17. Calista

17

CALISTA

" A s lovely as this has been, I need to get back to Mom," I say, finally, when we're done eating our food and he's cleaned away the dishes after refusing my offer of help.

Vex shakes his head. "Look out the window, babe."

I do as he instructs and see the snow that has steadily fallen. "Shit."

"You can stay the night. Come on." Vex takes my hand and leads me to his bedroom.

Too tired to argue, I let him.

When he pauses in the hallway, I almost bump into his solid frame. "I got two beds." He points to his room. "That one, I'm gonna be sleeping in. Really like the idea of you being in it with me." He points to the other. "That one is my guest bed, and I won't be in it. Your choice."

There is only one decision I can make to protect myself. I step up onto my toes and kiss his cheek. "Good night, Ti." Then, I turn and walk into the guest bedroom. It's as pretty as Ti's bedroom and must look out over the rear of the house, but it's too dark for me to see anything beyond the immediate flurry.

Quickly, I do what I need to in the bathroom, strip down to just the T-shirt he gave me to wear, and then crawl beneath the sheets. They smell exactly how they used to, and I find it sweet that Ti uses the same laundry detergent his mom always used. They're soft and cool to the touch. The weight of them over my body settles me.

To a point.

I hear the creak of floorboards on the other side of the hall, the click of a switch.

In my head, I build a picture. Ti naked in bed. I mean, I used to think of Ti naked all the time, but now it's more than an abstract concept.

He's taller than many of the men I've dated. Has broader shoulders. And is less refined. But I like it.

No, more than that, I feel safe around him.

I huff, punch the pillow a few times, then try to resettle.

What would it be like to slip under the covers with him? Would I sleep with my head on his chest? How would his arms feel wrapped around me? My body starts to light up, and I slide my hand down my body to cup my pussy, which rocks against my hand.

"Fuck," I mutter and snatch my hand away.

What was the advice Adam gave me all those years ago?

Sweetheart, don't settle for half of what you want when you can go out and chase the real thing .

I'm not sure he had Ti in mind.

I know doing anything more with him is asking for trouble. I can't stay, and he won't go, so this will have to end when I leave.

But maybe it can bring the two of us the closure we never had all those years ago.

Normally, when I have a big decision to make, I make it instinctively, but then I give myself twenty-four hours to think about it rationally.

My heart says to just go to him, but I know my head will say something altogether different in the morning.

But for once, I let my heart lead. The handful of steps across the hallway feel like climbing Mount Everest without oxygen. By the time I reach the door, I'm vibrating with nervous energy.

The handle is cool to the touch as I turn it slowly.

I can just make out his form in the bed. He's wearing a black sleep bonnet on his hair and his eyes are closed. And when I'm about to talk myself into seeing that this is a really bad idea, he lifts the duvet.

"Get in here, babe," he says. His voice is rough around the edges, and it does little to ease my nervous energy.

I've felt this before. When I ran. When I signed the forms to make my company a legal entity. When I got my first client, and when I did my first seven-figure hack.

Scratch that. I haven't felt anything quite like this before.

The wooden floors turn into a plush rug around his bed, and then I climb in beside him.

I've barely had time to adjust to being horizontal when he tugs me to him, rolling me so I'm on my side, my back snug against his chest. His heat hits me immediately, and I can feel his thickening length pressing up against the cheeks of my ass.

He's naked and wrapped around me.

It's overwhelming. Too many sensations to process. His lips brush my ear. His breath warm against my skin. "I'm sorry I didn't see you back then, babe."

I know what he means. My confession about the tender and all-consuming feelings I had for him.

"It's okay," I whisper.

"You don't mean that," he says, mirroring my own thoughts.

It wasn't okay. It hurt painfully as a young adult trying to figure out what to do with confusing feelings.

"How did you know?"

His palms slide down my body, pulling me closer, gripping my hips. I can't help but press back into him, his cock now fully erect.

The speed at which he's managed to arouse me is shocking to me. I'm sure if I asked him to, he'd have sex with me. My clit throbs in anticipation.

But it would only compound how terrible my decisions have already been tonight.

"Doesn't matter how." He nibbles my earlobe, then kisses a line down my neck. "The only thing that matters is I see you now."

"You're about fifteen years too late." I want to kick myself for answering with snark.

His hands stop moving immediately. "Am I?"

My head is a morass of conflicting thoughts. I appreciate the checking for consent. I hate that his hands aren't roaming my body anymore. And worse, I miss the brush of his lips and the whisper of his breath against my skin.

"We don't have a future," I say. How can we with everything between us?

"But we have tonight, Calista. Let's see what we've been missing."

I turn in his arms and can make out his eyes in the darkness of his room. "I feel like that's a recipe for heartbreak."

"Is your heart in one piece right now?"

I think about everything that's happening in my life and shake my head. "I guess not."

"Mine either," he says, cryptically. "Maybe tonight we should just pretend we made different choices. That this is our life. We chose this. We chose each other."

I can't make sense of all the warning signs in my head, but I listen to the green light coming from my body and kiss him.

It's the first one I initiated, and everything about his lips on mine feels like coming home. Like this is how it's always meant to have been.

The first brush of lips is soft and overwhelming. The second takes my breath away.

There is nothing rushed or hurried. He pulls me close and kisses me like I'm cherished. Like this is more than a one-night stand, a friends-with-benefits thing.

Like we're real.

Like the two of us were meant for each other.

Like this is the future I dreamed about when I was young.

The intensity takes me under like a riptide I can't get out of.

My hands stroke his broad shoulder and his back, dipping low to the curve of his ass. His fingers slide into my hair, cupping me to him.

When he lifts me slightly, it's so his cock lines up with my pussy, and I groan when he grinds against me.

Surely, one of us should worry about contraception or practicalities, but I couldn't stop him now if my life depended on it.

His breath comes out in a forceful puff of air against my cheek.

Decades of pent-up feelings take over. He rolls us so he can settle between my legs, keeping up the slow and steady grind against me as he kisses me tenderly.

My T-shirt raises up my hips, exposing me to him.

"Can feel that pussy of mine getting wet," he says.

And, boy, that does not help with the feelings zinging through me. My body responds to the ownership in his words, and I ignore the voice in my head that says I don't belong to anybody because nobody has ever wanted me.

Instead, I cling to the fact that right now, in this moment, I'm the only thing he wants.

He pauses and cups my cheek. "You okay if I go taste it?"

I nod before I can even debate it. My body has decided I'm all in tonight. "Yes, please."

He smiles. "Such a good girl."

My clit aches at his words.

He tugs off his sleep bonnet and disappears beneath the covers before nudging my legs wide apart. I'm glad I showered so that?—

"Holy shit." The first flick of his tongue against my clit and I realize just how needy and close to orgasm I am.

I don't want to think about just how much practice he's had over the years to be this good at it, but he intuitively knows what I need.

He laps as he eats me. Flicks my clit to tease me. Sucks and nibbles to bring me to the brink of orgasm, just before he eases up and lets me slip away from my peak.

A groan of frustration and need escapes me.

"Please Ti," I beg.

I never thought I'd end up here. With him.

It only takes Ti a minute to take me back up again, and I rub my pussy against his face, riding in abandon to take the orgasm I was just deprived of.

I want to see and throw the covers back. He's a shadow in the darkness of the room, but it's enough. I grip his hair and grind, and he doesn't complain.

"So fucking good," he mumbles, then resumes whatever the magic is he's doing with his tongue.

This time, Ti doesn't let up. My world narrows into the place we're connected, and yet explodes in brilliant color.

I arch my back, pushing my head down into the pillow as I lose control.

"Ti," I shout. "Oh, God."

My breath comes in gasps, my heart beating like I just ran a marathon.

Aftershocks follow. Secondary ripples of pleasure as Ti licks and sucks me down.

Ti kneels, then crowds over me, kissing me. I can taste myself on his lips. "Think I'm gonna need you to come on my face a few more times, you know, for science and shit."

I can't help but smile.

He reaches into the drawer of the side table and grabs a box of condoms. I watch as he puts one on. "You okay if I fuck you now, babe?"

"I guess I owe you."

It's the wrong thing to say—I can feel it immediately.

"You didn't owe me when we stood in your mom's living room. You sure as shit don't owe me in my bedroom."

I reach for his hand. "I'm sorry. Guess you're starting to see the reason I'm single. I'm terrible at this."

He takes my hand and raises it to his lips. "Then, let's try this again. You okay if I fuck you now, babe?"

"Please. I really want to know what it would be like between us."

He shimmies the T-shirt up and over my head so there is nothing between us. Once I'm naked, I feel a wash of vulnerability. In some ways, I'm just that girl, waiting for him to notice me. "I like it when you express what you need, Cal, instead of hiding from me."

"Hiding who I am has been the only way I could survive."

Ti places a palm between my breasts. The pressure helps me relax and hold back the nerves that threaten. "I'm liking this honesty too, babe."

He shifts and sits on the bed, resting his back against the headboard. "Come here and ride me."

Gently, he tugs me until I'm on my knees sitting over his thighs. I can feel the wetness of his tongue and my orgasm still coating my pussy. We're chest to chest, his arms around me, his cock nudging between my lips.

"I'm thick. It's gonna take a minute for you to adjust to me. Take me in your own time."

His hands grip my ass, opening me wide. I start to lower myself over his cock and gasp as he stretches my lips. While it doesn't hurt, there's the delicious feeling of fullness.

"Oh, God," I groan as I lift off him.

He wasn't lying when he said it would take a minute. I can't imagine what it's going to feel like once he's fully seated in me.

"Cal," he mutters. "Feels as good as it tasted."

I ease back down him, the slide a little easier now that I've lubricated the tip a little. This time, I make it farther down his length.

My thighs burn as I lower and raise myself slowly.

"Keep going," he says against my ear. "You're doing so fucking good taking all of me."

It's probably the fact I'm a CEO and rarely get praise that makes me want to melt against him at his words. I never get praise, and I soak it up like rainfall in the desert. Maybe that was all I ever wanted. For Ti to be proud of me.

It mattered.

I can feel myself getting wetter. Plus, I can't remember ever coming twice in one session before, but I can already tell I'm close.

The thought has me lowering myself a little more aggressively, taking more of him.

We both groan.

"Yeah, fucking take me just like that," Ti says. "Knew your pussy was gonna feel like heaven wrapped around my cock."

This time, I seat myself all the way to his groin.

"Ti," I gasp. But he cups the back of my neck and pulls my lips to his.

The kiss is searing. I can feel him throb in my pussy, even as I sit.

"Now. Keep your lips on mine, and ride my cock like you fucking mean it," he says.

My body needs no further invitation.

Our kisses are interrupted with gasps of breath, groans, and grunts from Ti. But every time, he tugs my lips back to his. Even when we're barely kissing because we're too busy trying to breathe.

Sweat forms between our bodies.

My tender nipples rub against the dark curls of hair on his chest.

His hand slides over the curve of my ass before his finger rubs a circle over my asshole.

I almost want to object but can't find my voice as the sensation amplifies everything else happening between us.

I increase my pace, riding him furiously as I chase another high. I close my eyes tightly and focus on the drag of my lips and clit along his cock every time I lift off him.

But I worry that it's not what he's expecting. Not what he wants. "Is this okay?" I ask, and I hate the waver of uncertainty in my voice

Ti thrusts up, meeting me. The slap against him becomes a steady drumbeat.

"How can you ask? Can't you feel how good this is, Cal?" he mutters against my lips.

"Yes," I cry in borderline frustration.

My orgasm is so close. Within reach.

"Fuck, I'm close," Ti says. "Your fucking pussy is too good to last in. Choking me so tight. Wanna hear you come soon. Show me how you need it, sweet girl."

I start to grind against him rather than lift off him. I can't get close enough. Ti applies pressure to my ass, holding me tight against his cock, rolling my hips against him.

"Like that," I gasp.

"Yeah. You finding it? Come for me. I want to feel you coming on me before I come in you. Because I'm gonna come so hard—my balls are so fucking full. You better be ready, babe."

I cry out because it feels so goddamn good, and I'm so goddamn close.

"Come for me, Calista. You've been such a good girl taking me like this, you deserve it."

And it's the movement of his lips and the words spilling from them that push me over the edge.

I lose all sense of time and reason.

I forget everything happening in my life.

I forget who I am and who Ti is and lose myself in an orgasm so mind-blowing, I can barely breathe.

"Can tell you needed this," Ti says. "So glad you came to me for it."

I put my forehead to his shoulder as I try to put my world back together.

"Now," he says. "Hold on, babe. Because I need to come in you real bad."

I'm too limp to be of much help. But Ti doesn't need any. He presses his heels into the bed and thrusts up into me.

It's jarring and fast, and my pussy is going to be sore tomorrow, but I kiss his neck, his shoulder, and his cheek.

When my lips meet his, he gasps my name against them and grunts as he comes.

"Aw, fuck, yeah." The words come out on a hiss of air.

His thrusts lose all momentum as he rides out what feels good. I feel his cock pulse inside me over and over.

And when he's done, we sit there, his cock still deep inside me, clinging to each other like we just survived a tornado.