Page 62 of Priest (Priest 1)
I could see her getting wetter, her cunt practically weeping for me, and I didn’t care, let it weep, and then it was there like a vicious riptide, and I shot all over her day-old clothes, a climax that was powerful, but harsh and nasty and short, because she wasn’t there with me. She wasn’t satisfied, and so I wasn’t either, although it hadn’t been about satisfaction, it had been about some kind of revenge, and God, I was a fucking asshole.
I sat back on my heels, my cheeks flushed with shame. I should touch her; I should spread her legs and lick her until she came. What kind of bastard did this to a woman—while drunk and jealous—and didn’t return the favor? But how could I touch her now, when I felt so disgusting with all of my sins and failures, when I was still so suspicious and upset that I couldn’t trust myself to be in control of her body?
I couldn’t. It was a dick move, but it was even worse to touch her with the kind of feelings I had inside of me.
After stuffing myself in my pants, I grabbed her a towel and wiped my semen off her clothes as best as I could.
“Are you…are we not…” She turned around and faced me, not bothering to fix her clothes, and the sight of her bare cunt sent a jolt straight to my dick. I’d be hard again in a minute.
I forced myself to look away. “Let me help you up. And then I think you should go home.”
She stood and pressed herself against me. “You’ve been drinking,” she said, looking up into my face. “You look like shit.”
She reached up to caress my cheek and I caught her hand, holding it in the air as I wrestled back the thousands of dark temptations, the feelin
g that if I fucked her hard enough, I’d pound the memory of Sterling right out of her.
I let go of her hand.
“Go home,” I said tiredly. “Please, Poppy.”
Her eyes hardened, huge agate stones of determination. “No,” she said, and there was that senatorial voice, that Chairwoman of the Fed voice. “Upstairs. Now.”
I wasn’t going to argue, because of the voice and also because upstairs was the way she needed to go if she was going to leave, but once we got to my living room, she put her hands on my shoulders and guided me to the bathroom instead of going to the door, and I was way drunker than I’d originally thought because I could barely make it without weaving into the wall, and crap, it was still daylight outside. I’d managed to get shit-faced and fuck over the world’s most perfect woman all before four p.m.
Tyler Bell: American Hero.
I let Poppy guide me to the edge of the bathtub, where I sat.
“Why won’t you go home?” I asked plaintively. “Please go home.”
She knelt and unlaced my sneakers, tugging impatiently on the strings. “I’m not leaving you like this.”
“I don’t need taken care of, dammit.”
“Why? Because you feel too vulnerable? Is that why you wouldn’t fuck me? Or touch me? Or even look me in the eye?”
“No,” I spluttered, even though it was the truth and we both knew it.
“Stand up,” she ordered, again in her Madame Secretary voice, and I obeyed, not enjoying the submission, but enjoying the interaction, the way she was fussing over me like she cared about me. Like she loved me.
She tugged off my shorts so that I was naked and then she reached past me to turn on the shower. “In.”
I made to protest until I saw that she was unbuttoning her blouse and slipping out of her heels. She was going to join me.
The warm spray felt like heaven on my sore muscles, and then Poppy was there, and there was something clean-smelling and a washcloth, and for a while it was just the fresh smell of soap and the massage of the washcloth and the soft rain of the water, warm and comforting. When she had me kneel so she could knead shampoo into my hair, I dropped to my knees without question, pressing my face against her stomach, wondering if there was a word for the skin there that meant more than supple, meant more than soft and sexy, that meant all of those things combined.
I closed my eyes and groaned as she massaged my scalp, her fingers applying the kind of pressure that relaxed and stimulated at the same time. I turned my face and kissed her navel, a supplicating kiss. Supplicating for what, though, I didn’t know.
What I did know was that for the first time in twenty-four hours, I was not roiling with hot-tempered emotions, I was not brooding with guilt, I was not punishing myself. I was with Poppy and her pussy was so close to my mouth, and I bent down and kissed the top of her clit, feeling her quiver.
But then she put her hands on my shoulders, pushing me away from her. “Not until I finish taking care of you,” she said firmly and rinsed the shampoo out of my hair. Then she had me stay there while she quickly washed her own body and shampooed her own hair. She wasn’t putting on a show, she wasn’t trying to be sexy, but it was still one of the sexiest things I had ever seen, the way her nipples slipped between her fingers as she soaped up her breasts, the way the suds funneled down her stomach to stream over her cunt and thighs, the way water poured over the smooth globes of her ass as she held her head back and stood under the spray.
By the time she shut off the water, I was as hard as a fucking rock, and I caught her staring at my erection out of the corner of my eye, staring in a hungry way that made me want to tackle her right there on the bathroom floor.
But I was also sobering up (not very much) and coming to terms with what a jerk I’d been to her down in the basement and also realizing how much I didn’t deserve this sweet treatment she was giving me now. So I didn’t tackle, I merely toweled off and let myself be meekly towed to the bed.
“Lay down,” she said. “And go to sleep.”
