Page 44 of Reading Between the Lines
I helped with the condom and straddled his waist. From my knees, I guided him inside, slowly sinking down until I was fully seated.
“Fuck my life,” I said through gritted teeth. “I will never get used to the size of you.”
He didn’t smile, but it was a close thing.
Diem was a watcher with intimate encounters. He absorbed every action with parted lips and a look of awe like he couldn’t believe it was happening, like I was an illusion or a dream, and he feared looking away.
It always took him a second to remember to participate, but he did. Hands on my hips, his body moved in time with mine. As though remembering how much I’d enjoyed my nipples beingtweaked in the tub, he tentatively glided a hand over my pecs and thumbed the pebbled nubs.
“You can do better than that.”
He massaged them between his finger and thumb.
I groaned. “Harder, D.”
He pinched me, and a sting rippled through my blood. “Oh yeah… fuck me. That’s it. Again.”
I rode his cock, instructing him the entire time because I had no doubt he feared hurting me. It took grinding my teeth and spitting. “Fucking harder, D,” for him to get it right. Lust bloomed in his eyes as I shuddered and moved faster on his cock.
Was it the best sex of my life? Not even close, but there was something powerful in knowing that Diem had never had this with anyone else before. This bonding. This growing sense of freedom and comfort. This peace.
That was what made it worth it.
10
Diem
Ilay awake for hours that night, studiously aware of every inch of the king-size bed both occupied and not occupied by our bodies. My power-bottom boyfriend had ridden me until I’d lost my fucking mind. Any remaining brain cells capable of arguing about our sleeping arrangements had been fried, so somehow, I’d wound up sharing a bed with Tallus. Rather, I’d wound up occupying the same space on the bed with Tallus while the rest of it remained unused.
I replayed the bath and orgasm to avoid focusing on the proximity of Tallus’s slumbering body—flat up against me for anyone curious as to why I was wide-eyed and practicing breathing exercises.
When the fun ended, before my heart rate returned to normal, Tallus had rested his head on my shoulder, hooked his leg with mine, and draped an arm across my chest. Then, he’d fallen asleep.
I was stuck. Not that I couldn’t physically move him aside. I could, but it wasn’t the answer. More importantly, I didn’t want to. I liked him there. His heat. His scent. His presence.
So I counted to ten, breathing in and out, taking stock of the shapes in the darkened room and trying to identify them, listening to the ice storm rattling the windowpanes, and adjusting to the weight and permanence of Tallus in my life.
I needed to make this connection okay and find comfort in it. But the more I thought, the more I wanted to squirm away.
Sleep evaded me. Every now and then, I drifted, but fear of dreams returning jerked me back to consciousness more than once. I didn’t know what would happen if I woke suddenly from nightmares with Tallus in my arms. Would I recognize him? Would I register the body beside me as a threat?
What if I hurt him unintentionally?
I’d rather die.
So I fought the pull of sleep and spent half the night giving myself pep talks, reminding myself I was okay. This was normal. Every hour that passed was one more to be proud of. I was doing it. Sort of. We were side by side in a bed. Snuggling, in essence. I wasn’t sleeping, but it was something.
If I could stave off the anxiety attack until the sun came up, I would have won the battle.
At close to dawn, exhaustion swung a knockout punch and took me out. I couldn’t have been asleep twenty minutes when the entire fucking house started chiming like it was the goddamn ringing of the apocalypse. I wasn’t the only one blasted from unconsciousness. Tallus and I both flew off the bed in a state of fight or flight. Him scrambling frantically to hide from the threat while I dropped into a fighting stance, fists raised.
Only as the remains of sleep dissipated did I realize what was happening.
The grandfather clock cuckooed, a tiny yellow bird popping in and out of its roost. The mountain of blankets in the corner binged and bonged with such clamor it physically moved. From the rest of the house, other out-of-sync clocks dinged and donged and chirped and screamed the hour. The cacophony was a deafening assault on the senses.
Tallus covered his ears and shouted, “Whelp, good morning, sunshine. Hope you didn’t want to sleep in.”
It was the second morning in a row we’d experienced Ivory Lace’s wake-up call. Getting torn from sleep to the racket was enough to make the most docile of nuns go on a murdering rampage, and I wasnotthe most docile of nuns.
