I nod, cupping his face. He wrecks me with his play, with his command that so easily melts into adoration. I close my eyes, sinking my hands into his hair as he kisses down my neck, sucking my br**sts, my navel, parting my legs with his hands.
I’m sore from his rough treatment only minutes ago, but he’s careful now, blowing a soft stream of air across me, whispering, “Let me see you.”
Ducking, he kisses my clit, licks slowly around. “I love to taste you, do you notice?”
I curl my hands into fists around the pillowcase.
“I think this sweetness is just for me. I pretend your desire has never been like this.” He dips a finger inside and brings it up to my lips. “For everyone else it was never so silky and sweet. Tell me it’s true.”
I let him slide his finger inside and suck, wanting to make this night last for days. I’m wild for him, hoping he stays here with me. Hoping he doesn’t retreat to the office and work until dawn.
“Isn’t it perfect?” he asks, watching me suck. “I’ve never loved a woman’s flavor as much as I love yours.” He climbs up my body, sucking at my lips, my tongue. He’s hard again, or maybe he’s hard still, and he grinds into my thigh. “I crave it. I crave you. I’m too wild for you. I want you too much, I think.”
I shake my head, wanting to tell him he could want me more and wilder but the words get stuck in my throat when he returns his lips to my pu**y, licking and sucking so expertly now that I arch off the bed, crying out.
“Like this?” he purrs.
“Yes.” My hips press up from the mattress, greedy for his fingers, too.
“I’d be your slave,” he whispers, sliding two fingers into me. “Give me nothing but this and your mouth and your quiet words and I’d be your slave, Cerise.”
I don’t know how it happened, or when exactly, but he knows how to read my body, knows my tells. He teases me, pulling each sensation longer and tighter, making me wait for the orgasm I’ve wanted for what begins to feel like days. With his tongue, and his lips, his fingers, and his words he brings me to the edge over and over until I’m writhing beneath him, sweating, begging for it.
And just when I think he’ll finally let me come, he pulls away instead, wiping his mouth with his forearm as he climbs over me.
I push up onto my elbows, eyes wild. “Ansel—”
“Shh, I need to be inside when you come.” With quick hands, he rolls me onto my stomach, spreads my legs, and slides in so deep I gasp, bunching the pillowcase in my fists. His groan vibrates through my bones, along my skin, and I feel the continued buzz of it as he begins to move, his chest pressed to my back, breath hot on my ear.
“I’m lost in you.”
I gasp, nodding frantically. “Me, too.”
His hand slides underneath me and presses, circling against my clit. I’m right there
right there
right there
and I go off like a bomb the second he presses his lips to my ear and whispers, “What you feel, Cerise? I feel it, too. Fuck, Mia, I feel everything for you.”
Chapter SEVENTEEN
IT’S NOT THAT I don’t already think about Ansel a hefty proportion of the time, but after last night I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him. While I sit outside at the café the next evening with Simone, I’m tempted to see if I can get him to play hooky with me tomorrow, or maybe drop in and see him tonight for a change. Being an eternal tourist alone is growing dull, but keeping busy is the far preferable alternative to being home with my thoughts all day, with the increasingly loud countdown clock ticking away in the back of my mind.
“Today was so f**king long,” she groans, depositing the keys into her purse before rifling through it. Searching for her ever-present vapor cigarette, I suppose. Being around Gruesimone is a paradoxical comfort: she’s so unpleasant, but it makes me love Harlow and Lola even more, and seeing them is the one thing I’m looking forward to when I return home. Simone pauses, eyes lighting up when she finds the familiar black cylinder in one of the inner compartments.
“Fucking finally,” she says, and holds it to her mouth before frowning. “Dammit. Dead. Fuck this shit, where are my Marlboros?”
I’ve never felt like more of a bum in my life, but I don’t even care. Every time I consider getting organized to move home, my mind bends away, distracted by the pretty, shiny life right in front of me. The far preferable one where I can pretend money is endless, I don’t really need to go to school, and it’s easy to silence the gnawing voice in the back of my thoughts telling me I need to be a contributing member of society. Just a few more days, I keep telling myself. I’ll worry about it in a few more days.
Gruesimone produces a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a silver Zippo from her bag. She lights up beside me, moaning as she inhales like that cigarette must be better than chocolate cake and all the orgasms combined. For a moment, I seriously consider taking up smoking.
She takes another long drag, the tip burning orange in the dim light. “So when do you leave again? Like three weeks? I swear to God I want your life. Living in Paris just for shits and giggles for an entire summer.”
I smile and look past her as I lean back, barely able to see her face through the plume of acrid smoke. I try the words out for size, to see if they still ring with the same feeling of panic: “I start business school in the fall.” I close my eyes for a moment and breathe. Yep, they do.