changed into silky, loose pants in a vibrant jewel-tone mosaic, and a cloying camisole.
Her eyes ballooned dreamily as she took all of me in, and she lulled slightly forward. I could feel the haze of steam coming off of her from some recent shower, could smell the shampoo in her hair.
“Hey,” she breathed.
“Hey.” All the words drained out of me as I traced her with my eyes. Her hair was down around her shoulders, damp and thick. I wanted to pull those adorable glasses off her nose. I wanted to bury myself in her neck. When I was around her, my impulse control eroded to zero. “I don’t want you to pay that damn bill.”
Michelle exhaled. “Okay.”
I took a tentative step into her space. “Can I come in?” I wondered, sliding one hand up the doorframe in anticipation. “I just want to talk.”
Michelle fell back a step, and I entered her space. The smell of soap and warm water intensified. “I want to talk, too,” she said. “I’m the problem, Andrew. I’ve got—” She bit the word back and then finished, “—problems.”
“Your work building probably has lead deposits in the paint,” I informed her, pseudo-somberly. “And, as a lawyer, you’re about seven times more likely to fondle mechanics. That’s a big problem, girl.”
A little smile tickled at the corner of Michelle’s lip. I saw it. She couldn’t hide it.
“I—I’m sheltered,” she explained, walking away from me and deeper into the den, breaking eye contact. “I was raised by dorm schools. My parents would just go to Europe for three months and leave us with literal servants. I’m that kid.” She twisted to face me and pinched her lower lip between her teeth. “It made me kind of crazy.”
Huh. That was new. I made a face like a smell was in the room. “Really?”
Michelle nodded. “And it made me—”
“You seem poor,” I went on warmly. I reached forward and grasped one of her hands without thinking about it, trailing my other hand the length of her arm. She was smooth with lotion. “You really seem genuinely poor to the untrained eye.”
“I am poor,” she assured me. “But my childhood was rich, and I probably have a phobia of strangers or something because of that.”
I drew her close and nuzzled at her ear. I loved cuddling her when she was warm and wet from the shower. I loved cuddling her when she was being overdramatic and self-conscious. “I don’t think you have a phobia,” I whispered against her ear.
“I get really nervous around strangers.”
“I was a stranger,” I reminded her.
“You were an acquaintance.”
“Who you had known for... how many minutes?”
“You were special.”
My heart warmed and I said, “I’m glad you’re... the way you are.” I rubbed at her shoulders and then dropped my head to kiss her neck. My hands slithered over the ridge of her hip and into her pubic valley. Just the heat of her pussy on my palm could calm me. “It gives me a reason to be the way I am.”
I moved to press our bodies fully together and she separated from me. It was physically painful to experience.
“I still can’t go,” she explained firmly. “I promised myself that I wouldn’t get caught up in all this again.” She gestured vaguely around.
“In all what? Life?”
I stepped to close the gap between us and she stepped back to maintain it. Then she laced her arms over her chest in case I hadn’t received the message.
“In finding the right clothes and worrying about your friends and keeping my insecurities in check and being poised and charming and…” She took another step back, not even looking at me anymore. Her eyes fluttered everywhere but at me, like she couldn’t keep freaking out if she looked at me, but she wanted to freak out right now. “Stressing about where you stand and figuring out all the rules because they’re different for everybody and trusting again when I know—anything could happen.” She took another step back and her eyes fell to the floor. There were four baby steps between us and it looked like the Grand Canyon to me. “I spent my life doing that crap, believing my effort would make the difference, and it all fell apart anyway.” Her voice was a mousey whisper at the end of the tirade.
She couldn’t take another step back without bumping into the armrest on the sofa.
“What happened?” I asked, not pushing my luck by advancing. I could only imagine how the moment might fracture and fall if I made her topple over the side of a couch trying to get some space. “What fell apart?”
“Uh.” Michelle’s eyes ticked up from the floor and met mine. I didn’t even know the name for a brown so rich and vivid. “I was sixteen when my dad got arrested for embezzlement,” she breathed. “The whole charade was over and no one stayed. Not a single friend. I was sixteen,” she reiterated, suddenly ardent. I remembered the age: invincibility, certainty in one’s own choices, in one’s friends. I never had the experience of being abandoned by all of them, though. I was lucky enough to have friends who were loyal to a fault. “My boyfriend—who had proposed and everything, we were supposed to get married after college—got with a friend of ours and... it all happened so fast. He wouldn’t even return my calls. Wouldn’t answer the phone. Said his girlfriend didn’t want us to see each other anymore. And she was supposed to be my friend, too! That was my whole life going inside out, and since then, I’ve really—um—streamlined.”
I listened to her talk, nodding as she quietly broke down at the mere memory of this total abandonment.
“You cut everybody out,” I said, taking a slow, small step toward her.
“I had a mission,” she corrected me. Her eyes fluttered up to mine. “I haven’t been back to Connecticut since.”
“How long has it been since you’ve been with someone like this?” I took another small step. There was only one left.
“Um, I last had sex in 2014. That was with a friend of mine. It was New Year’s Eve, we were drunk, it was stupid. College, you know?”
“I mean, like this,” I said, passing my hand back and forth between us, indicating that something was passing here. Didn’t she feel it?
She stared at me and swallowed. “Never.”
I crossed the space between us completely. “Me neither.”
She swallowed and gazed up at me with heavy lashes. I was in her space now. I punctured her bubble. “It’s hard to infiltrate someone’s world again—after being in your own for so long,” she warned me. “You don’t even know if there will be a place for you when you get there.”
My fingers scooped around her arms and trailed softly upward to her shoulders, exciting every little hair along the way. I leaned down and let my mouth brush over her earlobe as I whispered: “In my world, there’s a goddamn throne for you.” My mouth crushed its way down her throat and she flowered open in my embrace. I felt her fingertips kiss over the back of my neck and skate up into my hair. Her joints unlocked and I was the one who held her in place. I came back up to feel her breath on my lips and our mouths pressed together savagely, just as insistent on her side as on mine. She was mine. I knew it.
I let us fall forward and she gave a little yelp as we collapsed on her living room sofa. She giggled and grinned up at me, unable to hide the way her eyes shone, but I wasn’t trying to be sweet anymore. My dick pounded for her, and I forgot about tenderness. I gripped the hem of her camisole and yanked it over her bare breasts, exposing them from beneath. My mouth filled with saliva at the sight of these creamy tits and I swallowed, bowing my head worshipfully.
“Come with me, Michelle,” I insisted, rolling my tongue over her taut nipple. She whimpered and thrust gently against my erection. Heat flowed through my entire body, unlocked from the bottomless reserve kept in my crotch. I twisted her spearhead nipple between thumb and forefinger as I moved to the other breast, skimming its underside with my teeth. “Come to the wedding. I want you by my side. I want to introduce you to my world, Michelle.”
I slid one hand past the elastic band of her slinky pajama pants and felt between her legs, invigorated by the extreme slickness there. A rush of dopamine charged through my muscles like I was a drug addict tapping into his stash, and my eyes rolled up into the back of my head. I moved my fingers up and down, strumming her clitoris with intention and appreciation, grinding subtly with the motion of my palm.
Michelle writhed and moaned beneath me on the couch. She was ready. Her pussy was hot to the touch and so wet. She might have started having orgasms without me if I didn’t get in there right then.
I leaned back on my haunches and tucked my fingers into the waistband of her pants, on the verge of stripping them down, when my gaze just happened to scan the window parallel with us.
Chet Browntooth was standing at the ledge of his porch, bracing a pair of binoculars in his hands.
I glared at him and was about to stand up and charge over there, kick his ass and end up in jail for assault, but then he put the binoculars down and hurried inside. He must have noticed that I stopped touching her, stopped peeling her clothes off, and moved the lens to check on me. He must have seen that lethal look in my eyes. Good. He should have been scared.
I realized that I had just unknowingly exposed Michelle’s breasts for him and it filled my chest with a hot, stinging poison. I bet he loved that. I bet he would use it while he touched himself. I wanted to kick his ass.
“Um,” Michelle whispered, and I glanced down at her. “Are you still here?” she wondered. Her tits pointed up at me and I idly caressed one.
“Always here,” I promised her. “I thought I saw something, but—”
That was all it took to bring Michelle into a sitting position. Her eyes followed mine to the window. “Is someone here?” she squeaked nervously. Her palms covered her nipples, and she moved to get off the couch, but I put my hand out and held her shoulder firmly.
“Never be scared when you’re with me,” I instructed her. “I told you that I will never let anything happen to you. Remember?”
Michelle pursed her lips and nodded up at me. “I remember.”
I stood and strode to the window, lowering the shades, then turned back to my baby, bathed in darkness now. “Come on,” I whispered, closing the space between us in three strides. She still held her breasts defensively in her hands. “Shh,” I murmured against her ear, cupping her hands in mine and slowly sliding them away. “Let go. Let me in.” My cock came back with even more strength as I pressed her hands further down, until they were under the elastic band and buried between her legs, where my hands used to be.
I moved her hands up and down with mine, tracing her clitoris like I was the puppeteer and she was my marionette. I listened to her shaky breath pulling in and out and I knew she was pleasuring herself now. I swept behind her, letting my hands separate from hers, and then I was free to peel her pajama pants to the floor. I descended to my knees as I did so, treasuring her ass with a gentle bite to its round edge.
The blood flow to my hard-on was crushing, but I battled through the dizziness to stand and grind my thumbs down against her fleshy hips. I swallowed. God, I love her softness. She’s so much... softer than Lola ever was. And she’s so tentative and sweet and meek. She needs someone to push her into her orgasms, into her pleasure. I can do that for her. Oh, god, can I do that for her.
Michelle abandoned her own sex and peered up at me, standing behind her with my hands planted on her hips. “What do you want me to do?” she whispered.
“Get your hands back on that pussy,” I growled against her ear. “I want to see how you make yourself come, woman.”
I didn’t need to have a light on to feel Michelle’s blushing. I didn’t care. I wanted to push her boundaries. Christ, she needed it. She needed me.
Michelle’s palms slithered obediently over her belly and back to her come-starved pussy.
One of my hands gently rested over top both of hers, feeling how quickly her feverish little fingers moved. My dick was pure steel now. It dripped with desire to fill her. I swallowed and closed my eyes and frowned, holding it at bay. Wait. Wait until the moment is at its sweetest.
I tracked Michelle’s ragged breathing and the way her hips slowly tilted upward to present herself to me. She might not have realized it, but as she came closer to orgasm, her body bowed, subconsciously bending for me. I unzipped and she heard it. She moaned. The sound of my unzipping jeans brought a moan out of Michelle and that almost made me moan. I grabbed her hair in my fist, unable to control my roughness, so overpowered by my own desire for her, and I commanded, “Don’t stop.”
I put my free hand lightly over her hands and relished the way her knuckles bobbed up and down against my palm. I smoothed that same palm down the inside of her thigh, eyes rolling back in my head. Silky juices tracked down her thighs. She was ready. She would come soon. Her thighs trembled as she worked and her ass tilted up higher. Fuck. Fuck. She was ready and I was dizzy.
I played my cock over her hole slowly, back and forth, collecting and spreading her syrup all over both of us.
My head barely penetrated her, and her walls shuddered in response. I didn’t know if it was me or if it was the masturbation which made her so impossibly tight. Her cunt was almost vibrating for me and I plunged completely into her, unable to stop myself. She shrieked in surprise at my girth, and my palm flashed down for a quick, tight spanking on the crest of her ass. It was a dominant animal instinct to do so.
Michelle groaned, burying her face into the couch cushion in front of her.
“You like that?” I wondered breathlessly, almost confused.
“Uhhh, yes,” Michelle rumbled back at me. She sounded possessed, her voice was so raw and earthy right now. She sounded nothing like the mousy, tentative woman I’d first met in my office in January.
Her hands traveled up and dug into the cushions in front of her.
Driving deep into her, I bowed down over her, our skin pressing together for a fleeting, sweaty moment. My hands left her hips to snake up to her hands and spread over them. I breathed against her ear, “I said don’t stop.” My fingers curled around hers, sliding between each finger and binding between the knuckles, dragging her hands back to her waiting button.
I felt her hands move over herself again and my eyes rolled into the back of my head. My cock pulsed and grew and filled her completely.
“Make yourself come,” I commanded raggedly. “I want to feel it, baby. I want your cum on my cock right now.”
My hands returned to their grip on her hips, and I drove into her, again and again, measured and intent. This was the home stretch. I could feel it. I had to stay focused on my breathing and on my pace. If I let myself drown too much in this moment, I’d come before she did and ruin everything. I had to focus. Don’t think too much about this ass in front of you, like a fucking peach. Don’t think about how her sweet pussy pumps your cock. Don’t—
“Uh,” Michelle grunted, and her pussy walls clenched around my member. It swelled in reaction. Oh, shit. This was it. “Uh, uh, uh.” Her little grunts were surprisingly loud and firm. She still didn’t sound anything like the Miss Harper I met so long ago. “Uhhh,” she called out, muscles fluttering and flexing over my shaft. My eyes went into the back of my head and my throat fell open, head tilted back like I was worshipping a celestial deity.
“I’m coming,” her little voice whispered up to me. “Oh, god. Oh, god! Ohhh!”
The smallness of her voice shattered away, and she pressed and twisted on my staff. She was so fucking wet that I could feel a splatter of juices, a literal splash, every time our hips met together in another slam. I lost control of my pace and thrust as fast and as hard as I humanly could. I wasn’t trying to have a simultaneous orgasm with her, but my head ballooned suddenly and absolute magic surged through me, through her, through the room. It wasn’t possible that this was all just in my head. Something magnificent happened between us every time we came together.
I cried out to Jesus, and every vein and muscle in my neck stood at attention. The room drowned in my orgasm. Michelle’s body moved with my thrusts, but the effort of her muscles was completely gone. She went limp and murmured sleepily as the motion of our sex slowed to a stop.
I melted over her back and we laid, slumped on the armrest of her living room sofa.
“This came with the house,” her muffled voice came from the cushion. “This couch isn’t mine.”
“Mm,” I murmured against her wet neck, savoring the powerful combined scents of cleanliness and sex. “I was hoping we could save it for posterity.”
“I was hoping we could burn it to be sanitary,” Michelle replied, and I grinned. The side of my mouth was pressed to her back as I grinned and I knew that she felt it on her skin.
“Hey,” I whispered to her.
“Yeah?”
“Grant and Lisa’s colors are gold and green.”
“Uh. What?”
“For the wedding.”
Michelle struggled to stand upright, even though she still had my full weight bending her and pressing her into the sofa armrest and cushions.
“I didn’t say yes to that,” she reiterated sharply. “Never did, sir.”
“Oh, but you’re going to,” I breathed, fingers creeping toward her soaking pussy folds. I slid one over her abused clitoris and she yelped with sensitivity. “You’re going to come to that wedding for me, or you’re going to come on this couch for me,” I promised her, finger tickling over her, relishing the way she jerked and rolled her hips, trying to make me stop and keep going all at once.
“Okay,” she whined. “Okay, okay, I’ll go!”
“That’s my girl.” I grinned and stood, releasing her from the sofa, and she sprang up and swayed. I took pity on this rag doll of a woman and scooped my arms around her, hugging her close. “Come with me because you want to, Michelle. I want you to be with me. I want you to meet my friends.” And then I finally confessed the truth of it, something I hadn’t even wanted to tell myself yet. “I want people to know that you’re mine.”
Michelle was quiet for a moment and my throat tightened. Was she about to say no? Again?
I didn’t know if my ego would be able to recover from a woman so dead-set to never be with me.
“Okay,” Michelle said. Her fingers traced up my chest, my throat, and my chin. “Okay.”
And I could breathe again.
This woman was going to be mine.