Wake (77 page)

“Dad!”

“Have a pancake.”

*

Elise comforts herself with a
Harry Potter
marathon, including the DVD extras. Eric sits down next to her to offer comfort, but when he hears about what happened he just laughs. That puts Elise in an even worse mood. She hears the doorbell ring when Willa arrives, and tries to mar my happy moment by practically shouting the dialogue along with the actors.

“Morning.” I lean in for a kiss as Elise declaims along with Mrs. Weasley’s Howler. Willa looks to the living room and raises an eyebrow questioningly.

“She’s having a rough day.” I put an arm around Willa and usher her upstairs.

“Something about that guy?” Willa asks lowly as we cross the upper landing.

“What has she told you?” If he did anything to her, I will break him.

Willa shrugs. “Nothing. She’s been trying to get over her crush.” I automatically grin at the news.

I take Willa into my bedroom. Maybe we can create a playlist together for once instead of over the phone.

Willa locks the door behind us. What for?

“I like those jeans.” They’re the one pair that fit me. Willa casually squeezes my right cheek and gives my butt an appreciative pat. I realize my mouth is open when she makes a jerking motion in front of my lips. I’m just surprised, is all. I’m not used to being… attractive. She touches me so casually, like there’s nothing complicated or different about grabbing my ass.

I grab hers right back.

“I’ve been waiting for you to do that.”

She has?

I slip my hand into her back pocket. Willa’s arm wraps around my neck as she reaches up for a kiss.

The hand in her pocket flexes as she begins to walk me backwards. My knees touch the foot of the bed and we fall back on it together. Willa is careful to break her fall with her arms so as not to hurt me.

“I like your shirt.”

It would look better on the floor.

“
Always the tits with you, isn’t it?” Like she’s complaining. “Will you take off your hat?”

I refuse to let her kill this moment. “Nope.”

“It’s t-shirt weather and you’re wearing wool.”

“Actually, I think it’s alpaca. You’d have to ask Elise.”

“Alpaca is wool.”

“Nuh-uh.” She opens her mouth to argue so I pull her down for a kiss. It’s my favorite way to interrupt her. Willa tries to talk anyway.

“You really”—kiss—“won’t”—kiss—“take—”

“No, it stays. I keep my hat on, you keep your pants on.”

“And what if I don’t want to keep my pants on?” She gives me a wicked smirk. Willa loves to call my bluff.

“well then too damn bad.”

“Where are your parents?” she whispers.

“Uh, Dad’s at the hospital. Mom’s in her office.” I can see where she’s going with this. “Eric’s just down the hall , in the library. Close enough to hear.”

“We’ll have to be quiet, then.” She dips her neck into mine and I can’t think straight when she kisses me like that. Some magnetic force attaches my hand to her boob. She’s wearing a thin cotton bra—no wire, and I can feel
everything
through it.

“Did you ever think about this, before?” I ask. My voice might be a little husky. Might.

Willa just chuckles. Her teeth close around my earlobe and I melt. My thumb makes its way to the little val ey between her breasts, and I feel a ridge of plastic. She’s wearing a front-clasp bra.

Sweet baby Jesus, yes!

You’re not going to do anything with it, genius.

“Did you ever picture
me
naked?” she murmurs with a smile. I freeze for a second. Not because I don’t want to admit that I did—do—picture her naked, fondly and frequently, but because I think her tone just implied that she thinks of me in the same manner. I bet she imagines something better than the reality;

more weight, fewer scars, hair in all the appropriate places…

“You look guilty,” she observes.

“Uh…”

Willa giggles and kisses my cheek. “What? You got some weird fantasy?”

“No.” Bending her over in the bathtub. Over the desk. In my desk chair. Against the door. On the couch.

On the rug. On her knees in front of my piano bench… “Nothing unusual.”

You forgot ‘in the car.’

Willa rolls onto her side next to me and props her head up on her elbow. Her other hand stays wrapped around my middle, idly stroking my side. “Tell me.”

“Uh…”

She whispers in my ear, “What do you think about when you’re
alone
?” Does it get her off to hear this?

Does Willa like dirty talk?

“Um…” I’m just full of eloquent answers today. The honest answer to her question is ‘how much I know it’s going to hurt should I manage to come,’ but that’s not sexy. I should lie, if only for form’s sake.

“I think about you.”

“What am I doing?” Her breath is hot on my neck. The magnets in her nipples tug at my hand again.

Willa only encourages me to touch.

“You’re on your knees.”

She chuckles. “And where’s my mouth?”

Screaming for more.

“You’re facing away from me.”

“And what are you doing?”

I swallow. I don’t want to set up the expectation that I will be able to follow through on this fantasy in the near future, because I won’t.

“I’m…”

“Do you want to show me?” Her hand migrates from my waist to my crotch. Unlike Ava, she doesn’t bother to feel around. She goes right for the goods and strokes me through my jeans. Hello, marshmal ow dick.

I pull her hand away. “I don’t want you to touch me there.” Willa looks more than a little confused. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have played along—I teased you.”

Willa’s eyes travel southward and I bend my knees up to make it look like I’m hiding a boner. She isn’t fooled.

“You’re not into it?”

“I am, really.” It’s Ava all over again, only this time I don’t want to push Willa away and shut her out while I lick my wounds. “It’s complicated.”

Willa raises an eyebrow. She sits up, and just the small est signal of her pulling away makes me panic a little. I pull her back down and she lands on me awkwardly. I kiss her desperately and squeeze her ass to prove that yes, I am into her.

Stay with me; stay with me…

I can tellshe’s confused, but she still kisses me back. At first she doesn’t know what to do with my sudden aggression, since our kisses are usually slow and gentle, but then she picks it up and matches me stroke for stroke. I get her bra undone through her shirt—I love front clasps—and Willa grabs my hand away.

“Jem.” I am in such trouble. “Fair is fair. You don’t get to touch me if I can’t touch you.”

“I
do
want you,” I try to impress on her.

“But you don’t want me to touch you.”

“In certain places,” I agree lamely. Willa stares at me for a few seconds. There’s understanding in her eyes, and that’s the only reason her silence doesn’t scare the shit out of me.

“Is it a kidney thing?” she asks.

“What?”

“Why you don’t want to be touched there.” She signals to my crotch with her eyes. “I don’t know much about kidney problems. Is, uh, incontinence an issue?”

I can’t decide whether I should throw myself out the window or stick my head in the oven. I’ve sabotaged myself again, somehow managing to turn a hot make out session into a conversation about whether I piss myself involuntarily.

What is wrong with Willa that she looks so damn understanding? What if I said yes, I do pee my pants and wear an adult diaper? There is something seriously wrong with her if she would stick by a guy like that.

She takes my hand and I don’t want her to think I’m
that
guy. I end up telling her the whole sordid story. I tell her that if I get hard it’s almost always by accident, and I don’t stay that way long enough to finish.

There’s no intensity of feeling down there. When I do finish, it feels like I’ve been kicked in the balls; just painful ejaculation with no orgasm to make it worthwhile.

Willa listens to the whole thing patiently. When I run out of words she cups my jaw in her hand and tries to kiss me. I don’t want to be kissed; I’ve never felt less sexy than I do right now, and I don’t want her to try to ‘fix’ my problem the way Ava did.

“How long has this been going on?” she asks.

“Since winter.”

“No wonder you’re so grouchy,” she says. “Months without an orgasm. I’d be climbing the walls.”

“Not funny.”

“Put on a t-shirt.”

“What?”

“Short sleeves. I want to show you something.”

“I’m not in the mood.”

“Humor me, please.” She smiles so sweetly, but I just can’t do it. I close my eyes and rest my forehead on hers with a sigh.

“
Please,
Willa, let it go.”

She wraps her arms around me tightly, drawing me into my favorite kind of hug. Willa holds onto me like she wants nothing more than to be as close to me as possible. She’s not overly gentle with me; I’m her boyfriend, not a piece of glass.

“Can you feel your heart beating?”

I sigh, happy and grateful. Willa always knows how to center me.

“Yes.”

“Feel it in your wrists?”

“Yes.” My wrists are pressed against her shoulder blades, holding onto her just as hard as she is to me.

“In your elbows?”

“Mmmh.”

“In your ears?”

She keeps going, whispering places and breathing softly against my neck until I’m so relaxed I’m almost asleep. She rubs my back and tells me she loves me, and I barely have the will to care when I feel her pushing my sleeve up.

“Feel your heartbeat here,” she says, and plants a long, wet kiss on my inner elbow. She lifts her lips away and licks me softly, dragging her tongue up the center of my elbow. The skin there is so thin I bet she can feel my pulse with her lips, and I, in turn, can feel every bit of her lips in acute detail. She slowly repeats the movement on my other elbow. A sigh escapes me as her fingers trace the backs of my knees.

“How do you feel?” she whispers as she lowers her face to my arm again. Willa trails slow kisses up the inside of my arm from my elbow, lingering over the sensitive skin. Her hands are under my hips, lightly tracing the indentations at the back of my hipbones. I couldn’t possibly feel calmer and my skin feels warm and tingly.

“Beautiful,” I murmur, because for the first time in a long time, it’s true. I won’t mean it twenty minutes from now, but I try not to think about that. I nest my hands in her soft curls.

“Your heart is beating faster.” She’s right. I’m relaxed, but my heart is double-timing it, pounding in all the places Willa made me feel—my elbows and knees and neck. I have a sudden craving to have my throat touched, and pull Willa away from my arms to attend to the skin there.

She trails her tongue from the hol ow of my collarbone to the tip of my chin. Sweet bliss. My hands and breath tremble as she traces the underside of my jaw with her lips, laving at my earlobes.

“Jem?” she whispers with her teeth around my earlobe.

“Mmh?”

“Where do you feel your heart beating?”

“Everywhere.”

“Everywhere?”

I nod dumbly and try to recapture her lips for another kiss. My skin feels hot and swollen, like a ripe berry about to burst. I feel so blissfully alive and I don’t want her to stop touching me.

“Jem?”

“What?”

“You realize you’re hard, right?”

No one has ever had to point that out to me before. I look down, flabbergasted, to find her quite correct. It’s not exactly a steel rod, but it’s the first promising erection I’ve had all month.

“Do you want to do something about it?”

Yes.

No.

Maybe.

Why the hell are you leaving this up to me?

“It’s going to hurt.”

“Do you get any pleasure out of being touched? Or is it all pain?” Willa kisses my neck and I shiver. It’s an odd sensation, like the ghost of what being touched used to feel like.

“It doesn’t feel bad until the end. It’s just…frustrating. I don’t get anywhere.”

Willa’s hand makes its way to my inner thigh. “Shal I?”

“No.”

“Do you want to do it yourself?”

“No. Just kiss me, okay?” I pull her face to mine, trying to resurrect the good thing we had going before my cock had to get in the way with its dirty tease. Willa opens her mouth to my tongue. We play in her mouth for a while, licking and sucking on each other’s lips. Then she has to thrust her tongue into my mouth, goading me on. Willa wants to tongue-fuck.

Her arms tighten around my back and she shifts her legs, tangling them with mine. My yet-to-disappear hard-on is sandwiched against her front. I try to ignore it and pour what I can into our kiss. Willa loves it.

She opens up to it. She moans into my mouth and part of me wishes she would wriggle just a little bit, putting friction elsewhere. But I know that’s a bad idea.

I put an inch or two of distance between our lower halves and Willa breaks the kiss.

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

“Oh.” Willa grabs my waist and thrusts her hips against mine. The small relief of that brief action is enough to make me grunt and thrust back just as hard.

Bad idea.

Very bad idea.

You’re not going to want to stop until it’s too late.

Willa smiles at my obvious pleasure and adjusts her hips to give me a better angle to grind against.

I pull away. Fucking hell, I can’t do this.

I roll onto my back, out of her reach, and try to catch my breath. Willa wants to know if she hurt me. Like all that matters is whether or not I find this physically painful.

“You weren’t just…
trying
to get me hard the whole time, were you? Just to prove you could or something?” I don’t want sex with her to be an ego trip. I want her to want me—not to prove that she can get me to work right.

“No.” Her tone makes me want to believe her. “There’s such a thing as phantom orgasm, you know.”