“You’re doing great.”
I jerk off the bed before I understand why. She pinched my nipple, twisted it. Not in a cute way.
“The fuck? That hurt!”
“Tell me what you want.”
Her eyes are intent, her mouth set in this no-nonsense line. She looks like classroom Caroline, sure of herself, ticked at me for keeping her from completing this lesson to her satisfaction.
I love her like this.
“Suck me,” I say. “Hard.”
She smiles this little smile. Totally satisfied with herself. “Thank you.” Her head drops down again. “Now, keep talking to me, or I’m going to drive home and you’ll be all alone with your right hand. Or is it your left, since you’re left-handed?”
I don’t think I’m supposed to answer the question. Not when she’s crawling down my body, ass in the air. I want my hands on that ass. Get her turned around, pussy in my face, dripping all over me while she sucks me off.
I’ve said shit like that to her on the phone, when I was too far gone to stop myself, safe because I was a couple thousand miles from her. But it’s different to think about saying it to her face. Does she like that, or does she just put up with it? Where do girls like Caroline draw the line?
When she wraps her hand around me, I reach down, show her where to pull the skin tight. “Here.”
She takes over. Then she’s licking me again, flicking her tongue over the head, sucking me into her mouth. Sucking hard.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
She pops me out of her mouth long enough to say, “That’s more like it.”
There are no girls like Caroline. Just Caroline.
She’s more than enough.
She sucks me, licks me, tongues me in the spot I show her until I’m lifting off the bed, my legs stiff, my dick so hard I can’t possibly last. When she goes for my balls this time, I show her where to stroke behind them, where to press—oh, fuck, she’s a quick study.
“Turn around,” I say, but I’m not sure she understands me. Not sure I can make words that actually come out sounding like English.
“Caroline. I—can you—gnuh.”
“Eh?” she teases.
I sit up, grab under her arms, haul her up my body. Her lips are shining, wet, and I kiss her, get my tongue inside her, get my hand in her panties and my fingers into her slickness. She’s slippery, soaking. God damn.
She moans into my mouth. “West.”
“Turn around,” I tell her.
“What?”
“Turn around. Get your hips up here”—I tug her toward my face—“and your mouth back down there.”
“That’s … Can’t we just have sex now?”
For a second I’m dumbfounded. When I manage to gather a few brain cells together, I say, “Honey, we are having sex.”
Her cheeks are already pink, but now they turn red. Which is hilarious. I mean, I’ve got my fingers inside her, she’s riding my hand, still moving in this soft up-and-down even as we’re talking, hair all loose around her shoulders, fucking beautiful—and now she’s going to get shy on me?
“What did you think this was?” I ask.
“I know. I mean, yes, I’ve heard Quinn’s sex-doesn’t-have-to-include-a-dick lecture, too. But I meant, you know, were we going to have sex sex. Penis-in-vagina sex. Sex.”
I raise an eyebrow. “Penis-in-vagina sex?”
“Shut up.”
“No, I mean, that’s romantic. That’s probably the most romantic proposition I’ve ever heard.”
She’s laughing. “Shut up.”
I move my fingers and push her onto her back. Look deep into her eyes. Say, real serious, “Caro, I would love to have penis-in-vagina sex with you.”
She smacks my arm, and then I kiss her, and then … damn. It’s like we’ve been playing around and now we’re not. At all. The kiss gets intense, fast, her hands are everywhere, grabbing at me, positioning my hips where she wants me, where I’m grinding against her. Her panties are in my way, and I’ve had enough of that. I yank them down, pull them off her ankles, push her knees apart and lick between her legs until she’s making these quiet, helpless sounds that I fucking love.
“West,” she says.
Yeah. I know. She wants me inside her, and if I don’t get there in the next thirty seconds, the world might as well end.
“Hold on. Don’t move. Not one inch.”
I get up, grab a condom from the desk, rip it open, and roll it on with my eyes on Caroline on my bed, legs spread open, wet and ready, her body, her mouth, her smile, her eyes.
“I’m getting cold.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Then I’m back over her, my dick sliding over her warm, soft pussy, our mouths meeting, her arms around me. “You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
I reach down. Find the right spot, the right angle.
I ease into her. Inch by inch. Slow, because I don’t want to hurt her, because it’s been a while for both of us, because I don’t want to embarrass myself and come before we’re even hardly started.
Slow, because I want to watch her face, and, fuck, it is romantic. It is special.
It’s Caroline.
When I’m all the way in, her knees spread wide, her eyes right with me, I kiss her. I just stay there, not moving, because I’ve wanted to be here, with her, for so long, but I didn’t think I ever would.
It’s torture. The worst best torture of my life.
This is what deeper feels like.
This is what sex feels like, if you’re doing it right.
If you’re in love.
It’s incredible.
I frame her face between my palms, smooth her hair off her forehead. “You okay?”
I thought this couldn’t get better, but it does when she smiles. And when she moves, rocking her hips experimentally into me, then back away—Christ Jesus. I suck in a breath and close my eyes.
“I’m great.”
“Good.”
I’m not ready to move yet. I’ve been told I have amazing stamina, but it’s obvious now that this is only true when I don’t give a shit. With Caroline, I’m going to have to work hard just to not be the king of the premature ejaculators.
“West?”
She rocks again.
“Hunh?”
“Are you going to fuck me or what?”
“I ever tell you I don’t like bossy women?”
She slithers away beneath me, then thrusts up. Her mouth falls open in a soft O. Then she smiles and looks at me, like, I’m such a genius.
She does it again. “You—oh—like me, though—oh my God.”
Whatever tiny piece of control I was holding on to, I lose it. I start to move, and she’s right with me. I suck her tits, kiss her neck, behind her ear, everyplace she likes. I drive into her, savoring every stroke, the tight clasp of her cunt, the way she moans, the slide of our bodies, the sex stink better than any perfume, the taste of sweat at her throat.
“Can you come like this?” I ask.
“I don’t … know.”
I get a hand under her ass, angle her up. She squeaks.
“Better?”
“Oh, wow.” After a few seconds, she says, “Harder.”
Music to my ears.
I speed up, stop banking my thrusts, let her have more of my need, more of my greed, and she takes it. She wants it. She gets her legs around me, digs her heels into me on every stroke, lifts up into me, and says, “West, yeah, oh, God.” I didn’t think she’d be like this, this open, this loud, but she is and I love it.
“This gonna work?”
I don’t have to ask, though. She’s tossing her head, heels back on the bed, digging in, getting restless and desperate. “Please,” she says. “Please.”
She always begs me when she’s about to come. I love that, too. I love making her so crazy that she loses her pride and just begs.
“So fucking sexy.”
Then we’re moving fast and frantic, and I don’t have any way to describe it that’s worth anything. I push into her until there’s nowhere to get to, until I’ve already got there, and there’s no her or me, just us, our bodies, our heat, this gathering pleasure white-hot and dangerous, too dangerous, but I don’t care. I can’t think.
I can only move with Caroline, deep, deeper, all the way toward the center of something bigger than either of us.
She tightens. I groan. She grips me. I kiss her.
She moans and her voice breaks, a beautiful cracked-open sound. My balls tighten, the joy searing through me, her eyes closing, her arms clenching, my heart open as I watch her light up with pleasure.
MARCH
Caroline
We got five weeks.
I’d teased West for counting the days of our separation, even though I spent them dragging around, doubting myself, wrecked with missing him. But when we were together—the last two weeks of February, the first three weeks of March—it was so good that every day felt like an anniversary. Every day felt special, worth pressing into a scrapbook, sealing in amber, tucking away.
Nights at the bakery. Showers at the apartment, a snack in the quiet kitchen, trying not to wake Krishna, laughing behind my hand. Mornings in West’s bed, hands and mouths and the slow, beautiful rhythm of his body rocking into mine.
The way he moves has always made me crazy, but there is nothing like the way he moves inside me. Nothing.
I didn’t know it could be like that. So dirty and so good. So gorgeous and perfect.
For five weeks, we were always together. I went back to my vampire schedule, napping in the afternoons, waking up in the middle of the night and meeting him at the bakery for his shifts. I studied at the library when he was working there, set myself up in a carrel on the fourth floor and waited in the quiet for him to find a cart of journals that needed shelving. I pushed my fingers into his hair when he dropped to his knees beneath my chair, bit my thumb to keep from crying out, came against his fingers and his tongue, scandalous and forbidden and happy.
He kissed me in the dining hall. I took his hand when we walked across the quad. We raced each other down the train tracks, one on each rail, balancing with our arms out, pushing at each other’s hands to see who could stay on the longest, who would fall off, who would win.
Those were the best weeks. In the dead of February, the frozen cold, I had West, and we were beautiful and bright, friends and lovers, laughing all the time. Laughing until my cheeks ached and my stomach hurt and I had to ask him to stop, because it was so good, it hurt.
I loved him.
I didn’t tell him, but it was obvious. Obvious to me, obvious to West.
Obvious to anyone who was paying attention.
West is sitting on the edge of the mattress, bent over his phone. He’s got an eight o’clock. I don’t have to be up for another hour, but I’m up anyway. West had ideas.
Or, okay, West’s penis had ideas. I woke up to his mouth on my neck, his hand heavy and hot against my stomach, his erection pressing against my ass.
“Good morning?” I said. Because I wasn’t all that sure. That it was good, or that it was even morning.
“Mmm.”
That was pretty much all it took to convince me. He has this way of humming under his breath, this low, delicious sound that vibrates right up against my clit. It’s so sexy. It’s so West. One mmm, and I’m in.
I mean, what’s there to complain about when you’re with a guy who’s gorgeous and nice and who wakes you up with the slow, inexorable press of his fingers into your panties, parting your folds, sliding over your clit and inside you?
Nothing.
He got me breathing heavy, flipped me over, eased a pillow under my stomach, and moved into me from behind, his hand at my clit, kissing my neck, my shoulders, until I came so hard I saw stars.