Problematic Summer Romance (Not in Love, #2)(88)

“What?”

“I can make you come harder than you already have.”

I laugh. “I don’t think that’s possible. And we agreed that I’m the one in charge. You said you’d do what I tell you—”

“Tell me, then,” he rasps against my jaw. “Tell me to pull out and curl my fingers inside you and eat you out until you pass out from it.”

“No. I already—”

“I don’t fucking care. Tell me.”

Against the gentle burn of his beard, I say, “No.”

He lets out an annoyed, guttural sound. “Then ask me to go deeper.”

“What?”

“Tell me to get inside you even deeper.”

“I don’t think that’s possible—”

“Tell me to go fucking deeper, Maya.”

It sounds like an order, but he’s begging. That’s why I nod, without expecting the way he tilts my pelvis. A grunt, and then he’s in to the hilt, and—

“Fuck,” I say.

“Tell me to move you. Tell me to show you how to use my cock to make yourself come.”

I can barely think. “Show m-me. Please.”

He does. Like I did before, up and down, empty and full. Except that I was using his size to stimulate every part of me, and he knows exactly how to—

“Oh my god,” I say, coming again. This orgasm is shallow, wet. Erratic. No less good.

Conor studies me as I relearn how to breathe. Says: “This might be the only decent thing I’ve done in my whole life. The one thing I’m good for.”

“W-what is?”

“Making you come.” Another angle, this time me leaning backward, leaving room between our upper bodies. I can almost see him move inside me, rocking back and forth under the skin of my abdomen. Conor lets out a grunt, but then his hand presses down on my bellybutton. All at once, the space he’s carved inside me shrinks, disappears, and I’m coming again, so hard that I space out for a second.

I stir back to find my cheek on his shoulders. He inhales deeply, filling his lungs with the scent of me and sex and salt air. Shivers with pent-up restraint.

“What would you do?” I ask in his ear. “If you weren’t afraid to lose control?”

He shakes his head. Like he can’t imagine such a scenario. But then says, “I would want you under me. I would pin you down. I would lock you in a room and not let anyone look at you, ever. I would…”

I wait. But he doesn’t continue until I say, “Whatever it is, it won’t shock me.”

“It will.” His fingers slide down. Draw messy circles around my clit.

“T-try me.”

His exhale sounds like a snarl. “It’ll terrify you.”

“It won’t.” I grind against the heel of his hand, feeling like I’m contained by him this way, not a person but a beam of raw nerve endings, reduced to the places where he strums me and fills me.

“I would put a baby in you.”

I’m coming, again. Dropping from a great height. I arch my back as the pleasure quivers through me, Conor’s teeth grazing the side of my breast. As I ease down, he allows himself to suck on my left nipple, hard. It’s a small, short-lived indulgence.

“You’re not going to let yourself come, are you?” I breathe out, words tangled between gasps.

He’s trembling. An exposed wire, pulled taut. Still, he shakes his head.

When I climb off him, his cock looks to be in pain, but I’m too angry to care about it. I limp to the bathroom, desperately trying to walk straight and pretend like what happened didn’t knock me over. The ceiling light is white, suddenly harsh, and the second the door closes behind me I stagger forward, elbows on the marble counter.

I just came more times than I could reliably say. I took and took and took—and yet I feel empty. More hollow than a drum. Like something cracked, and my insides spilled out.

I start cleaning up. My underwear is too drenched to put back on, so I leave it by the sink, next to a transparent case. There is a razor inside, not electric, not even a safety one—an old-school, straight razor. A blade. Like he just time-traveled into this century to bring penicillin back to his era. “Get the fuck over yourself, Conor,” I grit out, rolling my eyes. But in the case there’s something else, too. A vaguely familiar pattern, a shape that nags at me.

I reach out. Open it.

Find a cute, plaid scrunchie.

My cute, plaid scrunchie.

The one I last had in Edinburgh. In Conor’s hotel room.

Time stops. Restarts, counterclockwise. I slide the scrunchie around my wrist, grab a warm washcloth, and return to the gentle glow of the bedside lamp.

Conor hasn’t pulled up his pants, but he’s speaking on the phone, giving hushed instructions that I can hear but not understand. Still naked, I kneel next to him to clean him up.

His hand snatches my wrist.

“I have to go,” he says into the phone, abruptly ending the call.

His eyes linger on the washcloth, then flicker to me. “No.”

I tilt my head backward. Stare up at him. “Really? What are you going to do with that, Conor?”

He doesn’t reply, but tucks himself back into his sweats.

Whatever. Screw him. I stand, dropping the washcloth. That’s when he notices the fabric at my wrist. It was just a matter of time, since I’m wearing nothing else.