CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
We lay on our backs looking up at the ceiling. We hadn’t said a word since falling out of each other’s arms after having the best, best,the best, sex of my life. Sex where I had actually said his name over and over again, and sex that had there been walls to beat with my sweaty fists, I would have.
We were holding hands, but that was our only physical contact. We were both completely naked, my hot body was covered in a layer of sweat and when the sea breeze blew through the open window, a pleasant cooling sensation made me shiver slightly.
Finally, Alex stirred. He turned to face me. He propped his head up on his elbow and looked down at me and then smiled.
I turned my head to look at him better and found myself smiling back. “Well.” It was only when I opened my mouth and spoke that I realized how dry it was. “I guess we can tick that off the list.”
His smile grew. “I guess we can.” He lowered his head and planted a small, soft kiss between my breasts.
“You taste salty,” he said, keeping his mouth there, letting his lips linger on that sensitive part.
“I’m sweaty.” I laced my fingers through his hair again. It was damp and sticky.
“Me too,” he said, moving his lips over my nipple and blowing on it.
I winced, a mixture of cold pain and hot pleasure stabbed me. He lifted his head back up to me and smiled again. The heady scent of sex lingered in the air. Sex and sea air and cologne and sweat.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said, pushing a wet strand of hair out of my face. I reached up and grabbed his hand. Brought his fingertips down to my lips and kissed them one by one. Everything about this moment felt so natural and normal and comfortable. It didn’t feel awkward in any way at all. My body seemed to instinctively know what to do with Alex in a way that I had never known before.
I pulled his hand away and looked at it, tracing it with my fingers. “You have such beautiful hands,” I said, admiring them. I’d always liked them, but it was only now that I was getting to see them up close. “This is loose,” I added, looking at the green ribbon on his finger.
“Take it off,” he whispered to me.
I turned and looked at him. Our eyes met and he looked at me like he’d never looked at me before. I tugged at the little knot and the ribbon immediately loosened, and fell from his finger onto the bed. Our eyes both drifted down to where the ribbon was now lying; there was something so final about it lying there like that, as if it was dead. Alex picked it up between his fingers, then lowered it to my face. I closed my eyes as the tip of the ribbon came into gentle contact with my skin. It tickled. He ran it down my nose, over my lips, down my neck and I arched my back once more as he trailed it teasingly over my breasts.
I opened my eyes again and looked at Alex. He opened his mouth as if he was about to say something, but then stopped himself.
“What?” I raised my head.
“I just wanted to say that this last week has really,reallymeant a lot to me,” he mouthed quietly.
“Me too,” I said. “It’s meant the world.”
This moment. Right here, right now. Suddenly, it felt like everything we’d done over the last week had somehow been building to this exact moment for Alex and me. As if this was meant to happen. As if it had somehow been ordained from the very first moment we met. A realization hit me, well, part of one—I wasn’t sure I had the full picture yet, I could only see parts of it. Fragments.
“You mean . . .” I started talking, “you’ve come to mean so much to me, Alex.” I said softly. I knew I wanted to say more, but I wasn’t quite sure exactly what I wanted to say, or if I should say it?
“You, Val,” Alex brought his lips to my forehead, “have come to mean so much to me too.”
I waited for him to maybe say more, but he didn’t. Something was lurking on the tip of my tongue. They were words that I suddenly felt rather frightened by. Words that I dared not speak out loud . . . the words seemed so inappropriately big. So unexpected that I wasn’t sure I trusted them just yet. My thoughts suddenly drifted back to number one on the list . . .were these feelings I was feeling even real?
And then Alex stood up and extended his arm for me to take. I sat up on the bed and looked at him. Totally naked and so fucking gorgeous it was a sin. A sin to waste that naked body by not doing something with it.
“What say we shower?” Alex asked.
I smiled. That was more like it. I could definitely do something with that body in the shower.
The warm water rushed over us, washing away all the sweat and sex and the beach sand that I’d only realized now was clinging to my ankles. Alex picked up the bar of soap and then started washing me. Every inch of me. Running the soap all the way over me from my feet to the tips of my fingers. When he came to my finger, he looked up briefly, and then slipped the ribbon off, dropping it onto the floor. The feeling of the hard slippery bar on my breasts was amazing, and it got that ball of energy all coiled up inside me again.
He took his time making sure that every inch of my breasts were clean. I closed my eyes and put my arms up on the wall behind me, giving him full access to every possible part of them. The sides, underneath them . . . everywhere. The warm water trickled down my body, caressing it softly, and at that moment Alex took a nipple between his fingers and squeezed. Hard. I jumped with surprise, the pain was ecstasy. I opened my eyes and looked at him again and he did it again to the other one. Pain and pleasure melted together to create something new and intense that needed exploring.
And then suddenly Alex turned me around and pressed the front of my body against the cold, hard wall of the shower. He suddenly kicked my legs open and a hand dived between my legs. He came up behind me, his lips to my ear and he whispered something that I couldn’t hear through the sound of the falling drops and then I felt him inside me again. Alex was definitelynottoo nice, after all. Nice guys didn’t do . . .this.
He pinned me to the wall even harder, holding my hands in place as he thrust into me. My body smacked into the cold wall with force and then he said something into my ear again. I was just about to ask him to say it again when my body started tensing again and all I could do was keep still and let the feeling crash through me. It was so intense it made my legs shake. I could feel Alex was starting to lose control too, his movements were getting more erratic and frantic. I was just about to remind him that he wasn’t wearing a condom when I felt him slip out of me. He moaned into my ear and I don’t think I’d ever heard such an amazing sound before. I smiled. It had been quick, and dirty and totally satisfying.
We stayed like that again for a while until Alex turned the water off and then turned me around to face him once more. I couldn’t help smiling at him.
