The Man I Love (The Fish Tales, #1)(24)
“I’ve had boyfriends,” she said, gazing off over his shoulder. “But this is the first time everything I feel about a boy and everything I want from a boy, I want to feel inside me.” She looked at him. “David’s such an ass. I have no delusions about sex and marriage. I just wanted to wait until I knew. And I figured I would know when my mind stopped debating and my body said ‘Him. All of him. Inside me.’”
It wasn’t the first time Erik had heard a girl say she wanted to wait, but he had never heard a girl articulate why so clearly. She was so self-aware and fearlessly true to herself and it made his heart peel open to its most tender core. She was beautiful in his arms, a mermaid in jeans and a silvery-grey bra, her long hair spilling down her back. He made to gather her to him but she hung back, touching his face.
“You’ve done it,” she said.
“I have,” he said, hestitating to admit the particulars of who and when. Not because he was considering lying, but because his gallery of sexual encounters, so thrillingly delicious at the time, were now revealed as being so void of emotional connection he regarded them not sadly, but the same way a parent would indulge a child’s mediocre artwork—oh yes, lovely, dear—and then secretly chuck it.
Daisy touched his face, bringing him back. “What were you going to say?”
“I’ve done it. But what I’m doing with you is totally different.”
He had more experience yet he was following her in this dance of slow, intense exploration. Daisy wasn’t meek or passive. Not prudish or shy. She knew her body, knew what turned her on and what got her off and she trusted Erik with the knowledge. He didn’t take it lightly. He was on his own journey—learning what it meant to be a lover. A good one. To take pleasure in pleasing her. To make love instead of assuming its perpetual existence.
In her bed they devoured the nights. More often than not when he slept over, they woke up naked, tangled in each other’s arms. She was ardently curious about his body and what she could do to it. Not a square inch of him went untouched. She wanted to know him down to the electrons. And for a young man naturally averse to being scrutinized, Erik was becoming addicted to her attention. The more he let her look and let her in, the more open and responsive she became to him. And the more she gave, the more he wanted.
He had never wanted so much.
He wanted all of her. Her thoughts, her words, her silences and her stillness. He wanted her skin, her smell, her taste and her noises. He loved to make her come, could never get enough of the sound she made when he was bringing her around. Or rather, it was the absence of sound. Other girls he’d been with seemed to explode when they came, but Daisy would implode, pulling everything into her—light, air, sound, even her own voice.
He would never forget the first time it happened. Locked up in her room one night, they were making out, making in, making time stop. Erik was half-sitting, half-leaning on her desk, holding her in front of him. Kissing her mouth, kissing her bare breasts, feeling her head loll around her neck. And then, in an astonishing move, Daisy took her hands off his shoulders and unsnapped her jeans. Started pushing them down. Herself. Never had a girl loosened her own clothing for him with an open, unabashed invitation for him to come in. Come in. I want you. He held her steady even as he was exploding with stunned arousal. He felt like thanking her.
Graceful and confident, she stepped out of her clothes and kicked them aside. Slid her arms around his neck, pulling up tight to him. “I like this. Being totally naked while you’re totally dressed.”
He swallowed hard, running his hands up and down her back.
“I love feeling your clothes against my skin,” she said.
He moved more of his forearms along her spine, then down around her waist, letting her feel the material of his shirt bunching up around his elbows then smoothing out again. He slid his leg between her calf, then drew her closer so he could feel on his thigh where she was softest and warmest. His hands curved around her ass and the air in his chest thickened.
“Your body,” he murmured. “I swear.”
Her hips rocked back, then forward, pressing down on his leg, rubbing as she pushed deeper into his kiss.
He started to draw her over to the bed but she resisted. “Stay here, stay like this,” she whispered.
Kissing, he slid his palm down her soft stomach, then further down one hard, sculpted quadriceps muscle. Up the tender, smooth skin of her inner thigh until his fingertips reached that secret nest of damp heat.
“You’re so wet,” he whispered, his heart pounding hard in his ears.
Her breath shook by his ear. “I know.”
He touched her. Easily. None of the awkward, hit-or-miss fumbling he’d experienced before, trying to guess where things might be. He didn’t guess with Daisy, he just knew. It was right there, that little bright pearl of flesh, right where he knew it would be, cozying up against his fingertips.
“Feels so good,” she said against his mouth. Little hitches of air on his lips. His own trembling breaths back to her.
“Like that?”
“Yes. Just slide on it. Like that.” Her hand at the back of his head, the other’s nails biting into his arm. Her voice got thinner, with no breath behind it. A click in her throat as she swallowed. Her forehead down on his shoulder. “That’s gonna make me come.” The words fell apart in her mouth.