“What?”
“I wanna make you your favorite dessert.”
“No…come on. You shouldn’t have to cook tonight.”
“I want to,” I said. “I owe you big time for this, and I could really go for some myself. Plus, all the ingredients are still in the cabinet from last time.”
“Well, if you insist. Your Bananas Foster is like crack, so you’re not gonna hear any argument from me.”
“I didn’t think I would.”
As I gathered the pan, rum, spices and bananas, Jake leaned over the counter following me with his eyes as I moved around the kitchen.
“I am a little bummed about the excursion you’re gonna miss. It was going to be killer. But there’s always next time,” he said.
“Now you’ve got me curious about what was in store for me. Something tells me I dodged a massive bullet.”
His grin said it all. “You have no idea.”
“You’re evil,” I said, throwing a banana at him, which he caught. “You can peel. I’ll cut.”
“I can handle that. I’m good at stripping off layers slowly,” he said winking.
“I thought we established you were not, in fact, an exotic dancer.”
“Doesn’t mean I don’t give private shows.”
I must have momentarily lost my mind. Even though I laughed at him, the mental images that emerged made my cutting of the bananas faster and harder. And just like that, the knife I was using slipped and plunged deeply right into my finger.
“Ow…shit!” I screamed. “Ow!”
Blood gushed out, and the pain was excruciating. Jake immediately got up grabbing my hand. “Shit. Nina!”
“Ooh, ow, ow,” I cried.
What happened in rapid succession over the next ten seconds nearly undid me. He looked around for a towel and didn’t find one. On instinct he wrapped my finger in the bottom of his shirt and squeezed it. When he lifted it out and saw that it was still bleeding badly, he took my finger into his mouth and held it there, sucking it hard to stop the bleeding.
Took.My.Finger.And.Sucked.It.
Remember that saying about experiencing pain to attain a pleasure you have never experienced before? Well, I think for the first time in my life, I actually got it.
He was completely serious, mind you, in those seconds of applying pressure to my wound. He was just trying to get the bleeding to stop. It wasn’t meant to be a turn on, but of course, everything Jake did had that effect on me whether he knew it or not, and well, this just put me over the edge.
It was not an exaggeration to say those seconds of my finger being trapped in his hot mouth while he breathed rapidly over it, were more exciting than full-on sex with Spencer had ever been, ten fold. The competing sensations of pleasure and pain were something I had never experienced together at the same time.
His mouth made a popping sound as he released my finger to the cold air, and there was a tiny bit of my blood on his lip. He took off his now stained shirt and wrapped it firmly around my finger. I couldn’t help staring at his body. It looked as if it were carved from stone.
The bleeding had slowed, but it had not stopped. “We’ll wrap it in this for now,” he said, holding my finger tightly in his shirt.
“You have some blood.” I nervously lifted my fingertip to his bottom lip, grazing the ring and wiping it lightly. “Right here.”
Instead of wiping it with his free hand, he slid his tongue back and forth slowly across his bottom lip, licking away the rest as he looked at me. My heart skipped a beat. It was so strangely erotic, and my body became fully aware. He stared into my eyes as he held my wrapped finger, and I felt something shift. I couldn’t put my finger on it (no pun intended), but something felt different between us in that moment. It was a feeling I had definitely never experienced before.
The room was completely quiet as he broke the stare, looking down at my wrapped finger. He cleared his throat, his voice was thick, “I’m gonna see what we have in the bathroom for first aid.”
Still in a state of bewilderment, I nodded but said nothing, as he ran down the hall, returning with gauze, peroxide and bandages. Removing the shirt from my finger, he carefully treated the area with some peroxide on a cotton ball. I tried to look down at the wound and not at his bare chest as he blew on the cut before wrapping it in gauze, followed by a bandage to hold it together.
“That should do it for now,” he said before releasing my hand. “You may want to take a look at it tomorrow. If it looks worse, there is a walk-in down the street. Hopefully, you won’t need stitches.”
I felt like I lost more than blood in this process, like perhaps my ability to speak. “Okay,” I muttered.