Chapter 18
Bella
“Knowin’ the right thing to do and doin’ it are two entirely different propositions.”
~ Papa Duke
Wave after crushing wave of pleasure, of body-wracking intensity crashed over me. It was more than I could take. More than I could process.
Until I had the sudden, bursting flash of realization that the problem was I was trying to process it. It was beyond processing. Beyond understanding. Beyond breaking down. There was nothing to do with the sensations buffeting every cell in my body except simply let them be.
And so that’s what I did. I closed my eyes, blocked out conscious thought, and lost myself.
It was magical. I finally understood the significance of the phrase “sweet oblivion.” It really was sweet, to lose all conscious thought. To forget who I was, where I was, and all the complications of my life. To lose myself completely in the physical and block out the mental and emotional entirely. This was a place that I could see myself staying, a temptation I could envision giving into again and again if I wasn’t careful.
When my orgasm finally died down and my thinking slowly began to clarify and reality started to drift back in, I was struck with just one overwhelming desire—not to let that happen. I didn’t want reality. I wanted oblivion again. I was desperate to lose myself in Colton.
As he kissed his way up my belly, I lowered my arms and ran my fingers through his hair and over his neck and face. When he was close enough to be within reach, I grasped his shirt in my hands and pulled him the rest of the way up and declared, “I want you naked. Now.”
My statement drew an amused chuckle from him. I’d never been the “take charge” type, but I liked this new side of myself. I could see by the flaring lust in his eyes and the conspicuous bulge in his pants that he did, too.
I snaked my legs around him, entangling them together and holding him in place as my trembling fingers undressed him. It seemed to me that the pace was maddeningly slow. I just wanted to feel his skin against mine. Now. Frustration overwhelmed me as I fumbled with his belt buckle, button, and zipper of his jeans.
Of course, the slow pace could be partially explained by the fact that it was tough to employ my motor skills while my brain was spinning out from the way he was kissing my neck as I did my best to tug his shirt off and his pants down. And the way his strong hand wrapped around my waist as his thumb made little circles on my lower back didn’t help either.
Knowing that I wasn’t up for the task, I asked, “Can I get a little help here?”
With lightning speed, he sat up and ripped his shirt off and tossed it to the side. I sat up, too, following him barely an instant behind.
I snaked my arms around his neck and pressed my bare breasts to him. I had to feel him against me with nothing in between. Skin against skin. I had to feel the hard, rippling muscles of his chest against my sensitive nipples, feel the steel strength of his arms as they pressed against my back.
I kissed his neck and he moaned. I remembered that moan. I’d never forgotten it. I’d dreamed about it…and daydreamed about it. It’d never left my memory, and now I was hearing it again in person. Tears filled my eyes.
I reached down and began the fumbling process again at the waistband of his jeans, but he pulled back and finished the undressing process himself.
“Thanks for the assist,” I breathed, ending the words on a little gasped chuckle.
He pulled a condom out of his back pocket before dropping them to the ground. He set the condom down on the blanket and took himself in his hand, stroking up and down while he used the other to run his finger up and down my sex with a feather light touch. “I know you don’t want to talk, but I need to make sure that we’re on the same page about this, Bella. I have to make love to you. I need to feel your tight body clench around me as I slide into you.” The tip of his finger pressed down on the base of my opening, applying just enough pressure to send a shock of bliss shooting through me like a firework exploding. His lips turned up in his sexy one-sided grin. “I’m going to stretch your body to its limits. I’m going to fill you up and go so deep that your body molds around me so that we can’t tell where I end and you begin. Is that what you want?”
I nodded, unable to speak. Not just because of the images that his words brought to mind—him on top of me, buried deep inside me—but because we would be so very close. Wrapped up inside me, the two of us wrapped up in each other. Close. So very close. Like one person.
I’d never achieved that with anyone else. With Owen the sex was different, it was almost clinical. There was no real connection. I’d read books to see what I was doing wrong, even suggested we go to couple’s counseling, but Owen said he didn’t think there was a problem and the “sex was fine.”
But with Colton? Intimacy just came naturally. No trying required.
“Lay back,” he instructed gruffly.
I tried to relax my body and just be in the moment as I lowered myself down on the blanket. The morning air was crisp but that wasn’t the reason my skin broke out in goosebumps as I watched him slide the condom on his massive erection. I wanted him so badly. I wanted him more than I could ever remember wanting anyone or anything in life. I was shaking from need.
“Open up for me, sweetheart.” The intensity in his stare was in direct conflict with the gentle authority of his words.
This was what I’d missed the most. Being the center of his world, where all of his energy, focus, and attention was on me.
I let my legs fall to the side but when Colton knelt between my knees, he shoved them even farther out and I almost had an orgasm on the spot. The move was quick and decisive. Not rough by any stretch of the imagination, but about as far from gentle as I could imagine Colton being.
The fact that he was losing control was hot and it caused a deep, low ache in my belly that quickly spread to my core. I bit down on my lip as a quiet moan rumbled through me and my back arched as he stared down at my sex and his intense gaze made me even wetter.
I used his concentration on me to do a little—a lot—of looking of my own and instantly verified that my suspicions had been correct. He was now all man. There was no sign of the lanky boy that I’d fallen in love with or the lean teenager that I’d lost my virginity to. This Colton was larger and more dominating. He’d always been confident when we were together but now his touch was expert level, his strength was virile. My eyes drank in his broad chest, the steely contours of his muscular torso, and his narrow waist all highlighted by his sun-kissed skin.
I’d never considered myself a desperate woman. Quite the opposite. I was a survivor, and I’d always done whatever it took to be self-sufficient. But, hell, if I was honest, there really was only one word to describe the hunger that was clawing its way through my belly in this moment, and it was that—desperate.
I was desperate for his touch. Desperate for him to fill me up. Desperate for his lips, his kisses, his hot breath on my neck.
For him. I was desperate for him. And it was getting tougher and tougher to deny that to myself.
Colton positioned himself at my opening and my breathing hitched as I stared at where our bodies were aligned. I wanted to be watching at the instant Colton plunged inside of me. I wanted to watch his thick, powerful erection disappearing inside my hot, soft wetness. And I wanted it now.
I could feel his thick tip pressing against me. My pulse quickened as he wrapped his hand around the base of his shaft and slid his engorged head up and down my seam, spreading my arousal so that it coated my sex. Both the visual and the physical sensation worked together to create a ravenous hunger that I knew only he could satisfy. It sparked a need in me like a lit match thrown into a pile of wood doused in kerosene. On pure animalistic instinct I angled my hips up, silently begging for him to take me.
He exhaled as he drove into me, filling me completely, in one powerful thrust with my name on his lips he breathed, “Bella.”
It was all too much. It stunned my senses. Being with him like this was overwhelming. Not just physically, being naked in front of him, seeing his naked body, feeling his skin pressed to mine, and having him inside me. But emotionally as well. I’d wanted closure. To get him out of my system and instead I felt more, more than I could ever dream of recovering from.
I squeezed my eyes tight, hoping that I could concentrate on the pleasure radiating through me. But my brain had other ideas. The second my lids shut I was overloaded with flashes of memories, a whirling kaleidoscope of images from the past. All the things I’d tried to forget and erase from existence was now animated in my mind’s eye. The first time he held my hand. The first time he picked me up in his arms. The first time he explored my body with his hands. The first time he kissed me in places below my collarbone. The first time he said he loved me.
Image after image appeared in a slide show, exposing the feelings that accompanied all of those moments. I’d been so naïve in believing that our lives were laid out in front of us, simple and loving, and no obstacle existed that could ever tear us apart. Now I knew how unrealistic that had been.
But instead of making me sad, like I would’ve expected that revelation to do, it actually filled me with a sense of wonder. Now that I knew the odds against us being together again like this after all we’d been through, I was all the more amazed to be here in his arms after all this time. Feeling the way that only he could make me feel. I knew that whatever the aftermath of the emotional firestorm I’d created, I would deal with it and it was worth it for this moment.
Determined not to do anymore thinking or analyzing, I wrapped my arms and legs around Colton and held him tightly. As he pumped in and out of me I surrendered to the experience. I loved feeling his body growing larger inside me. I loved hearing his breath growing more and more ragged. I loved seeing the muscles in his back flexing and straining. All those things assured me that I wasn’t the only one losing control here, and that was a heady feeling.
The friction of his rock-hard shaft rubbing against my inner walls with every stroke caused a delicious tension to develop deep in my core. It was a gradual but inescapable build that didn’t stop until I felt like there was a sensually-charged rubber band inside me stretched so thin and so close to breaking that there was no way to keep it from snapping apart.
I didn’t really understand how I could be this close to coming again after I’d had just climaxed only a few minutes before, but then again, the answer to that question and so many others was simple: Colton.
He was different. He was magic. He’d always made everything about me different and magic, too.
I pulled his face down to mine as he continued plunging in and pulling out of me in a rhythm that was taking me to the peaks of ecstasy. I had to kiss him while he made love to me. It was the only way for me to feel like we were completely connected, head to toe, body and soul.
The moment our lips touched he pushed his tongue into my mouth and I opened up eagerly to accept him. I loved the symmetry of sensation of his throbbing member invading me at the same time as his wet tongue. Both of them bringing very different kinds of pleasure.
I tightened the grip of my limbs snaking around him. Making love to Colton was the closest physical representation I could reach to express what I felt for him. The way that my heart sank into him, leaving a piece of myself in his DNA. I knew that, deep down, he did the same thing and there was no way I could ever shake him from every corner of my soul.
As his strokes grew more and more powerful, I catapulted close to going over the edge. I didn’t want to go there without him so I broke our kiss and did the one thing I’d promised myself I wouldn’t. I snuggled into the crook of his neck and placed an open mouth kiss on his sweet spot.
My intention had been to expedite his release, but instead it fast tracked mine. I trembled and rocked and held him tight as another wave of orgasm swept over me, even stronger than the one that came before. It was different—mellower, slower, longer-lasting, and more emotional. And, yes, it was more powerful.
Just as I was floating back to reality, Colton stiffened and thrust his hips, driving into me so deep that I truly didn’t know where he ended and I began. I buried my face in his neck as we both rode out our orgasms.
As soon as they began to wane I let my head fall back against the blanket and tried to gain some of my equilibrium back. Lifting his hand, Colton brushed away the damp strands of my hair stuck to my face and leaned down to kiss my forehead.
Well, this backfired.
I wanted him out of my system, and he’s only burrowed his way further in.
Bella: 3 Colton: 4
Not good. Not good at all.