Page 54 of Freak
Chapter Sixteen
Every emotion Abigailhad ever felt, every sensation, every dream, every wish, had converged in her mind, her heart, her soul, all at once. Her very flesh sang as impulses cascaded through her like raindrops striking a copper chime. Each time she opened her eyes, her vision exploded with color and light.
Mel’s big, rough hands strummed her skin, touching places only she had touched in longer than she could clearly remember. His beard scraped at her cheeks and lips as they kissed in a wild clash she’d never before experienced, not even with him. Before he’d moved slowly, telling her what he wanted to do, asking her if she wanted him to do it. Now he’d left off asking. He was kissing her like he meant toconsumeher, and she thought she’d be glad for him to swallow her whole, if only she could feel like this forever.
Briefly, standing before him in her altogether—a state of being she was rarely in except for bathing and changing clothes—Abigail had felt shy, a little insecure. He was so handsome. And so ...broad, somuscular. So ...tattooed. So ...masculine. It was a little intimidating.
Alan, the one man she’d dated long enough to think of as a boyfriend, way back when she still thought of herself as a girl and not a woman, had been attractive, too. He’d been tall, with kind brown eyes, a sweet, genuine smile and a nice crop of light brown hair on his head, if virtually nowhere else. But he hadn’t been a physical kind of man. He’d been a data-entry clerk for work, and his chief enjoyment had been a fantasy game called ... she didn’t quite remember. ‘Battlehammer’ or something like that. His body had been soft and slim.
She hadn’t thought Alan any less of a man for being one who preferred to be indoors and comfortable, but now Mel, with his larger, harder, hairier body pressed on hers, his tough-skinned hands sweeping over her skin as if he meant to sand her to a glossy sheen, his dark beard roughing her cheeks, his sinewy tongue claiming her mouth, was rewriting her personal understanding of manliness.
Oh, and something else, too, a quiet marvel unfurling in her mind: she was beginning to understand her own body differently. With Mel she felt ... what was it? Eased. Despite the adrenaline sparkling through her veins and turning her blood to champagne, she felt eased.
Eased because she was, just now quite literally, in capable hands. With each touch, each caress, he drew all her most wonderful sensations together and frothed them into a perfectly peaked meringue of want and need, but even more than that, Abigail felt sheltered. She feltsafe. She could set aside all awareness of anything but him, and her, and this moment.
An awareness that she had never, not in all her nearly forty-three years on this earth, ever felt so completely safe, soprotected, began to dawn on the horizon of her consciousness, but it was too big a thing, too full of meaning, to face right now. She turned from it and focused instead on the big thing full of meaning right here in her arms. Mel.
Wanting more of him, all of him, Abigail slipped her hand between them and sought out his ... her mind stuttered as it failed to find the perfect word. ‘Penis’ was the proper word, but it felt too clinical. She’d read quite a few 1980s-era romance novels—Granny had been a particular fan of Johanna Lindsey and had kept fruit crates full of battered paperbacks she’d gathered from thrift shops and library sales—but the terms they’d most used were overwritten euphemisms and, Abigail thought, just plain silly. ‘Cock’ and ‘dick’ seemed the most common colloquialisms, but they were coarse and ill-suited to a moment like this.
Mel himself had used the word ‘dick’ several times in her hearing—but he most often used it to refer to himself or someone else being unkind or thoughtless.
No word seemed right, but she set that wondering aside as well. The word didn’t matter. The hot, hard flesh she was wrapping her fingers around right now did. And the way Mel flinched and went still, that mattered, too. It mattered a lot.
He pulled up a little, rocking his hips back an inch or two, clearing room for her to move her hand freely. She availed herself of that freedom at once, tracing his full length, up and down and around, brushing feathery touches over his tip, learning all the ways he felt and moved and ... how would he taste? She wanted to know.
But just then, as Abigail considered how to shift positions as gracefully as possible to sample his taste there, Mel covered her hand with his and said, “Hey,” in a low, rumbling murmur. “Look at me, beautiful.”
She lifted her eyes to find his, those inky dark pools that sparked with warmth as he smiled.
“I’m gonna let you explore as long as you want, or until I’m about to break, but I need you to know—I’m in charge here.”
Despite his smile, a small worry fluttered in the distance, and Abigail frowned. “In charge? Of what?”
That smile deepened as he lifted a hand to brush her frown away. “This. I like to drive.”
His aspect was the opposite of threatening and her worry couldn’t find a path forward, but she remained confused. Yes, she was aware he like to drive, and ride, and generally steer, but what did that have to do with ... oh.Oh.
“Oh,” she said aloud, with an inner eyeroll at her naiveté. “Oh, that’s just fine with me. I hardly know what I’m doing anyway.”
He chuckled, “I don’t know, babe. You’re doin’ great, far as I can tell.”
“There’s a lot I don’t remember, or never had a chance to learn. I want you to show me all the things we can like together.”
His smile faded as the fire in his eyes flared hot. “Jesus, Abs.”
All at once, that fire seemed to burst through him, and the moment became something entirely new. Mel’s movements had been firm and passionate but still gentle; now they became powerful, forceful. Driven. Any idea that he’d let her explore was forgotten. He grabbed her thigh and swung her under him, adjusting their positions so they were fully on the bed, her head on her pillows. He settled his body between her thighs. When she tried to sweep her arms around him, he reared back and caught each one, pulling them up and over her head, folding her fingers around brass spindles in her headboard. "You’re makin’ me crazy, and I got shit to do. So keep those up here. Understood?”
Though she wanted to touch him, too, she nodded. He was in charge.
For maybe one second, Abigail felt self-conscious, lying beneath this virile man, waiting for him to do ‘shit’ to her, but then he began to do it, and she forgot to have thoughts at all. She was nothing but sensation.
He touched every part of her, with fingers and lips and tongue. His body slipped back and forth, up and down, hands grasping, petting, gliding, penetrating, rubbing. His tongue—oh goddess, his tongue, in places she’d never have thought could make her body buzz and flutter. The insides of her elbows. Behind her ears. The shallow scoop above her collarbone. The base of her palm.
