Deeper (Caroline & West #1)(59)

“I want to be killing you.”

I want you inside me. Deep. Deeper.

Please.

The words are at the back of my tongue, piled up, and I can’t make myself say them. I can’t ask.

“I want to make you come,” he says.

That would also be excellent.

He strokes his hand up my leg, and I make this sound that’s like a squeak. I guess he likes it, because he kisses me hard. His palm starts over again, sliding from my neck to the cap of my shoulder. It slips over my collarbone to cup my breast and drag slowly over my nipple and then down, down to my waist, to my navel, to the space between our bellies. “I need to touch you.”

“Please.”

He shifts to the side, leaves his thigh slung over mine, his elbow by my arm, his breath at my ear as he caresses my breasts with the back of his hand. Brushes back and forth over my nipples. Traces circles, random patterns, until I’m ready to hurt him because the anticipation is killing me, and I say, “West, please, please,” and he relents. He flattens his hand and slides it slowly—agonizingly slowly—down my stomach. Over my navel. Right to the margin of my panties, which are ridiculous red-and-white-striped cotton with holly berries on them and this cartoon Santa, the least sexy panties I own.

I didn’t know I’d be here, that this would happen. I had no idea what this morning would bring. This cautious lifting up of the elastic. This wicked, knowing, dirty sneak underneath.

I never could have imagined the feeling of West’s hand cupping me. His fingers parting me, tracing the secret shapes of my body, the sound of his voice saying, “Fucking hell, Caro,” like a prayer and a compliment.

He presses his finger inside me. Then another. When he tries three, I whimper, and he finds my clit with his thumb. I arch off the bed, deliciously shocked.

There is a sense in which I’ve done this before, all of it, but it feels brand new and astonishingly different. It feels so good that it hurts, it aches, and I hate it, but not nearly as much as I love it.

“You like that,” he says.

I mewl. Like a cat. And his grin is so smug, I reach up to give him a playful smack, but he changes the angle of his fingers inside me and I end up yanking him closer by the hair, kissing him so hard that our teeth knock together and I bite my tongue. I don’t care. Not with West’s thumb circling my clit, over and over, just a little too hard, which turns out to be how I like it.

Not with his fingers moving in and out of my body, a steady rhythm that fractures me into a thousand desperate, craving pieces.

“That’s my girl,” he says, when I have to turn my face away because I can’t concentrate on kissing, can’t breathe, can’t do anything but buck against his hand, senseless as an animal. “Just like that.”

When I come, it’s terrible. This low gathering tension winds and winds until I think I’ll die, and then I do die, I do, and it feels so amazing that it hurts. West stays with me right through it, watches me, eases me down, and now I can feel the rush of it, the part that’s all pleasure in one big push, a wave, a wake, a wave, until it’s grabbed me everywhere, pulled me in and let me go.

I float.

“Oh my God,” I whisper, when I can speak again. My voice is faint. Sweat has gathered at my elbows, in my armpits, at my temples. The wetness between my legs has spread down my thighs, and I’m conscious of the smell of sex.

Nate called it “that fish smell” once. He joked about it.

Fuck you, Nate, I think faintly, but there’s no rancor in it. I honestly don’t care.

I feel so good.

It wasn’t like this with Nate. I came, but it was a goal that had to be reached. An obstacle to be laboriously climbed toward so that we could move on to the next thing, and then the next. It was never this … this bliss, this shared thing West and I make between us, a natural outcome of our being together rather than the product of our dogged efforts.

“Hey, where’d you go?”

West is propped on one elbow beside me, his hand flat on my stomach, resting. Poor hand, it must be exhausted. I give it a pat, then link our fingers together. He smiles and lets his elbow slide, settling onto the mattress. I’m too tired to do anything but look at him. His face, his chest, his stomach, his briefs, dark gray with their intriguing bulge and an even more intriguing wet spot.

I’ve never touched him there. I’ve been afraid to, always afraid that there are rules and I don’t know them. Like if I wait long enough, someone will give me a book called How To Touch West’s Penis, and I can study it until I’m confident. An expert.

Enough of that. In this bed, this cocoon, I’m allowed to reach out for him. To enjoy the sharpness of his inhale, his lowering eyelids, his lip caught between his teeth.

I’m allowed to trip my fingers down his happy trail, shimmy closer so we’re belly to belly, my breasts pressing into his chest, my hand flat, slipping inside his underwear and investigating what I find.

Hard. Hot. Big—oh my gosh.

“You are like a furnace,” I say, and he laughs.

I think it’s supposed to be a laugh. He sounds like he hurts. I want to make it better.

I tighten my hand and stroke experimentally, watching his face to see if it’s okay. If I’m okay, doing this. It’s not my first go-round on this rodeo, but I don’t want to be inept. I want to give him what he gave me.