Page 49 of Raising Love
“Yes, yes,” he grunted through bared teeth, pumping his hips back and forth with methodical thrusts, slamming into me at this point as he trembled like crazy against me too. “Fuck, Ivy, fuck, ahhh!”
We shook together, the bed vibrating beneath me as our cries echoed around Leo’s room.
“Ahh, ahh, shit,” Leo whispered, his jaw slacked, bottom lip quivering as his eyes locked on mine again.
And all I could do was watch without blinking as his entire frame vibrated in my grip while he struggled to pull on air.
At the end of it all, Leo and I collapsed onto the bed, him on top of me. We laid there frozen. Still. Him inside of me, his dick still pulsing between my walls that felt like they were milking him. We tried like hell to catch our breaths. I hadn’t let him go, and he hadn’t let me go either. Neither one of us wanting to leave the moment.
For me, I refused to let him go, deep down fearing what would happen when we locked eyes for the first time after. Most of all, I feared what would come next after that and what us doing this meant moving forward.
ELEVEN
leo
“It is so beautiful in here, ugh!” Vanessa said across from me. “So green.” She giggled next.
I forced a smile and nodded. “For real.”
She reached across the table, placing a hand atop mine and then closing her hands over it.
“I’m so happy you asked me to come out with you tonight, again,” she said with a playful smile. “Three nights in a row, it’s like we’re reliving our first summer together. I feel like I haven’t seen you this much in forever.”
I lifted my glass of brandy to my lips to take a sip.
“But I don’t hold that against you, so please don’t think I do,” she added, her eyes softening as she looked at me. “I know you’ve been through a lot, so I totally understand your absence.”
All I could do was nod.
“A whole baby.” She cringed, shaking her head. “How are you coping, anyway?”
We were at Celestine Sky, a socialite's dream. It was a favorite amongst celebrities too. A fact that played a part in me asking Vanessa to have dinner with me here. I’d been asked for my autograph at least five times since we’d arrived and honestly? I needed that shit. I needed all the distractions and extra interactions. On any other day, it would frustrate me a little, but tonight I needed it more than ever.
Vanessa lifted her menu to her eyes. “What are you thinking about getting?”
When she did that, she moved the air a little in the room, sending the fruity, floral notes of her perfume across the table.
Her perfume was the first thing I noticed when my driver picked her up from her apartment. It made me skip a breath. And it made me skip a breath again sitting across from her.
It was the same perfume Ivy wore. Besides knowing it was the same perfume from scent alone, I knew it was the same because I was the one who bought the fragrance for Vanessa after smelling it on Ivy two summers ago. Big mistake. Because just like earlier, when I got the first whiff of Vanessa’s perfume, my mind pulled me back to that night with Ivy in an instant when I smelled it on Vanessa again.
Ivy and I laid there for what felt like forever, long after catching our breath.
Once the moment set in, and the realization that what had happened, had happened, I guess neither one of us wanted to look at each other.
I decided to be the brave one, inhaling a deep breath and pulling away, breaking our connection below the waist.
Ivy let out a soft sigh when I created distance between us. She immediately pulled her legs to herself while tugging at the hem of her oversized tee in an attempt to cover the lower half of her body.
When we finally looked at each other, we just stared. It was so quiet in my room I could hear her heart beating.
My eyes were on fire, burning from lack of sleep, burning from being up at an hour I shouldn’t have been, and burning after crying.
I was crying. Thought it was too late to have been heard. All due to a dream I had of Tyrell. He didn’t say anything in the dream but looked happy. And I kept telling him how much I missed him, how much life had changed since he’d been gone. The dream didn’t last very long, and I felt so fucking incomplete when I got up suddenly from it. Instead of going back to sleep, I was filled with so much emotion I couldn’t fight back, and I just broke down, crying on my bedroom floor… until Ivy showed up.
We were staring at each other now. After… everything. All of that. All the sensations, and emotions, and other things I couldn’t quite put names to.
“We didn’t use a condom,” were her first words to me. She said them low, as if she were saying it to herself.
