Sheltered (21 page)

It wasn’t supposed to be this good, she knew. It was supposed to hurt, and then be kind of boring. Not all juddery and tingly like this, with an urge to tighten herself around him so brightly fierce inside her.

Would he hate her, if she just tried it again? Or maybe moved a little? It looked as if he’d probably hate her, but for one mad second she didn’t want to resist. She wanted to just jam herself down on him, hard, and feel it again. See him lose it like that again—because by God he definitely seemed close to it.

“Don’t say come,” he said, but he didn’t do so to be mean, she could tell. He did it because the feel of her around him was making him arch his body. It was making all the muscles on his arms stand out in a way that practically swamped her with excitement, and just as she thought she couldn’t stand any more, his head went back.

He rocked his hips, as though he just needed to test it out a little.

“You okay?” he asked. Funny that she wanted to say the exact same thing back to him. “Am I hurting you?”

“You’re not hurting me.”

“You sure?”

His words actually trembled on their way out. But that was okay, because hers did too. She could feel them rattling around inside her, as his cock just ever so slightly eased back and forth, back and forth.

Surely,
surely
it wasn’t meant to feel this good.

“Positive.”

“You want me to—”

“Yes please, now. Just move now. Please.”

Realization crossed his face then. She hadn’t meant to let him know—she kept her words as straightforward and non-urgent as she could. But some of it slipped out anyway, and the second it did his expression practically melted.

“Oh God, God. You
like
it.”

She fought the urge to prove him right, with some of the things her body then wanted to do. Like maybe rubbing herself against him, frantically, to get more of that slick, solid feeling so deep inside her cunt.

“I’d really have to get more of this to make any sort of informed opinion. So if you could just…you know.”

He eased just a little way out, on that last word. Just a little. And it felt nice, it really did. It set off a series of little sparks along all of those nerve endings that hadn’t previously existed, and made her even more aware of how slick she’d gotten. How easy it was, to just do this.

But it wasn’t half as sweet as the feel of him pushing back into her. He did it hard—harder than she was completely prepared for—and the resulting sensation was very far from a series of sparks. It was much more like a jolt, a pulse, and though she’d intended to be composed she somehow ended up with its opposite.

“Yes!” she cried out, then did her best to reel it back in. Tried to get ahold of herself, before continuing with this line of thought. “I mean…yeah. That is possibly sort of maybe quite nice.”

“Like this?”

He drove in again, harder this time. It didn’t seem as though harder should be better, but it was, it was. Harder shoved right up against some nerve inside her, some little pleasure spot that felt almost exactly like someone mashing their hand down on her clit.

What could she really say but,
Oh Jesus do it again
?

“Tell me how you want it, baby,” he said, which was somehow even worse than the actual sensation of his cock rubbing and rubbing over that heretofore undiscovered point of bliss. He just spoke the words so desperately, one hand now right on her ass, lifting and lifting her up toward his thrusts.

Those thrusts getting faster, and harder—though not quite enough, she knew. She could feel him holding back just a little, even as she did her best to set him straight. Even as she gasped and dug her nails into his side and his shoulder, and told him, “Go on, go on, you’re not hurting me.”

God, how had she ever thought this would hurt? She’d ridden a bike her whole life. There probably wasn’t even anything to break. And though he felt thick—impossibly, hugely thick—it didn’t threaten to tear her in two.

On the contrary. It threatened to give her the weirdest, most intense orgasm of her life. She could feel it building in the pit of her stomach, and didn’t know whether to fear or welcome it.

“Fuuuccck, Evie. You’re so tight, honey, seriously I can’t—”

“Does it feel good?”

“You know it feels good. I can hardly get a…I don’t even…”

There was something amusing about watching him trying to form a coherent sentence. Amusing, but arousing at the same time.

“You feel good to me too,” she said, then sort of knew how his speaking problem felt. Those six words didn’t seem like enough, somehow—they were too limited. They didn’t encompass everything about this experience, like how it thrilled her to see him close his eyes and turn his head to one side.

How it turned her insides to molten lava when his thrusts turned jerky and uneven. He was losing control of himself she suspected, but that was fine. Because the moment he did he got hold of her someplace weird—like the back of her thigh—and yanked on her hard. Hitched her hips up, so that his next thrust sent lightning bolts directly to that slowly building place in her belly.

Now it was her turn to say
don’t
.

“Oh no no no—that’s too much. No, I can’t. Oh God I can’t, Van—”

“Right there, huh?”

“Yeah it’s right there but just
ohhhhh
,
please
.”

“Hold on to me,” he said. “Hold on to me.”

She did. She had to. Everything just felt way, way too intense, and clinging to him seemed to make it somewhat bearable. She pressed her face to his shoulder and got her arms around his big back, then just let him take her as hard as he wanted to, in the exact place he wanted to do it.

And God, it felt like being turned inside out. She almost said it right then—those three words she hadn’t been brave enough to give him before. But if she did, what then? He’d think she’d said it because he was currently giving her the most intense pleasure of her life.

Instead of the real reason—because she did. She did she did she did.

“Van,” she said, then just let the pleasure come.

Though “letting” was perhaps stretching it a bit. She didn’t so much let it go through her as cling to him while it punched a hole through her body, all of it so muted and strange compared to her other orgasms, yet sharply intense at the same time.

She didn’t know how such a thing was possible, but it happened even so. And all the way through she hung on fiercely, most of her moans more like grunts. Thighs squeezing too tightly around his body. Hands grasping at parts of him she probably shouldn’t have been grasping.

And best of all—she felt herself clench down hard, on his still-working cock.

“Oh Jesus, Evie,” he panted, almost automatically. Swiftly followed by a tightening of his grip on her back, her ass. His face pressing against the side of hers, as he moaned all hot and wet right into her skin.

He was going over, she could tell. But just in case she wasn’t entirely sure he gave her a brief and helpful tutorial.

“Ohhh that’s it, oh fuck I’m coming,” he said, as his cock swelled inside her. As his thrusts turned even jerkier, some of them lasting for what seemed like days, others over in a heartbeat.

Then finally, he was still. Or at least, as still as somebody could be after something like that. Long after it was over, he still shuddered against her. His breathing still came heavy and hard, and every now and then his cock would jerk into her. As though the aftershocks called for just a
little
more sensation, to ease them up and out.

She understood, however. Most of her felt almost exactly the same. Even when she didn’t want it to, her pussy kept clenching around him. And though he felt heavy spread over her like this, it was good. Stabilizing, somehow. It kept the strange jitters in, when they threatened to overtake her.

“That was…” he started, after a long, long moment. Of course he took what felt like an even longer moment to finish, which wasn’t good. It just allowed her to add a million different words to the end of his sentence, and none of them were, “Unbelievable.”

Most of them were just responses to the question,
Can you file that report
? Like
okay, all right, sure thing
. She didn’t expect the word he actually delivered.

“Really?”

“I’ve collapsed on top of you. How could you doubt it?”

She tried to shrug beneath the weight of him.

“I guess I just didn’t think it would be good, my first time.”

He lifted a little, so he could look at her. Pushed some of the hair back from her face—all of it wet with perspiration. She was a mess, really. A sticky, soggy mess.

“And was it?” he asked, because really he was just as silly as she was. Just as raw, just as unsure, just as unable to grasp simple concepts.

“Better than good,” she said as she ran a hand through his spiky hair. “So good I’m not sure I want to do anything else for the rest of my life.”

Of course, the moment the sentence was out she saw it in a different light altogether. In her head it had seemed simple and more than a little horny, but on the outside…on the outside it had a note of forever. As though she’d proposed marriage, by accident, when really she’d just wanted to reassure him.

He didn’t appear to mind, however. His lips curled into a smile, and then said lips kissed a pattern over her cheek and temple. Shortly followed by those words again—the ones that made her heart beat in a new and startling rhythm.

“I love you, Evie,” he said, while she thought of that one idea over and over again.

Forever.

Instead of what she realized she’d been thinking, all along. That in the morning, she’d have to face the cold, hard reality—she couldn’t stay with Van. She couldn’t live in some romantic fairytale, taking from him what he didn’t actually have. She’d have to find her way alone, and if last night had been anything to go by…alone was a very daunting prospect indeed.

She woke up to the sounds of the city, so rich and strange that for a moment she really thought her journey here had been a dream. Reality was back there, with her father, or outside in the land of motels she couldn’t afford and horror stories about shelters she didn’t want to go to. This was just a fantasy she’d concocted, to make it all go down easier.

But then she turned on the bed, restless, and saw Van sat on the broad windowsill. One leg trailing off over the pillow he’d lain on. Notebook in hand. Everything about him so vividly real she couldn’t doubt it.

The weak winter light had turned his skin to milk. The charcoal in his hand had smudged all over his fingers. And most damning of all, he wasn’t wearing any clothes. Just none at all.

There wasn’t a person on earth who’d doubt Van’s presence, while naked. He looked huge, framed by the window, and so very, very intent on whatever he was drawing. Until he saw her looking at him, of course.

His eyes met hers. She didn’t mind admitting that it made her stomach bottom out.

“Keep still,” he said, as she did the exact opposite. She couldn’t possibly obey while he sat there like that, looking like one giant delicious contrast. Black on white, rough on smooth, big and gentle all at the same time.

And he was actually drawing too. He was drawing something even as he half-eyed her, gaze as smoky and gorgeous as ever she’d seen it.

Had she really thought this might not be a dream, after all? That person was mad. This
had
to be a dream. He looked unreal, and worse than that, he then said, “I can’t get your mouth right.”

He was
drawing her
. That fact practically guaranteed she was hallucinating this.

“Don’t,” she said, though naturally tried to catch a glimpse of what he was doing anyway. Maybe it didn’t have to be a hallucination—maybe he’d drawn her with massive cheeks and giant, hairy eyebrows.

“Are you sure? Because you’ve just exposed a whole bunch of other stuff for me to capture. I’ve got room for breasts on this page.”

She snatched for the notebook, uncaring of her completely naked state. He’d seen it all the night before, and in her bedroom too. What did it matter now? What did anything matter now?

“Let me see,” she said, but he kept the notebook just out of reach. He waited, until she’d practically clambered all over him.

“Ready for round two, huh?” he asked, which was somehow more awesome than all of the rest of it. The waking up to him, all relaxed like that. The drawing, the lack of fear, the knowledge that this could be real, if she wanted it to be.

“Is jumping on you all I have to do to get a round two?”

He laughed, for that. Nice and easy, just like the rest of this.

“Pretty much.”

“Can I see now?”

“It’s not finished.”

“I’m frightened you’ve made my face really huge.”

More laughter. This time bemused, but just as welcome.

“What? Why?”

She snatched at the book again, but his arms were as long as the river Nile. She could have stood on one of his shoulders and made out Egypt, somewhere in the distance.