Beautiful Together (31 page)

Slowly, he resumed his previous tempo in our adjusted position. His fingers remained planted on my clit the whole time, and the undulating waves of pleasure grew exponentially, starting to shake me from the inside out.

"I'm gonna cum," I mumbled weakly, the words of the sentence disjointed by his thrusts.

"I know," he snarled.

Our bodies slapped together loudly as he pushed me toward that climax. The sweat dribbled down my cheeks until I could taste the intense saltiness on my lips.

And then, after he spanked me once more, I came.

Blackness overtook me, my lungs gasping for air, my body curving against his. I felt the muscles inside of me clenching. I heard my cries, but didn't remember making them. I rubbed hard against the sheet and pillow, my gasps and moans incessantly spilling into the pillow like run-on sentences of bliss.

I brought my hips closer to him. I needed him as deep as he possibly could go.

Deeper. Now.

"Oh fuck, Naomi," he moaned. "I love you. I... love you."

I felt him twitching, felt him releasing into me. I felt my own muscles milking him, my orgasm elongated, heightened, stretched to new peaks. I couldn't have responded, even if I wanted to.

Again and again he spilled into me, filling me with pure ecstasy. He cried out like I had, our sounds harmonious, like desperate prayers.

His cock flexed and his muscles contracted and tightened. I could feel his engaged abs against my ass. I could feel
so much
, and everything I felt brought me more pleasure, more concentrated, unadulterated pleasure, like the sweet taste of pure honey.

My vision blurred, and I felt myself swimming through a very dreamy mind, drowning in that beautiful moment.

And then, when our climaxes started to subside, he pushed me flat again, going in as far as he could. He held himself there and kept me against the bed. I was fulfilled in so many ways at once.

My lungs fought for air, their powerful struggle enough to lift his weight up and down on my back. He kissed the nape of my neck gently, cradling me, physically loving me. I had lost my mind.

It. Was. Gone.

I was
his
, all
his
—and there was nothing I could do about it.

"I love you, Naomi," he said, his voice airy and soft.

"I love you, Jesse," I whispered.

I didn't want to move from that position beneath him, not then, not ever.

So we stayed there, together.

31

"Have you ever wanted something so badly for so long, and then when you finally get it, it's even better than you could have ever imagined? Like, your expectations aren't just
met
, but they're totally blown away?"

We were in the shower together the next morning, washing ourselves after an extensive night of, well, sex. It was great sex too. The best sex. The kind of sex that would spoil every future sexual encounter forever.

And even after two incredible rounds last night, I was still super riled up in the morning. So I generously woke Jesse with some surprise attention
down below. And then he reciprocated with his own
expertise
—the most brilliant tongue and fingers
ever
—and drove me nearly to the point of insanity.

Now we were in the shower, and he was
still
visibly hard. It seemed like we could have literally had sex
the whole weekend
without any real issues.

Well, as long as we took an occasional break to eat and drink.

"I don't really know," I answered. "I know what you're saying, but unfortunately, I was a little less fixated on you than you were on me. I mean, this is by far the best sex I've ever had—I just didn't have any expectations for it."

"Did you think I'd be terrible?" he asked, grinning.

"No way!"

"Well, then you had
some
expectation, right?"

I shrugged. "I guess so." I looked around the shower for soap. "Do you have any girly stuff I can use?"

"Why the hell would
I
have that?" he asked incredulously.

"For guests? To be polite?" I wryly smiled. "Just something neutral. I don't want to smell like sports or a creek in the woods or a rodeo or something."

"A
rodeo?
" he asked snidely. "Are you kidding me? What, like
mud and horse shit
scented body wash?"

We both burst out laughing. "That's so stupid," I said between giggling fits, clutching at the washcloth bar for support. "Worst. Idea. Ever."

"I don't have anything like
that
," he finally said as our laughter quieted, "but that peppermint stuff isn't inherently manly as far as I'm concerned. I use it for both soap and shampoo."

"Fine." I grabbed the bottle of Dr. Bronner's Soap after finally realizing what it was. The weird cryptic writing covering the whole blue label should have been a dead giveaway. "As long as it's not like
rodeo
-scented, I'll use it."

Jesse smiled. "Right. Well, anyhow," he started, steering the conversation back to his original point, "I actually never thought I'd see you again. And then when I
did
see you again, I wasn't sure if the same feelings would still be alive today as when I was a horny teenager."

"Well, you're just a horny adult now," I said, pointing down at his crotch and his very conspicuous state of arousal. "It's not like you've changed
that
much."

"Well, because you haven't changed either—you're still the hottest girl on the planet."

"Thanks. Even hotter than...
Carla Voss
?"

"
Way
hotter," he said. "A hundred times hotter."

I smiled. "Well, I think you're hotter now, too."

"Good," he said, lathering up his hair. "It's just... I couldn't believe how good this all is. How good it made me feel. How good it
makes
me feel. You're incredible, Naomi. Beautiful, smart, funny, charming, witty... I don't know what to do with myself."

I rinsed the tingly soap out of my hair as I waited to see just how long his warm stream of compliments would continue. "Thanks," I said after he finally slowed down.

"I couldn't stop thinking about you after I left London. I just kept reliving the whole night in my mind, over and over again. I had always wondered what it would be like to be with you, and I never thought I'd actually find out. I assumed my chances ended way back when I was sixteen and screwed everything up." He paused for a second, standing under the spray of the showerhead. "Believe me, I wanted to come see you again in London more than anything, but I knew it just wouldn't work. I kind of wanted to quit Dolphin."

"Jesse!" I scolded. "You can't quit. Dolphin is your thing, the dream you've been working so hard for."

"I know," he said sheepishly. "It was just a weird feeling, not something I would actually do."

We both fell silent, the calming rush of water filling in our conversational gap. "So where do we go from here, then, Jesse?" I asked. "What's next for
us
?"

"I don't know," he said. "What do
you
want to do?"

I thought hard for a second. "Were you even looking for a girlfriend when you ran into me?"

"No," he said softly. "I wasn't."

His response initially shocked me, but I knew it was just my emotions flaring up. "Well, so—"

"But that doesn't mean I don't want you," he added quickly. "And I don't just mean sex, either."

"I've been looking at schools in Boston," I admitted. "If I could get into one, it would be perfect."

"I'm gonna be really busy," he said. "With Dolphin. But that doesn't change how I feel about us. It's not like I want to keep working eighty hour weeks. I might be busy, but... I can make it work."

"Sure," I muttered, a little defeated. I felt like an untied balloon, my soul slowly leaking away. "I mean, if you're gonna be so busy all the time, I don't know if I should—"

"We could get our own place together. Even if I was busy, we'd still see each other sometimes." He paused and stared back at me. "Well, if you were ready. I don't want to rush you. We can let things progress naturally."

To me, it felt more like regression than progression, but once again, my feelings weren't actually facts. I had been single for so long—did I really want to jump into a relationship with a guy who I might only see a couple times a week?

"I guess I have to think about it," I said. "I don't know if I'm ready to just... dive in like that."

He smiled at me, but it wasn't all that warm. "Yeah, I understand, Naomi. I want to be with you. But if you're hesitating, I don't want to make you uncomfortable. I meant what I said about all of my feelings though. I still mean it."

It took me a minute, but I finally snapped out of my haze, out of the fog of love and sex and steam that was overtaking my brain. "Yeah, we'll just... wait and see. And I'd also better wash myself before we run out of hot water and have to scramble to get out of here." I clutched the peppermint soap and dumped it all over my hand.

"We probably won't run out," he said, and then smiled. "Maybe we
shouldn't
focus so much on the heavy stuff. Let's just enjoy the now. Let's have a good time."

Finally, something he said really got through to me. It was the same thing Arielle had said too. "Yeah. I like that."

And unsurprisingly,
his
idea of a good time involved bending me forward and making me scream his name into the shower walls.

Yeah, it was definitely a good time. And no, the hot water didn't run out.

***

After coffee and breakfast, we ended up back in his room, sitting on the bed.

"Listen, I need to meet with them downstairs for like an hour, okay? I swear it won't take too long. They already know I'm taking the weekend off, but I still have to check in."

"Yeah, sure," I said. "I can just get on my laptop or whatever. I've got some shows to catch up with on Netflix."

"Cool," he said. "I'll be back, okay?"

"Okay." I nodded, and then he leaned forward and kissed me. Soon after, he jumped up and headed out into the hall, closing the door behind him.

I booted up my laptop and sat there in peaceful silence, waiting for the desktop to load. Everything felt so great, so incredibly perfect. I didn't have all the answers, but that didn't mean I wasn't happy.

When my desktop was finally loaded, I clicked on the internet icon and quickly realized I didn't have the Wi-Fi password. Since Jesse was only supposed to be downstairs for a short time, I also didn't feel comfortable interrupting him, not right now.

His Macbook Pro was sitting open on his desk, so I sat down and turned it on, hoping I could get the Wi-Fi password from it somehow. It booted up to a password screen, a password that, like the Wi-Fi one, I didn't have. I tried a couple of stupid phrases, but as I expected, they didn't work.

I shrugged and closed the lid.

I dug out my book and tried to read, but I felt too distracted to focus on anything in particular. My body felt twitchy, and my brain felt like it didn't fit inside my skull. I had an itch inside my ear and I promptly realized I was going to need a cotton swab.

And I didn't have any.

I walked into the bathroom and opened the top drawers. No swabs. I opened all of the lower drawers one at a time, giving their contents a cursory glance, not wanting to dig too deeply in case he had something embarrassing hidden in there.

After failing to find anything inside the drawers, I arrived at the doors beneath the sink. I opened them and peered inside—and felt ambiguous panic surge through me.

There was a cardboard box filled with bottles of girly conditioner and shampoo. Acne medication, eyeliner, mascara, blackhead removal strips. It was a full arsenal of feminine beauty and cleaning products, everything haphazardly thrown into the mysterious
Box Beneath the Sink
.

I abruptly closed the doors, trying to shield myself from the sudden discovery. It didn't make any sense; these were the kind of things he specifically said he didn't have.

But after a minute, I reopened them, wanting to figure out if I had lost my mind.

It was all still there. I shut the doors again.

"What the hell?" I said to myself.

Once again, my imagination ran wild, but I fought to quickly shut it down. Maybe he just liked girly products and didn't want to tell me. That wasn't a huge deal. A little strange, but that's it.

Maybe they were left over from someone in the past, one of his exes who had lived here with him.

Yeah, that made sense. But the fact that he didn't offer them to me in the shower didn't add up either. If they were discarded by someone else, he should have—

Maybe he just forgot.

Yeah, that seemed plausible. I had stuff beneath my own sink that I had forgotten about too. I pinched my cheek. "Get yourself together," I scolded at that familiar face in the mirror. I splashed my cheeks with water and then got the hell out of the bathroom before anything else weird happened.

I groaned as I lay down on the bed and stared up at the unmoving ceiling fan. I was losing it. Jesse had blown my mind so much that I was actually losing touch with reality.

That's exactly what was going on. Everything was so new and fresh and different and I couldn't even begin to comprehend it without excessive suspicion. And since we didn't have a clear plan for the future, my mind was rushing into full paranoia mode.

Control yourself, Naomi. He said he loves you, right?

I grabbed my cell phone and looked at the time—only about twenty minutes had passed. I had at least forty more to go. And it was very possible the meeting would run over.

I took some deep breaths and held them in until my heart slowed down.

This was just a stupid misunderstanding. I would ask him about it, and he would clear things up immediately. I mean, Jesse was a guy I had a history with, a guy who had been closer to me than anyone else for a long time. We had shared all of our secrets, celebrated the good times, lamented and cursed the bad ones.

I used to be able to ask him anything, so why couldn't I do that now? Maybe it
was
a bit of a leap in logic to assume that things would go back to the way they used to be—we were sleeping together now, after all—but I needed to calm down.

The thought finally assuaged my fears. I didn't even know
what
I was afraid of, to be honest. I guess it was just the uncertainty.

Realizing that I had no way to get online and also no way to solve my current puzzle, I put my head down against the pillow and tried to nap.

I fell into many short-lived, fitful bouts of sleep until finally, I reached something deeper.

***

Thud!

"Huh?" I bolted up abruptly.

"Oh, shit," Jesse said. "I'm sorry, the meeting went way over. I didn't know you were sleeping. I'm sorry I startled you." He slowly sipped from a mug in his hand.

I rubbed my eyes and glanced out the window—the sun had moved significantly since I dozed off. "How long has it been?"