CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

Seth felt like a madman on the drive home. He drove carefully, as always. But his fingers drummed on the steering wheel, he fiddled with the windows, with the radio. He let the car inch forward at every red light.

He could almost feel the universe conspiring against him. Even though Sarah had reassured him that she wanted this, it made him nervous to be separated from her. As if now that he had decided to sleep with her, a blizzard was going to come and dump fifteen feet of snow between them and he wouldn’t be able to get to her.

Because Seth never got what he wanted, not in a real way. And driving through the night, barreling toward the thing he wanted more than he’d ever wanted anything? Well, it would be very on-brand for the world to find some way to snatch it away from him.

He drove behind Sarah on the way to their neighborhood, because even though he was hoping to do some very ungentlemanly things to her in a matter of an hour or so, he was a gentleman at heart and driving in front of her felt rude. After they pulled onto her street, he was very surprised to see her pull into his driveway, not hers. She wanted to do this at his house.

He realized that when he’d said, ‘see you at home’, he’d definitely been thinking of her home, not his.

But the more he thought about it, the more it made sense. Her house was the place where he’d rejected her all those times. His house was where he’d pounced on her in the kitchen. Sarah didn’t strike him as a superstitious person, but if she was, she probably would want to go back to the scene of this morning’s crime.

Seth parked his truck and bounded up the stairs of his front porch, unlocking the front door with a hand that was surprisingly steady, even though his veins were brightly electric with adrenaline.

He swung open the door and stepped back to let Sarah step through, smiling when she practically sprinted into the house.

If she’d been anyone else, Seth might have invited her into the living room, gotten the two of them something to drink. He might have put on some music, come up with some things to chat about. He might have started kissing her demurely on the couch.

But this was Sarah, and he wanted her so badly he had two handfuls of her ass and his tongue in her mouth before they’d even gotten their shoes kicked off.

They were in a mad, tangled scramble down the hallway when he reached for the hem of her dress and she was already undoing the belt of his pants.

“One of these days I’m actually going to take a look around at your house,” she told him through a panting laugh as she lifted her arms to let him strip off her sweater dress in one fell swoop.

“Yes. A tour. Later.” He dropped the dress and got a load of her body. “Much later.”

He should have known she’d be wearing a sports bra. Something about that discovery thrilled him. It was sexy, with lots of straps and mesh and a keyhole between her breasts. It matched her perfect black underwear. Her hair static-clinged to the wall where he’d dragged the sweater over her head.

“Why the fuck don’t I own a polaroid camera?” he growled, letting her rip off his shirt and then dropping his mouth to her neck as he crowded her against the wall.

“You want a photo of me half naked?” she asked, a smile in her voice when he picked one of her legs up and wrapped it around his waist.

“Duh.”

“There’s, like, a thousand of them on my Instagram.”

“Sure, but this time you’re naked for me. All of this is for me.” The realization of that hit him at the same moment the words came out of his mouth.

Seth’s heart suddenly started beating woodenly in his chest. This was Sarah he was about to get naked with. No matter what, it was going to mean something.

No, he told himself. This can be casual. The only way you can have her is if you keep it casual.

Shushing all the voices in his head, he started to walk her backwards toward his bedroom. To his delight, she shifted them so that she was walking him backwards. After five steps on the carpet, the backs of his legs hit his bed and they both went tumbling down.

The weight and heat of her was a shock there’d have been no way to prepare himself for. She simply felt perfect against him. Like she was supposed to fit there.

Luckily, before he could freak himself out about it too much, she was levering herself off of him and ripping his pants and socks off. As she crawled back up his body, he reached down and gripped her bra, and she lifted her arms and that was gone as well.

Then it was just skin and underwear and rolling on his bed, messing up the blankets. She’d chewed gum in the car and her mouth tasted of mint and vanilla. Seth couldn’t get enough of it. His tongue swept in long, mindless arcs through her mouth.

She wiggled against him and Seth rolled to his back, let her stretch out on top of him. He’d never been with a woman like Sarah before. She was strong and secure and comfortable in her skin. She was feminine but not in the least bit fragile—Seth wasn’t worried at all about hurting her.

Except…

What the hell are you doing? a voice asked in his head.

You’re going to ruin this girl.

Either you’ll destroy your relationship with secrets or you’ll burden her with a secret she’ll have to protect forever.

If you care about her, you won’t do this.

But I can’t turn her away. I can’t turn back now. I can’t. I can’t.

Seth’s thoughts swirled so hard in his head that he had to break the kiss, grip her almost naked body to his and turn his face toward the wall.

She panted in his arms, the damp of her exertion mixing with his. He’d had plenty of sex and he still didn’t think that his body had ever been closer to another person’s than he was right now.

He felt torn in two. His body was still racing, racing, racing toward Sarah. Toward everything, as much as he could get, as fast as he could get it. But his brain was stuck twenty yards back, in the muck, in the terrible bog of responsibility and restriction.

“Seth?” She lifted her head from where she’d rested it on his shoulder and braced herself up on her arms. Her hair fell all around them. “Is everything all right?”

How to explain to her that everything was simultaneously perfect and terrible all at once?

Because he couldn’t not touch her, he brought his hands to her back, stroking her smooth nakedness in a way that soothed and aroused both of them. He sifted through combinations of words in his head, trying to think of the correct way to ask what he so badly needed to ask.

“Sarah… you don’t think you’re going to fall in love with me, do you?”

He was immediately, viciously aware that he’d asked that question in, arguably, the worst way possible.

“Excuse me?”

“I just mean… well, I guess I’m wondering what direction you think this—us—is going in?”

“Well,” she glanced down at her naked breasts. “I was thinking this was headed in the direction of sex.”

He was swamped with both relief and disappointment at her flippant answer. “So, that’s what this is to you? Just sex?”

Her brow furrowed and she pushed up, all the way off of him. She crossed her legs and leaned her elbow on one of her knees, cradling her head. He so admired her comfort with her own nakedness. She didn’t attempt to cover herself at all. She just stared at him with those amber eyes of hers. He suddenly found that he wanted to cover himself up. He felt certain that she was seeing way more than he wanted her to.

“I’m feeling,” she finally started, “like there’s a right answer and a wrong answer to that question, but I sure as hell can’t figure out which answer you want to hear. Actually, I don’t even think you know what answer you want to hear.”

He grimaced. She’d gotten it in one. She was reading him like a book. He’d never been so transparent in his life.

“Sarah…”

“So, I guess I’ll just tell you the truth.” She let out a long breath and he scented vanilla and mint on the air. It made him want to drown in her. He forced himself to lay still on the bed and hear her out. “I want to move forward with you, Seth. And I want to do it naturally. In a way that feels good. I don’t want to sign any verbal contracts about how I’ll feel in the future before I kiss you or sleep with you. I can’t predict the future, and I refuse to be beholden to something I’ve agreed to before I had all the information. And let me remind you that you are the one who is withholding information. So, I really don’t think you have the right to be asking me to agree to anything.”

Her eyes searched his and under her scrutiny, he found he had to move, to do something. So he sat up and ran two hands roughly over his hair, frustration with himself rising quickly within him.

“You’re that scared of hurting me, Seth?” she asked after a minute. “You’re so terrified of what, of being the bad guy, that you’re over there trying to write invisible ink clauses into a contract you’re desperately trying to get me to sign?” He could feel her eyes searching him as she continued. “You want me. Obviously. But you also want it in writing that you won’t end up hurting me. That we’ll both be okay in the end. Hasn’t anyone ever told you that’s not how relationships work? That’s not how life works?”

The questions she asked him could have sounded caustic or snarky, but her tone was genuine. She was truly perplexed by his behavior. To her, it was childish and defensively protective.

“I’m not trying to keep myself from getting hurt,” he told her, rolling up from the bed and adjusting his erection in his underwear. He strode over to the bedroom window and looked out at his dark backyard for a second. “Truly. I could give a shit about myself. It’s you I’m worried about. I just want to make sure that whatever this thing is between us doesn’t steamroll your life.”

“Why is that?” Again, she sounded genuinely serious.

He turned back to her and was momentarily floored by the sight of her sitting topless on his bed in a nest of snarled blankets. She was still flushed, her lips still plumped from his kisses. She was Athena. Hera. Helen of Troy. Toned and golden and looking at him like he was worth figuring out.

“Why don’t you ‘give a shit’ about yourself?” she pushed. “Most people care to protect their own feelings at least a little bit. Why not you, Seth? Why is this all about me and my feelings?”

His chest squeezed down a little bit and he paced back, turning his back to her and sitting on the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. It’s just the way I am.”

It’s what happens when you’re born dangerous. You take care of others before you take care of yourself. Caring about the welfare of others is the only thing that keeps me from being a monster.

He couldn’t say that out loud and expect her to get it. Not without telling her everything. He gripped his hair in frustration and bent forward. He was so freaking sick of this endless circle of logic. Everything came back to the push and pull of both wanting her and wanting her to be safe at the same time.

“Can I ask you something?” Suddenly, she was pressed up against him, her breasts smashed against his back and her arms around his shoulders. She nestled her chin into the crook of his neck.

Even in his distress, he couldn’t help but relax a little in her arms. She was just so warm. So strong. It felt good to be held by her. Like she was a safety belt for all the terrible shit that life threw his way. “Shoot.”

“Do you ever just take what you want?”

He was quiet for a long time. “What I want is usually tied up in what other people want.”

“I’m not asking about other people. I’m asking about you. Do you ever take what you want?”

He frowned. “I guess… I’m more of a giver than a taker.”

“So, that would be a no, then?”

“Yeah. That’s a no.”

Her heat slipped away from his back and he suddenly felt cold without her there. She stepped off the bed and came around in front of him. Her hair was a dark, almost amber-ish gold in the lamplight and he’d never seen her eyes look darker. Her mouth was tilted up at the corners in a mischievous way, but her eyes were intensely genuine. “Tonight we’re gonna fix that.”

“What?”

“Tonight, Seth, you’re gonna take what you want.”

His brow furrowed as his stomach tightened down. “Sarah—”

“Don’t argue with me.”

He had to admit it was very hard to argue with her while she stood there in just a pair of black panties, her hair spilling over her shoulders and her hands on her hips. Her breasts were tipped with raspberry and he so wanted to lean forward and test her with his teeth. But, as usual, he held himself back. Back from her, and he realized, back from his own desires.

“I can see you fighting it, Seth.” She sighed. “I guess I’m just going to have to take matters into my own hands.”

“What do you—holy shit!”

Seth jolted when she marched up to him and fell to her knees between his spread legs. She leaned forward and landed her mouth on his cock, over the fabric of his underwear. He’d never felt a mouth that hot and it immediately made his hips jut up an inch off the bed. She took the opportunity to dig her fingers into the elastic of his briefs and yank them down his hips. She was moving so fast she scratched his skin and Seth hissed, his vision going hyper-HD as adrenaline flooded his system.

“Sarah,” he groaned. “It’s not supposed to go like this.”

But she was too busy yanking his underwear down his ankles and tossing them away to answer.

“Sarah—” he tried again but cut off when she lunged forward, closed her lips around the head of his cock and swallowed him down as far as she could go. “Fuck.”

He gripped the sheets under his hands, making fists so hard he thought his fingernails might split. This was all wrong. And he was a bastard for enjoying it so freaking much. He hadn’t even kissed her breasts yet. He certainly hadn’t made her come. And here she was, already on her knees for him? This wasn’t right. No, no, no.

“Yes, yes, yes,” he chanted as she gave him a good hard suck, came up for air and swallowed him down again. “F-u-ck.”

He dropped his head back and stared at the ceiling, praying for strength of any kind.

Suddenly she popped off of him and he looked back down at her. She grabbed the base of him with one hand and jacked him for a minute, using a twist of the wrist that brought his hips off the bed again.

“You’re still holding back,” she informed him.

“Ah, shit. I really don’t think I am,” he panted as he couldn’t help but jack his hips up to fuck her hand.

She reached forward and pried one of his hands from the sheets, tangling it in her hair and flattening her palm over his fingers. Her eyes bored into his, demanding, raw, powerful. “Seth. I’m not delicate. I’m not going to break. And I’ll tell you to stop if I’m not into it. But until then, you have one job. Take. What. You. Want.”

She pushed on his hand, which pushed on her head and suddenly Seth found himself shoving her down on his cock, making her swallow more than she had before. He could barely believe what he was looking at.

He’d gotten head before. But never with a woman on her knees, never with his hand on the back of her head jamming his cock into her mouth. It was new and barbaric and… “Fuck, that’s hot,” he couldn’t help but groan. She pulled off him and grinned and then she was taking him in again and Seth was helping her, showing her the exact pace he wanted, finding he liked pulling her unexpectedly off of him as much as he liked pushing her down onto him.

He was no stranger to twofers but as he felt his orgasm nearing, he realized that this wasn’t exactly how he wanted to pop. He wanted it to be at least partially romantic. And as hot as this was, romantic it wasn’t.

So, he pulled Sarah off of him and tugged her to her feet. He yanked her closer to stand between his legs, his cock smashing against her thighs as his arms came around her and he crushed their mouths together.

“I want you on your back.”

She almost scrambled to comply, her eyes as heated as her mouth was delighted. She’d lit a fire within him and Seth wasn’t sure it was in his power to put it out.

It was a new idea. Taking.

He’d always been so ungodly terrified of it that he’d never let himself consider that taking might be super fucking hot.

Sarah laid on her back on the bed, her breasts tipping lustily to the sides and Seth’s mouth watered as he stood over her. He hooked his thumbs in her panties and dragged them down her legs.

“Spread.” Was that his voice sounding two decibels too low and as gravelly as if he’d taken it outside and beaten it?

She immediately complied, bending her legs at the knee and planting her heels as wide as she could.

He could only stare at the shiny pink heaven between her legs. She looked soft and warm and wet and everything Seth wanted to lose himself in for the next few hours. He could just barely catch the scent of her wetness and it was damn near close to destroying him.

She’d had sex before and those dudes hadn’t done every single thing they could to keep her? What the hell was wrong with people?

“More,” he grunted, barely even knowing what it was that he was referencing. He wanted more of it all. More everything.

As he watched, she slicked one hand down, between her breasts and over her flat stomach. To his eternal, burning delight and lust, her hand went between her legs. Seth watched, hypnotized, as she used two fingers to spread herself open for him. To show him absolutely everything.

Here he was taking and there she was giving it all up. What had he ever done to deserve this?

And more importantly, when had his cock ended up in his hand? He pumped himself as he looked at her, his chest massively compressing and expanding with each breath he could barely control.

And then he was on one knee on the bed, leaning toward her, crawling forward toward nirvana. Sarah still held herself open which meant that Seth could keep one hand on his cock when he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to her pussy.

Normally, he would have spent a lot of time kissing her everywhere. Her thighs, her mound, along the seam of her. He would have opened her slowly, starting at her clit and working his way methodically through her pleasure.

But the second his mouth touched her, Sarah’s heels dug into his back. “Take it, Seth, just take everything you want,” she gasped.

And he was gone.

He slowly, thoroughly, inexorably, pushed his tongue into her tight channel. Sarah’s legs clamped around his head and he unhanded himself to grip her hips, pull her more tightly against his mouth.

Seth lapped at her, going further into her with each stroke of his tongue. When he’d gone as deep as he could, he kissed his way up to her clit and gently stroked over her in messy patterns. First one finger and then the next pressed inside of her.

He was lost to the cyclone of making love to her, but he was still a perfectionist at heart, he couldn’t just throw all technique out the window and expect results. So, he curled his fingers inside of her, searching for her g spot. When he found it, he petted her there like she deserved everything he had to give.

“Fuck!” Sarah shouted and her heels dug even harder into his back. Her hips were moving of their own accord against his face until he dropped his free forearm over her hips and held her down. “Seth. Yes. Just like that.”

She grabbed a hank of his hair and nearly yanked it out of his head but that didn’t surprise him. It only fueled him further. She was a tough woman and she fucked as hard as she lived, apparently, demanding as much from her partners as she did from herself.              

Seth kept with her, sucking and stroking, his cock grinding into the mattress until Sarah’s body bowed tightly, all her air expelled and Seth could feel each one of her ten perfect toes pressed against his back.

They both fell slack at the same time but Sarah didn’t stay that way for long. She slid out from under him and crawled across his bed, slamming through his nightstand drawers.

He knew what she was looking for but could barely find the oxygen to tell her where to find them.

“If I don’t find a fucking condom in the next ten seconds,” she griped.

“Then what?” he asked, a smile on his face.

She turned back to him. “Is that a challenge?”

He grinned, rolling on to his back. She fell halfway over him, her hip on his shoulder and her mouth at his hipbone, his dick bobbing in the air as if it were begging for his attention.

“Tell me where the condoms are,” she said, as she sucked him into her mouth with a bright, hard pressure.
“Fuck!”

“Seth…” she swallowed him down and then popped off of him. “Tell me where your organized little brain thought the best place for them would be or else I’m going to…” she took him all the way to the back of her throat and his hips came off the bed.

“Fuck,” he panted again. “They’re in the—they’re in the—stop doing that for a second so I can think.” His hand naturally found its way back into her hair and she came up off his dick smiling.

“I’m guessing you’ve stashed them someplace extremely logical, but also more discreet than a nightstand drawer. That would seem much too crass to you.”

Later he would marvel at how well she seemed to know him, but right now, it was all he could do not to come all over her face. Which sounded like fun, but also like maybe something he didn’t want to do the first time they ever hooked up.              

“Sock drawer,” he gasped. “Close enough not to ruin the mood to get them but also unexpected enough for Raph not to know where they are if he wants to steal my stash when he’s too lazy to buy his own.”

Sarah laughed and immediately rolled away from him, standing stark naked in front of his dresser, rifling through the drawers. She came back a second later, already tearing open the condom.

She crouched next to him, gripping him and sliding the condom onto him while Seth hissed through clenched teeth.

“What are you gonna do now, Seth?” she asked. “Are you gonna lay me back and fuck me sweetly? Are you gonna put me on top? Or are you gonna give us both what we want and take it all?”

She was goading him and he knew it, but he couldn’t stop himself from rising to the bait. Seth reared up and grabbed her around the waist. He gently pushed her down so that she lay flat on her stomach on top of the covers. He pushed her legs open and marveled at the sight of her toned, golden body, laid out for the taking. He hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to her ass yet. It was perfect, round and pert and strong.

Seth leaned down and bit her ass, making her yelp and laugh. He spread her wide and kissed her from her spine all the way down to her pussy. She squirmed and moaned and gripped the bedsheets as he did. When he found her ready, even wetter than she’d been when he’d first gone down on her, Seth sat back on his heels and held the base of his cock with one hand.

“You want it, Sarah?”

“I want it.”

You want me inside you?” He trailed one hand over the perfect globes of her ass, kneading and grabbing her.

“Yes.”

“Just like this? You want me on top of you just like this?”

“God, yes.”

Well, that was all the confirmation he needed. Seth kneed her legs open even further, grabbing her by the waist and dragging her toward him. He positioned the tip of his dick right at the opening of her heat before he settled his weight over her. His elbows rested on the bed on either side of her shoulders, his chest to her back, his mouth a breath away from hers where their faces twisted to be close to one another.

“I’m gonna take it, baby,” he whispered into her panting mouth.

“Yes.”

Seth pushed forward, into her, inexorably. The fit was tight, but he knew, without a doubt, that he’d fit her perfectly if he was patient enough.

And Seth could be patient. He could wait for the good parts. In some ways, he’d been practicing his entire life. He just hadn’t known that he’d be rewarded so well for it.

A string of words he’d never remember left Seth’s mouth as he slowly worked himself into her tight sheath. Sarah’s lips moved under his and he gulped down her exhales. And then he was fully inside her, flush against her.

 “More,” she whispered. “More weight. More everything.”

He let a little more of his weight push down onto her and she moaned and arched against him.

“Everything, Seth,” she whispered again.

And he couldn’t stop himself from doing just that. He’d tried so hard to hold parts of himself back, but she demanded everything from him, and he couldn’t deny her.