Page 22 of For Real

His stern voice ripples all the way down my spine, and I kind of want to arch into it, purring and wriggling, until he turns smoky-rough and sweet instead. “Don’t ‘Toby’ me. I’m serious. If you don’t want me, then that’s one thing, and it’s okay. But saying no because you’re worried about what people will think, that’s another, and it’s not okay.”

He reaches out suddenly, hand brushing my cheek. And I press into his touch, wanting it, wanting it so much. “I can’t believe you’re trying to talk me into bed.”

“You’re already in bed.”

He smiles his odd, shy smile at me.

“So come on.” I don’t so much put my cards on the table as throw the whole deck out the window. “Tell me you don’t want me.”

I’m waiting for him to do it. Expecting it. Braced for it. And I kind of realise a second too late that even if he doesn’t mean it and he just says it to make me go away, it’s still going to take a rock hammer to my stupid little heart. And then I’m thinking that maybe he’s right. Maybe I’m too nineteen for this. Because this shit is big and real, and I’m probably going to dash myself to pieces on the realness of it.

“I can’t decide,” he murmurs, “whether I’m being seduced or bludgeoned.”

“Maybe a bit of both?”

That makes him blush again, and I get to watch it sort of slide all the way down his naked throat. It makes me brave, the way only he can. I crawl fully onto the bed and straddle him. It’s not exactly something I’ve had much practice at. In my head, it’s all graceful and natural and I sort of swing myself over like a cowboy into the saddle. But, basically, I kind of scrabble and then plop but, hey, it gets the job done. And shame about my clothes, and shame about the duvet, but I can just about feel the shape of him under there.

And his cock, which seems pretty seduced.

He lets out this…not quite a gasp, more this sort of an uncontrolled breath, that tells me how much he’s struggling.

All that control. And he’s letting me undo him like a bow.

God. He’s perfect. He’s fucking perfect.

“It’s kind of a classic,” I tell him.

I’m kneeling over him, so he has to tip his head back to look at me. His eyes have that hungry, stormy look. “What is?”

“The rhetorical approach.”

He tries to laugh, and it comes out all shaky. “I don’t think people usually surrender their virtue to the power of rational argument.”

“Oh man, they did all the time in the seventeenth century. There’s this whole branch of, well, not love poetry, but shag poetry I guess, which is about convincing chicks to bone you because Reasons. It ranges from like, ‘Hey, you’ll be dead one day so why not?’ to ‘We both got bitten by the same flea so we’ve pretty much done it already.’”

He’s kind of silent, but his body is all noise under me. Thunderous.

I smile at him. “That’s my favourite. ‘This flea is you and I, and this our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.’ Isn’t that way, way hotter than ‘eyes like suns, lips like cherries’?”

His hands come up and frame my face.

Kiss me, is what I think.

Forever limps by.

“What do you want, Toby?”

Dangerous question to ask me when the answer is everything. But that probably isn’t what he means. So I go for the obvious: “I want you to fuck me.”7

And then he’s on me like a breaking storm, and it’s fucking terrifying and fucking wonderful and actually fucking happening. I’m on my back, and he’s on top of me, and wow he’s strong, and he’s tearing at my clothes—like, literally, tearing because I hear something pretty serious happen to a seam even through the heart-pounding, blood-rushing tumult of our moving and breathing and coming together. He slides a hand up my chest, the touch more protective than sexy, and for a moment I’m bewildered at what it’s doing there, but then he’s dragging my T-shirt over my head and I realise he was making sure the fabric didn’t snag on my nipple ring.

I catch onto his shoulders and stare into his face, which is all flushed and wild. And, holy shit, there’s some kind of…I don’t know… It’s just so fucking precious to me that he could be so far gone and still remember something that trivial.

And it’s exactly the thing I need to hold on to right then, because, God. Unleashed is what he is. And I’m kind of pinned by him and overwhelmed by him, but I know, more than anything else I know, he’s never ever going to hurt me, not even in the teeniest, tiniest, most accidental way. And the truth is I like him and I want him—far too much to be scared. Even though he’s right between my legs, pressing me wide in this rough, really…definite way. No hesitation at all, like his whole body is saying, I’m going to fuck you, I’m going to fuck you.

And I love it.

Because this is mine too.

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