“You’re . . . soft,” he said, a faint smile ghosting across his lips. “So soft.”
“Mm-hmm.” I sighed as his fingers found the opening of my dress and slipped inside.
“Lace?” he asked. His thumb brushed across my nipple and my back arched.
“Mm-hmm.” I sighed again.
“It’s rough, a little, I can feel the tiny threads catching against the grooves on my fingertips,” he said. “But then your skin, so smooth.”
I slipped down onto my elbows, my head dropping back as he moved over me. His mouth trailed kisses down the column of my neck, licking at the base of my throat, nipping at my collarbone. He held himself above me, his hand still exploring. He circled my nipple, feeling it rise under his touch.
He smiled. “You’re excited.”
I could feel him against my thigh, hard and thick. “You’re not?”
His response was to nip harder, his teeth nibbling along the top of my breast, which was now rising and falling with my every breath, growing faster and more heated with every kiss. He slipped my bra strap from my shoulder, dipped his head, and put his mouth on me.
Every nerve ending twisted, every neuron fired, and every toe pointed as his rough tongue dragged across my nipple.
“Mmm . . . Archie . . .” I sighed, my back arching off the ground as his lips surrounded me. But where I was a wriggly squiggly mess beneath him, he suddenly stilled. His back stiffened, his hands froze, his entire demeanor changed.
“Archie?” I asked, reaching up to smooth his hair back from his brow.
“I need to tell you something,” he whispered, still frozen.
“Okay . . .” I replied, wondering what in the world? The tension beneath us had changed, shifted somehow. He was worried, anxious, and still frozen. “You want to tell me, or my boob?”
He snorted, his breath warm on the very boob in question. But the tension broke once again, and I could see him relax, if only a little. I curled my arm beneath my head, propping myself up so I could see him. He leaned on one arm over me, his other hand reflexively pushing the missing eyeglasses up his nose.
He was still nervous.
“I’ve only slept with one woman my entire life.”
Oh. Oh . . .
“I’ve only ever had one first time. Ashley and I were sixteen, we’d snuck away to her parents’ beach house. We had candles, and wine, and soft music, and it was all very planned out, very perfect.”
I mentally flashed on the backseat of a 1972 Chevelle with Chuckie Sullivan, Nickelback on the CD player. I shuddered.
He took my shudder as laughter. “I know, it sounds silly, right?”
“Not silly, it actually sounds really nice,” I replied, smoothing his hair back again.
He leaned into it, closing his eyes, turning his head to kiss the center of my palm. “I was just thinking how funny it is, losing your virginity. It’s something that happens to everyone, but in such different ways.
“The point is, I was with Ashley, and only Ashley. I’ve never done this with anyone else. I wasn’t sure I’d even want to do this, after she was gone.”
“Listen, Archie, we don’t have to—”
“Until you, Clara,” he interrupted, his eyes flashing open and searing into mine. “I want you, I fucking want you more than I ever thought possible, but I’m . . . well . . . a little out of my depth here.”
“Archie?”
“Yes?”
I moved swiftly, rising up and rolling to the side, bringing him with me, rolling us both so that now I was on top, moving his hand down to my leg and hitching it around his hip. “Believe me when I say, you’ve so got this. But if you want to stop then you just say the word.”
His eyes, good lord those eyes. Deeply blue, deeply troubled, at war with his past and his present. They searched my own for answers. I couldn’t tell him what to do, but I could give him a hint, couldn’t I?
Breathless, I slid his hand farther along my thigh. Breathless, I hooked his thumb through the band of my panties. And then, still breathless, I placed both of my hands on his chest, waiting to see what he would do.
He did nothing. His chest rose and fell, and I rose and fell right along with him. My head was telling me to smile, to reassure him, to tell him it was okay and we could take this slow and at whatever pace he needed.
My heart was telling me to be patient, because any second now Archie’s internal war would be over and he’d be ready for fast filthy fucking, the kind without candles and soft music.
Any second now.
Any second now.
Any second n—
His thumb moved. The thumb, the thumb that controlled the fate of my panties. And of the world. It was one and the same as that perfect thumb dragged against my skin, hooked to the flimsiest scrap of silk you ever did see, even if Archie couldn’t without his glasses, and God bless America if he didn’t drag those panties right off.
And then I took over. Because I knew he needed me to. And because I wanted to. I rose up over him, my dress hiked up around my hips, and breasts spilling out of the top, and grasped him firmly, positioning him just so that when I slipped down down down he
Oh
He
Was
There
And
Oh
He
Was
So
Hard
and something very much like wonder crossed his face as I took him inside of me.
And then something exactly like lust crowded in as he crowded in, Christ he crowded in, filling me up and raising me up and he thrust into me from below.
Uncertainty was gone. Should haves and what ifs were gone. And in their place was pure carnal heat. Archie’s hands gripped my hips, pushing and pulling as he filled me up and I moved on him, rocking, feeling every ridiculous inch of him inside, he was inside while we were outside and it was frightening and maddening and Jesus was I coming and how could I be coming already and I shuddered and shook as all the colors ran and the world narrowed down before it exploded.
He sat up beneath me, lips on my breast and hands on my backside as I rode him hard, rode him to another orgasm and another, anchored by those searching eyes, swirling ink and beautiful as his own powerful orgasm shook through his body.
When his hips finally stilled, when his fingers released my skin, when the cords in his neck finally receded and the flush in his cheeks flooded in, we collapsed onto the balcony, his lips alternating between dropping tired kisses onto my neck and whispering my name.
Clara, he said, over and over again. God, I loved hearing this man say my name.
Chapter 16
“Are you sure you want to go?”
“I don’t want to, but I really can’t see a thing. I’ll be back in just a few minutes. If you want me to come back, that is.”
“I want you. To come. Back.” I grinned, tucking my arm through his as I led him to the door. “See what I did there?”