THE BENCH WAS narrow, but Nicky pointed out, "You do ab work on the incline bench, just hold on." I put my hands behind me next to my head and held on. Our clothes had ended up in a pile on the floor. He did me by hand, using his fingers to find that sweet spot that was possible from the undignified angle of me on the bench, legs up and half bent, him holding one leg so that he could put one knee on the bench and get the angle his fingers needed to stroke over and over, fast and faster, that sweet spot inside me. He brought me screaming, fighting my body to hold on to the bench and not forget that if I let go, I'd fall.
He moved his fingers out of me, and between my legs to find that other sweet spot that was outside. My words came out breathy, as I said, "Fuck me."
"Not yet," he said, and his voice was growling deep again.
"Why not?" I breathed.
He stroked over and around me, staring at my face as he did it. "Because I've seen what the other men in your bed do to you, Anita. I want you to want me, and that means I have to bring my A-game, because anything less and you don't have to fuck me. If I don't put effort in, you'll go to someone who does."
It was hard to think with his fingers playing with me, but I tried. "I enjoy you. You're... great."
"You've got at least two lovers who are better at oral sex than I am. You've got two who are bigger than I am."
I started to try to comfort him, but he said, "I'm okay, I don't have to be the biggest boy in your bed." He started moving his fingers faster, a little harder. The pleasure began to build between my legs, and my face must have shown it, because he grinned. "Yeah, that's it. I love that look on your face."
One moment the weight was building, and the next, that wave of pleasure burst over me, poured through me, danced over my skin, my body, as if every muscle, every piece of me had become nothing but the joy, the sensation of it. I shrieked, head back, back trying to arch against the bench. Nicky called out, "Anita!" His hand was suddenly pressing against my sternum, pressing, holding me to the bench, while I rode the orgasm, and his fingers kept it going, until I lay boneless, eyes fluttering, and blind with the pleasure of it.
He was laughing, that deep, masculine chuckle that men have inside them when they are particularly pleased with themselves, usually about sex.
I tried to see me, tried to force my eyes to work, and the world not to be soft-edged and blurry, but another aftershock made me writhe on the bench, and Nicky's hands were wrapping around me, lifting me.
I had time to try to make my arms work enough to hold on to his arms. He moved both his hands down to my thighs and lifted me slightly, and then he sat me down on top of him, and slid the tip of him inside me. It stole the breath from my throat, too soon after the last orgasm, so that the sensation of him sliding inside me, his hands controlling how slow he entered me, was almost overwhelming. It felt so good, so... my eyes fluttered shut again, my hands convulsing on his arms, trying to hold me where he wanted me, while he guided our bodies together.
When he was as deep inside me as he could go, he said, "God, that feels so amazing."
I managed to gasp, "Yes, oh, yes."
Then he bent forward, pressing me back onto the bench with his body still buried as deep inside me as he could go.
"We'll fall," I said. The thought was helping clear my head a little.
"Hold on to my arms, I've got this."
I did what he asked, and the happy after-fog was drifting away on my very real fear we would fall off the narrow bench.
He raised my hips a little, angling my legs up and to either side. He steadied me while I found the angle I wanted with him on top, and then he put his hands on either side of me, wrapping them around the edges of the bench, in a reverse grip of what I'd done earlier. He stayed sitting up, his legs on either side of the bench, my legs on either side of his hips and waist, and he began to move himself in and out of me.
"On the bench," I said, eyes a little wide and not just from afterglow.
"On the bench," he said, and he raised his hips a little, lengthening out his upper body above me like a roof of muscle and flesh. His arms were moving with the rhythm of his body inside mine, and I transferred my grip back to the bench, one careful hand at a time. Once I wasn't holding on to him, he changed his angle and started finding a serious, quick, deep rhythm. I watched his body work above mine, only his hips and that long, hard piece of him touching me at all. Technically with the man above me it was supposed to be missionary position, but this was as far from that as you could get and still have the man on top.
The long fall of his bangs began to swing forward at the downstroke so that I could see the smooth, creased scar tissue where his other eye would have been. It was only when he was on top, and only at certain angles that I got to see his whole face above me. I'd come to value those glimpses of all of him. I watched the concentration on his face, that distant inward looking, which was his version of trying to last, trying to prolong the amazing things his body was doing inside mine.
He glanced down at me, truly seeing me. He gave a fierce smile and said, in a voice breathy with strain, "You are way too in control. I'm not doing my job."
I don't know what I would have said, because he sped up what he was doing, driving himself faster, harder, but the bench was too narrow, too hard, too something for pounding. He changed to a rolling, stroking rhythm of his hips, proving that he could dance, even with me on my back. It was a softer orgasm than it would have been if he'd just pounded me thoroughly. It built more like a clitoral orgasm, so that I could feel it getting closer.
My voice showed the strain of holding my position on the bench, keeping my arms tensed and holding, while he danced in and out of me, but I managed to say, "Getting close."
"Good," he said, but his eye was closed, he wasn't watching me anymore. His face had that deep, internal look again, but closing his eye meant he was fighting his body, fighting to keep the wonderful rolling, dancing rhythm, to hold us on the bench, to hold on until I came underneath him, fighting to keep everything moving, and not to lose his concentration now, not now, when he'd done so much work to get us to this moment.
Then from one stroke to another, the orgasm caught me, flung me screaming, writhing underneath him. My hands on the bench jerked and fought with the rest of my body, because my hands wanted to rise up and mark his body with my pleasure.
His voice growled over me, "God, God!" He shoved his body one more time so hard and solid that it made me cry out again, and I couldn't decide if it was a new orgasm, or if it was just an extra ending for the first one.
He growled at me, his face wild with it, and his eye lion-orange, his humanity slipping away as he shuddered and growled above me. One last shudder ran through his body from shoulders to hips, making me cry out again, because he was still shoved deep inside me as he shivered.
He half-collapsed over me, head dipping down so that his bangs brushed my face. I could feel the frantic pulse of his body in the side of his neck, the pounding of his heart just above me. He whisper-growled, "You didn't feed."
He was right, I hadn't fed the ardeur. I'd forgotten that was why we were making love. With his body still inside mine, a light sheen of sweat on his chest and stomach, my arms letting me know that I'd held this position and us in place a long time, the afterglow of all that good sex still flowing through my body, and all I could say was, "Well, shit."
He laughed then, and he was still too hard inside me, so that it started me writhing and making small noises again, as I laughed with him. We laughed and twitched, and tried to stay on that damn bench, and I still had to feed.
He finally lifted me up into his arms, so that he held me against the front of him, and I wrapped my rubbery legs around his waist. He was still inside me, but growing softer, so that as he picked me up he slipped out, and we were just holding each other, faces inches apart. There was a light dew of sweat on his forehead, too.
His voice was still breathy, his eye still lion-orange. "I love that you enjoyed it so much you forgot the ardeur."
I smiled at him, arms around his shoulders, hands clasped at the back of his neck. "You were amazing."
He grinned, a quick baring of teeth, more a cat's snarl than a smile. "I've never had to be this good with anyone else."
"Because you feel you're competing against the other men?" I asked.
"That and I've never been with anyone who likes sex the way you do. I have to keep up with you."
I hugged him with my arms, and my legs that were still around his waist. His hands were supporting my legs and ass, but he held me easily; even with the sweat drying on his body, his breathing still not back to normal, he wasn't straining to hold me. He was strong enough to bench-press small cars, but still I was impressed.
"Right back at you," I said.
He grinned again. "You still need to feed."
"God said he'd send Ethan, or Domino; you want to send them in?"
He shook his head. "No."
I widened eyes at him. "You up to it again?"
"I'm a lion, Anita. Give me a minute, and yeah."
I gave a little frown. "Isn't this fast recovery for you?"
"There's usually a line," he said, "so I step out of the way, usually for Nathaniel."
I smiled. "He does share well."
"He likes to watch," Nicky said. He stood up with me still wrapped around him.
I gave him wide eyes, and tightened my arms and legs around him. "Now I am impressed. I'm not sure I could stand yet."
"In your bed, I'm not the biggest, I'm not the most flexible, I'm not multi-orgasmic, I don't have centuries of practice, I'm not even sure that I have the most stamina. Nathaniel and Jean-Claude are scary impressive there." He stood on one leg as he moved us off the bench completely and started walking toward the showers. "But I'm strong, and I can fight, and my physical recovery time from almost anything is really good. Give me a few more minutes and I'll prove it."
He carried me easily, smoothly, as if I weighed nothing. I was strong for my size, I was damn good, but I'd never be able to return the favor. I would never be a really big, physical man, but in that moment I allowed myself to enjoy that I had one to carry me into the showers, instead of being upset that I could never have carried him.