I swallow, and breathe. “Just, like this, I feel like—”
He caresses the generous curve of my ass. “You think this is too big? Is that what you’re so self-conscious about?”
I nod, not trusting my voice.
He presses his hips forward, rubbing his arousal against the left cheek. “What does this feel like, to you?” he says, taking himself in hand, rubbing himself against the other side now. “Does this feel like I’m turned off?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“What’s it feel like, Imogen?” He drags the head against my seam. “Don’t you feel how turned on I am?”
“Yes,” I breathe. “I feel it.”
“I’m so hard it hurts,” he snarls. “I’ve never been so fucking turned on my life.”
“Don’t lie to me, Jesse,” I whisper.
He drags himself downward between the cheeks of my ass, a thick hard ridge between them, and then, using his fingers to find my entrance, notches himself inside me. “Does this feel like a lie?”
God, he feels bigger and harder than ever. “No…” I breathe, on a whimper.
He slides in, slowly. “You feel how hard I am?” he demands, his hands palming my ass.
“I feel it.”
“I’m not gonna last ten seconds like this, Imogen,” he growls. “So get ready.”
“Jesse, god…” I gasp, feeling him push into me. “I’m ready.”
“Are you?” he murmurs. “I’m not sure you are.”
“I feel you, Jesse. You’re so big, so hard.”
He pulls back, and drives in, so, so, so slowly. As if savoring every millimeter of slick sliding wetness of me. “Because of you. Because seeing you like this, on your knees for me, seeing this ass of yours—yes, this big, gorgeous, juicy perfect ass—” he caresses the round weight of me as he speaks, a tender, reverent, worshipful touch, “—all spread out just for me, getting to take you like this, feeling you like this…it’s fucking heaven, Imogen.”
“Jesse…” I gasp, his words hitting me as hard as his slow, inexorable thrusts. “Keep talking. Tell me everything. I need to hear it from you.”
He leans over me, reaching under to cup my breasts, pushing into me, his hips squashing hard against my ass. “You need to hear me say it? I told you before how much I love this,” he says, one hand caressing my butt as the other kneads my breast. “How much I love your ass.”
“I don’t think I believed you,” I admit.
“Do you believe me now?” he demands, leaning backward again, upright on his knees behind me, both hands on my buttocks now, pulling their heft apart so he can drive deeper with his slow thrusts.
“I’m starting to,” I say.
“What else do you need to hear to believe? Your ass is perfect, Imogen.” He has my ass in a palmed grip, braced for each thrust. “I can’t get enough of it.”
“Take all of it, then,” I say. “Show me how much you like it.”
He speeds up, as if he can’t help it. Each thrust finds his hips slapping against my butt, and each thrust drives him into me so I whimper, and gasp, and shriek at the beautiful penetration of him. And then, on his next thrust, he pats his hands against my buttocks.
“How about that?” he says, “you like that?”
I nod, turning to watch him over my shoulder. And, in this position—no longer on my hands and knees, but only on my knees, my entire torso flattened against the mattress to lift my ass high into the air, I can see the beauty in my curves. I see the sensual eroticism in the uplifted spread of my ass, in the curve of my spine, in the power in my legs. And now, as he taps my buttocks in time with each thrust, I begin to feel the burn of arousal scorching away the doubts, a conflagration of need searing away my self-consciousness.
He smacks my ass harder. “You like that, Imogen?” he demands.
I nod. “Yeah,” I breathe. “Do it again.”
He drives into me, his hips smacking hard even as his hand slaps even harder. The sting is beautiful, adding to the crashing heat of my building climax.
“You like it when I spank you?” he growls.
“Yes, Jesse.”
“Say it.”
“I like it when you spank my ass,” I breathe, almost breaking into giggles hearing myself say that. But it’s too dirty and too arousing to be funny—especially as I realize he’s actively holding back.
His jaw is clenched, and his thrusts are more measured, and he’s gasping raggedly, growling with each thrust. I need his orgasm. God, I need it. I’ve had three—almost four now—and I want to feel him lose control.
“Jesse, please,” I whisper, brazenly begging. “Please.”
“Please what, Imogen?”
“Come,” I breathe. “Give it to me. Spank me, fuck me—let me feel you come.”
“I don’t want it to end,” he says, even as he thrusts harder. “I don’t want to stop.”
“I don’t either.” I push back into his thrusts, now, and my orgasm is not being brought on by his touch or my own, nor by his mastery over my body, but by raw arousal, by the raging, driving, coruscating need for him brought on by our joining. “But I need you. I need to feel you come. Please, Jesse.”
He’s growling helplessly, and his thrusts speed up to a wild, manic, furious onslaught. He stops spanking me and just claws his hands into the trembling, bouncing flesh of my ass as he thrusts; his growls turn to grunts, and then his grunts turn to a roar, and he’s gone, utterly animal now, all control lost. I watch him over my shoulder and give myself to the moment, my own climax—my fourth—tearing through me like a wildfire, my screams meeting his bellowing snarl of orgasm.
Each of his thrusts is accompanied by a greedy caress of my buttocks, and this, the way he palms and kneads and caresses my ass as he gives me his orgasm, does more to erase my self-consciousness than anything he could say. He could conceivably fool me and lie to me with his words, but he can’t fake that, not as obviously gone as he is into the depths of climax. His possessive appreciation for me in that moment of abandon cannot be faked.
“Ohhhh…” he breathes, his moment of release turning him breathless, his roars and grunts gentled to a ragged, helpless groan. “Ohhhh fuck, Imogen…”
I’m with him, then, squeezing and clenching around him, crying out, taking each slow hard grinding thrust with a backward drive, wanting it deeper, needing him harder.
We come in unison.
I feel him release even as my climax crescendos inside me, turning me into a writhing, thrashing, lust-crazed beast.
His orgasm is endless, it feels like, thrust after thrust of grunting, groaning, cursing release, his hands slapping, cupping, gripping, kneading, and caressing my ass through it all.
Finally, after a beautiful eternity, I collapse forward and he goes with me, all of his weight on me for a moment, leaving me unable to breathe and feeling exhilarated.
And then he rolls over, and I—out of some kind of instinct I didn’t know I possessed—roll with him, needing to be close, needing his strength and heat and hardness and comfort after what we just experienced together.
I hear his heart under my ear, a slamming, frenetic, racing beat. Even in the intimacy of cradling me in his arms, he finds a way to keep a hand on the outer curve of my ass, which makes me smile a secret, private smile of delight.
I drowse.
But I feel him, still—Jesse, his breathing ragged still, his heart hammering, his hands clutching me. He’s not relaxing—he’s tense.
I lift up on an elbow and look at him. His expression is usually open and readable, his emotions on his sleeve. For once, I can’t read him.
“Jesse?” I say.
He glances at me. “Hi,” he murmurs.
“Thank you,” I say, smiling at him.
He frowns, wrinkling his brow. “What? Why are you thanking me?”
I laugh. “Because that was—that was the most—” I shake my head, unable to encapsulate how I feel in words. “You made me feel—”
<
br /> “How you should always feel,” he cuts in. “How it should always be.”
“But that’s not how it’s always been, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt how you made me feel, so…thank you.” I rest my hand on his chest, lean up on an elbow against him—his eyes roam my body, his hand still clutches the curve of my hip, but he’s tensed and restless, and his eyes won’t meet mine.
“You shouldn’t be thanking me—I should be thanking you,” he says.
“For what?”
“For the gift of yourself,” he says. “For…just for…you.”
I blink, unsure how to respond to that, and he won’t look at me.
He shifts under me, restless.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
He nods. “I just need to get this off and clean up,” he says.
I roll away, and he gets up. I watch him go, enjoying the sight of his beautiful nude body as he goes into the bathroom. I kick my feet under the blankets—the bed had been neatly made, and the vigor of our sex sent all the blankets and sheets askew. Now that the heat of the moment has faded, the air is drying my sweat and cooling me off.
When Jesse returns, he stands a few feet away from the bed, staring at me. As if trying to come to terms with the sight of me in his bed. I didn’t bother covering with the sheet, only tugging up enough to warm my legs. His eyes skate over me, as if he can’t help devouring me with his eyes, but his expression is not one of arousal now, but of…
Discomfort.
Tension.
There’s an awkwardness in the room that I don’t know how to identify, how to rectify, what to do with.
I want him to climb back into the bed with me, and I want him to touch me, and to kiss me. I want to feel his body against mine. I want to drowse with him in the silence and the afterglow. I want to cling to him.
I want to slide into arousal with him, and take him a dozen different ways before dawn.
He blinks at me. “I—” but he doesn’t finish.
And realization hits me. The usual clichés apply—like a freight train, like a ton of bricks, with all the force of a hurricane. They all apply.
He doesn’t want me in his bed, now that it’s over.
He’s never brought anyone here.
Which means he doesn’t do…this. The afterward scene. I bet when he’s done, he leaves. Maybe a drink or a smoke between, some chitchat, another go, and then he leaves. That’s why he’d never bring anyone here—he can’t make his escape. If we’d done this at my house, he’d have made an excuse for leaving. He has to work early. Maybe fake an emergency phone call from James—but no, it’s one thirty in the morning, and James is out of town, and Jesse guaranteed no emergencies.
So what now?
I realize my mistake—I assumed intimacy where there is none.
This was just sex.
For him, and for me.
Incredible, stunning, breathtaking, earth-shaking, life-changing, expectation-shattering sex.
But still just…sex.
And now it’s over.
The cuddles afterward, resting my head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat, his arm around me, cradling me…that’s not what this is, and not what he wants. He never promised that, or anything like it.
I choke back whatever stupid thoughts and emotions are boiling inside me—I deny them, shove them down, shut them down, and fake a breezy, unaffected casual confidence I in no way feel.
“So, I should go.”
Jesse doesn’t react. Fists clenched at his sides, jaw ticking, chest rising and falling—if I didn’t know better I’d think he was warring with his own thoughts and feelings.
I kick my feet free of the blankets and leave the bed. I don’t feel sexy or sensual or powerful anymore, but somehow, neither do I feel self-conscious in my nakedness. I wait for a response, but, uncharacteristically, I get nothing from him.
I’m baffled, now. I stare at him, trying to figure this moment out. He’s not the single-word, grunty, macho, no-reply kind of guy. I’ve known those, and dislike it intensely. You know what’s sexy? A guy who can communicate. That’s what I like about Jesse, what has me falling for him—
Oh.
Oh shit.
Oh no.
I breathe through my panic. I’m not falling for him. I’m not. I can’t be.
I make for the bedroom door, naked, panicking inside, still faking a confident casualness that’s less and less believable by the second. I need to get away from him before I lose the ability to fake it anymore. I’m a terrible actress—I don’t fake orgasms, and I don’t fake emotions. This feels illicit, yucky, trying to make him feel like I’m unaffected when everything inside is a mess.
I want to cling to him—I want to beg for more of him. Give me more orgasms. Let him taste me. Take me until I’m ragged with exhaustion.
But I can’t have that, it seems.
That’s not what this is.
He got what he wanted, and so did I.
I don’t let myself run, as I head for the stairs. I force myself to not hurry, to act like everything is hunky-dory fantastic fabulous, like I’m ready to go, like I got what I wanted and I’m as done as he is.
I feel him following me, feel his eyes on me, and feel the weight of unspoken words between us.
I ignore it.
I dress in the kitchen, facing away from him—step into my thong, tug it into place; hook my bra in front and spin it around, shrug into the straps, tuck the cups into place, tighten the straps a hint; step into the dress, zip it, and find my purse.
Where are my heels? I had them on—how long? I don’t remember. Did I have them on during sex? Maybe. I think I had them on for part of it, and then kicked them off at some point. I don’t know where they are and I don’t care. I just need to get out of here.
“Imogen,” Jesse says, sounding wildly uncharacteristically hesitant. “I’m not—I don’t want you to think—”
“I have to go,” I say, going for breezy and fine. “Can you drop me off? If not, I can call a cab.”
“I’ll take you,” he murmurs. “Cab would take an hour to get out here.”
I wonder what we could do with that hour? I think it, but I don’t say it. We’re past that, I think.
Why does that hurt? The loss of the witty, clever, lascivious banter hurts.
He finds his jeans on the kitchen floor and shoves his legs into them one after the other, tugs them up, tucks his junk into them and carefully zips them up. His shirt is by the front door, but he ignores it, finding instead a faded black pullover Blackhawks hoodie hanging from a hook by the front door. He tugs it on and nudges open the front door. He’s out onto the porch before he stops abruptly.
He snorts in frustration. “Keys. Need keys.”
It should be amusing to see Jesse this obviously flustered, but it’s not—it hurts. It’s confusing. And I don’t want to ask what’s wrong because I don’t want to know the answer. I wait on the porch while he snags his keys, phone, and wallet, and then we both climb his truck.
The drive back to Billy Bar is long and quiet.
He’s deep in thought. He has his window open, his left wrist draped over the wheel, right elbow on the console between us, fist clenched, his thumb repeatedly and obsessively switching from finger to finger, cracking the knuckles.
I try to speak a dozen times, but can’t figure what to say that won’t open a can of worms I know I can’t handle.
I just need to go home and be alone. Maybe ice my vagina, because holy shit, am I going to be sore—I’ll savor the soreness, and I’ll hoard the memory of sex with Jesse.
Back in the parking lot of Billy Bar, he pulls to a stop next to my little POS Camry, slamming the shifter into park. I don’t get out right away, hoping he’ll say something. Hoping, deep down, that he’ll say or do something to salvage this situation.
He doesn’t, and I can’t hold back a sigh.
I shove open the door and unbuckle. “Thanks for the ride,” I say. And then, in
one last attempt, I smirk at him. “And for driving me back to my car.”
His smile is slow and unsure. “Imogen, listen—”
I hold up my hand. “Jesse, don’t. I’ll ask you no questions, you tell me no lies.”
“It’s just that—”
“Thank you, Jesse. You made me feel beautiful and wanted in a way that—in a way I’m not sure I’ve ever felt, ever in my life. So thank you for that.” I smile, but it’s sad, regretful, and I can’t hide that. “I’m going to go now, Jesse. Goodbye.”
“Imogen, wait.”
I don’t. I close the truck door, unlock my Camry—the old-fashioned way, with my key in the lock—get in, start the motor. Thank god it starts—with a sick, rattling squeal, but it starts.
I pull away, seeing Jesse jumping from his truck and jogging after me—I hear him telling me to wait.
But I don’t.
I don’t want to know his reasons. I know he has them, and I’m sure they’re good reasons.
He was clear at the start that he doesn’t do heartbreak. He keeps things clean. I went into this knowing exactly what it was—no-strings, no-expectations sex. And as sex goes, it was goddamn spectacular. Fireworks. Ten out of ten.
Hell, twenty out of ten.
But that’s all it was, and I don’t need to hear what he has to say. Excuses, reasons, logic, justifications—I just need to clarify my own emotions, get myself clear of the assumptions I was fostering. The hope I was nurturing.
I make the fatal mistake of looking in the rearview mirror—and I see Jesse, hands in his hair, looking distraught.
I take the extra precaution of shutting off my phone as I drive home, just in case he tries to call.
I don’t cry, but I want to.
Chapter 14
I hide from Jesse and Audra for three days. They both blow up my phone, but after six calls from each, I shut it off and leave it off. I ask for, and receive without question, three days off from Dr. Waverley. I buy a plane ticket to Florida, rent a convertible at the airport, and I visit my parents. They’re overjoyed at my unexpected visit, as I haven’t gotten down to see them more than once or a twice a year for the past several years, even though I talk to them regularly.