Slow Twitch - Реинхардт Лиз. Страница 77

It was happening, and I was both so ready for it and so nervous I could hardly think. My body pressed against his, my skin hot on his skin.

He pinched my butt to make me smile, and then he rolled me back under him carefully. My hair tumbled all over the blanket, and his body pressed down on mine. Our smiles faded and he licked his lips nervously.

“You tell me if you need me to stop. If you need anything, you let me know. Right away,” he said, his voice hushed, his eyes dark with worry.

I nodded, my heart doing a wild, adrenaline-powered tap-dance in my chest.

Jake reached for his jeans and pulled a condom out of the pocket. He ripped the foil packet and slid it on, and my mind was racing too fast to process it all. I looked up, and the leaves danced on the wind between the trees above us. The creek rushed and sang, the sky glimmered with the first few, faint, pale stars. And at the center of all this beauty was the gorgeous, loving face of my boyfriend, eyebrows smashed together with worry, mouth flattened in a serious line, eyes burning with focus.

I put my hands up to his face and held it, looking right at him. “Don’t worry. I love you. I love you so much. This is good. This will be so good.” I made sure my voice didn’t even shake.

Jake’s face lost all its worried lines, and he kissed me softly and leaned his forehead against mine. “I love you, Bren. Let me know if anything hurts or you need me to stop. Okay?”

I nodded and kissed him hard, holding my breath as Jake drew a few inches back. “I love you, too,” I said, the words taking a quick tumble out of my mouth.

He gave me a final kiss and then it happened.

For one intense, uncomfortable minute, I was enveloped in a shooting, squirming burn of tight discomfort. Jake’s eyes searched my face, his mouth bunched in desperate nervousness, and I managed a big smile and nod through the haze of my pain to let him know he could keep going. He made sure he kept his eyes on mine and read my every look, checking to see that I was okay.

Once I adjusted to the feel of him, I tried moving under him, surprised by how much of this was all awkward positioning and strange, burning discomfort. Jake and I had been together for awhile, and so much of what we did was easy and fun. A tiny, panicked part of my brain worried that sex would fall into a different category and would forever be like a nightmare game of Twister.

But once I stretched enough that I got used to the way our bodies joined, the pain eased and then it was gone. The tingle that started out overly tight and possibly never-ending bloomed into something more sweetly filling and then, suddenly, so good I stopped tensing and cautiously moved my body in time to Jake’s.

Jake’s expression was a mix of loose-cannon worry and intense concentration. I squeezed him around the waist and moved my hands to his hips, wrapped my legs around his, and pulled him closer. I could smell the sweaty-sweet tang of his skin and feel his body actually in mine, so intimate and amazing, I wondered how anyone could ever do this with someone they cared about and not be at least momentarily in complete love. Relief that it felt so good made me relax, and it felt even better.

“It’s okay for you?” His voice came out on a ragged breath, and he smoothed my hair back with his hands.

“Better than okay,” I said on a breathless laugh, so happy, I wanted to stay here, with him, in this place, doing this thing we were finally doing forever.

He locked my mouth in a long, sweet kiss, then changed positions slightly until I felt the same buildup of warm, hard-to-control shakiness that engulfed me like a warm bath, reverberated through me like the hypnotic beat of a perfect song, and whirled in my blood like a thousand carbonated bubbles exploding from the top of a champagne bottle on New Year’s Eve.

I wrapped my arms around him hard, pulled against him, wanting to be closer to his skin and his body and him, even though we were locked so hard and tight against each other, there was no space between us. Jake moaned my name, kissed me again, and then a few frantic seconds made everything rush and crash together in a twisting burst of sweetness.

We both panted, arms and legs locked each other under the soft purple-gray glow of the sky at twilight, and Jake pulled back slowly, untangling himself from the twist of our overlaid limbs, then rolled over to take the condom off. He tucked it back in the wrapper and took a long second to just breathe before he turned back to me and gave me the longest, slowest, shyest smile that I had ever seen cross that boy’s lips.

“You feel alright?” He pulled his boxers and jeans back on and sat next to me.

I could have stayed right where we were all night, but the sun had slid completely behind the horizon, and the air was chilly. “I feel amazing. Thank you.”

His laugh got tangled up in the cool breeze, and he made himself busy gathering my clothes and offering his clumsy help to dress me. I knew it was so I wouldn’t see how pink his ears were.

“Thank you.” His voice crept out in the dark. He didn’t meet my eyes as he pulled my tank top over my head, backwards, and opened his mouth like he was going to say more. Then closed it. Opened it again. And closed it.

“You look like a fish.” I fixed my shirt and took his face in my hands. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve just never felt like this. You know. After. I feel…” His voice sounded so scratchy and rough, I had no idea what to expect when he looked up. “I feel so fucking amazing.” He crushed me to his chest and held me, his breath hot and unsteady through my hair. “I love you. I wanted it to be like this, but I wasn’t sure it could be. I’m just…I love you.”

I rolled him onto the ground and kissed every inch of his face. “I love you. So much.” The moment could have gotten much more romantic, but I smacked a mosquito that had been quietly sucking at my blood, and Jake helped me to my feet.

“Enough lovey-dovey stuff. Finish getting dressed, and I’ll pack up. You’re gonna get eaten alive here in a few minutes if we don’t go.” I watched Jake get busy putting everything away, and felt like a tiny bit of the fairy dust had been rubbed clean from our trip to this secret Neverland.

I pulled my jeans on and put my feet in my sandals. “We’ll come back here, right, Jake?”

“Of course.” He looked over his shoulder as he packed the duffel bag and his smile was so sweet, it seeped through all my bitter worries. “This is our spot now. We’ll come back while we’re in Sussex County, and then we have our five-year-plan, when we’re big, important hotshots. This will be that place we come back to when we need to get away from everything.” He reached for my hand, and we went back up the rocky incline, away from our little secret sweet spot full of magic. Jake didn’t give it so much as a backwards glance.

We jumped back in the truck and he whistled. He grinned. He tapped the steering wheel in a happy beat. When he didn’t have to shift, he reached his hand over and held mine.

“You’re in an awful good mood, Jake ‘Speed Demon’ Kelly.” I pulled his hand up to my lips and kissed it.

“I really hope that’s a reference to my racing skills and not my, uh, other skills.” He glanced at me and winked.

“Winking! All this sexy time definitely went to your head.” I leaned back on the seat and let out a long, sweet laugh. “And I think your skills were above average.”

“Above average? Is that, like, a B+?” He shook his head.

“Yep. And you know what that means?” I winked back at him. “Practice. Lots and lots of it.”

“I swear I will practice until I get an A from you, Ms. Blixen.” He turned the dial on the radio and sang along with the first song that came on.

I’d never heard it, and I don’t really think Jake had either, because his version of the lyrics was totally off key and made no sense. He stuck his head out the window and sang with the full capacity of his lungs, then screamed with pure pleasure into the wind.