Page 36 of Edge of Ruin
“Yes, I heard you. I just couldn’t believe it,” he said.
“Ah. Well, believe it. So? What now?” I clamped down on my nervous giggles before they could start to turn to tears. “Do we just ... do it?”
His grin flashed, but his face was wary. “Sounds fine to me.”
I groped for a tissue in my skirt pocket and blew my nose. “I’m so embarrassed,” I muttered. “It’s been so long. I don’t even know where to start.”
“I do,” he said swiftly. “I could absolutely help you with that.”
I snorted with laughter, covered my face with my hands. “I just bet you could,” I said. “So? What’s the plan?”
“We’ll start here, definitely.” He sank promptly to his knees in front of me and pressed his face against my mound through the thin fabric of my gauze skirt.
“Oh, God,” I said weakly. “That, again? You’re obsessed!”
He lifted up the yards of fabric, seeking his prize. “God, yes. Your pussy is so pink and salty sweet. I want to make it puffy and slick and hot pink. I want to lick you like candy. Until you melt into hot slippery girl juice. Then we’ll work out what comes next. We’ll take it slowly. One step at a time.”
I could barely speak. He shoved the wad of skirt into my hands and murmured with approval at the skimpy white lace thong. “Behold me, on my knees,” he continued, flashing me a mischievous grin. “Your desperate supplicant.”
“Oh, stop. As if.” I shook with a fresh attack of nervous giggles.
He wasn’t put off by them at all. He was extremely focused. He pulled aside the gusset of my panties and tucked it to the side. My legs buckled when he pressed his mouth to my naked flesh.
“I can’t handle it,” I whispered. I had no experience at receiving oral sex. Brian had been entirely uninterested in it. In performing it, at least. He’d been more than happy to receive it. Had considered it his God-given right, in fact.
The fierce glow in Jack’s eyes transfixed me. “You’ll handle it,” he assured me. “You did at the pools. And you’re so small. I’m going to take my sweet time with you. You taste amazing.”
My legs trembled. Jack looked around for a chair, saw none, and hoisted me up onto the kitchen counter. He tugged the tiny wisp of stretch-lace panties off my legs and tossed it away. I balanced there, clutching his head and trembling, skirt wadded against my chest. I was so aroused, the feeling bordered on terror.
“I love your taste,” he murmured. “I could lick you for hours.”
“I wouldn’t survive it,” I said, and he laughed, pleased.
He knew instinctively just how to touch me, how deep, how hard, how soft. Voluptuous thrusts of his tongue, lapping up and down, plunging deep. His long fingers opening, stroking, while he suckled, insisted, pushing me to that screaming point of no return … and oh … yes. Yes.
Pleasure jolted heavily through me, deeper and wider and sweeter every time.
I floated back and found myself draped over him. He’d caught me, held me as I came.
He lifted me up so that I straddled him, and braced me against the wall, reaching down to fumble with his belt?—
And the shimmering warmth inside me flash-froze. My heart skipped, bumped. Panic flashed through me. Faintness, suffocation.
Shit. It was happening again. That sickening black fog rising. The memory of those last awful times with Brian. They haunted me.
Brian had liked that position, especially when he was snorting coke. On his feet, pinning me to the wall. Or else holding me down, immobilized. His face, a taut, stiff mask of lust. Eyes fixed, staring. A million miles away. Not listening when I told him that it hurt. Not caring.
I hadn’t been able to be intimate with a man since that. I had tried a few times, but nothing wrecked the mood faster than a stress flashback.
Finally I had just let it go. I figured it was simpler to learn to do without sex.
But goddammit, I wasn’t going to do without this.
I grabbed his shoulders. “Just a minute,” I said, gasping for breath. “Just ... let me get myself together. Don’t go away.”
I could hear him talking, from far away. His tone was urgent, anxious, but I couldn’t make out the words over the roar in my ears. The frantic, deafening gallop of my heart.
Breathe, silly. It’s now, not then. It’s Jack, not Brian. Get a grip.
