THE QUIET SOUND he let out fell somewhere between a growl and a sigh, and he opened his lips, allowing me entry.
I pressed up onto an elbow for a better angle.
As I tentatively slid my tongue against his, he pressed a hand to the back of my head, tangling his fingers in my unruly curls and somehow steadying me at the same time. But he didn’t draw me closer; he only provided enough pressure to prevent me from falling away from him, not enough to set the pace.
Apparently, making the next move was up to me—and I wasn’t sure how to react to the realization. Should it make me feel strong or possibly anxious about getting something wrong, doing something that would prove my inexperience? Not that either of us could have any doubt about my lack of skill in this area—it was as evident as the nose on my face. And anyway, just now, I felt both strong and anxious in equal measure.
I took my time, exploring his tongue and lips and teeth with my own until I was breathless and panting and had to pull away to gain a moment of clarity.
“I want to touch you,” Blake rasped into the dark.
My tongue went thick, but I replied, “So touch me, then,” with a heck of a lot more bravado than I could properly account for.
He slid his hand from my hair to my shoulder, the tips of his fingers trailing along the back of my arm with a featherlight caress and leaving gooseflesh in their wake. When his progress finally came to a stop, he settled his palm on my hip for a moment before gently kneading my bottom.
I had to fight the urge to stop him because the pathetic, drooping skin of my butt wasn’t very sexy, but his touch made me feel warm and tingly and nice.
Besides, he would have to touch me if we were going to go through with this. And I had every intention of going through with it. Maybe this would be the only time I’d ever be with him or any man, because he’d likely be repulsed beyond any chance of recovery once we went through with it, but I wanted at least this one time to happen. It was enough that I’d probably be sad, lonely, and single for the rest of my life after this.
But I wanted to rid myself of my virginity first, at the very least.
“You’re so soft everywhere,” he murmured with a hint of amazement before fusing his lips to my neck and stealing my ability to wonder whether he meant that in a good way or a bad way.
I splayed my hands over his abdomen to steady myself. His skin was supple and smooth, but everything beneath the surface was hard—he was nothing but strong cords of muscle everywhere I could reach.
Just how dissimilar could two bodies be?
Apparently very.
I might not be fat any longer, but I was all lumps and bumps (each existing in places they didn’t belong), stretched-out skin, and every inch of my body was covered with the sorts of ugly marks that supermodels never bore. Or maybe they’d been thoroughly airbrushed to hide their flaws? If so, I could hope that Mia Quincey would do a bit of airbrushing in Photoshop to make my photos look better than I did in reality.
But thinking about all of that wouldn’t help me in the present. I had to get back into the moment, keep my mind away from the things that would haunt my waking hours as much as my sleeping hours. Besides, I was beyond fascinated by discovering the differences between Blake and me.
I tugged up the bottom of his shirt, baring his skin to my touch. His abdominal muscles jumped slightly when I slid first my fingers and then my palm toward his chest. I almost stopped because of that virtually insignificant movement, thinking I’d done something wrong, but he kissed me again before I could, urging me on.
“Is this all right?” I asked, smoothing my hand over his skin when he let me up for air.
“You can do anything you want to me, Bea.”
“Anything?” I trailed my fingertips down his chest and abs again, moving them toward the waist of his jeans.
His almost-black eyes locked to mine, he said, “Anything.”
That whole breathing thing that humans were supposed to do all the time? Yeah, right. I doubted I’d ever breathe normally again after hearing the heat in that single word.
Undoing his button and fly turned out to be more difficult than it should have been because my hand was shaking and I needed my other arm to support my weight. Blake helped me by lifting his hips and shucking the jeans, then tossing them somewhere on the floor.
My fingers hovered over the elastic waist of his briefs, but I couldn’t seem to lower the fabric. My bravado was already fading, giving way to anxiety.
“Touch me,” he pleaded.
I swallowed the lump filling my throat. “How?”
“Any way you want.”
“I don’t know what I want,” I lied.
“Well, I do.”
“What do you want?”
He chuckled. “No, I mean I know what you want.”
“Tell me, then,” I said, breathless. Or better yet, show me.
He removed his briefs, too, flinging them away into the darkness. Circling my wrist with his powerful fingers, he guided my hand toward his pulsing heat. I slid my palm over his length, reveling in the soft hiss of air from his lips that intensified when I gave him a gentle squeeze.
“Rub me,” Blake said, rough and needy. “That’s what you want. You want to touch me. You want to feel every inch of me. You want to make me hard and hot so I’m aching to be inside you.”
Only somewhat surprisingly, he was right. I did want all of that, but I was also nervous to follow through with what I wanted because I was sure it would lead to all my fears coming true.
Still, my fingers tightened around him, and I stroked.
It was tentative at first.
No, I was tentative, not some random it.
But there was a sort of power I felt with Blake on his back beneath me, his pleasure literally in my hands—and I’d never experienced anything quite like the headiness of this sensation before in any other area of my life.
“Like this?” I asked.
He nodded, but then one of his hands came down over the top of mine, adding more pressure, and he closed his eyes with a deep groan. “That’s so fucking good.”
And maybe it was good for him, but it was amazing for me. There’d been plenty of times I’d thought about doing something like this, but the act of experiencing fell into an entirely different realm than I could arrive at through mere imagination.
His free hand came around my waist, and he drew me closer to kiss me again. He tangled his tongue with mine; I could get drunk off the taste of him and the heated sounds he made. When he broke away, he kissed a trail down the column of my neck, stopping to suckle at the soft hollow below my voice box.
My hand stilled.
“I want to touch you,” he said, his voice reverberating against my skin. “I want to make you come. I need to be inside you, Bea.”
I shivered from the neediness in his tone and the anxiety racing through me and making my blood go hot and cold all at once. “Then touch me,” I replied.
Faster than I could blink, he was out from under me and had us flipped around so he was hovering over the top of me. With his lips fused to mine, his practiced hands went to work tugging the waist of my shirt free from my jeans and undoing buttons and zippers. It was as if he’d done this many times before.
Well, who was I kidding? No one but myself. Blake was a young, sexy, professional hockey player. Women likely threw themselves at him all the time—women younger and hotter than me. He probably did this a lot more often than I even thought about it. But allowing my thoughts to stray to ideas like those wouldn’t help me get through this at all, so I shoved them aside.
He tugged my shirt over my head. I shivered in the moment before he covered me again, warming me with the heat of his own body while he worked my jeans down my hips.
Then his mouth was on mine, and his hands were everywhere at once.
Finally, blessedly, my brain shut down and all I could do was feel.
Blake suckled on the sensitive skin where my neck and collarbone met, and I shuddered. He slipped his hand inside my bra and cupped my breast with his palm, and I moaned against his lips. He pressed a knee between my thighs, grinding the top of his thigh against the spot that was throbbing with heat and need, and I stopped breathing.
If only I could stop thinking, too, because now my brain was racing at a pace of a thousand miles a minute.
“Do you want this?” he asked, his voice like gravel as his lips hovered over my skin.
My body zinged when he slid his fingers beneath the elastic edge of my panties, and I nodded desperately.
“Tell me,” he insisted. “Tell me what you want.”
I squirmed to get more of his touch, and I felt him smile against the overheated skin of my neck.
“This?” Blake asked, lightly swirling the tip of a finger around my clitoris.
I shuddered and drew up my knees, opening myself to him. “More.”
One long, thick finger slipped easily inside my opening while he continued to rub my clit with the pad of his thumb. “Like this?”
I nodded, biting down on my lower lip.
“Can you take another finger?” He kissed my shoulder blade, his tongue darting out to lick my overheated skin. “You’re so wet, Bea, but I don’t want to risk hurting you—at least not any more than I have to. I want to take this nice and slow.”
“I—” My breath caught in my throat when I felt a second finger joining the first. But even though the way he stretched my body was slightly uncomfortable at first, the discomfort quickly gave way to a pleasantly full sensation. I nodded, closing my eyes with a moan.
His mouth seared my neck again before making a wet path along my collarbone, veering toward my breast. “Take off your bra for me,” he said.
I didn’t even think about ignoring him. Slipping my hands behind my back, I unhooked the clasp. My breasts tumbled free almost immediately, but he caught one in his palm before lowering his mouth to suckle my tit. I felt the suction all the way through my body; it seemed to draw everything in me tighter, making me hot.
“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he murmured, moving his lips to my other breast while his fingers continued working their magic between my legs.
“Blake,” I pleaded.
“Hmm?” He lifted his head briefly, and I imagined he was trying to meet my eyes.
“Hurry.”
A rich laugh rumbled through him, reverberating all around me. “I’m just trying to be sure you’re ready for this.”
“I’m ready,” I insisted. Or as ready as it was possible for me to be. Thirty years ought to be long enough, right?
He swirled his tongue over my breast again, but then his weight shifted away from me on the bed. I rolled toward him, partially due to the effects of gravity but also due to my need for his heat.
The sounds of him opening a foil wrapper competed with my heavy breathing, and then he was rolling toward me again. He lifted himself above me, his legs settling between my thighs, bracing his weight with his arms on either side of me.
I reached up and splayed my hand over his chest. His heartbeat thundered against my palm, almost as erratically as mine.
“Kiss me,” he said, deep and husky.
“Hmm?”
“Kiss me.”
As soon as my lips met his, his hips rocked forward and he thrust into me. My cry of surprise was swallowed up by his mouth. But it was only surprise and not pain, so I quickly got over my shock—and myself—and reveled in the moment.
“I’m not hurting you?” Blake asked.
“No. It’s—” Beautiful. Perfect. Heaven. None of those words quite covered it, not even when they were all combined into one. Because, having spent my entire life as the Designated Ugly Fat Friend, I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d never experience anything like this. “It’s good,” I finally forced out.
Blake held himself up with one arm and used his other hand to explore my body. His touch was almost reverent and definitely possessive. Or maybe that was all in my mind, just what I wanted to believe for this brief foray I was taking into someone else’s life.
“Can you take more?” he asked, squeezing one of my breasts in the most delicious way.
“More?”
I’d barely gotten the question out when he went deeper, harder. His hip bone ground against my clitoris, and an unfamiliar sound ripped from my throat.
“Too much?” he asked, all concern.
I shook my head, wrapping both of my arms around his shoulder and holding on for all I was worth.
I wanted to capture every moment of this. It was something I could hold on to once he’d moved on and I was back to existing as an old, fat, single teacher, one whom no one like Blake would ever look at twice.
But Blake stopped, buried deep inside me, and he tipped my chin so I’d have to look at him. “You’re not with me. You’re in some other world.”
“I don’t— I’m not—” Words failed me.
He rolled over, dragging me with him, not stopping until I was straddling him with his arm around my waist to steady me.
I had to brace myself with my hands on his shoulders so I wouldn’t topple over and fall onto him. In this position, my breasts flopped and drooped pathetically. Thank God the lights were out so he couldn’t see them.
“What are you doing? What’s wrong?” I demanded.
“Nothing’s wrong for me. But something’s wrong for you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You were lost in your head. I want you to be here with me.”
“I’m here.”
“I want you to set the pace, Bea.”
Set the pace? “But I…”
“Ride me.” He reached for my hands and dragged them lower onto his chest, flattening my palms on his body. “Brace yourself like this, and you decide what feels good.”
“You feel good,” I argued feebly.
“Fucking right, I do. As long as I’m inside you, I feel better than I’ve ever felt before.”
“That’s not—”
“Use me, Bea,” he cut in. “Figure out what you like.”
“I like you,” I mumbled.
“Good, because I like you, too. More than like you. Like doesn’t even begin to cover it. So use me. My body is at your disposal. You can do anything you want to me.”
He’d told me that, or at least something very similar, not too terribly long ago. But I still didn’t know what I wanted.
“Come on,” he said, and he ran his hands over my hips, the tips of his fingers pressing in just enough to avoid tickling but not enough to push me into anything. “Move around a bit and see what feels good.”
I locked my eyes onto his, and, steadying myself with my hands on his pecs, I rolled my hips in a circular motion.
“Fuck, that’s good,” he said.
I concurred, but I couldn’t spare the energy to say as much. I was too busy doing it again, moving in a wider arc this time.
“Tell me what you want me to do,” Blake said.
“Meaning?” It was almost too difficult to form the single-word question since my brain was otherwise occupied in taking in all the sensations I’d never experienced before.
“Do you want me to play with your tits? Rub your clit? Just keep my hands on your hips to help steady you?”
“I don’t kn— Touch my breasts,” I finally said.
Almost immediately, he brought his hands up to cup me like a bra, gently kneading every time I rolled my hips toward him.
I leaned forward, changing the angle, which put pressure on my clitoris every time I ground against him. That slight shift drew a new moan from my lips.
“Make yourself come,” Blake said. “Use me to make yourself come.”
“I don’t want to use you. Not like that.”
“I want to be used.” And as if to prove he meant it, he slipped one of his hands down to my hip again and pressed down, adding more friction to my most sensitive place.
A moan slipped out involuntarily.
“That’s it,” he said when I started rolling my hips over him again. “Take what you need.”
I rolled my hips, rising and falling until I was running out of steam and couldn’t keep it up any longer. Then I dropped forward over Blake’s body, my chest pressed to his, my face buried against his neck, and let the friction of our movements take over.
He fisted a hand in my hair, holding me close to him, his other hand caressing my back, my butt, my thighs, roaming all over me while the climax built inside me.
And then it exploded. Or maybe I did.
“Fuck, that feels good,” Blake murmured in my ear.
Every muscle in my body went loose and limp as he drove into me from below a few times, using my body the same way I’d used his, until he reached his own completion.
I lay on top of him for a long time, trying to steady my pulse and remember how to breathe. He kept stroking his hands over my back, my bottom, my thighs, his body heat keeping me captive in a warm cocoon.
But then he stilled.
Was he asleep? I couldn’t tell, but it seemed possible, especially with the way his breathing had gone slow and deep, his chest rising and falling beneath me.
I should probably try to disengage my limbs from his. Could I manage it without waking him? Doubtful. Still, I ought to try because we couldn’t stay like this. I couldn’t stay like this. Allowing him to touch me while we had sex was one thing; but now that we weren’t moving anymore, and my skin was just sagging all over him…ugh. No. I couldn’t stay like this at all.
I tried to inch my way off his prone form.
“Where are you going?” he murmured in a thick, sated, sleepy tone.
“I just… I should—”
“Stay here.” Blake’s arms tightened around my waist, tugging me closer.
“But I should really—”
“I need you,” he cut in.
That was enough to get me to stop in my efforts to disengage my body from his. I’d been prepared for a lot of things, but not that. “You what?”
“I need you. I need you to stay, Bea. Hell, I just need you.”
The thing that scared me, though, was that I was starting to need him, too.