“Do you want to do this?” she asked. A stupid question. She knew he did. She just needed to hear it again.
“I jerked off in the shower a minute ago,” he said absently. He was still staring at her breasts like he wanted to eat them.
The confession hit her strangely. One part surprise, one part maidenish dismay, three parts conflagration in her crotch.
“What? Why?”
“Couldn’t help it. Plus, I thought it might take the edge off.”
“That’s …” She tried to think what that was, other than shocking and unexpected and surprising and wonderful. “That’s really hot.”
His eyes flicked up to hers. “You think?”
She nodded, unable to speak because she’d begun melting down internally, turning into a liquid puddle of goo at the mental image of Ben with water streaming over him and his hand stroking himself as he thought of her. Her.
“What did you … What were you thinking about?”
He angled his head toward her breasts.
“Typical.”
“And your legs.” He shifted his gaze to her thighs. “Wrapped around me.”
He pushed himself up onto his hands, bringing his face really close. His voice turned dark and dangerous. “How it’s going to feel to be inside you. That’s what I want the most, May. To get inside you. Figure out what makes you moan, how to get you off.”
“Can you …” She had to stop to take a breath. He was so close, and his words had already gotten inside her somehow and scrambled everything. Plucked the desire from her head and sent it racing through her bloodstream. She was embarrassingly wet and completely discombobulated.
“Can you go again?” she asked. “Right away, I mean, or is it too soon? Because if we need to wait—”
He surged up, took her shoulders, and flipped her over onto her back. The towel was trapped beneath her, a damp lump at her hip, and Ben was hard warm skin, pressing everywhere on her at once.
“You think too much,” he said.
“I do.”
“My new purpose in life is to make you stop thinking.”
“Oh please,” she said, and he finally kissed her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
It didn’t take long. His tongue stroked into her mouth, and her brain shut off with such abrupt definitiveness, she thought she might have actually heard it.
She wrapped her legs around him, brushed her fingers through his cool hair, tangled her tongue with his, her breath with his. They went from awkward to frantic in five seconds as she tried to touch him absolutely everywhere at the same time that he kissed her silly.
And she did feel silly now, to have worried about this. They’d already done this part, and it had been awesome. What the hell was her problem?
No more. No more of that, ever.
He stroked her side, holding his weight on one elbow so he could run his hand down her waist, over her hip, along her thigh to pull it higher and tighter against him. He stiffened against the crotch of her panties, a burgeoning new pressure right where she wanted it.
He licked over her lip and sucked it into his mouth. She touched his shoulders, his back, the shallow ditch of his spine, the muscles at his hips. That tight ass, performing a gratifying slow thrust against her that made her bite her lip and suck in a deep breath through her nose.
Kiss my breasts, she thought. Suck my nipples.
But he kissed her mouth, and that was a disappointment. It would be so much easier if he just knew. That was the thing about sex that always got to her—that as much as people liked to pretend it was this fantastic melting of one body into another, this full-on mind and body meld, in fact she’d never managed to achieve wordless communication during sex, and she was too embarrassed to say the words out loud.
Which was sad, now that she thought about it. Would she never be able to say them? At what point in her life did she think it would be time to start saying sex words, if not now?
Ben rose onto his hands. “May,” he said sternly.
“What?”
“You’re thinking again.”
“Sorry. I’ll stop.”
“No. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
She could feel her eyes widen, because no. No.
But that new voice, that get-out-of-your-own-way voice, whispered, Yes. Do.
“Tell me,” he repeated. “I don’t care what it is. Tell me I’m a shitty kisser or you’re worried my dick’s too small. Tell me you want me to tie you up and lob tennis balls at you. Tell me you’re worried about flesh-eating bacteria. I don’t give a shit what you say, but you’re going to tell me.”
“Tennis balls?”
“Tell me.”
May gathered her courage.
“I was thinking … I wanted you to kiss my—” She closed her eyes. “My breasts.”