Page 39 of The Goode Girls of Maple Lane
He takes off his glasses and sets them on the nightstand.
Sweaters and shirts fly to the floor, leaving me in my bra and underwear,and him in blue plaid flannel boxers. Despite the manic momentum, as we lie down together, everything slows. With our bodies still only dimly lit from the streetlight that comes in through his parted curtains, he takes me in and I do the same with him, savoring the newly exposed details of the man I’m already crazy about yet am still discovering, like the trio of dark freckles on the left side of his sternum. The long, raised scar on his right shoulder, which he once mentioned was from falling out of a tree as a kid after his sisters dared him to climb it. The slightly rounded belly I felt earlier. Even something as ordinary as the tufts of brown hair under his arms. It’s all a revelation.
His legs slide against mine, soft and strong, and with more hair than I expected.
His knuckles tenderly brush over my shoulder and the subtle curve of my breast.
His eyes fill with admiration as he follows the path of his hand.
This is how it’s supposed to feel, I think.This is the real thing.
I kiss him again, before my emotions catch up to my thoughts and I psych myself out with the magnitude of what I’ve been missing and what I stand to lose now that I have it. He’s quick to respond, holding me tight against him as our mouths collide and our legs tangle.
For a while, that’s all we do: hold each other and kiss, allowing our bodies to grow accustomed to each other, learning the little dents, swells, and hidden spots that draw out a sigh or a moan. He likes it when I play with his hair. I like it when he wraps a leg over my hip, as if he’s embracing me in two places at once. We both like it when we open our eyes to find the other watching, at which point one of us always smiles, and the other can’t help but follow suit.
As our kisses deepen and our writhing grows more restless, skin, heat, and movement stir up a new frenzy. He pops the clasp on my bra. The instant I’ve slipped out of it, he rolls me onto my back, kneeling between my legs and leaning over me as he guides my arms over my head one at a time and pins my hands to his pillow with a single fist around my wrists. Then he studies me with his eyes and his free hand, his fingers splayed wide and firmly pressing into my skin as they travel over me. In any other circumstances, this might make my anxiety spike, being stretched out like this, so blatantly displayed, with all of my flaws in full view, from my bony hips to my too-small breasts to the acne scars just below my collarbones. But I don’t feel cataloged or inspected. I feel like he’s learning me, the way my pieces come together to make a whole, and it’s the whole he’s interested in. Not the pieces.
As he secures his grip, I blink up at him, drinking in his smooth skin, the light dusting of hair on his chest, and the boyish face that lacks the hard edges and chiseled features of a classic romantic hero but radiates a warmth and gentleness I’m much more drawn to, even when he’s not being “nice.” His hazel eyes look bigger and brighter without his glasses, or maybe it’s the feeling within them that seems amplified. The desire. The intention. I’ve always found him attractive, but now I grow breathless at his hunger and his beauty.
Can I?he asks with a look.
Yes, I say without speaking.Yes. Please. Yes.
He slips his free hand into my underwear, gliding his hooked fingers directly into me.
I gasp as I arch into his touch, instinctively jerking my arms down so I can brace myself on his shoulders or grip the sheets or... or I don’t even know what, but he holds tight to my wrists, keepingmy hands above my head as he watches me squirm beneath him, thrusting into his touch with a sense of abandon I never knew I had in me.
“I’ve imagined this so many times,” Everett says, his voice husky with desire.
“Is it, did you, I, um...” I give up, lost to the feel of his touch.
He bends lower to steal a kiss, tugging my bottom lip between his teeth as he pulls away.
“It was perfect in my imagination,” he says. “Somehow, this is even better.”
Then his fingers go deeper. My hips lift off the bed as my heels dig into the tangled sheets. I throw back my head and ride his hand until I can’t stand it anymore.
I want all of him. Now.
“Everett. Please.”
My voice is barely audible but he must hear me because he tells me not to move as he releases my wrists and withdraws his fingers from inside me. In a quick succession of movements, he drags my underwear down my legs and frees them from my ankles, removes his boxers, and digs a condom from his corduroys where he finds them heaped on the floor.
I watch without moving, without speaking, taking in the full, unobstructed view of him. We’re naked in more ways than one right now, and for the first time in my life, that thought doesn’t terrify me. It fills me with wonder and affection, and by the time we’re kissing again as he guides himself inside me, filling me in a way that feels so good, and so right, I’m dead certain I finally know that not only is this what good sex feels like.
This is what it feels like to be falling in love.
Chapter Fifteen
Iwake with a jolt shortly after sunrise, convinced it was all a dream, only to find Everett sound asleep on the far side of my bed, with his mouth ajar and his hands tucked under his cheek.Farisn’t that far, since my mattress is only queen-size, but a certain ample-bodied, space hog of a golden retriever is stretched out between us. Everett and I came back here after having fun at his place so she didn’t spend the night alone, and she decided that if he was allowed to sleep in my bed, she should be, too. I wasn’t exactly in a mood to argue.
My stirring wakes her, and the instant I start petting her head, her tail thwaps against the bed. I hold a finger to my lips to shush her, but she only wags harder as she wriggles toward me.
Predictably, Everett’s eyes blink open. My anxiety spikes without warning, a knee-jerk reaction to being in a new situation, and one in which wanting too much could shatter me; but before a barrage of annoying questions and reflexive what-ifs has a chance to assault my brain, a sleepy smile stretches across his face and he reaches out to tuck loose strands of hair behind my ear, letting hisknuckles graze my cheek and his thumb brush my lower lip where one or both of us bit it last night. I can tell because it’s unusually tender. Actually, everything’s tender. My neck, my wrists, my breasts, my thighs, my... well. My everything.
“Good morning,” he says in a slow, gravelly drawl I find unbelievably sexy.
“Good morning.” I try not to look like a lovestruck idiot but I’m pretty sure I fail.
