Lust(28)

     



 

Her head shook from side to side, swaying her hair over her shoulders.  "Maybe I picked the wrong book." Her voice was quiet, but I was able to  read her lips well enough to understand what she was saying.

"No, I just think we haven't had enough to drink yet." That gained a smile from her.

The air around us was full of tension until the end of her second drink.  By then, her knee was bouncing to the beat of the music and she seemed  to have loosened up quite a bit. I was still nursing my first drink and  felt like I was wound tighter than line on a fishing rod pulling in a  Great White.

I needed to do something, anything. I couldn't just sit there for the  rest of the night and battle with myself. I took her hand in mine before  I talked myself out of it, and led her to the dance floor. Her body  stiffened against mine as she looked up at me with a concerned  expression. With my hands now on her hips and slowly moving them in time  with mine, I leaned down to meet her ear with my lips. "Relax. It's  just me and you out here …  no one else."

"I told you …  I can't dance."

I smiled and said, "I can't either. So don't worry about it."

No matter what I did or said, she was stiff and nervous. After one song  of horrible dancing from both of us, we sat back down and ordered  another drink. I had to do something. Everything that played out in my  mind throughout the day was proving to be the complete opposite. I  needed her to loosen up, to get out of her own head. Part of me was  wondering if the loud club was a bad idea. It helped with keeping my  mouth closed, but it seemed to have had the same effect on her, and  that's not what I wanted.

I placed my hand on her thigh and felt her body freeze. "What can I do to help calm you down?"

She shook her head with a worried look in her eye. It almost seemed as  though she was on the verge of having a panic attack. "I'm fine just  sitting here."

"Why don't you want to dance?"

Her eyes moved away from mine and I could tell she didn't want to answer me.

I grabbed her chin and forcefully made her look at me. "You are not Ivy  Jaymes tonight. You are Joes. You are strong, confident, and sexual. I  am not Cade. I am not your therapist. I am Matt, who is in love with you  and who does things to your body no one else can. Do you understand  me?" I was yelling at her as if it were a lecture, a harsh pep talk that  she needed to hear.

"I don't know how to be sexual," she argued back.

I winked at her and smiled. "Good thing for you that Joes does. And it's  another good thing that I am a sex god." It was meant as a joke, but  saying that to her and watching her eyes go wide made the smile fall  from my lips. I had to back away before I did something I would regret.

What she did next shocked and surprised me at once. She touched my face,  keeping it from pulling too far away from her, and leaned in, pressing  her lips to mine like she had a week earlier. It was soft and quick, but  enough to make the breath in my lungs disappear. I wanted to lean in  and deepen it, lick her bottom lip until she opened up for more, but she  didn't give me the chance. Instead, she took my hand and pulled me back  out into the crowd.

Her back was to my chest and I had my hands on her hips. Her ass was  moving against the front of my jeans and I worried I would give her a  surprise if she kept it up. After a minute, I could feel her body  physically relax against mine and I began to move my hands flat against  her stomach. I needed to feel her and that was the only way it was going  to happen.

She placed her hands on top of mine, keeping them from wandering further  along her body. I had my head bent down by the side of her face and it  allowed me to smell her hair. I felt creepy doing that at first, but  there was something about her scent that calmed me. I felt calm,  relaxed, happy even. For the first time in God knows how long, I felt  light. I didn't feel the darkness that had always surrounded me, even  while standing in a dark room packed with hundreds of strangers. I  didn't feel the weight of my past on my shoulders. And the hatred for  love that had always swirled within me seemed to have disappeared as  well. Ivy was my salvation. She was my therapy. And as much as I wanted  to rush things along to make the uncertainty of things go away, I knew I  needed her on some level. That thought should have scared me. It should  have evoked a fear deep within, but the scent of her hair and the feel  of her body in my hands was enough to keep it away. At least for the  time being.

She spun in my arms, locked her fingers together behind my neck, and  pulled me closer. With a soft, lingering kiss on my cheek, she moved her  lips to my ear and asked, "Is this what it's like to feel sexual?"         

     



 

My grip on her tightened as I pulled her body impossibly closer. I could  feel the heat from her chest against mine and it caused me to catch my  breath. "Is this what it feels like to be in love?" I hadn't meant to  ask that. I was only going to answer her question, say something about  feeling sexy, but somewhere between my brain and my mouth, the words  changed.

It startled me and I froze, but Ivy kept moving, not paying any  attention to the inner turmoil that filled me. With her lips so close to  my ear and her fingers playing with the back of my hair, I couldn't  focus on shit. I couldn't keep my mind centered on one thing. She was  intoxicating me, more so than the liquor that seemed to have evaporated  out of my system.

"I don't know; what does it feel like?" she asked. Her voice had me  imagining that she asked it with her eyes closed and her bottom lip  between her teeth like some women do when trying to be seductive. I was  pretty sure that's not what she was doing, but it was all I could think  about.

Again, the signals that my brain were sending to my mouth had misfired. I  didn't want to answer her question. I didn't want to feed into the  accidental question that lingered between us and muddled my brain. But I  found myself answering anyway. "Like I want to hold onto you forever  and never let you go. Like I want to feel your body against mine, skin  against skin, until you're etched into my every pore. I feel like I  can't breathe without your air and my heart doesn't beat properly  without mirroring yours." There was so much more I could've said, but my  brain decided to work and I stopped before the hole I had dug was too  deep to pull myself out of.

Ivy pulled her face away from mine and searched my eyes in the dark  room. Her hands moved from my hair to my cheeks before pulling my face  down, meeting my lips with hers. I was paralyzed and couldn't find the  strength to do anything other than let her lead. It went against  everything in me to let her, or anyone, have that much control, but I  was hopeless to do anything about it.

Our bodies stopped moving as her lips took hold of mine, gently searing  my skin until my entire body felt like it was burning from the inside  out. I took in a deep breath just as she parted her lips, moving her  tongue into my mouth, giving me a taste of her. I was gone, completely  and wholly lost in her. Normally, I would have taken over by this point.  I would have pressed into her, consumed her mouth, and given her all I  had, but the fear of pushing her too far kept me from doing so. For the  first time in my life, I felt like a domestic animal, content with being  owned.

Her tongue manipulated mine, my hands groped her sides, her arms wrapped  around my neck like a boa constrictor, and our bodies pressed hard into  one another. I was lost in her, in all of her. From the scent of her  skin to the taste of her tongue, from the feel of her body to the  breathless sounds she made, I was lost. I needed her. I needed her more  than she needed me, and that realization gutted me.

My want took over as my hands moved south, pawing at her ass through the  thin material. My mouth turned greedy, hastily taking charge of her  growing advances. My senses were on overload, blocking out everything  else, including the ability to know right from wrong. I pressed my hips  into her, the only part of my body I had been keeping away from hers. I  felt myself grind into her lower stomach, ignoring the alarms and  whistles faintly sounding in my brain.

I heard a deep intake of air and then felt Ivy push away from me. Her  eyes were wide and darting all around the room. Her hand landed on her  chest as I watched it heave up and down, pressing her small breasts out  before letting them fall, over and over again. I didn't dare take my  eyes away from her to see what she was looking at. I could only stand  there and try to catch my breath as much as I possibly could. But it was  impossible. Ivy Jaymes had stolen my breath. Her presence had created a  vacuum around me, leaving me with a lack of sufficient oxygen. Her  panicked expression had me feeling anxious, scared, fearful of what she  would do. I didn't want her to run. But if she did, I would chase after  her until my legs were too numb to carry me further.