Mr. Beautiful (Up in the Air #4)(20)

His response was to moan and grind back against me.

I started moving, great heavy thrusts that he met beat for beat.

I let myself get rough with it when I saw that he could handle it, jamming into him at full strength, brutal jackhammer thrusts that made him hold on for dear life and cry out loudly.

I bit down at the straining tendon between his neck and shoulder as I kept up a punishing rhythm, hammering into him.

His c**k jerked in my hand, and he cried out.

I outlasted him, but not by much.  He was still spurting in my hand when I let myself go, ramming hard into him one last time as I came deep inside of him.

After, I peeled off the condom and tossed it in the trash, far from done.

I pushed him on his back on the bed and started kissing him, my hand still on his cock, pumping at him, enjoying the feel of him, even soft.

I wasn't soft.  I was ready to go again way too quickly, grinding myself between his legs, jabbing my tip against his sac as I thrust my tongue into his mouth.

"Oh God," he cried out, panting, his arms holding me to him like I was the answer to a prayer.

I couldn't get enough of him.  His sweet acceptance undid me.

I sat him up, pulled his thighs over mine, and lined our shafts up together, using his hand and mine to stroke us both into a frenzy, rubbing, stroking leisurely, then urgently, until we were spilling on each other, coming together.  I looked up to find him watching my face at the end, a look of rapt adoration on his.

I still hadn't had enough, and started kissing him again mid-ejaculation, rubbing myself against him as I devoured his mouth with mine.

I pulled back only long enough to catch my breath and started kissing his perfect body.  He was lean, but muscular; his skin a pale olive that I thought looked perfect under my sun browned hands.

He whimpered when I caught his growing erection in my mouth and started sucking.  I didn't stop, instead clamping down with my lips and going harder, crawling over his body until my own hardening length was pushing against his mouth.

I pushed my fingers into his back entrance while we sucked each other off.

I lay on my back and pulled him over my chest when we'd finished, stroking a hand over his soft hair, kissing his forehead, sated but with a stomach still alive with butterflies.

"Wow, just wow," he breathed, running his hands over me, turning his head to kiss my chest repeatedly.  "I've never . . . I never, um, that was amazing."

I smiled, my eyes closing, a feeling of utter contentment blooming to life, sheer delight working its way through me.  "Yes, it was."

I didn't even ask.  I just stayed the night in his room.

I noticed with the crew the next day that he changed in front of other people, became more stiff, less open.

It was like this with everyone, I would learn.

He was so different with me.  He gave me something distinctly unique from what he gave the rest of the world.  With me, he didn't hold back a thing.  He was more open, more honest, sweeter, better.

I fell for him.  Hard and fast.  As though I was too naive to know better, as though I was innocent instead of tarnished, I dove in headfirst.

He made me feel good about myself, like I was the missing piece of his puzzle, the one that made him fit right in his own skin.

In a perfect world, when you found the person that did that, that was it.  End of story.  Happily ever after.

But this wasn't a perfect world, and even though I fell for him deeply, I knew it couldn't last.

He was always on the offense about his sexuality.  I, on the other hand, was firmly stuck in my defensive stance.

He was insulted that I continued to insist on hiding our relationship.

I was resentful that he didn't understand or respect my need for privacy.

My pigheaded stubborn pride had doomed us from the start.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

THE SWEETEST MONTH

We were joined at the hip after that.  Every second of  our free time was spent together.

I was anxious at first about what Bianca would think of it all, but I shouldn't have worried.  She was ecstatic about it, so happy for me she was bursting with it.  She pushed me in his direction at every opportunity.

"Go," she'd say.  "I'll just be painting all day, anyway.  This works out perfectly."

It only lasted a month, but it was the sweetest month.

He was on-call, and good friends with the girl who ran scheduling, so he managed to snag the fifth position on nearly all of our flights.

I was on cloud nine.  I'd always been a romantic, but even so, I'd never been in love.  Not like this.  It was a brand new, heady, wonderful experience.

Of course, it all just made the quick plummet of our breakup that much harder to bear.  It didn't seem to matter that we'd had such a short time together, because that time had been spent earnestly making bittersweet memories that I would dwell on in all of my troubled, lonely reflections after.

But that was after.  During . . . during was another thing entirely.

The making of the sweet memories before they turned bitter.

We loved to go hiking.  There was this little private spot at Red Rock that we hit every chance we got.  We'd hold hands and talk for hours there.

It was maybe the fifth time we'd gone, and we had just reached the peak at the top of our hike when he shot me his best smile.  "Pinch me.  I feel like I'm dreaming here."