Page 29 of Something Like Sugar (Pine Forest Something #2)

SHANA

A cherry pops between Lemon’s teeth, juice flowing over her glossy lips as she tells us about this employee of her father’s whom she detests and is not at all concerned with.

I snicker over my root beer. Turns out, I’m not the only one with an unconventional admirer.

“And then he sat there and just… watched . Can you believe that? Sure, it was hot, but who does that?”

I choke on my drink, hardly able to catch my breath between Lemon recanting her polyamorous experience with exhibitionism, and Dustin in my plane of sight behind her, making a muscle show of his waffle cone crafting, hands down by his waist as he slides a metal rod into a mold … stuffing and flexing and twisting.

Devyn pats me on the back, shaking me out of the spell, and Jeremy motions for the server to get us some napkins while I use the sleeve of my hoodie to wipe my chin.

Per usual, our weekly pageant directors’ meeting has morphed into a vent and gossip session.

But this week, my friends are just as frustrated with intimacy as me.

Lemon is in complete denial about her feelings for a much older gentleman, a whole other story , and when Dev tells us about living with Hunter Isaac, Pine Forest’s very own thirst trap, and goes way too into detail, I actually want to know.

I’m not cringing or hiding my reactions, trying to save face over completely normal parts of adulthood.

There’s no worry or fear enveloping me as I listen to them unload.

Not anymore.

My root beer float melts as I listen to my friends, and Jeremy nudges me, offering a throat lozenge. “You got quiet again. Just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Coughing fit or, ya know. Whatever.” He nods to Dustin while Dev isn’t looking.

“I’m fine,” I assure him. “Just forgot how easy it is to choke when it goes down.”

My eyes widen then, and my friends’ do too. Even Devyn whips her head my way, a laugh curving the edge of her lips.

It’s nearly impossible not to blush when her eyes match her brother’s, and all I can picture is what I was choking on of his last night.

She’s going to flip when we tell her.

Old Shana would have hidden in her hoodie with shame, but a smile tugs at my lips when I realize, for the first time ever, it’s not if I tell her…I’m thinking about when I do.

Because the possibility of a future with Dustin isn’t just a fantasy.

I take that entire concept in and break it down. I’m whole, even as I’m still gathering the bits I might not see, parts of me that are forming day by day. Parts he brings out of me by being the safe space for my confidence to bloom.

The innuendo still hangs thick in the air, and Jeremy’s cheeks are puffed up with air to the point he may blow.

I know what they expect from me. From shy, sheltered Shana Holiday, but she’s changed for the better.

And the new Shana rolls with laughter, joined by her friends, in her favorite booth, under the watchful eyes of the man she loves.

I steal a glance at the man in question, wiping a table nearby, and just as I suspected, his eyes are already waiting for mine. He smiles.

I wink at my watcher before I twist back to my friends, Jeremy exhaling in relief.

“Not gonna lie, Shay, I was gonna be so pissy if I had to keep that laugh in until the parking lot.”

Lemon shushes him.

“I didn’t mean it like that. “Jeremy rolls his eyes. “You’re you , Shay. You’re a good girl, and that’s okay. We don’t like to make you feel uncomfortable with our wild ways.”

He’s not being rude. It’s simply the truth.

I am that girl. The weird one. The shy one. The one still struggling to find herself amid the world around her.

And these are exactly the people to share that with.

I stop Dev before she rushes to my side like always, fighting my battles just like her brother.

This is my life. My battle.

My choices.

No matter what happens to, or at, or around me. Regardless of who dies.

This is me.

I nod at Jeremy, tears filling my eyes before I swipe them away and replace them with a smile.

I’m not sad about this. Not anymore.

Jeremy smiles, too. All my friends do. And when he waves Dustin over for our check and sees the way I melt for his smell alone, he clinks his glass to mine one more time before exiting the booth with the others. “Bout time you stopped hiding what’s in your heart.”

Twist.

The lock clicks. The last thing I suffer watching Dustin handle, jealous of everything his fingers have gripped tonight that isn’t me.

And now, everything else falls away.

I take off my converse and lace up my jazz shoes right in the middle of the Sugar Stable. Can’t say I ever imagined a moment like this when I was standing in this very spot ordering swirly cones as a kid.

I can barely breathe beneath his gaze.

“Stop staring at me like a half-cooked waffle cone if you want to learn how to waltz,” rushes out of me.

“A…what?” His eyes shine brighter than before. He even stretches like I taught him, and I lick my lips like he taught me.

Both of us have been different since we started these secret rendezvous of ours.

Happier.

Hornier , if I’m being honest with myself.

Maybe it’s because I’m still a virgin, even after dozens of ‘lessons,’ or perhaps it’s because we’re still a dirty little secret few are privy to, but my cheeks heat when I register his eyes raking me up and down. Need pulses in my center.

“A waffle cone.” I step forward. “You look like you want to lay me flat and fill me up.” I bite my lip.

He stares at me, floored at the forward remark I may or may not have recited in my mind seventeen million times before this, touching myself to the brink in my bed last night. It’s all I can do to shove my legs together at how hot it makes me, playing it out in real life.

Is it too weird? The thought flits across my mind, but I grab the condiments around me before I can stop myself and pour them directly into my cleavage.

“Oops, I got dirty.”

He drags his teeth over his bottom lip and swears under his breath, setting his jaw and narrowing his gaze on my chocolate-covered breasts.

“Fuck, I love it when you talk ice cream to me.” He grins, launching between my thighs . “Pretty little cherry sundae, aren’t you?” He gropes my hips, tongue swiping over my nipple. “Fuck, baby. How’m I gonna keep from going all the way when you taste like the final course?”

My body breaks into goosebumps when he plays along with my silly fantasies. When he talks about sex in this blatant manner.

But his words concern me.

I don’t want him to keep from going all the way.

Not this time.

“I want you to fuck me,” I tell him. “I want the final course.” I wrap my hand around a can of whipped cream to my side, and I squirt it into his mouth before he can say no.

Dropping the can to the floor, I go on relevé and slam my tongue between his lips, taking what I just gave right back. “Do you want it, Dustin?”

“Yes,” he whispers, eyes swirling with questions.

I answer every one of them with a single nod.

I’m ready.

He stills, both of us breathing and waiting, and the whole world seems quieter than normal while we share our eminent exchange. Will it be like always?

Or is he a new Dustin, too, like I’m a new me?

Is it only me that hears my heartbeat?

I can’t stand it.

“For fucks-sake, you creeper, stop watching me and—ahhh!”

“C’mere.” He smirks. “Turn over.” He motions to the counter.

I stare in confusion. “But I thought—”

“Calm down, waffle cone. You’re too sweet to tear right into.” He kisses me, cream and syrup twisting around our tongues. “Need to enjoy you slowly. Savor the taste.”

He teases my nipples between his fingers and teeth, tugging until I’m hissing at the pain.

“Need to warm you up first.” He flips me over, and I’m turned on beyond my wildest fantasies.

He hoists me until I’m on all fours, my most intimate parts close and personal with his face.

Hot breath coats me in arousal when he grumbles against my pussy.

Then lower.

“Gonna take this tight little ass one day, too. You’re gonna beg me for it, aren’t you sweet thing? Dance for me until I fuck this tiny hole?”

“Oh!” I cry, my hips wiggling at the feel of him there, the deranged promises of his cock where his tongue now flickers drawing my hips harder against his mouth, my clit grinding over his lip ring and voice singing to the heavens as my pleasure rolls up and down my body.

Dustin’s wide hands grab me, angling my hips just how he wants before he shoves two fingers in to accompany his tongue’s wild lashes.

He sets me over the edge again and again, until my thighs are clenched so tightly around his head and hands, I fear I’ll bind him to my bottom half in a smeared mix of cream and fudge, and my own desire.

He flips me over, hooking his arms beneath my knees and yanking me across the counter so my center is in line with his cock.

And then he frees it.

I know how large it is…I’ve seen it, sucked it…but nothing could prepare me for how it feels pushing into my center, slick with his spit and aching with my same need.

He fits it against my hymen, and it’s already stretching me far beyond what his three fingers ever have, but my body pulses, my clit practically banging down the door to be let in.

He lowers his lips to mine and whispers, “ Relax,” and my legs fall open around him.

My head hangs back as he trails kisses over my skin and his bottom half presses in, tearing through my folds and pushing slowly into me, so deep I can feel him in my stomach, I’m sure of it.

“Ohhh!” I moan, stinging at first, but settling into the zing of pleasure as he works himself in and out, the head of his cock stretching me wide and hitting a spot inside me that feels far too perfect for words.

I want to keep him there, in that exact rhythm, even as the soreness increases with each reinsertion of his engorged shaft through my torn and stinging muscle.

I wrap my legs around him and force him even deeper to the place that has me reeling, pulsing, pumping my own body up and down in tandem with his, the slickness pooling from inside me. “Oh my God! I’m going to! I need! Dustin, please!”

He shushes me with his lips. “Look at you take me, baby. See how your perfect little pussy stretches open and squeezes me?” He thrusts harder, right into that same damn spot that makes me scream. “Such a good little virgin taking me whole.”

“Oh! Oh!” I scream, the buildup almost too intense. The words he speaks like darts, assaulting my folds along with his thickness.

“Yeah, you like it, don’t you baby? Gonna let me do whatever I want with this sweet little cunt. It’s mine, isn’t it, sugar?

My body electrifies when he growls against my ear, and I whimper, I love it and, yes, and yours , shaking around him in pleasured waves.

He pumps in and out and in and out, and it’s too much. Holy shit. It’s so full.

“ I knew it the first time I saw you in that tankini. I wanted to feel this tight little cunt around my dick before I knew what it even was. So fucking warm.” He groans, his other hand wrapping around my neck, and hell if this isn’t wrong and sexy all at once.

“So damn sexy, baby. Always been mine, haven’t you? ”

“Please!” I beg him, unsure of what it is I’m even asking. But no, I do know. “Make me come, Dustin! Oh!”

He slams into me, rubbing circles over my clit until the pressure builds so high within me that I burst, colorful language and sinful promises flowing from my mouth as fervently as the gushing stream joining the space between my legs and his glistening cock, wet from me .

From the soft ripples of ecstasy pouring out of my soul.

Dustin kisses me then, swiping sweaty strands of hair from my forehead and wrapping them into the mass of darkness fanned around my naked body, his eyes memorizing every dimple and freckle of my skin if I didn’t know any better.

“You’re such a creeper. Always watching.” I poke him in the cheek until a smile forms.

“You’re one to talk. That waffle cone speech was next-level porno material.”

“You think?” I laugh.

“You’re a talented choreographer, but I think you might have a knack for adults-only screenplays with that dialogue.”

“You think that’s how pornos happen? People write their masturbation fantasies? Not that I masturbate to you waffle-coning me or anything, but—”

Ohmygosh, I did not just say that .

My hand slams against my own mouth before I vomit more of my skeletons, but Dustin’s there immediately, pulling it down and snorting back a laugh. His eyes crinkle, a grin across his face as he shakes his head in wonderment. “You are funny, Shana Holiday.”

“You always remind me of that, but you know what’s truly funny about this?” I pop a literal cherry in my mouth and press back a smile.

“What?” He smiles.

“ I’m a next-level, screenwriting porn-star, and you still don’t know how to waltz.”

Dustin sighs dramatically, pulling me against his chest, but his smile stays put, dancing with mine where it was always meant to be.