Chapter 14
Jackson
M y pulse quickens, so fast I can hear it in my ears.
I watch Lily as she takes in my home, the one I had built for me before my return to Cider Bay a year and a half ago. Her oversized sweatshirt drapes down over her backside, nearly obscuring her sleep shorts. It’s not hard to imagine she’s not wearing anything underneath the sweatshirt which is bad news for my dick.
“It’s bigger than I imagined,” she says, glancing around at the main living area. “I bet you get amazing light during the day.”
I glance at the geometric paned windows. “Yes, it’s . . . it’s nice.”
Is that really all I can come up with? Nice? Eloquent, Roy.
“Does it get lonely? Living here by yourself?”
Of course, it gets lonely. It has five bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms. It’s designed for a family I don’t yet have. “Not too bad.”
Lily smiles over her shoulder at me. Damn her and the devilish grin. “You’re lying.”
“Is it that obvious?”
She turns and comes back to me, stopping at a distance close enough to kiss me. However, she chooses not to. My body screams in agony. “You’re a bad liar,” she says with a smile.
“Some things never change.”
Lily stands there. Her closeness is tempting in and of itself. “I want to show you something.” The intonation of her words suggests to me that she’s not actually interested in the house. It’s just a guise for . . . for something else.
Of course, I’m not going to assume that she wants that . She’s only just learned of my feelings. We’ve only just agreed to a trial run of a relationship. I’m not going to rush anything.
Unless she rushes first.
“Okay . . . ”
“We should go to your bedroom, though.”
Alright, now I’m assuming. “My bedroom?”
“Yeah, ever heard of it?”
I know I’m flushed. “I have heard of it. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to do something to make up for or—”
“I’ll go find it myself then,” she says and heads off down the dark hallway to the right.
I’m frozen in place for a moment, watching her as she disappears into the shadows of the house. “Wait, you’ll get lost!” I call after her, willing my feet to follow.
Lily giggles from the darkness. I see her silhouette, her hands tracing the walls. “Getting lost is part of the fun sometimes.”
Getting lost has never been fun for me. My life was founded on the idea of being lost. “Lily . . . ”
She stops in front of a door and pushes it open. She disappears inside.
I follow, stopping in the doorframe. “This isn’t my bedroom.”
“It’s a bedroom. That’s all I need,” she says.
My mouth goes dry. “What do you need to show me?”
“Are you playing dumb right now?” Lily asks, hands on hips.
I raise my eyebrows. “I’m . . . not wanting to assume anything.”
She is quiet for a moment. In the silence, my eyes adjust to the dark. She isn’t just the shape of curls and the bulk of her sweatshirt. I can start to make out the shapes of tattoos on her legs, and the contour of her cheeks. “You’ve imagined this, haven’t you?”
I swallow. I could continue to play dumb. But I don’t want to give her the impression that I’m a man who doesn’t know how to take what he wants. There is another side to the coin of being a gentleman. The other side can take control. Be dominant.
It takes time to learn someone and how to exercise it.
“You . . . me . . . alone . . . a bed.”
I chuckle. “Yes. I have.”
“Show me what you’ve imagined, Jackson.”
My knees are weak, and my cock stiffens.
“Please.”
That please tips me over the edge. I leave the safety of the doorframe behind and join her in the swell of darkness. “I can be soft, or I can be rough, Lily. What do you want?”
“I want you, Jackson.”
My heart leaps. I grab the hem of her sweatshirt and tug her toward me until her chest touches mine. Lily’s hands engulf my biceps. She tips her head back and looks up at me with . . . adoration, I think.
I slide her sweatshirt up and place my hands against her skin, the curves of her waist filling my hands. “I’ve imagined . . . ” I begin, feeling something unfurling in my belly. “Fucking you hard and fast and unrepentantly.”
Lily hums, her eyelids filling with lust.
I pull the sweatshirt up over her head. Lily lifts her arms to assist, and, when she emerges from the neck hole, her curls bounce over her shoulders. I regard her bare breasts for a moment. There are words scrawled beneath one. When she notices me looking, she presses them to my chest, their fullness squeezed between us.
“But more often than that . . . ” I slide my hands around her lower back, pushing my hips into her. My cock digs into the softness of her belly. I want to grind against her, but I restrain myself. I let my gaze dance across her face. The tiny streak of her silver nose ring, her dark, sharp eyebrows. “I imagine making love to you.”
Lily’s eyes open again. Wider.
“Worshipping you. Soft and slow. Giving into you just as much as you give into me. Not demanding that you’re mine, but just . . . ” I trail off. I’m overwhelmed with the feeling of impossibility. That in a second all of this will disappear. Lily will poof out of my arms, and I will wake up from a dream, brokenhearted that my brain would hurt me like this.
“Just being,” Lily finishes for me.
I nod once. “Being mine. Yes.”
Lily hooks her arms around me, pressing her hands to my shoulder blades, and pulls me into a kiss. Her tongue immediately delves between my lips, searching and hungry. An invitation.
I rake my fingers through her hair and grip, keeping her mouth pressed to mine. More, more, more.
Lily tears her mouth away from mine but does not leave my airspace. “I can be yours.”
“You can?” I ask, nudging my nose against hers.
She grins. “I can. If you can be mine.”
I feel her words and her smile so deeply that I smile too. “Lily, I’ve been yours. For a long time now.”
Lily fists the bottom of my shirt and untucks it while I work on the buttons for her. We make quiet work of stripping our clothes off, the only sound punctuating the silence being our breath and falling fabric. Eventually, we stand facing one another. Naked as the day we were born.
“You don’t have any tattoos,” Lily remarks, letting her eyes travel down my body.
I’m in good shape. Great even. But being under her gaze puts me on edge. “No, I don’t.”
She touches the tip of her finger to my collarbone, then drags it down my front all the way to the vee of my hips.
“I could change that.”
I chuckle. “No, you couldn’t.”
“Don’t tell me you have something against them, because I hate to break it to you, but I have them everywhere .”
I’m tempted to ask her if she really means everywhere , but I don’t. “No, it’s not that. I’m . . . scared of needles.”
Lily laughs.
“Don’t laugh! It’s true, I don’t even get anesthesia at the dentist. I—”
“It’s cute. I think it’s really cute,” she says.
We engulf one another in an embrace. Kissing deeply again, but there’s no hurry. No rush. We are taking our time because the night is young. There is no pretense that this isn’t real. There isn’t a boundary I’m afraid to cross.
Tonight, we can give and take with abandon.
We kiss until we’re falling onto the bed. I’m careful not to crush her, but Lily pulls me close, wanting all my weight and closeness. Her center is blisteringly hot against my thigh. Already wet.
Lily slides her hand between us and takes my cock in her hand, stroking upward with a tight grip with slowness until she reaches the leaking head.
I groan, lifting myself to watch her hand travel up my length. I’ve wanted her, this, so badly for so long, I’m not sure I can take my time. I might lose myself too quickly.
“What can I do for you, Jackson?” she asks.
So many things. But if she takes me in her mouth, I’m a lost cause, and if she keeps touching me . . .
She presses her thumb underneath the head, and I shudder, digging my fingers into the swell of her hips. “Goddammit, Lil, I just want to be inside.”
We exchange the same breath for a few moments.
“I have condoms. In my room. I’ll have to go get them, but—”
“Don’t,” Lily says urgently. “You can pull out.”
I’m hit first by the prospect of being in her unsheathed. This makes my cock stiffen even more if that were possible. And then I’m hit by the reality of it all. “We’re not teenagers, Lily, you know that’s—”
“Jackson, don’t be all responsible right now,” she says, and she’s way too fucking convincing for her own good. “I’ll take Plan B tomorrow if you’re scared, just . . . please .”
Not the please .
She traces her fingers across my cheek. “Let me feel you.”
I’m already done for. She doesn’t have to beg. I’ll be in her bare if that’s what she wants even though we both are old enough not to take risks. But the risk adds another layer of arousal. A mistake could change the entire story. That mistake would unify us far beyond what either of us have agreed to tonight.
It’s a risk I’m willing to take.
I move my hips back and find her wet center with my length. I rest against the cleft, coating her in her natural lubricant. I lick my fingers and reach between us, finding the sensitive nub of her clit. I can tell I’ve got it right by the way her body jolts, and she lets out a breathless laugh.
“This is crazy,” she says.
Her body shudders again, her hips pressing against my cock. I need to be inside. “We can stop,” I say, though I would have to go immediately relieve myself of this aching erection.
Lily shakes her head vehemently. “No, no, definitely don’t do that.”
I smile and lock my eyes with hers. “You tell me when you’re about to come.”
Lily’s eyes flash.
I work my fingers harder against her clit, circling it, pinching it, pushing it to the brink.
Lily hums and bucks, fingernails digging into my shoulders. “Jackson, oh, my God,” she moans.
I close the space between us, kissing her and collecting her wanton groans into my mouth. They resonate through my body. My throbbing cock begs for the tightness of her pussy, but I don’t want to risk her not coming if I find it difficult to stop myself.
Lily tears her mouth from mine. “Close, I’m close, I’m—”
I remove my hand from between us and brush my hand over her forehead, through her curls. I grab the back of her head. “Look at me when I enter you.”
She pins me with her hazel orbs.
And I plunge into her. Bare and unrestrained.
Moans of pleasure erupt from both our mouths, compounded by the intensity of looking into each other’s eyes. I watch her pupils expand further until there’s barely a ring of color.
“God, you’re tight,” I choke out.
“And you’re big ,” she says.
Before I can ask if she’s okay, if I need to let her stretch, Lily lifts her legs and wraps them around me, pulling me deeper into her. Again, a shared moan.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, you feel good.”
Our bodies twist until we lie on our sides. I grip my hand in her hair, keeping her eyes on mine as I begin to thrust.
Lily’s chin tips up, but she does not look away. Her breathing strains in her throat.
I grab a handful of her ass for leverage and quicken my pace.
And inexplicably, she’s mine.
“You’re so beautiful,” I rasp. “So fucking sexy.”
She laughs.
I fuck her harder and her laugh turns into a whimper of pleasure.
Lily places her hands on my chest. She slides them against my perspiring skin, up to my neck, until her fingers can latch onto my hair. “Jackson . . . ”
I tighten my muscles. I want to release so badly. But not until she comes.
I push her leg back to rest her ankle on my shoulder. Her body snaps back, and she gasps. “What are you doing to me?”
“What I’ve always dreamed of, Lily.”
“That is unreasonably—” She clenches around me. We both feel it. “Unreasonably hot.”
I laugh. Even making love with Lily is fun. I don’t know why I’m surprised. “You can’t do that again or else I’m going to come inside you.”
When her eyes return to me, she smiles. The absolute sweetest smile someone in the throes of passion could give another person. “That’s unreasonably hot too.”
“Don’t you fucking dare . . . ”
She descends into laughter.
And I go into overdrive.
I fuck her harder, watch her smile turn into a gape, her forehead pinching with pleasure. “Oh, God. Oh, my God.”
“Touch yourself,” I say huskily.
Lily touches herself. Her cheeks darken with a flush. And her chin dips down. “I’m so close. I’m so—”
She starts shaking, and I press her harder into the bed, pumping my hips as deeply as they’ll go.
“I’m coming, Jackson, I’m—”
Her pussy grabs at me again, and I miraculously don’t come.
But her sounds . . . fuck, her sounds . . .
Lily hooks her hands onto my shoulders and grips hard as she rides out the orgasm, letting out a massive wail that trails off into a whimper.
Once she is spent, I pull out and reach for my cock, but Lily’s hand intercedes.
“I’m going to do it.”
My eyes widen, but before I can intercede, she is stroking my dick. Faster and faster until I can’t hold out any longer, and I spend across her belly. I growl, gripping at the sheets, my hips fucking her hand until every last bit of me ends up painting her skin. The pleasure is immense and doesn’t seem to end.
“That’s it, baby. Yes, give it all to me.”
If she keeps calling me ‘baby,’ I might not even need a recovery period.
I collapse onto my back beside her and try to catch my breath. My muscles burn, and my hair sticks to my forehead.
Lily lifts herself into a seated position, but I grab her thigh. “No, I’ll—” My mouth is too dry to say my whole sentence at one time. “I’ll get you something . . . to clean up.”
Lily glances down at herself, then back up at me with a shy smile. “I just want to show you that thing I was talking about.”
I watch her pull her legs up into a diamond shape under her. She points to a couple of words written on the inside of her thigh. “Can you see it in the dark?”
I turn onto my side as laborious as it is and lean in close. It’s a mistake because the smell of her sex is intoxicating. Makes me want to dive right in and give her more orgasms than she can count. But I have to focus. At least for right now. “ And . . . whatever . . . ”
The memories flood back. The night of the reunion. Our first kiss. All the subsequent ones in the car. I look up at her with wild shock. “You got this tattooed?”
“I did it to myself that night,” she says. “This thigh is my practice thigh, and I thought . . . I don’t know, they felt like important words.”
I nod. “They are.” I trace the words with my finger, then lean over and kiss the inside of her thigh. Those are our words. And without me even knowing it, Lily marked herself with a piece of me. I kiss up the inside of her thigh until I’m at her juicy apex. “Lay down,” I growl. “I’m not done with you.”
Lily does so, laughing fitfully. “Let the ‘and whatever’ begin.”