Page 62 of Duke
And she was with me, naked for me. Climbing into bed withme.
She’d come all over me, clung to me, chanted my name as we fucked—
Not fucked. It wasn’t just fucking. It was—god, I wish I had a word for it.
Except for the obvious word, of course, the word I’ve never said, never heard spoken to me, a concept I’ve never believed in. Was it that? I refused to even think the word, but I could skirt around it mentally as I watched Temple sway and bounce from the bathroom back to the bed.
Was itthatword?
Fuck…it was. I mean, as far as I could tell, that’s what this was. The most cliché shit in the world: one amazing fuck with the right woman, and I was falling for her. And yeah, I was acutely aware that she was falling for me.
Just go with it, Thresh had said.Don’t fight it. There’s no point.
The right girl, she’ll make you feel like more of a man, not less.
Just go with it.
But…how? I couldn’t even think the L-word, much less say it. Plus, it was fucking nuts. I just met the woman. It’s not possible. Insta-love isn’t real. You don’t just meet someone and fall in love that same day—even after a day like the one we’ve had.
You don’t know shit.
Temple was on the bed, crawling for me on all fours. Breasts swaying beneath her, hair falling in blonde waves on either side of her gorgeous face. When she reached my thighs, she stopped.
“Now…where was I?” she asked.
I swallowed hard. “Kissing me.”
“Where?”
I tapped my lips. “Here.”
She grinned. “Oh…yeah. That’s right.” She ran her palms up my thighs. “I’m thinking maybe I’ll start over…down here.”
And she kissed my thigh, just above my kneecap. And then higher. She pushed my other leg aside, and kissed around toward the inside of my thigh, her hands on either side of her mouth, fingernails gently scraping as she slid upward, kissing. It was hard to breathe when she did that, when she kissed me like that. Made it hard to think.
“Temple—what are you doing to me?” I heard myself say.
“Kissing you,” she answered, the words huffing against my inner thigh, inches from my balls. “Kissing you everywhere.”
“You’re making me crazy.”
“Good. I like it when you’re crazy.”
“But I don’t—I don’t know how to handle it. It’s—fuck. It’s crazy.” I gasped helplessly as she breathed a hot breath across my balls and then kissed my opposite thigh mere millimeters away. “It’s too much.”
One hand on each thigh, lips traipsing and teasing and kissing toward my hip, she paused when she reached my hipbone, glancing up at me. “Too much, huh?”
“Yeah. I don’t know—It’s fucking crazy.”
She laughed. “So you’ve said.”
“It’s—it’s thewayyou’re kissing me. It’s not just the teasing, it’s—”
Her eyes found mine, knife sharp and intense and fierce. “It’sus, Duke. That’s what you can’t handle. The way I’m kissing you? It’s because I’m kissing you like I…” she trailed off, swallowing hard.
“Don’t say it, Temple.”
“But that’s what it is, isn’t it?”