Page 36 of Unrealistic Expectations

“Yes. Yes. I need more.” She didn’t even sound like herself anymore. She didn’t know who this woman was—the one that he’d unleashed just by being himself. She wondered at the pieces of herself that she’d let go missing over all those years with Luke.

It wasn’t that it was all bad, but she’d never realized how much of herself she’d locked away in order to make Luke happy. She’d instinctively known which emotions and ideas were acceptable to him. Everything else she’d tucked away until it was as though it didn’t exist.

But Galvin didn’t have any of that artifice when it came to her. She’d been too tired to hold it up anymore when they’d met.

When he pressed his body inside hers, all thoughts of who she’d had to be for her previous relationship slipped away. They were no longer relevant. The only thing that mattered was what she was feeling in exactly that moment. And it was likely the same for him. He groaned in pleasure as he bottomed out, his pelvic bone against her clit.

“Okay?”

Instead of answering him, she drew her legs up and wrapped them around his hips, trying to pull him closer—though that was likely impossible in the moment. She wrapped her hands around his waist, hoping it might prompt him to move. She needed him to move.

“I love it.” She shouldn’t even be uttering that particular l-word in this room, right now, with him. This didn’t have anything to do with love. This was merely chemistry—conjured up by two particular people with histories that made them susceptible to each other.

This was a rebound for her, and he had something to prove with her. She should be making that her daily affirmation and possibly tattooing it on her palm, but she couldn’t seem to care a whole lot when he finally did move.

“Touch yourself,” he said. “You need to come again, and I’m not going to last very long.”

“I won’t. I can’t.” They’d hooked up enough that he should know better by now. She was pretty much one and done. Him fucking her felt absolutely amazing, but she wasn’t going to have another orgasm.

“I think you can do anything you want to, pretty girl.” She shouldn’t like him calling her that. She hadn’t been a girl for a very long time. But she did. “The only question is whether you want to come again all over my cock.”

She did very much, and it seemed important to him, too. Maybe it was in service of his ego, but if his ego got her a second orgasm, she could live with it. So, she snaked one hand between them and touched her clit. He pinned it there with her hips and directed her movements with his pelvis.

It probably said something fucked up about her that she enjoyed him using diminutives and treating her like she was a puppet, and her pleasure was all in service of his. But she did. Right now, they existed outside of space and any rules of propriety. She didn’t care that she’d never liked that before. She liked it with him.

He was right, he wasn’t going to last long, but being filled by him and stimulating herself broke her open once again. Her body arched into his a few seconds before he stiffened on top of her and emptied himself into the condom.

He rolled away and disposed of the condom in the bathroom while she was still lying on top of his bed, the sweat on her skin rapidly cooling underneath the ceiling fan. When he leaned on the doorframe between the en suite and his bedroom and looked at her, she shivered.

“Are you cold?”

She didn’t know how to answer his question because she didn’t know what she was. “Maybe.”

His brow furrowed, and she couldn’t have that, him being confused about what she felt. She motioned for him to come over. “Are you okay?”

He pulled the covers back and on the other side of the bed and tucked her underneath them with what seemed like zero effort. So, he obviously wasn’t feeling as boneless and lethargic as she was.

She was braced for him to tuck her in and then try to get some space, but he surprised her by scooting in next to her. After warning herself that this was just a fling pretending to be a relationship for the internet, she hadn’t allowed herself to expect a postcoital cuddle. And even if she had expected it, she couldn’t have predicted how much she would need it.

“You’re not going to tell me to put my pants on and get out?” She knew she was being insecure, and he would probably be repulsed by that. But she didn’t want to miss something and overstay her welcome.

But he took it in stride, and chuckled. “I’d tell you to put the rest of your clothes on first.” He squeezed her shoulder to tell her that he was just joking. “I don’t want to let you go just yet, even though I promised to feed you.”

He kissed her on the temple, and then they snoozed.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

You have got to be fucking kidding me.”

Jessica looked around the restaurant to make sure that no one was staring at them after Kelly’s exclamation. It was the Wednesday after the Saturday debacle with her mother and the cataclysmic sex with Galvin, and she was having lunch to debrief with her two best friends.

“Shhhhhh. There are children here.” Barbie had grown up in a very conservative family and was already uncomfortable after Jessica had detailed Galvin’s money sex moves to them over antipasti. Yelling the f-word in a crowded restaurant had put her over the edge.

Kelly just sat back in her chair and shook her head. “He did not have those kinds of moves in college.” It was a little bit weird that Galvin had hooked up with one of her best friends, but that was over a decade ago, they couldn’t let it stay weird. Even in a city the size of L.A., there were only so many men worth sleeping with. If you tossed one back, you couldn’t exactly expect all of your friends to leave him in the sea. “He was eager to please and eager to learn, but it sounds like you guys set the bed on fire.”

“And then he made you pasta carbonara and you ate in bed while watching murder documentaries?” Barbie was the one shaking her head this time. “The fucking dream.”

Jessica nodded. “With a really nice Barolo.”

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