ALEXA

The living room is empty when I get upstairs. Tightening the sash of my robe, I walk through the kitchen and check my room. Frowning, I return to the living room.

Finally, I find Damon in the study. Watching him from the doorway as he paces back and forth, I prepare myself for the end. It was inevitable really, and probably for the best. Wishing it wasn’t over this soon, I knock gently on the open door.

Damon’s head snaps up and he stops pacing. “Alexa.”

Closing my eyes, I let the shiver take its course. How he does it just by saying my name, I have no idea, but I’m going to miss it. When I open my eyes again, he is standing right in front of me, his eyes searching my face.

I watch, frozen, as he raises a stump to my face. Before it touches me, he looks at it. With a pained look in his eyes, he lowers it again. Looking me in the eyes, he wets his lips.

“May I please kiss you, Alexa?”

Surprised, I nod. His lips are on mine in a flash, making those tremors he sets off multiply, and travel throughout my entire body. Longing to feel his body against me, I realize he’s purposely holding it back. Kissing him more deeply, I reach for him, pulling him in to press against me. Moaning, he pulls his face away, standing tall so I can’t reach him.

“Damon what’s wrong?”

Shaking his head, he rubs his forehead. “It just feels so good when you pull me in,” he says, not meeting my eyes. “I don’t want you to push me away. I won’t hurt you, Alexa.”

“That’s very good to hear, Mr. Serious. Can you put your sexy mouth back on mine now?”

Looking down at me, he smiles cautiously. “May I wrap my arms around you?”

“You may.”

His arms slip around me as his lips return to mine and I find myself melting into him. The warmth of his embrace is more comforting than I would think possible after knowing him for such a brief time. Feeling not only safe, but incredibly attracted to him, I give myself over to the pleasure of his gentle touch. Slipping my hands under his polo-shirt, I run my hands over his back as his arousal grows harder between us.

Breaking his lips away, he presses his forehead to mine. “Alexa, I want to do things with you. How do I do things? Or do I only let you do the things?”

Untying the sash, I let my robe fall to the floor. “Tell me what you want to do and I’ll let you know.” Slipping my hands under his shirt again, I work it up and over his head as he ducks low enough for me to do so. Running my hands over his toned physique, I lean in and taste his skin. He is in very good shape for someone who can’t even hold weights and things. His abs look good enough to eat and I flick my tongue through the groove between them.

“I’m sorry. What was the question?” he asks as his wide eyes watch my every move. Crouching to retrieve the condom I stowed in the pocket of my robe, I hold the little packet with my lips as I run my hands around the waistband of his trousers and drop them to the floor. Opening the condom, I look into his eyes as I roll it on.

“You were about to tell me what you’d like to do with me,” I whisper, stroking him a few times. I like that he said with me and not to me. It’s a small distinction, but it makes all the difference to me.

“I’d like to lift you up,” he says, his voice deep and husky as I press myself against him. “Higher than you need to be, and real close, so that your body runs over mine on its way back down, but not all the way down. I mean to keep you off the floor, Alexa.”

He moans as my shiver travels into him.

“That sounds very nice, Damon. If you promise not to push me up against anything, you should begin when you’re ready.”

Bending low, Damon wraps his arms around my knees, rising again real slow. Grateful for the tall ceiling, I look down at him as he gazes up at me. The look of adoration in his eyes is hard to miss, but although I’m instantly alarmed by it, I soon forget why, as he closes his eyes and lowers his head, causing his beard to lightly graze over the skin of my stomach. “May I please touch you with my face?” he whispers, as his breath teases the very spot that his beard has set tingling.

Face?

“Yes,” I whisper back.

Pressing his forehead to my stomach, Damon stills a while, just breathing into me. Every breath he takes pulls cool air across my skin, only to warm it again with his next exhalation. Unbelievably responsive to such a subtle sensation, I begin to tremble in his arms. Looking up, I see the hunger in his eyes, but also the control. “I’ll always be gentle with you Alexa,” he whispers, pressing his lips to my belly and absorbing my quiver. “You can trust me to be gentle.”

“Because you’re a lover, not a fighter?” I whisper as he nuzzles my skin.

“And a nerd... and a clown... and a big brother...and an artist and a dreamer,” he says between soft kisses with his beard lightly scuffing me as I’m lowered at a painfully slow rate.

Pressing his face between my breasts, he kisses my chest and again, settles there for a while. Ever so softly, he grazes my skin with his bristly cheek and nuzzles my breasts, covering them in delicate kisses. His warm mouth closes over a nipple and I squirm in his grasp. The way he’s holding me has my legs locked together and there’s nowhere to find the friction I’m suddenly craving. My thighs cinch even closer together as his tongue does fantastic things to my nipple and a silent gasp escapes me.

With absolute control, Damon lowers me a little, offering just a hint of delicious friction as my body grates along his. It’s enough of a suggestion to drive me wild, with none of the fulfillment. I moan, a little from frustration, but mostly from pleasure.

“You have the softest moans I’ve ever heard,” he whispers against my skin as he works his way slowly along my collar bone and up my neck.

“You’re teasing me.”

“Are you in a rush?”

“No,” I breathe on a sigh as his arms shift slightly higher, pressing my pelvis into him more firmly, but still keeping my legs shut. There is just the slightest sense of rotation that accompanies this change in pressure and it feels good. Tilting my head back, I let him control the motion. It’s a big step for me, but I trust he won’t force himself on me and he really seems to know what he’s doing.

Again, he lets me slide a bit lower. I feel his words on my skin as much as hear them.

“Will you kiss me Alexa?”

Leaning back in, my lips are on his before the shiver has reached my toes. Rearranging his arms, he holds me close by pressing one up my back and banding the other across my hips. With my legs suddenly free to do as they please, I wrap them around his waist. Finally able to open up for the much needed pressure I’ve been longing for, my body grinds into his involuntarily, seeking my release and sensing its nearness much sooner than I’d expected.

Moaning into my mouth, Damon uses the arm banded across my hips to slow me. The added pressure is heavenly, and while initially I didn’t want to slow down, the new rhythm soon brings me back close to the edge with an even deeper sensation. He isn’t even in me yet, but I feel like he could push me over at any second.

Stilling me a little more, Damon removes the risk of falling over the edge again. It’s as if he’s moving the finish line further away. Just when I think it’s starting to disappear from sight, Damon lowers me again. Not onto his dick exactly; it doesn’t go inside me, but I can feel it hard and throbbing just below me, as if I’m sort of resting on a branch of this Damon tree.

Moving against it, I coat him with my arousal as the sensation of having him just there, but not inside, teases me back to the brink.

“Oh Alexa.” My name is just a breath and this time the shiver that runs through me is turbo charged. Clinging to him, I’m almost ready to beg for him to be inside me.

“May I please come in?” he whispers, as if his cock has just been waiting on the doorstep. I guess it has.

“Yes,” I whisper back. “Please.”

Without lifting me an inch, Damon somehow hollows his abs to angle his fat dick upward so I can feel him at my entrance. Entering slowly, he releases a deep, rumbling moan as he lowers me yet again to take all of him.

My body responds eagerly, having been hungry for him. Beyond my control, I move against him as he keeps those gentle pressures changing across the back of my hips, keeping himself deep, and me so close to his body that I get everything I need. The long-desired sensation builds each time he moves inside me. More intense than every previous build up, my pleasure crashes around him with such force that I bite my lip to keep from crying out.

Becoming some spineless form of pulsating pleasure, I ride out the waves in his arms, only vaguely aware of him calling out my name as his body stills and he clutches me to him. My name on his lips sends another wave through me and I sigh in pure delight as I squeeze him within.

Damon holds me close until our bodies quiet and not once does it feel like he’ll drop me. Kissing my hair, he leans back a little to see my face resting against his shoulder. Kissing my forehead, he smiles.

“Do you want me to carry you to bed?” he asks.

Feeling like that would be wonderful, I look down at us and giggle. “Like this?”

Looking down he hums in approval. “Definitely. If you think nobody will see us.”

“I have no idea what time it is, but even if most of them are still at the club, I live with ten other people, so the probability of someone else being home is relatively high.”

“Probabilities huh? I knew you liked math really,” he says lightly, even though he’s frowning. Reluctantly loosening his holds, he lowers me gently to the floor. Picking up my robe, he slings it around my shoulders as I slide the condom from his waning erection. A tremor runs through his body as my touch leaves him and although his eyes are closed and his expression purposefully blank, I can tell by the rigid line of his jaw and the shallow crease between his brows that he’s uncomfortable. I run a hand down his sculpted chest, a promise that this isn’t over, and feel him relax again, as if my touch truly does relieve his pain.

“Are you okay?” I ask quietly, for the first time wondering if I’m not the most vulnerable person in this scenario. A strange thought.

Damon nods slightly. “Yeah. Just the change from extreme pleasure to extreme pain is quite disorientating. Like traveling at speed then hitting the emergency brake. I’ll adjust in a minute. My threshold is pretty high; it’s just that you feel really, really good, so it’s a rapid come down,” he says in a rush as he takes a steadying breath and opens his eyes. “I’m a lot better than ‘okay’. Truly,” he says with a smile. Covering my hand with his forearm lightly, he presses it to his chest a moment before letting go and clearing his throat. “Sorry. Are you okay?”

“More than,” I say with a smile. “You want a shower?”

Thoughtful a moment, he looks me over with dark eyes and a sexy half-smile as he steps into his pants and pulls them up to hide his dick as it looks to be on the rise again.

“What’s that look for?” I ask, even though I know the answer is going to make me blush.

“I’d rather keep the sense of you on my skin a while longer,” he says, stepping closer and making the heat in my cheeks flame higher. “May I carry you to your bed now?” he asks, holding his arms out and bending low enough for me to fall into them. Instead of using words, I just turn around and situate myself in his arms, feeling a tad queenly as he rises with me. Wrapping my arms around his neck, I watch his smile grow to a grin as he marches us towards my bedroom.

“And what’s that look for?” I ask, unable to keep from smiling myself.

“I like your arms around me.”

“Oh yeah? Well I like yours around me, so snap.”

Chuckling a little, Damon carries me through my door and uses his foot to shut it behind us. Laying me gently on the bed, he bounces onto it next to me. Still shirtless, he makes himself comfortable against my pillows, his leg touching mine. Looking down at me a while, he sighs happily, then reaching over me, he turns Charlotte to face us.

“You going to introduce me to your friend?”

Looking to Charlotte, I roll my eyes at her as if telling her that Damon’s crazy. “This is Charlotte, my oldest and dearest friend. Mom and Dad gave her to me for my sixth birthday and she’s been my constant companion ever since.”

“She means a lot to you then.”

“Yes.”

“Is your father still alive?” Damon asks, treading carefully around the subject.

“He is. How about you? Obviously your mom is alive and well,” I say with a smile as I recall their earlier phone conversation.

Chuckling a little, Damon nods. “Yeah, she’s alive and kicking. Dad too. They live a few hours away in Syracuse, with my youngest sister Harriet. She’s seventeen. Lara’s twenty-one, as you heard, and she’s in California soaking up the sun while she’s studying.”

“There’s quite an age gap between you and your sisters,” I wonder out loud as my eyes trace the lines of his body appreciatively. He really is a very good-looking man.

“I may have been quite a handful,” he says, blushing. “It was for the best that I was kept busy with school and things before my parents committed to more kids.”

“I can imagine,” I say with a smile as I run my fingers through the groove between his abs. “You still keep pretty busy, it seems.”

“Mmm,” he agrees, watching my fingers. “Mainly to keep my mind off the million and one thoughts whizzing through my brain, or to distract myself from the weird pains at the ends of my arms. It’s better to keep busy.”

“What kinds of things do you like to do?” I ask, toying with the waistband of his pants as my fingers run along the groove of the diagonal muscle heading down to his groin. “Apart from painting, and teaching, and unicycling, and running naked from the law?”

At first he doesn’t answer and I look up to find his gaze still fixed on my fingers as they run over his skin. Meeting my eyes, he clears his throat, which actually makes all his muscles stand out even more. Smiling again, I slip my hand inside his pants, watching his face. I stroke his hardness, wondering how much he misses doing it for himself, and how powerless that must feel. Fluttering his eyelids, he looks to the ceiling as he releases a shuddering sigh.

“Um, I like to ah...” Clearing his throat again, he closes his eyes and shakes his head. “You’re very good at that.”

“You like to...” I prompt, changing my method and very much enjoying the effect on him. Squeezing his eyes together, Damon takes a steadying breath, but it doesn’t stop his words from coming in bursts.

“I exercise a lot. Running, swimming, kick-(gasp)-boxing. I ski. Snow and water. I love music. And travelling. And this. Alexa.”

His breathing is rapid and as he whispers my name, my body revels again in that strange surge of sensation he inspires. Enjoying both the control I have over his pleasure and the reactions I’m getting from him, I’ve worked myself into another hungry state. I didn’t think that would be possible after Damon so perfectly delivered satisfaction already, but I can feel a needy ache in my belly and arousal slick between my legs.

Removing my hand from his pants, I shove them down altogether as I lean in to kiss his lips. His arms raise to meet my face, but before he touches me, he begins to lower them back down, shoving them firmly under the pillows.

“You are so very good at the rules, Damon,” I whisper against his lips, before leaning across to my bedside to get another condom. Rolling it on, I wonder again how it would feel if he did touch me. Would it be gentle, like all of his touches? Sensual and pleasurable?

Straddling him, I lower myself onto his erection with a sigh as Damon’s eyes roll back in his head a little and he groans. At first I think about being completely selfish and taking what I want, knowing that he’ll be along for the ride, but then I think about how hot it was making me to turn him on, and I decide on a different direction.

Leaning forward, I kiss him softly on the lips as I start to move. Moaning in approval, Damon chases my lips as I pull away, making his abs strain and his dick jerk inside me in a spine-melting way. Riding him slowly as I recover, I let my robe fall from my shoulders, giving him all of me to look at as I roll my clit over the hard surface at the base of his dick. His arms press further into the pillows and I can only assume it’s from denying his urge to touch me. I love that he wouldn’t dare.

His eyes have gone dark as they watch me, and I run my hands through my hair, letting it fall about my shoulders and over my breasts. It brushes gently against my skin, making my nipples tighter, and my breasts feel full and heavy. Tossing my hair, I thrust my chest out for him to see. Damon’s tongue runs over his lips and his hips tilt forward, tipping my breasts closer to his face and pushing himself deeper inside of me as I move against him. The effect is sigh-inducing and my toes are already starting to curl. From the focus of his eyes, I know he wants his mouth on me, but I tease him a little, keeping my breasts just out of reach. I can practically see him begging to taste them, but as he senses the tightening inside of me, his eyes widen to take in all of me and he settles back to watch as I ride him towards my orgasm.

Edging closer and closer, I can’t quite find what I need to bring me to the climax that feels so close. I gasp as Damon shifts beneath me, giving me exactly what I want by filling me more and changing his angle slightly. Now he’s hitting me in just the right spot inside as I grind against him and in a few quick movements, I’m coming hard around him as he tenses beneath me.

Flopping against his chest and panting, I listen to his heart pounding below as I rise and fall with each of his quick breaths. I shiver in response to the connection between us and Damon hooks my robe up to cover me like blanket. “You are so beautiful to watch,” he whispers against the top of my head. Closing my eyes, I feel his lips press to my hair as his body relaxes beneath me.

I can’t think of a response. Even lifting my head is difficult. Depleted both mentally and physically, I melt into Damon as my breathing slowly returns to normal. With eyes too heavy to keep open, I listen to Damon’s pulse slow to a steady thump.