Page 48 of John Wilder Gets Schooled
Avery tilted his head. “What?”
It was dumb, because of course I’d known he’d ask. Somehow, though, I didn’t know how to say it. My face was hot and I couldn’t meet his gaze.
“Fingering,” I blurted.
Huh. Okay. That said it.
Avery didn’t look horrified. He just nodded and said, “Who’s fingering who in this scenario?”
“You,” I said. “You’re doing me.”
“Yeah,” he said. “We can try that, if you like.”
“Only if you want to,” I managed to say, even though all the air in my lungs had vanished.
“I would love to,” he said. “Do you want a beer first or…” He nodded toward his bedroom.
I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “Maybe later.”
“Okay,” Avery said with an easy smile. He reached out and grabbed my shirt, then reeled me in for a kiss, like he knew it would settle my nerves and ramp up my libido at the same time. He was good at reading me, or maybe my thoughts and anxieties weren’t as special or as secret as I’d assumed—maybe Avery did this with every guy he’d ever invited into his bed, and it worked with all of them. When he released me, though, it felt like his smile was just for me. “Come on through.”
I let out a long breath once we were in Avery’s bedroom, then said, “I showered. Like, carefully.”
“That’s good,” Avery said. He tugged at the hem of my old T-shirt. “This is soft.”
Then his fingers were underneath the fabric, tracing lines across my abdomen and leaving tingling trails of sensation in his wake. It felt good. I didn’t know if anyone had ever touched me with the same care Avery showed me. Cassidy and I had cared for each other, but we’d been fumbling teenagers. Avery was precise and deliberate, and his touch made me feel like he was shining a spotlight on me.
He tugged my shirt up, and I lifted my arms to make it easier for him to take it off. Then he moved his hands to the button on my jeans.
“This okay?”
“Yeah.”
The rasp of the zipper was very loud.
“We’re just gonna make out some first,” he said. He put a hand over my chest where he could feel my heart beating fast.
“Okay.” I tried not to sound as nervous as I felt. It was dumb to be scared of this. People did this stuff all the time.
I was already hard—had been since that first kiss at the front door—and the appreciative noise Avery made as he opened my jeans was thrilling. When he peeled them down and reached for my underwear, I said, “Can you… Can you too?”
I guessed he could translate my tongue-tripping bullshit into words, because he nodded and took his shirt off too. He almost slingshot his glasses across the room doing it, but he caught them before they launched. Then he laughed, his glasses lopsided and his hair all messed up, and he was fuckingadorable. How could he be so in charge and so clumsy-cute at the same time?
He wasn’t built. He was shorter than me and leaner, and he didn’t have much definition, let alone any real muscle. He didn’t have a six-pack. Instead, his abdomen was flat and soft and looked as though it’d make a nice pillow for my head. I wondered what that would be like. I could imagine curling up lengthwise, dozing away while Avery read a book he held in one hand, and played with my hair with his other. Seemed like that would be nice as hell.
Avery wasn’t shy about losing his pants and underwear. Or maybe he was—I thought of the Adventurama, where he’d shown one of the kids that it was okay to feed the goat by doing it first. He’d looked so cool and calm about it, then said to me afterward in a breathless undertone, “Holy shit! I thought it was going to eat me!” And it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen him naked before, and vice versa, but this seemed bigger somehow. Last time I’d been here, I hadn’t known what to expect, not really. This time I’d asked for it. Made it feel different.
I couldn’t stop looking at his hands.
“Come here,” he said with a smile and pulled me into a kiss, and okay, I knew this. I liked this. I liked it a whole lot, and the simmering heat that built inside me took the edge off my stupid nerves. So much so that when Avery moved his hands to my jeans again, I helped him hook them down along with my underwear.
By the time we made it to the bed, I was fully on board again. It was good when Avery was close, but my nerves spiked again when he leaned away to get something from his bedside drawer. Lube. Of course it was. I let out a slow breath and tried to remind myself that I wanted to try this, and I trusted him.
“You’re so jittery you’re about to bounce off the ceiling,” he said. “We don’t have to do anything.”
“I want to,” I said. “I’m nervous, but I want to. Can you just do it?”
He gave me a look that was half-dubious, half-sympathetic. “It’s supposed to be something fun, not something you’re forcing yourself to do. It’s not a root canal, John.”
