Page 37 of Trade
“You like that?” he asks.
“You can’t tell?” I circle my clit faster and stretch my knees wider, hiking my butt higher, chasing the feeling gathering low in my belly. It feels so good. I want it to go on forever, and I don’t want to wait a second longer. I don’t know what I want. I want everything.
I want to be as smug and satisfied as Dalton. No, I want him to be as knocked off kilter as I am. I want this to be real—all of it—the beautiful man with eyes only for me, the green canopy and sweet air and skies miles overhead with no place I need to be, no time I have to be there, no alarms or duties or constant, soul-smothering sense of dread.
I want to fly into pieces, but I can’t. I’m stuck on the edge, and it feels so good, but it’s not enough.
Dalton’s lips tighten. I whine.
He shifts over me, never stopping with his hand, and sips at my lips, so thirstily.
“Tell me how it feels, Glory,” he says between kisses.
“Good,” I gasp as he works a third finger inside me.
“What would make it feel better?”
I don’t know. How am I supposed to think at a time like this?
“Should I stick one of these fingers in your asshole?” he asks. His pinky prods at my behind, and I squeeze my butt cheeks together.
“No. Please, no.” I don’t want that. At least, I don’t think I do. Bennett never tried that. My face is on fire. I can’t keep up—with the kisses, with my breath, with the way he just says anything.
“Tell me what to do, Glory,” he says, “I’ll do whatever you want.”
I guess those are the magic words. The wave crests and then crashes. The best feeling ever explodes through me, then explodes again, a chain reaction. A scream escapes my lungs. My toes curl. My pussy squeezes his fingers.
“That’s it,” he murmurs, and slides his fingers out of me so he can shove his hair out of his face—so he can look down and see me better.
I blink up. My inner thighs are shaking. That was the best orgasm of my life.
He grins. Oh, my goodness. He has dimples. I had no idea.
“You liked that,” he says. Again, a statement of fact, not a question.
“You did, too,” I huff, pushing myself up on my elbows so that he has to sit back up. I’m coming back to myself now. Feeling naked on the ground at thirty-nine years old. Foolish.
“Yeah.” His grin morphs into a smirk.
I grab for my coveralls, but they’re out of reach, and he’s still kneeling between my spread thighs.
“Hey. Not so quick,” he says and, with a mind-blowing acrobatic backbend that engages every single one of his rippling stomach muscles, he grabs the willow crown and places it gently on my head. “Queen Glory,” he says.
I stick my tongue out.
He laughs softly and does the backbend again to grab my coveralls, slower this time, watching me gawk at his abs as he does it. My cheeks heat.
He helps me get my arms and legs stuck in the right holes and zips me up, stealing a kiss before he draws me to my feet and adjusts my crown.
“Drink.” He passes me the canteen and hikes his backpack onto his shoulders. He swings by the creek for a refill before we start on our way again. We seem to have dallied away the hours when the sun was directly overhead, but it’s still warmer than it was in the morning, and my energy lags.
Dalton is less inclined to walk ahead, strolling only a few feet ahead and pointing out things of interest as we pass. We’ve seen most of the flora he knows by name, so he’s taken to pointing out fauna.
He spots several bird species—a mourning dove, a whole flock of starlings, and at least three different taxa of black birds, all of which he calls crows. We hear a woodpecker, and although he leads us on a stealthy detour to see it, we don’t find it before it flies away.
And then there is the turtle. He spots it by a stream when he’s refilling the canteen, and we spend a good long time watching it meander on its way toward wherever it’s going. It clearly has a destination in mind, but it moves as lazily as a cloud.
I love the clouds. I spend so much time watching them pass overhead that I get an ache in my neck. They don’t look real. No illustration or movie could have possibly conveyed how they hang above you in space, and sometimes sail along, blown on a wind you can’t even feel on the ground.
