If Only (21 page)

He lowers his head and
trails his warm, wet tongue around my hard peak, one delayed sweep. Reclaiming
my hold on his hair, I arch as he grips my bar between his teeth, tugs it
lightly, and sucks my flesh into his mouth. “Joe,” I whimper. I’m going insane,
I want him so bad. I just want to open my legs and clamp him between them. I
want him inside me.

His palm travels down to my
panties, stopping over them, and he clasps my crotch tightly. His responding
groan vibrates through me and I moan. “Fuck, you’re so warm,” he mutters
against my breast, sounding tormented. I now know for certain that I’m not the
only one going crazy here.

 I tilt my hips,
pushing against his grip, seeking relief from all the pulsating tension. Biting
my bottom lip, I suppress the moans fighting their way out, but it’s impossible
not to writhe beneath his touch. I wish we weren’t out here. Remaining outside
my underwear, he presses his two middle fingers between my soaking wet folds
and strokes my clit. Heaven help me, I’m truly losing my mind
.
As I feel
the pleasure start to build and almost succumb to the verbal release, Joe’s
mouth captures mine and I cry out into his.

He breaks our connection and
rolls me onto my front. My shirt still up around my chest and upper back, he
kisses hungrily down my spine, all the way to my butt, and pulls my panties
partially down. The combination of warm breath, licking tongue, and grazing
teeth across my ass overwhelms my mind and body. I’m close to begging him to
take me right here, hard and fast, so fucking hard and fast, especially now
that he’s pulling my underwear off. If we had condoms I’d do it, screw where we
are, I don’t care anymore.

As I urgently fist my
sleeping bag, Joe flips me over on to my back, hooks one of my legs over his
shoulder and pushes the other one wide. His face right in front of my pussy, he
inhales deeply through his nose. “Holy-fucking-shit,” he mutters, pressing his
cheek against my inner thigh, his eyes squeezed shut and a tight frown tugging
at his brows. “I can smell your arousal.” His grip on my hip tightens, almost
painfully, his deep groan a sound of desperation, a reflection of my own. “I’m
going out of my mind.” He looks up at me, across the contours of my body, his
face partially obscured by his hair falling like open drapes. “It’s beautiful.”

“Joe,” I sob, over-aroused.
I can’t say anything more.

I swallow hard, against my
tight throat, and as I attempt to speak again, he says, “I wanna taste you.”

Um, what do you say to that?
I give a small, pleading nod. He looks ready to devour me. I reach for the
shirt he brought with him and hold it tightly over my face, to muffle the
sounds already coming from me. I’ve never felt this aroused, or desperate, in
my life.

Heaven is fucking torture
.

He licks me once, slowly. I
arch and whimper and flex my toes. He licks me twice, slower, the entire length
of my pussy. “I love the way you taste,” he whispers, his cool breath caressing
the spot he just stroked. As his tongue delves into me, over and over again,
the rough texture combine with his ravenous invasion has me parting my legs
wider and thrusting into his face. Teasing, slick swirls over my clit, spearing
in and out of me with persistence, it feels like he’s intentionally delaying
it, yet he’s so determined and unforgiving about it.

He starts pressing into me
with two fingers, all the way to the third-knuckles. Rocking my hips, I ride
his hand, moaning into the garment. He brings the sole focus of his tongue to
my clit and attacks ... “Ah … Joe,” I scream into his shirt. My orgasm erupts
like never before, taking me over entirely. I tremble and goose bumps assault
me with a vengeance. For a second, I think I’ve gone blind, but it’s just the
clothing over my face, which I’ve almost suffocated myself with.

Over sensitive and panting
like I’ve been deprived of air, I could cry. I want to cry, but I don’t have
time; my legs pushed wide, hot mouth back in place, one hand cupping my breast,
firm and demanding. If I could speak I’d tell him to stop, because I feel like
I’m going to die. I come hard again, sooner than I thought I was capable of. If
pleasure could kill, I would expire right now, right here, and I would be happy
to do so. 

Tender kisses and gentle
licks cover in and around my folds, avoiding my too-sensitive nub, and then
they travel slowly up the center of my body. Joe eases my hands and the shirt
away from my face. A soft peck to the tip of my nose and, remaining silent, he
pulls me into a tight embrace, on our sides, facing each other.

I nuzzle my face against his
throat. I’m lost for words. My eyelids are heavy and I’m vaguely aware of the sky
being a cloudless sapphire-blue. It’s dawn. No, it’s twilight. I’m not sure
what the hell it is, I’m delirious and just don’t give a damn.

My body is humming in pure
rapture.

And Joe
loves
me.

I wake up first, the brightness of the sun making me
squint and shield my eyes with my hand. It’s quiet, except for some birds
singing in the trees and a few faint voices off in the distance.

Once I’m fully adjusted, I
gaze down at Callie, sleeping peacefully. “Baby cake, wake up,” I whisper in
her ear.

Her brow furrows and she
stirs. “What?” She’s so pretty and unwilling. We barely got one hour of sleep.

“We’ve gotta get up.”

As she turns onto her back
and slowly opens her eyes, the bright daylight hits her. She covers her face
with her forearm and smiles in my direction. I let her adjust in her own time.
The moment she moves her arm, I press my lips to hers.

I’m going to kiss this woman
everyday for the rest of my life.

“You got me dressed,” she
says, looking down at herself inside the sleeping bag.

“Yeah, all that skin to skin
contact disguised the drop in temperature over night. That’s why I put us in
the same bag.”

“I’d have been disappointed
if I hadn’t woken up in yours with you.” She snuggles into me like a content
kitten. Really, we should be getting up, but fuck that.

“Joe?”

“I love the way you say my
name.”

She laughs, lightly. “I’m
not sure why, but if it makes you happy.”

It’s spoken with sweet
affection. It’s always sounded this way, and I’ve always liked it, but I never
understood it. Now I get it.

“Did you wanna ask me
something?”

“Yes, but you don’t have to
answer.”

“Go ahead, I’ll tell you
anything you want to know.”

“Well …”

“Go ahead,” I encourage.

“When was your last
girlfriend? Not Paige.”

“Megan. We got together when
we were sixteen and I was with her five years.”

She pulls away enough to
look at my face. “Five years! Are you serious?”

I chuckle at the shock in
her expression. “Is that so hard to believe?”

She frowns, nodding slowly.
“Uh, yeah, it … kinda is. What happened?”

“We were good for the most
part, I thought I loved her. After around four years we were still going great.
Then her dad upped and left one day, out of the blue, just like that. Her
parents were happy as far as she and her mother knew. After he took off they
found out he’d been having an affair with someone he met on a business trip a
year earlier.
A man.”

Those slender eyebrows shoot
up. “Joe, are you serious?”

I nod. “I’m serious, Baby
cake.”

She blinks a few times.
“Sorry. Please, continue.”

“Megan was devastated. That
would’ve been the case anyway, but leaving her mother for a guy. They didn’t
know he liked men, nobody did. Her mom wound up on antidepressants, and Megan
distanced herself from everyone.
Including me.

“I didn’t really know what
to do, so I tried to be patient and be there for her. My parents tried, too, my
mom even put her in contact with a counselor friend of hers, but Megan just
refused any help. Instead, she began drinking, starting with all the liquor in
her house. Any attempt I made to help she rejected and we’d just end up
fighting. We went on like that for about a year.

“Then, one day, she told me
she’d been with some other guy, her neighbor who was home for spring break. He
wanted her for a long time, even before I got with her, but she wasn’t
interested in him like that. She was so messed up, and he took advantage of her
vulnerability.

“When she told me what she’d
done it was clear we couldn’t continue as we were, so I ended it. Soon after,
she moved away, her mom couldn’t afford the house anymore. They went to stay
with family in New York.”

“My God, Joe, that’s awful.
Did you ever hear from her again?”

“About three years later she
called my parents’ house and left me her number. She wanted to let me know she
was okay, and to say thanks and sorry. I didn’t think she had anything to
apologize for, but she did. I guess you could say we made our peace.”

“Is that what stopped you
having a relationship?”

“After she left, I decided I
should be by myself. I knew I’d be with someone else, eventually, but I wanted
my head to be clear of everything that’d happened with us. It didn’t help, I
guess, that Gerard and Dane were with me when I moved to the city. We arrived
with one fundamental thing in common – none of us wanted commitment. We just
turned into a bunch of dudes who were fucking.

“That was never my
intention, but I liked that there was no deeper connection with the women. I
liked not having to deal with emotions. I liked the freedom I found and more
than embraced it. It didn’t take away my belief in relationships, or my desire
to have a good one, but I was young and I figured I had plenty of time for all
that.
Until you nearly killed me.”

“Hah!” her lips curve on the
verge of a giggle, “I totally did not nearly kill you. You almost rode into my
bug, if anything, you tried to kill me.” She pauses, a soft smile remaining.
“Did that guy coming between you and Megan in anyway influence you not telling
me how you felt?”

“To start with it did, yeah.
I wasn’t gonna shit on some other guy like that, and I knew from that day at
the expo Nick was insane about you. It was obvious you were into him, too, and
I figured I didn’t stand much of a chance while you felt that way. I didn’t
know you had feelings for me, but I did sense a connection between us, like
things would’ve been different if someone else hadn’t found you first. To me,
the obvious thing to do was wait, which doesn’t seem as logical now as it did
then, but chasing you while you were with Nick was never an option. Eventually,
it came down to you and how you were with him, your reluctance. I’d been
considering talking to you these past few months. I was starting to feel done.”

She cuddles into me,
tightly. “I wish I knew how you felt, Joe.”

“You should’ve been mine a long time ago, Baby cake.”

Once we’re up and ready, we start heading back to the
others.

Callie stops, suddenly, her
eyes widening slightly. “Am I taking the walk of shame?”

I chuckle. I’m not sure
what’s more funny; her expression or the way she said it. “I guess some people
might say so.” I can’t help laughing again, she looks horrified. “This isn’t
exactly the same thing, but you know Gerard.”

“Yeah, I do. You know you
can actually buy walk of shame kits?”

“Are you serious?”

She nods. “I’ve never needed
one, I might add. For the record, you’ll be my number two.”

Shit, I don’t need that in
my head right now. Son of a bitch, I’m finding this resistance hard enough as
it is. It also doesn’t help that I know how little she has on beneath the
sleeping bag she has wrapped around her body. I focus on her expression as a
distraction from the stirring in my shorts. I’ve never seen her get embarrassed
before, but she is now. “Stay behind me, I’ll show my face first,” I say, as I
pace ahead of her.

We approach the tent, and
the others are outside.

“Hey, birthday boy,” Gerard
says, grinning in a way I know all too well. He’s thinking
someone got lucky
last night
. I did, but not in the one track mind way he’s thinking. He
starts chanting at a lower level, with his hand cupped at the side of his
mouth, “Walk of shame, walk of shame,
walk
of shame.”
He follows it up with a guffaw.

“Fuck you, Gerard,” Callie
says.

“Nah, you’ve already done
Joe.” 

“Ouch,” Dane responds. “Shut
the fuck up, man.” He chuckles.

And this is exactly why she
felt awkward. Callie ignores the smart-ass comment and goes off into the tent
with Su. “We’re getting ready, so no entry permitted,” Su calls out.

Gerard’s had his laugh now,
and that’s okay, but I’ll be making sure he doesn’t embarrass Callie further,
when she comes back out.

I am so cringing right now. For the first time, after
years of knowing them, I feel self-conscious walking out to the faces of Dane
and Gerard. I feel like I have ‘I fucked Joe last night’ written all over me.
It’s embarrassing.