Page 72 of Light Up The Night
A kind of lecherous greed swells within me, or some extraordinarily complex set of multi-layered feelings both physical and emotional tied to my physical desire and my emotional vulnerability, the whole predicated upon Riley's unending sweetness and patience and consideration, and now fueled into an inferno by this latest act of venturing beyond his comfort zone and into mine.
My heart clatters against my ribs and pounds in my throat. I clutch the front of his shirt in shaky fingers, gazing at him as I summon the courage to let myself perform the action my desire and greed is compelling me toward. I lift his shirt, slowly. His grin spreads slowly as he realizes what I am about, and he shifts his weight to allow me to tug the garment over his head.
A shirtless Riley Crowe is a wonderful specimen to behold. In truth, a ridiculous part of me has long suspected, simply through an absence of objectively confirmable evidence, that a body like Riley's does not actually exist. One sees physiques like his only through the suspect barrier of a screen, whether television, cinema, or a cell phone. One does not see such a body in real life. With the advent of photograph retouching, digital alteration, filters, and now AI, it seems all too feasible that bulging pectoral muscles, veiny, sinewy biceps and forearms, and rippling, block-like, sculpted-from-marble abdominal muscles revealed through single-digit body fat is fake, or at very least exaggerated.
I am faced with a living, breathing, and, indeed, rippling proof that my theory is false.
Riley really does look like that.
Shirtless, he rests on an elbow and simply allows me to gaze at him. I press my hand to the firm, hot bulge of his pectoral muscle, to the small, flat, partially-inverted nub of his nipple—he sucks in a sharp inhale when I touch him there, and his nostrils flare.
"Sensitive?" I ask, my voice a hesitant whisper.
"Yeah," he growls.
"You are so absurdly handsome, Riley," I whisper. "It is difficult for me to convince myself that I am allowed to touch your perfectly sculpted body."
"Allowed?" he grumbles, his tone one of disbelief. "I could beg you to touch me, if that would help."
My breath catches in my throat again, and the too-hot, too-constricted sensation roars back through me. I let my hand roam his torso, explore the thick, firm swell of his chest, the ridges and grooves of his abs. His jeans sit low on his waist, exposing the waistband of his underwear, beneath which the tempting grooves of his iliac furrows vanish.
I feel my legs writhing, and the folds of my dress gather and tangle and bind until my legs are knotted up like an octopus in a fisherman’s net. In my mind's eye, I see Riley in the basement of his home, shirtless and sweaty in those tiny, revealing shorts.
In my mind's eye, I am bold enough to hook my fingers inside those shorts and help him out of them, baring those infuriating, beguiling furrows which lead like twin highways to his manhood. The thought of which makes my heart palpitate most worryingly, and which makes my hands shake and my palms sweat and now my breath comes short and that hot, pulsing pressure behind my privates becomes maddeningly insistent to the point of insanity.
“The solution you mentioned," I whisper. "May I know what it is?"
"You may," he murmurs in answer, bending over me to kiss my chest between my breasts, and then my sternum, and then my diaphragm, and then my navel. "May I please demonstrate my proposed solution, Cadence?"
I grin, huff a breathless laugh. "I should be most pleased if you did.”
He rises on his hands and knees and moves over me, his gaze raking over my breasts as eagerly, greedily, and blatantly as the first moment he saw my exposed chest. He bends again, kissing my belly, navel, my sides. His hands rest on my waist, and he looks up at me, hesitating. Watching. He curls his fingers in the material of my dress and slowly tugs it downward, giving me every opportunity to stop him. I stroke his hair and search his face, memorizing the way he looks in this moment—eyes wide and deep and pale blue and fiery with desire and yet concerned for me and ready to stop should I give him the slightest indication I wish him to.
He tugs my dress down to my hips, and then pauses. My only response is to lift my backside up half an inch. He slips the dresspast my backside, and I lower myself to the blanket as he slides it down my legs and off.
I am nearly naked now, clad only in a pair of plain black briefs. "Fuck, Cadence," he snarls, his voice low and rough. "So goddamned sexy."
Even the roughness of his voice arouses me. His gaze raking over my body from face to chest to privates to legs and back up—that arouses me.
His hands skimming up my hips and then over my waist and then cupping my breasts, both of them at once—this arouses me.
The wild, frenetic heat building behind my sex is now a crushing, pulsating pressure that I can only attempt to alleviate through the utterly useless yet absolutely involuntary action of rubbing my thighs together. And the more he gazes at me with such obvious desire, the more the pressure of arousal increases.
And then he bends over me again, and I bury my fingers in his soft, cool, thick black hair and stroke and caress his scalp and temples and nape as he kisses my belly and my breasts…and then my belly again…and then my hipbone. Except, in order to kiss my hipbone, he has to tug my underwear down a bit. He repeats this on the other side, and my heart begins to pound harder than ever as I realize what he's doing: the same subtle method of easing me out of my clothing as he used earlier.
Am I prepared to allow him to succeed?
"Riley?" I breathe.
Fingers hooked in my panties at either hip, he freezes in place and looks up at me. "Too fast?"
I shake my head. "No, I…no." I swallow hard. "I know what you are doing. And I…I would like you to know how much I appreciate the care you are taking to ensure my comfort in this process."
He slides the elastic lower, kissing downward in a line from my navel, lower and lower, until he is not longer kissingbelly but the delicate curve of my mons pubis, which has my breath caught, hot and thick and pulsing in the frantic rhythm of my heartbeat, in my throat. "This oughta be fun, Cadence. Enjoyable. I know you're nervous, and that's totally normal."
"I am nervous," I admit, "but no longer afraid. I trust you."
He drops his head, and I hear him clear his throat. "Cadence, I…you don't know what it means to hear that."
