Chapter Seventeen

Carina

THE PIT IN MY stomach melted away the second we pulled into our quaint little driveway and entered our home. “I’m going to take a shower. Wash my face,” I say, waving the book in the air like an explanation.

Smith smiles. It’s almost the smile from a man who feels sympathy, but it’s not. He teeters on that line very gracefully. I give him mad credit for that. I don’t want anyone’s sympathy. Especially from the man I love. With a nod Smith says he’s going to his room to return a few phone calls and asks that I come get him as soon as I’m finished.

Nerves hit me in spades. I shower slowly and shave every square inch of my body. I wash my hair twice and let my face mask soak in longer than I usually do. It’s not because I’m nervous, it’s because I’m trying to forget what this afternoon made me feel. I don’t want to confuse emotions. I want to compartmentalize my time spent in the house of horrors. The shed. The pit in my stomach rears as do images of Greg on top of me grunting, his alcohol laced breath wafting in my face as he drilled me into the wooden floor, his eyes screwed shut and his shirt rubbing against my cheek. He never took his shirt off. Not even once.

I lean over and vomit into the drain. My stomach is empty, so it’s just bile and bad memories. I wash my face one more time and exit the warm shower. There are two sinks, so I make my way to mine and take my time brushing my teeth and blow-drying my hair while I go through Smith’s products. He keeps them in his Dopp kit on the counter because he’s always leaving. I smell his cologne and open the top of his shaving cream and smell that, too. It makes my mouth water. Yes. Smith. That’s what I need to focus on now. The rest of today is gone…buried with Greg.

“Pull your shit together,” I say. Smith makes me feel good about myself. He makes me strive to leave the weak, hurt girl in the past. It’s not one particular thing he does, it’s merely what happens when he’s himself. I know what’s going to happen when I leave this room and find him. I want it to happen. I need to be in the right frame of mind. I want this to be something to be remembered. Something more fantastic than fiction. It can be that just by the fact that it’s us. Smith and Carina. A fact that is frightening as much as it is amazing.

Dabbing my finger on my lips, I gloss on some clear balm. I hear the low, manly timbre of Smith’s voice, so I know he’s still on a phone call. Hanging up my towel behind the door, I cross the hallway naked into my room. “Time to get dressed,” I whisper. My closet is a rainbow explosion of colors. Most of the time I wear black, but recently I’ve been taken with brighter, more daring colors. Folded in the back on a shelf, I find what I’ve been saving for just the right time. “This is it, guys,” I say to the lace bra and panty set. I purchased it at the high-end boutique one day while Jasmine was next door at the market. It’s teal and more risqué than anything I’ve ever worn.

A man like Smith is accustomed to sexy pieces like this, I’m sure. Blue is his favorite color and I know he likes lingerie. He didn’t come out and say those exact words, but through a story in the beginning of the interview process he mentioned it. It had to do with a video chat session and his ex-fiancée while he was deployed.

Delaying our intimacy has been a challenge, and since we moved in together it’s always at the forefront of my mind. At first, I thought something was wrong with me. What type of man delays sexual gratification? From a woman practically throwing herself at him? The answer was a resounding no man I’ve had previous experience with. And that’s a good thing.

I slip the delicate lace into place, put on my silk robe, and then sneak past the office door and into the living room. I have several candles hidden in drawers and cabinets I’ve been planning to light when the moment was right. If this isn’t the moment, then I’m not sure about anything else. Our time together is dwindling. He’s leaving. Also, I can’t face Megan tomorrow being the woman Smith refuses to have sex with. I’m standing my ground. This is happening. We live together.

We’re in crazy love.

I’m lighting the last small candle and sliding it into place on the ledge in front of the bay window when Smith finds me. “You were supposed to come and get me,” he says. I watch his neck work to swallow as his eyes take in my appearance.

I smile. “I was busy. I wasn’t ready to come and get you,” I say.

Smith leans against the open doorframe, crossing one bare foot over the other. “Well, I wanted to be the one to introduce the romance. I’m a little offended you didn’t let me help.” He bites his bottom lip in a smile. Butterflies invade my insides. It’s the opposite reaction of what happened in the shower. It heals the raw, jagged place where I keep bad memories.

“Perhaps you can introduce something else?” I edge.

He taps his chin. “Would it be a true introduction if you’ve already met him?” he says. His joke makes me smile. Pressing my lips into a firm line, I send my gaze to the side wall for a couple seconds. When I look back at him, I nod. Smith laughs, the low tone more erotic than any other laugh I’ve ever heard in my life.

The coffee table is in the center of the room. I bend my leg and push it backward and out of our way. It makes a scratching noise as it goes.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” he asks, standing straight. Through the dim glow of the candlelight I see the contrast of every rippling muscle on his stomach. Absentmindedly I lick my lips. “After today,” he continues when I don’t speak. My eyes find his face and his amused smile morphs into concern. “It has to be perfect.” He crosses to me in a few large strides.

Taking my face in his hands, he says, “It’s the first time. More importantly I want it to be my last first. Our last first.”

Smith is so close I can taste his breaths and smell his skin. “I’m okay,” I reassure him. Placing a kiss on his chest, right over his heart, I tilt my head up to look at his face. “I want this. You mean everything to me. I’m okay when you’re with me.” With his soulful eyes wandering over every inch of my face, I gather what confidence I need and drop the silk robe. The light fabric flutters to the ground around my feet. ”Do you like?” I ask, backing away slowly so his view is unobstructed. His chest rises and falls at a more hurried pace and he doesn’t have to answer me.

With one hand bent behind his head, he reaches down to unbutton and unzip his jeans. “I want you badly,” he says. “You look amazing. Beautiful.”

“Right here?” I ask. Turning in a slow circle so he can appreciate the shards of lace from every angle, I move my feet slowly and let my body sway seductively. “This is where you want me first, right?”

While my back was turned, Smith stealthily closed the space between us. My back against his front, he leans down, moves my hair out of the way and kisses my neck. “You have no idea what this means to me,” he whispers in my ear.

“Show me,” I reply. Pressing my bottom back and against him, I feel his erection. “Show me now because this means everything to me and I want it so badly I’m not sure I can take another second of not having it.” I spin to face him and let my hands find the waistband of his jeans and boxer briefs. In a quick movement, I pull them and follow them down to the floor until I’m kneeling in front of him.

Peeking up, I see his look of awe and utter lust as I take him into my mouth slowly. I let my tongue wind around the tip briefly before I slide him into my mouth as far as my gag reflex will allow. Smith moans, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me. I stroke his thick shaft and lick his balls until I find just the right tempo. His legs are shaking and wetness floods my core in response.

“That feels too good, Care. Enough. Enough,” Smith says, trying to still my head with his hands. “Slow,” he chides, stepping out of his tangled pants.

“I’m too worked up to slow down now,” I pant. Standing, I wrap my hands around his waist as he pushes me back to the center of the room. He kisses my cheek, my forehead, and then my lips. The wet sounds of our mouths and our breaths are the only sounds to be heard. Smith slips his pointer fingers under my bra straps by my collarbone and eases them down until my breasts spring free.

He licks his lips. “We shouldn’t slow down then,” he says. “You’re so fucking beautiful.” Taking one breast into his mouth, he pauses before going to the other. “So goddamn beautiful. I can’t help myself, Care. I want to devour you. Keep you here forever.” I stroke his hair and close my eyes, oblivious to anything except what’s right here and now.

My mind clears completely for all that isn’t Smith Eppington. His muscles are coiled and hard, and his eyes are truly only for me. First, he tosses down a faux fur throw blanket from the sofa and then, bending over, he easily takes my body weight in his arms and lowers us onto the floor. He never stops kissing me. It’s the delirious feeling of floating and falling and consuming him right back. He breaks away briefly and remarks how my panties are his favorite color as he slides them down my legs. I don’t tell him that’s why I chose them. I smile and tell him something more true. “I love you. You know that, right?”

I’m completely naked and my words give him pause. The soft glow of the candles and the moonlight infiltrating our safe place transforms this moment into something magical. “I think I do know that,” Smith replies. “I’ve never heard words that made me happier. Or frankly more turned on.” His cock pulses up in protest. “You have no idea how you affect me. How you’ve always affected me.”

Smith doesn’t give me a chance to respond. He bends his head down and kisses me between my legs with his tongue. He licks me deep and slides a finger in at the same time. He’s just as turned on by it as I am. His breaths come fast and my own hands become frantic. Pulling him closer, writhing under the strong weight of his hands pressing me down. Breaths turn into panting and then into moans. He’s a quick study—knows exactly what gets me off. Tonight I want something more than his magical tongue and fingers. “I want you inside me, Smith,” I beg. With the sides of his face in my hands, he raises his gaze to look at me. “Inside me.”

“That’s an order I can’t ignore,” Smith says, sitting up. He scoots over to sit on the blanket and takes me with him. I walk, on my knees to straddle his legs, and lean forward to kiss his lips—taste my wetness. “How’s that taste?” he asks.

“Like I’m ready,” I reply. I kiss him again and glide my lips down the side of his neck—the bad side—and trail soft kisses across his wide shoulder and back again. His dick is beneath me, warm and hard as steel, flexing and throbbing. “Are you ready?”

He doesn’t reply with words. Smith reaches between our bodies to position himself and with his free hand, pushes my ass down. I cry out. It’s pleasure. It’s pain. It’s unlike anything else in this world. A small groan escapes his lips and into my mouth. “Did I hurt you?” he whispers.

I lean back to look at him and slide up a touch. “You could never hurt me,” I reply. Then I lower myself back down onto his slick cock. It fills me so fully that I don’t want for anything else in this moment. I ride him several more times, connected, melting into blissful oblivion while watching the forever memory dance in his hooded eyes. He works my clit with his thumb, a gentle assault compared to the girth of his member splitting me in two.

I throw my head back and relish all of my senses. The sweet smell of the floral candles burns through the air as do the crickets chirping outside the window, Smith’s lips dragging down my throat as he makes the sweetest of love to me. His body is hard, but his heart is so soft—so ready to love freely without reserve. “I’m going to come. Where?” he grinds out in between clenched teeth. “Where?” he asks again.

We spoke about the fact that I’m on birth control already. “Inside me. I’m coming. Inside me,” I say. It’s jumbled because my thighs are tingling and my whole body is about to fire into the atmosphere, but I’m sure he’s understood. With both hands on my ass he brings me up and down at the speed that he desires. It’s punishing and erotic. I slump over his shoulder and hug him around his neck as I come around him. It’s fast and slow at the same time. The waves of pleasure are so severe that I see stars, my whole body overwhelmed with the satisfaction of release.

Smith brushes several strands of hair away from my face as I continue to slide up and down on top of him. “I need to see your face,” he says, holding my cheek lightly.

“I’m here,” I say.

He licks his lips a moment before his mouth crashes into mine. He kisses me with his eyes open for a second or two and then, with his gaze locked with mine and his hands still on my face, he comes. His eyes flutter closed briefly as he unloads several hot bursts deep inside me. I wrap my legs around his waist and clutch him as tightly and as closely as I can.

I think from this position we can’t be closer. Him inside me, his heart beating against my chest, his chin folded over my shoulder. His breaths falling down my back. It’s all so personal, so vehemently different from what I’m used to. Regardless if this was the right choice—he and I—I now realize this was my only choice.

“Is it wrong that I already want a second time? And a third after that?” Smith asks. I feel the rumble of his spoken words in his chest as he speaks them.

I press a kiss to his shoulder. “You’re still inside me. I don’t think we can count this one over yet,” I reply.

He lets his palm graze down the center of my back until he finds my ass. Then, he lifts me up. Almost to the point where his cock leaves my body, but not quite. When I don’t think I can take another second, he lets me fall back down, taking him all the way in, filling me completely.

I moan, the noise echoing loudly in the room. He hisses out a long breath. “You’re still hard,” I rasp. I run my teeth down the edge of his ear and let my tongue glide along the rim.

“Care, I’m going to be hard anytime you’re in the same room as me for the rest of our lives.” He groans when I suck his earlobe and assault him with a slow ride. “I’m ruined now. In the best fucking possible way.”

I circle my hips in a small circle, forcing a new sensation. “This was beyond all expectations and dreams. Ah, yes. Keep doing that. Fuck,” Smith growls.

“This feels so good. Your cock is so big and thick. It rubs me the right way. I want to come again, filled with you,” I reply. The motion of circling and grinding is the perfect angle for my clit and I feel the sensations of orgasm building again.

He takes my face in his hands. This time he tilts my face to the ceiling and licks a trail from the hollow of my neck up to the bottom of my chin. “Do that. Around my dick.”

I push myself down a little further. And in a quick move, with one arm around my back, he leans me down so I’m resting on the floor. Smith rubs my clit while he thrusts inside me, rubbing my G-spot with the head of his erection. I close my eyes with the uncontrollable bliss of this position. I tell him I’m going to come, and he leans forward so he can kiss my lips while I explode, my core clenching as much as it can around his girth.

I pant several long, drawn out breaths, my chest heaving with exertion and pleasure. “I can’t even breathe that was so good,” I whisper. The scent of sex and the candles warps my reality. It’s like coming to Jesus. Being rescued. Something burned into the core of my being.

“Please breathe. I wasn’t trying to kill you. I promise,” Smith says. “I wanted to make you feel good.”

Feel good. He wanted to make me feel good. Does he have any idea how trivial that sounds coming off the lips of a person who has saved my life? “Smith,” I chide, rubbing the good side of his face. “We knew the sex was going to be like this. This breathing entity of its own. We were made for each other.” His half grin fades as he realizes the magnitude of what we’re feeling together. “Now it will be a chore to keep us off each other because we’ve opened Pandora’s sex box.”

His eyes crinkle in the corners with that comment.

“I’m just glad it meant as much to you as it did to me. It’s why I wanted to wait. To make sure this was it,” he says. Smith winces as he draws himself out of my body. “That was the most pain I’ve ever been in,” he proclaims, grimacing as he wraps a hand around his slick cock.

I smirk. “Your invitation is open. Anytime.”

He kisses me on the nose and pulls me up to a seated position.

“The fur blanket is going to be sullied in mere seconds.” I raise one brow when I feel his come leak from me, warm and wet. “I never understood that in movies and books. Why do people have sex on fur? It can’t be cleaned easily and it’s possibly the most impractical fabric to use.” I sigh and shift positions to try to dodge the inevitable. Smith pulls me into him, kissing me breathless.

“Maybe they want to mimic a Something about Mary hairstyle, though? Except on fake animal fur.”

“That’s just weird,” I say, my lips brushing his. With his arms wrapped around me right now I feel something I’ve never felt. “You make me feel so safe. Like no matter what happens I’ll always be okay because you’ll protect me. It’s so cliché.” Bust also so true.

“Always,” Smith says, his face buried in my hair. “I’ll always protect you from everything. On my honor.”

You know how when you’re a little girl playing dolls, Ken walks Barbie down the aisle when they get married? It’s mostly because you don’t know any different, but also because he’s the only man doll. Even when I grew up I liked that idea more than a father figure doing the walking. It’s Ken who is changing your life. It’s Ken who will drive the convertible back to the pink mansion. It’s Ken who is rescuing. It’s Ken who is protecting.

Now that’s cliché.

And it’s also the one truth I’m now positive of because Smith Eppington is my Ken. And I want to marry him and keep him forever.