Page 18 of Edge of Ruin (The Edge Trilogy #3)

Chapter Twelve

Vivi

J ack’s eyes flashed, and his fingers tightened on my ass. I waited until I started getting restless and impatient. “So? Jack? Did you hear me?”

“Yes, I heard you. I just couldn’t believe it,” he said.

“Ah. Well, believe it. So? What now?” I clamped down on my nervous giggles before they could start to turn to tears. “Do we just ... do it?”

His grin flashed, but his face was wary. “Sounds fine to me.”

I groped for a tissue in my skirt pocket and blew my nose. “I’m so embarrassed,” I muttered. “It’s been so long. I don’t even know where to start.”

“I do,” he said swiftly. “I could absolutely help you with that.”

I snorted with laughter, covered my face with my hands. “I just bet you could,” I said. “So? What’s the plan?”

“We’ll start here, definitely.” He sank promptly to his knees in front of me and pressed his face against my mound through the thin fabric of my gauze skirt.

“Oh, God,” I said weakly. “That, again? You’re obsessed!”

He lifted up the yards of fabric, seeking his prize.

“God, yes. Your pussy is so pink and salty sweet. I want to make it puffy and slick and hot pink. I want to lick you like candy. Until you melt into hot slippery girl juice. Then we’ll work out what comes next.

We’ll take it slowly. One step at a time. ”

I could barely speak. He shoved the wad of skirt into my hands and murmured with approval at the skimpy white lace thong. “Behold me, on my knees,” he continued, flashing me a mischievous grin. “Your desperate supplicant.”

“Oh, stop. As if.” I shook with a fresh attack of nervous giggles.

He wasn’t put off by them at all. He was extremely focused. He pulled aside the gusset of my panties and tucked it to the side. My legs buckled when he pressed his mouth to my naked flesh.

“I can’t handle it,” I whispered. I had no experience at receiving oral sex. Brian had been entirely uninterested in it. In performing it, at least. He’d been more than happy to receive it. Had considered it his God-given right, in fact.

The fierce glow in Jack’s eyes transfixed me. “You’ll handle it,” he assured me. “You did at the pools. And you’re so small. I’m going to take my sweet time with you. You taste amazing.”

My legs trembled. Jack looked around for a chair, saw none, and hoisted me up onto the kitchen counter.

He tugged the tiny wisp of stretch-lace panties off my legs and tossed it away.

I balanced there, clutching his head and trembling, skirt wadded against my chest. I was so aroused, the feeling bordered on terror.

“I love your taste,” he murmured. “I could lick you for hours.”

“I wouldn’t survive it,” I said, and he laughed, pleased.

He knew instinctively just how to touch me, how deep, how hard, how soft. Voluptuous thrusts of his tongue, lapping up and down, plunging deep. His long fingers opening, stroking, while he suckled, insisted, pushing me to that screaming point of no return … and oh … yes. Yes.

Pleasure jolted heavily through me, deeper and wider and sweeter every time.

I floated back and found myself draped over him. He’d caught me, held me as I came.

He lifted me up so that I straddled him, and braced me against the wall, reaching down to fumble with his belt?—

And the shimmering warmth inside me flash-froze. My heart skipped, bumped. Panic flashed through me. Faintness, suffocation.

Shit. It was happening again. That sickening black fog rising. The memory of those last awful times with Brian. They haunted me.

Brian had liked that position, especially when he was snorting coke. On his feet, pinning me to the wall. Or else holding me down, immobilized. His face, a taut, stiff mask of lust. Eyes fixed, staring. A million miles away. Not listening when I told him that it hurt. Not caring.

I hadn’t been able to be intimate with a man since that. I had tried a few times, but nothing wrecked the mood faster than a stress flashback.

Finally I had just let it go. I figured it was simpler to learn to do without sex.

But goddammit, I wasn’t going to do without this.

I grabbed his shoulders. “Just a minute,” I said, gasping for breath. “Just ... let me get myself together. Don’t go away.”

I could hear him talking, from far away. His tone was urgent, anxious, but I couldn’t make out the words over the roar in my ears. The frantic, deafening gallop of my heart.

Breathe, silly. It’s now, not then. It’s Jack, not Brian. Get a grip.

“... okay? Jesus, Viv! What did I do?”

“It wasn’t you,” I said, through shaking lips. “I’m sorry.”

“What the fuck? What happened?”

“It was that position,” I admitted, my voice small. “It just triggered some bad memories, that’s all. No big deal. I’m okay now. Really. Totally fine.”

“What do you mean, that’s all?” His face was pale with alarm.

Crap. I had been so close to getting through this stone wall in my own head, and I had to have a meltdown right now, just when I got to the good part. So freaking typical.

“... memories? Can you talk about it?”

The look on his face told me that he wasn’t going to let this slide.

I gave in to the inevitable with a sigh.

“It was a bad boyfriend I had once, years ago,” I explained.

“The relationship went sour. So did the sex. It took a while for me to pry myself out of the situation, and in the meantime, well. It left me hung up. He was, well. Heavy into control, let’s just say, and leave it at that. ”

I was afraid to look at Jack’s face. Pity would make me cringe. But when I finally looked, it wasn’t pity I saw. It was fury. A blaze of anger that made my heart do a weird galloping skip of primitive fear.

“Tell me his name, and where he lives,” Jack said. “I’ll rip that filthy piece of shit to pieces and grind him into the fucking dirt for you.”

I blinked at him stupidly. “Ah, well. Um, thank you,” I said, flustered. “That’s a very kind offer, but I’m okay with it now.”

“You didn’t look okay two minutes ago,” he said grimly.

“I’m sorry I?—”

“Stop apologizing!”

The harshness of his voice startled me, and he looked away, shaking his head. “Fuck,” he muttered. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell at you.”

“We can’t seem to stop apologizing to each other.” I kept my nails dug into the muscles of his shoulders, as if I was afraid that he would run away from me, but he didn’t. Not at all. His hands crept up, crossing his chest, to cover mine. Enveloping mine. Flooding my body with reassurance.

“Do you want to, uh, just leave it for now?” he suggested gently.

“No!” I yelled. “I will not let him fuck this up for me, too! He has taken enough from me already, goddammit!”

“You don’t know how happy I am to hear you say that,” he said fervently. “Thank God. Just tell me what I need to do. Or, uh, not do.”

“It’s not that complicated. Just do what you do. You’re fabulous. Just not shoved up against the wall. And don’t pin down my hands. Or press on my throat. Or pull on my hair. And we’ll be fine. I think.”

That tightly leashed fury flashed again in his wolfish eyes. “That sick, filthy fuckhead,” he said.

“Yeah, maybe he is, but starting now, he leaves the scene,” I said sternly. “No more airtime for the sick, filthy fuckhead. It’s just us now. Just Jack and Vivi, capisci? ”

He nodded. The silence grew so long, we both started to laugh.

“I feel really shy, now,” Jack admitted. “I think you’re going to have to choreograph this one. I’ll just follow your lead.”

“But I don’t know where I’m going,” I protested. “That is to say, I have a rough idea, but I might drive us into the swamp, you know?”

“So we’ll lead each other. Like hands on a Ouija board,” he said. “I’ll give you a tip to get you started. Take my hand and lead me into the bedroom. That’ll get us going.”

I lifted my hands from his shoulders and grabbed his hand, pulling him into the adjoining room. It was practically empty but for the futon with my sleeping bag and my suitcase tucked in the corner.

The walls were alive with shifting green shadows from sunlight sifting through oak and maple leaves. I longed for the cover of dusk, or night, but no. It was all going to be so visible. So terribly deliberate.

I gave him a questioning look. “Next tip?”

“Take off your clothes,” he said.

I giggled nervously as I began, but I put all my bravura into it. Kicking off my sandals. Peeling off my top. I stretched and preened as I pulled pins out of my hair and tossed them to the floor. The tinkle as they fell was loud in the flickering silence.

He watched me uncoil the long, twisted tail of red hair, shaking it down into loose waves over my shoulder, my breasts.

I began to circle him, and he followed me with his eyes.

The movement felt ancient. Like a ceremony, a spiral dance, an invitation.

A sacred rite that would braid their male and female energies into a rope of pure magic.

“The skirt,” he reminded me. “Lose the skirt.”

I loosened the drawstring and let the skirt drop. Now I was naked, but for Lucia’s Renaissance pendant. The one thing that I never took off.

I scooped my hair up over my head, arching my back, tossing my hair. Turning, in front of the raw hunger in his beautiful silver eyes. Not a single nervous thought for my itty-bitty boobs, or my not-so-little ass, or my in-your-face tattoos.

Flaunting myself, and absolutely sure that I would please him.

“Now my clothes,” he told me, kicking off his sandals.

Wow. Even his feet were sexy, and I’d never given a thought to feet before, as long as they smelled okay. His were beautiful: long and brown, with graceful toes, square nails, elegant bones.

I attacked his clothes. A goofy grin wasn’t the right heavy-eyed, sensual temptress expression that I had wanted to assume for the occassion, but I was having too much fun to pretend to act serious.

I peeled his t-shirt off inch by inch, taking the opportunity to explore his torso with my fingertips. Feeling the grain of his hair, those lean, cut muscles. Every detail fabulously lickable.