Page 52 of Prima
“This is wish fulfillment for you, isn’t it?” he murmurs. “You always wanted to have your way with me on this raft.”
“My wishes have always been completely transparent before you,” she answers.
Their lips lock together. She makes tiny sounds at the back of her throat and his blood ignites. He picks her up and sets her on the folding table—sturdy contraption, that—and stands between her legs.
She runs her hands down his arms, then kisses him along his shoulder. The moist insides of her lips on his skin—he grunts and opens the top button of her dress.
She kisses him on his jaw. “MaybeIshould work the buttons if you’re just going to rip them off again.”
He opens another two buttons. “I think I’ve finally found the silver lining in all this. For ten years I never had to think about the fact that I damaged your museum piece of a dress.”
He did not know about his mother’s early-life training in sericulture, but she had told him, more than once, that ever since the production of silk ceased worldwide, any new garment made of the material would have been produced from an ever-dwindling supply of archival bolts.
“Well, silk is less expensive now, thanks to your mother. And you didn’t destroy the structural integrity of that dress; you only ripped off a few buttons.”
He undoes yet another button—there are too many. “Is this a test? To see whether I can handle buttons without resorting to violence?”
She slides her fingertips across his abdomen. He sucks in a breath at the electricity of that caress. “Notice I changed into a far less valuable frock,” she teases. “My mother was highly displeased with the damage done to the vintage dress last time and I don’t think she believed for a moment that all the buttons popped off because it snagged on a door in Lion City.”
Her mother, who now thinks he’s skilled and patient—or at least more skilled and patient with a needle than Lanzhou was ten years ago. “Were you too ashamed to admit you’d picked up a gauche seventeen-year-old to sleep with?”
“Ashamed? No, not ashamed. Not in the least. I wanted desperately to talk about you, but your identity was too sensitive and I couldn’t go around telling people about your concurrent ability. It wasn’t until your mom and Nin reached New Ryukyu that I could break down and cry about you with someone.”
She rubs the inside of her wrist against his stubbles. “And your original manuscripts ofThe Long Safaribecame all tear-stained. Thank goodness pencil drawings don’t run when they are splattered with tears.”
My wishes have always been completely transparent before you, she said earlier. She has no idea—or maybe every idea—what a gift her frankness is to him after a lifetime of subterfuge.
“You’ll make me cry again,” he tells her.
Perhaps the true gift here is that it’s so easy for him to be simple and straightforward before her, when decades of training went into making him opaque and unreadable in front of others.
She touches his abdomen again, splays her fingers fully against it. The sensations go straight to his arousal. He was already hard; now he hurts.
“I don’t mind if you cry,” she says, giving him a sidelong look, “as long as you can sustain an erection.”
She brushes him with the back of her hand. He leaps against her touch.
“I see no problem,” she whispers against his lips.
He trails his fingers along the front of her dress and finds the next button, hoping to complete his task before his concentration crumbles like a sandcastle at high tide. But then he makes the mistake of looking down.
Her dress is open almost to the navel, a long, narrow V that exposes the rise of her breasts, a sight so erotic he instantly understands his younger self’s desperate desire to see more. Feel more.
He opens another button, his fingers abruptly unwieldy.
“Do you know what I sometimes think about?” she murmurs against his ear, her lips on the sensitive skin of the helix driving pulses of unbearable pleasure down his spine. “I never had a chance to take you in my mouth, to run my tongue around the head of your cock and then feel it jammed against the back of my throat.”
He feels as if he’s been set on fire. “Do you swallow?”
She nibbles his earlobe. “For you, of course. And afterwards I’ll lick you clean.”
He burns—and struggles with the next buttons, he who’s usually far more dexterous. But at last he manages to unfasten enough of them to push the bodice off her shoulders, revealing breasts so perfect that he feels he has disrespected them bynothaving ripped the buttons off this dress to see them sooner.
They are high and firm, with mouth-watering nipples that already stand up. He lifts one breast and licks the nipple, so engorged yet so heart-poundingly soft. She whimpers, the prettiest little sound. He worships at her other breast; she repeats the moan, louder this time.
All at once, he can’t wait any longer. He pulls the dress over her head, carries her down to the sleeping mat, and holds her so tight he worries that he might asphyxiate her. But she holds him even tighter and he doesn’t care about breathing at all, as long as he can kiss her.
She breaks free to push his trousers down his hips and capture his jutting erection with her mouth. Lightning lurches through him. So much pleasure. Too much pleasure.
