Page 24 of Most Likely to Match (The Matchbooks #2)

I push away from him. “Close your eyes.”

“Chloe.” He rolls his eyes. “Come on.”

“You’re it,” I insist. “Maybe spin around a couple times, too. Make it challenging.”

He huffs. There’s a tattoo beneath his clavicle, two faces in profile, mouths open, about to kiss.

It expands with his skin, then disappears under the water.

With another sigh, he closes his eyes and turns in the water, his movements jerky then smooth, jerky then smooth, as he spins around the deep end. “Good enough?” he calls.

I’m not falling for that. I keep my mouth shut.

Finally, facing the general direction of the shallow end, his eyes squeezed closed, Dean says, “Marco.”

“Polo,” I call back.

He turns toward me immediately. A shark again, on the hunt, his smile hidden beneath the water unless he’s ready to call for me again.

He almost corners me against the stairs, but I slip past his reaching fingers.

I bump into the wall underneath the diving board, and he homes in on me when the rough cement along the edge grazes my shoulder and I hiss.

“Are you okay?”

But I still only answer to Marco.

I can see Dean roll his eyes behind his closed lids when he hears my answering silence, and so it starts again.

But after a few minutes, I let myself answer a little louder.

I don’t try to cover the sound of my movement through the water.

Eventually, I don’t move at all when he calls Marco.

I hold myself against the edge, halfway up the deep end, my fingers gripping the deck behind me.

He finds my foot first, floating out in front of me. “Marco,” he says quietly.

“Polo,” I answer.

His other hand finds my knee.

“Marco.”

His hand lands on my inner thigh .

“Polo.” I can barely breathe the word.

He keeps his eyes closed, our faces close, noses almost touching. “Marco.”

I kiss him, lips cold with the vague taste of summertime. “Is that okay?” I ask, feeling suddenly shy, even with his body between my legs, his arms gathered around me.

“As long as I won.”

I nod, and he kisses me again, our mouths open, sucking tongues and water.

He wraps my legs around his hips, pushing off the pool wall, letting the water hold us up so we can focus on what’s most important, touching each other in as many places as possible.

We float to the sound of dripping water and sharp breaths.

His hands on my bare ass, pushing me together and spreading me apart.

I remember reading in Cosmo once, how pool sex isn’t good for you, something about chlorine and UTIs, but that’s the thing about sex.

Or maybe that’s the thing about sex with Dean.

I’m willing to overlook a lot— like getting caught in the library stacks, or by a cop, or his parents — if it means he’ll put his hands on me, in me.

If it means he’ll spread me open in so many ways, pull me apart until I’m made of pieces for him to consume.

A heart and a cunt, skin and lips, blood and nerve endings, but still good enough, still valued.

Still loved.

That’s what his attention, his care have always felt like. Like being worthy of him, even if we both know I am not.

“I want to lick your pussy, baby.” His words shiver through him and me as he rubs his knuckle over my clit.

“Yeah. Please,” I say, desperate.

Dean walks us toward the edge of the shallow end again and reaches for my towel on the pool deck.

He lays it out flat, half hanging down the side of the pool.

“Up,” he says, tapping my hip with an authoritative index finger.

I lift myself onto the deck, perching my ass on the edge, and Dean adjusts me.

He pushes my legs wider, hikes the t-shirt up my tummy.

I lean back on my elbows, look up at the sky as his fingers trace the creases between my thighs and lips, his tongue and mouth following the path.

It’s never really dark in the suburbs, and I should be scared of being caught, of someone glancing out a window, of their horrified reaction or, maybe worse, of a high-res camera phone.

I should be nervous, but how can I be ashamed of this ?

Of being eaten so thoroughly by a man who cares for me?

I have to bite the back of my hand while gripping his wet hair with the other.

What is there to scold about using the privacy of your backyard for the most private, most intimate, most domestic of acts, of making each other feel good?

He pets me, two deft fingers that he uses to taste me. Like I am a treat, a flavor sampler at the ice cream parlor, an amuse-bouche that he turns into the main course as his mouth covers my clit, his tongue teasing, lips sucking.

I put his wet t-shirt in my mouth, tearing at the fabric to keep quiet, but still, I moan, and he answers me back, a satisfied grunt.

My nipples ache from the cold, my arousal.

I grip my breasts, harder than I normally would, just because it feels so good to be used like this, if only by my own hands.

My feet search for purchase, anything I can use to push back against his mouth.

I scoot back farther, my heels on the edge of the pool, my legs spread wide, my body open in an obscene way that only adds to my pleasure.

Dean levers himself half out of the pool to get closer, to lean into me when I push against him, both of us seeking pressure and pleasure.

I open my eyes to look at the sky as he fills me with tongue and fingers. Realize only now how full the moon is, how low it hangs tonight, how easily we could be seen.

“Do you like,” I gasp, “how I taste?”

He nods against me, chin on my taint, nose and mouth buried deep in my pussy. He grunts his yes, then groans because I’m coming; coming from his face, his eagerness, his need . I’m coming because anyone could see us, and I want them to. I want everyone to see how well and thoroughly fucked I am.

I moan, too loud, uncaring. Grip my breasts, push them together, hard enough to leave bruises, just for something to hold on to as he eats me through my orgasm, as he licks, hums his encouragement and his pleasure, my body shuddering and shaking until I close my legs and beg him over and over again to stop, please stop.

I’m not fully aware of him after. He swears, not angrily.

His form comes over top of me for a moment, blocking out the moon, his hair tinted silver in the dark.

His hands on the inside of my legs are warm as he pushes me back open, the sound of fabric clinging and wet.

He says, “Can I come on you?” His palm covering my pussy.

“Do it,” I groan.

On his knees, one hand pressed against my inner thigh, the other wrapped around his cock, he pumps himself, his gaze locked on the spot between my legs, spraying me with cold drops of water.

I reach between my legs, pulling myself apart with my middle and index fingers.

My body aches for him. He gasps, his furious rhythm stutters, and he groans, long and low, as his come, hot against my frigid skin, covers me.

The first spurt covers my pubic hair, then my plump lips.

His warm come paints my hole, my taint, my ass, and the shock of him there, even if it’s only his ejaculate, makes me so hot, so wet, so horny for him again.

I use his come to rub my clit once more.

A few short strokes, and I’m gasping and coming and saying his name.

Dean watches me, his eyes bright in the dark night.

When I’m done, he rubs his thumb through his come, collecting it from my hair and between my legs.

He licks the side of his thumb, like he’s licking melted ice cream off a cone, and when I reach for him, he collapses into the cradle of my legs, his penis soft but warm on my skin, his lips tasting like the most delicious combination of the two of us.

When our legs work, we gather my sopping-wet towel, and he drapes his dry one over my shoulders.

We slip into the basement, the lights off, and creep up the stairs to the second floor as if someone else is here to catch us.

He runs the shower, holding his hand under the water until it’s warm enough, then draws me in.

He helps me with his t-shirt and I pull his boxers off, leaving them in a pile in the corner of the shower to deal with later.

We take turns under the hot water, lathering soap on our hands.

He is gentle with my breasts, the nipples still pebbled, and between my legs, even though I wouldn’t care at all if I was sorer there.

He kisses the abrasion on my shoulder where I collided with the pool wall, and I run my fingers along his jaw, my skin tender against his stubble, trace the muscle and tendons beneath to the spot on his collar where he got too much sun today.

I press against each tattoo I can find, like each is a button waiting to be unlocked, taking extra care with each letter on his fingers, because those are the loveliest to me.

We get into bed, him naked, me wrapped in his bathrobe, finding each other’s legs under the sheets.

We talk about domestic things, couple things, like how I am meeting my mom’s new boyfriend tomorrow and how he plans to do yard work and pool maintenance in the afternoon.

My bones are heavy. Not in a tired way, but in a satisfied way.

Muscles spent and my blood pumping the good kind of hormones through my body so that here, in the dark and quiet, it’s easier to ask him, “You said you needed time. Is this enough?”

It’s unfair, I know, to ask him to put a timeline on his healing, but he doesn’t call me on it.

“I don’t know?” he says after a while.

We face each other in the dark, but I can see nothing of his expression.

“The thing is, Chloe.” He finds my cheek in the dark, walks his fingers to my temple, follows my hair around the shell of my ear. “I could let you destroy me,” he says. “If I’m not careful.”

He’s not embarrassed or scared or even brave. He says it like an obvious truth. A fact, as scientific as it is profound.

I turn my head, hold his wrist to my lips, and say the only thing I can say, even though, at this point, they’re still only words to him. “I won’t.”