Ransom (24 page)

“Yes, oh my god yes,” she said in a breathy whisper.

The sound of her voice made me stop for a moment, because it was familiar, like a recently lost memory.

“Please don’t stop,” she said, riding my curved fingers with a force that said she was almost there. The hot desire in her voice was all I needed. I went even deeper, to the spot that I knew would take her over the edge. Then she clenched rhythmically around my fingers as she panted and moaned. The sound of her voice, raw with ecstasy made me almost come right then. Only my years of experience with holding back kept me from joining her. She rode and moved against me until the feeling crested and finally fell away. When she was done, I pulled out of her then rolled her over, so she was flat on her back facing me.

Her breathing came in stilted gasps. She smelled of minty toothpaste, not exactly what I had expected. I leaned in closer, covering her mouth with mine, kissing her softly, tickling the tip of her tongue. She responded by tugging my head even closer, arching her body up as she moved her mouth against my lips, leaving no doubt that she wasn’t finished with me. She latched onto my tongue, sucking hard which had the effect of making me even more excited. Her hand found the top of my waistband and she fumbled to unbutton my pants. When she had no luck I helped her, sliding my pants off without breaking our kiss. I snatched a condom from my pocket before I threw the pants aside.

Normally I would have let the girl I was with, take my boxers off, but I couldn’t wait. I needed to escape, as much as a plant needed sunlight and water to survive. I needed to orgasm long and hard, to set my world right. I broke away from her, just long enough to roll off my underwear and toss them aside. With the barrier of my clothes gone, I was long past wanting and well into
had to have
. With expert precision and only my right hand, since I was still clutching the condom in a fist, I undid the clasp of her bra. It found a home with the rest of the clothes a moment later. Her panties, the only material separating us from becoming one, came off even faster than the bra. With nothing left to do, I opened the condom and had it in place moments later.
 

My mouth found her breasts as I teased her nipples with my tongue and teeth until her breaths came out in short puffs of hot air. She tasted salty, her skin slick with sweat. I circled each nipple with my tongue, sucked on the raised flesh and flicked my tongue quickly across the tips. She arched her back, bringing her hips up to meet my body. My hand was between her legs again, spreading her wide. When I started to push inside her she seemed to tense for a moment, enough that it made me stop; it was the last thing I wanted to do. I shoved a finger, then two inside her, pumping slowly in and out until she was relaxed again, and riding me with renewed enthusiasm.

When she was moving with the vigor of someone who was ready for a second round, I slipped my fingers out and slid the length of me into her warmth. If she tensed this time I didn’t feel it. I was too lost in the rhythm that my body had automatically slipped into. She was so delectably tight around me. I gripped her ass, driving deeper until our pelvises were mashed together. With a hand supporting the small of her back and one on her hip I thrust into her over and again, each move bringing me closer to the release that clawed to get out. She seized my hips, forcing me with her hands to go faster and deeper. Then I tipped over the edge, one more push and everything exploded around me, my body seized as if my muscles had forgotten how to move, just my hips continued moving as I came with a force that was uncommonly powerful. Soon after, each pump became a little less intense than the last one, until I was spent. Absolute bliss washed over me and for a moment I was completely satisfied.

Exhaustion, that always came after I’d had a good lay, crested over me. I rolled off the condom, knotting the end, then dropped it to the floor beside me. I was too tired to attempt to get to the bathroom and would have to do the disposal after I’d had a few hours of sleep.
 

I drew her closer to me until her head rested on my chest, her satiny hair felt so soft against my flesh. As I drifted into slumber I thought for a second that I didn’t remember her name, then velvety black took me away.

18. LEXIE

I hadn’t really been thinking about what I was doing when I had tucked Ransom into my bed, because from the way he was snoring there was no chance he was leaving anytime soon. The truth was, no matter what I had gotten myself into I needed sleep, which meant I either bunked with him or I flaked out in a chair. I decided to take the former, something that an un-inebriated me would never have done. I stripped off my clothes until I was just in my cotton underwear and bra.
 

Too exhausted to bother to wash off my makeup, I brushed my teeth, promising to scrub my face extra well in the morning. Mom had always said that you could never ignore your pores. And just like that all the thoughts that I had pushed to the recesses of my mind converged in a steady stream, tears followed shortly after.

When I was sure I didn’t have any moisture left in my body, I stumbled out of the bathroom.
 

My throat ached and my eyes felt so puffy, that I was sure they looked like a guy named Kevin Smatt’s eyes had looked, after he’d had an encounter with a beehive in grade 2. Kevin hadn’t planned on playing kick the can, or in his case kick the hive, but that was how it had played out. Even as he had raced screaming back to the school, the bees had managed to get in quite a few stings. They had even stung his eyelids, so by the time he got back inside, his eyes were swollen shut with just dark slits where his brown eyes should have been. It felt weird to remember him now after all these years, but it seemed the evening had been about resurrecting skeletons from the past, whether I liked it or not.

I had turned all the lights out before I had gone into the bathroom, so the hotel room was pitch black. Worried that I might unintentionally run into a wall or something else, I threw my hands up in front of me, searching for where the bed was. A short while later my shin hit the wooden box spring. I cried out in pain. I was sure that I had skinned my leg, but I was too exhausted to care. I heard Ransom stir then turn over, then he went silent. It still felt exceptionally crazy to have him in the bed, but I guessed that was what it felt like to have a one night stand, though in those cases sex was involved. I didn’t like that once again my mind had drifted to sex. Clearly there was something about Ransom that made the usually ignored subject come front and center.
 

Having found the bed the hard way, I slipped into the space at Ransom’s side. I tugged at the bedspread that he was sprawled out on, barely able to get a corner to cover myself with. As soon as I was flat I got the dreaded bed spins. The last thing I wanted to do was vomit again, so I threw a leg over the side of the bed, positioning my foot on the floor. Trinity had shown me the trick a long time back when we had drank too many Peach Schnapps shooters. It had worked then, so I hoped it would work now too.

It eased the twirling enough that I could begin to relax and settle into sleep. Yet before oblivion took me, a movie of the alley and what had almost happened played through my mind. All I could think was that it had been too close. I was more than aware that I was getting more reckless by the day, the scene in the alleyway had proved it. Even slipping into bed with Ransom in just my underwear was way out there, but somehow I didn’t care.
 

In fact lately it seemed all that I really focused
 
on was getting the right person to solve the one problem that was quite possibly unsolvable. I was certain that if I continued on the same path, I would eventually pay for my mistakes. For now though, I was grateful that Ransom had been there to catch me before I fell too far. A shiver ran through me and I instinctively reached for Ransom, touching his arm for barely a second, as if he was a touchstone that confirmed that I was safe. Though I had struggled with the idea about whether I had done the right thing asking him to stay with me, now I was glad that I had done it. In the quiet of the night with memories too real to forget, his presence felt like the only thing that kept me tethered to sanity.
 

I squeezed my eyes shut, actually counting sheep for a little while, like my Grampa had told me to do a long while back. When I had been a small child and couldn’t sleep, he had shown me how to count sheep, saying that it was less about the sheep and more about keeping your mind free of all the thoughts that would keep you awake. Back then I had been scared about the monsters under the bed, now it was more grown-up fears, and the feeling that I no longer knew when enough was enough. But even after what had happened in the alleyway, I wasn’t sure if I was done searching.
 

Eventually my body gave out and I fell into a deep sleep.

At first I thought I was in the middle of a kinky dream, one where someone was touching me in a way that I had never been touched before. It felt more than good, it felt scintillating and naughty. But when I came around and realized that it was no dream, and that Ransom was doing things with his fingers that should have been illegal, I was both puzzled, but also very much enjoying what he was doing.

 
I still wasn’t sure when it had started or even why, but all those questions lay inert in my brain as something more animalistic took over. I didn’t want my hips to work against his hand, as he plunged deeper and more urgently inside me. The prude in me said what I was doing was all wrong, that you weren’t supposed to let strangers do things like he was doing to my body. The deprived and lonely woman told me to shut up and enjoy it.

Slut flashed in neon in my mind because that’s what I was, only sleazy girls did this with guys they hardly knew. But somehow the label had none of the impact it should have had. Stacked against Ransom’s expert hands, that were making me gyrate against him like a porn star, I was helpless to stop it from happening. Which made me think that if this was what it felt like when the porn queens were doing their
job
then I might not have judged them as harshly as I had before.
 

As his fingers moved faster in and out of me, his thumb also rubbed in time over the sensitive parts of my sex. It seemed impossible to catch my breath long enough to tell him to stop. Not that I was entirely sure I wanted him to quit what he was doing, because it felt so freaking amazing.
 

I released a moan that sounded like something out of the back seat of a car at a drive in, and was a little shocked that it had come from me. I didn’t do this kind of thing, ever, and was surprised at how my body seemed to be on autopilot. Without my permission my pelvis bucked in response to his fingers, and I was riding him shamelessly. His scent, of sweat and the remnants of alcohol, and something that was hard to name, but if pressed I would have said all man, filled the airspace around us. It of course only served to arouse me even more than I already was. It was odd how he didn’t need even a drop of cologne to improve on what was natural.
 

Words were flying out of me in a string as if I was possessed. If I was possessed then it was the best damn feeling I had ever experienced. Everything intensified into a wave of pure ecstasy that slammed hard against me. And when I was having, what could only have been my first orgasm, I wanted it to go on forever.
 
Time seemed to freeze frame in snippets of feelings and emotions, as the sensation of euphoria, where all the neurons in my brain seemed to fire at exactly the same moment, left me feeling as if I was literally going to shatter into a million pieces. Breathless and not even remotely capable of speaking, I lay still, panting. I soon came to realize that we weren’t done. His lips found mine in the dark and he was kissing me with a passion that I had thought was reserved for people like Trinity and Aiden, beautiful people, people who weren’t me.
 

For a guy as built as he was, Ransom’s lips were surprisingly gentle. Even the way his tongue explored my mouth felt carefully executed, as if it really mattered that I liked what he was doing. My body continued to run the show, while my mind screamed about the absolute insanity of it all. My hands found the button of his pants. Nothing seemed more important than touching the part that made him male. I wasn’t sure what I would do when I freed him of his clothes, only that I needed to give back some of what he had given to me so freely.

My inexperience in the task of disrobing him must have been obvious because Ransom had his pants undone and discarded before I could say
holy shit what are you doing Lexie
three times. That cheesy line from that book called Grey something,
Oh my
, seemed a little more real when I felt his erection press hard against the hollow of my stomach. Whoever had made Ransom certainly hadn’t skimped in that part of his anatomy.

Before I could regret initiating the move, Ransom was teasing and licking my nipples in a way that felt impossibly good. Even as he sucked the tips of my breasts until they were taut points, I felt his hand come back to the space between my legs. He spread me with his fingers, pushing against me with something much bigger. I automatically tensed.
 

I was catching up to where we were, and the glaring fact that if things continued on as they were, virgin would no longer be on my resume for potential boyfriends. I opened my mouth to say that we needed to slow down a little when his hand found the same magic place that it had before. Just as it had the last time, the build up was slow and cumulative. Once again I was pushing up and against his fingers, wanting more of what he was already giving me. When I was getting closed to climaxing again, he slid the length of his erection inside me. This time I was too lost in the rush of excitement that crashed over me, to be bothered by how huge he was, or that he filled me in a way that I hadn’t been sure was physically possible.