Page 26 of Something Like Sugar (Pine Forest Something #2)

Thick and tight. Massive like the rest of him.

His flesh slaps across my face, as I tongue parts I didn’t know existed, his body tensing in pleasure when I do, strong hands holding me at the back of my head.

And he’s into this. He’s so into it that I’m into it.

We’re kinky and stupid and feral, and melding into one.

“Stick your tongue out while I fuck your face like this. Yeah, that’s right. Like that.” He groans in pleasure as I pant for breath with my tongue out like a dog.

Somehow, this makes me feel electric.

“That’s right, baby. Keep that tongue out and mouth open.” His balls dangle into my mouth. “Oh, fuck yeah. Lick them like you want me to lick your pussy.”

I nod, unsure if he can even see me beneath his eightinch third leg, and his balls tighten on my tongue. Is this what it feels like just before he comes?

He continues with a steady stroking of his shaft while I suck beneath it, licking and swirling deeper and longer when I feel him tense and hear his breath hitch.

Finding what he likes is surprisingly thrilling; getting him to come becomes my unofficial mission.

“Fuck, baby, your tongue feels so good between my legs.”

I luminate with his praises, the contrast to his rough, bruising words a new side of intimacy I didn’t know I needed. This push and pull. And I want the absolute most of it. That same praise kink I’ve seen and read about, but never come close to experiencing for myself, it’s right here and now.

“Come on my face!” I blurt, surprising both of us.

His commanding tone slips, and my hackles rise. “Are you sure?” My mind swirls with doubt about my preferences and kinks.

I’m the weird one.

I want the weird sex things, don’t I?

Shame consumes me.

Being good is righteous. Perfection keeps us safe.

“Hey, it’s okay.” He brushes sweaty and slick strands of hair away from my cheeks as I stare up at him, my unconcealable innocence joining the party as I kneel awkwardly.

I’m still half turned on, but I’m not sure I should be.

Dustin brushes my hair from my face. “Don’t be embarrassed about what you want.

I only asked because I don’t need that kind of thing from you unless you want it.

You don’t have to do that for me. I know you think I have a type, but Shay, you’re my type.

No matter what. And if you think you like that kind of thing and really do want to try it, then don’t be ashamed of that either.

But don’t do anything just to please me. All I want is what you desire. ”

Are you allowed to swoon and cry during oral?

“Tell me.” He wipes a single beading tear from my reddened face and meets my gaze head on, forcing me to spill my thoughts free like he’s done for decades.

My watcher.

“When I was younger…” I pause, taking Dustin’s offered hand and sitting on the bed beside him, legs dangling next to his—and it feels safe like this.

Safe to tell him this thing I hold inside of me.

“At the funeral for Mom…back when we were kids, there was this friend I had, her father was a donor to the aquarium.” My eyes shift to Dustin, making sure I’m not overtalking or this isn’t weird, but it isn’t.

I can tell because his focus never leaves me, even though this has got to be the strangest string of events in his life.

“I was gargling your ball sack two seconds ago and now we’re doing therapy or whatever this is. ”

His eyes crinkle. “Did you mean to say that?”

“This time? Yeah.”

He kisses me on the cheek. “I’ll let you gargle them again if it makes you feel better.” We both laugh, and I find my body zinging back to life again, humming for his nearness. His touch.

Acceptance in Dustin.

But only if he knows the whole me. Maybe Lemon’s right. Maybe it’s time I didn’t keep it all in.

I’m not alone.

I don’t have to be, at least.

“Lucy lost her mother a few years before me. We bonded over this shared loss, I suppose, and even though she was across the river, Dad drove me to play with her from time to time that summer.”

“I remember that.” Dustin arches his brow in thought. “Devyn went to pageant boot camp or some shit that month and missed the funeral. I was so fuckin’ pissed at her for leaving you alone like that. It’s why I—” He stops, eyes flashing with remorse before shifting to the ground. “Sorry, go on.”

I study him. Calm as a cucumber on the outside but clenching onto the mattress, white knuckled.

“It’s why you asked me to that dance at her grave?” I let my question float there between us.

Until I pop it back down.

“Yes, it was that month,” I say. “Lucy, was different than anyone I’d ever met. She was poised, I guess. I was a dancer, but she was a ballerina. ”

“You are a ballerina. Fuck, Shay, I might be your biggest fan, and you have no idea the extent I mean that, thank fuck, but I’ve seen it.

The way your body becomes part of the music.

Part of the whole world. For two or three minutes at a time, when you allow yourself to be free, it takes over space and time. It’s magical.”

Dustin’s eyes swirl when he describes what he sees when I’m dancing, and chills spread, my father’s voice falling softly over me.

“But boy, when she was at the aquarium in her element…I’d stop and stare all day long.”

“You really do love me.”

“A little.”

I nudge him and he makes a show of falling off the bed, but quickly returns, crawling to the other side to rest against the headboard.

He opens his legs for me, sexiest thing in my entire life, and beckons me to come lay between them, back flush to his against his beating chest, held in place by arms that feel natural wrapped around me.

“Tell me more,” he whispers into my hair, kissing the top of my head. “Do you stay in touch with her now?”

“She died, too.” I sniffle back my sadness. I’ve cried over my losses enough for one lifetime.

“I’m sorry, Shay. I didn’t know.”

“It’s okay. You wouldn’t have known with her age… it was a fire.”

He wraps his arms tighter around my body, as if he can push the leaking bits of me back in, but the only way to grieve is to remember.

This much, I already know, so I push back my tears, and I force myself to remember.

“Lucy did everything perfectly. Not Devyn kind of perfect, wanting to impress people for attention—you know what I mean.” I crane my neck to make sure he isn’t offended by my clip at his sister, but he rolls his eyes in agreement, and I snort.

We love Devyn, but she’s a lot.

“Lucy was different from most kids I knew. She said please and thank you, got straight A’s, was hand-picked for solos, her lines and angles perfectly constructed for elegance…and do you know why she was like that? Why she toed the line in every area of her life?”

Dustin considers this, before surprising me.

“Maybe she felt like if she didn’t mess up, life would be easier for her dad? Without her mom around?”

“Wow. Yeah, that’s…” I peel away from his arms, turning to face him fully then, considering for the first time that this man I’m wildly obsessed with is oddly poetic. And perceptive. “You see a lot but say so little, don’t you?”

“I could say the same about you.” He smirks. “Hoodie girl.”

I grin, wondering how I got so lucky with this man. The thought flits through that maybe I’m not lucky yet, this being new. Me being weird. Him being…him, but if he loves me in my hoodie the same as he loves me in my ballet slippers, then isn’t that all that matters?

Maybe Dad’s right. Love makes you see things about a person in a way you wouldn’t see them in anyone else but that one other soul swirling through the wind in just the right pattern to tangle with yours.

To dance.

“I was the best dancer I could be after meeting Lucy. I studied harder, practiced for hours a day. And most importantly, my one personal mantra I tried desperately to never upend: I didn’t break rules.”

“What happened when you did?”

“I’d beat myself up. Worry people would die because I got a B.

After that pizza debacle with your mom, I went home and practiced my aerials until my wrists were bruised.

” I sneak a peek at his expression, an angered frown, and I flush.

My eyes whip away from his, mortified. “That sort of thing. So, sex?” I blow a raspberry into the air on the tail end of a self-deprecating laugh, and Dustin narrows his eyes, looking straight through me.

“You’re telling me you aren’t a virgin because you saved yourself for me all these years, pining for the thought of my one-of-a-kind cock? A virginity only I could coax from the stone? I’m not Sexcalibar?” He shoves an invisible stake through his heart and drops to the side.

I smile, smacking his shoulder and launching onto him, until we’re tumbling in laughter and bed sheets.

He brushes my hair away from my face and plants a kiss straight to my trembling lips.

“You don’t have to be perfect, Shana, not for anyone. Besides,” he grins, “I think I like you good and bad.”

Maybe rules are meant to be broken.