Vanilla

  “It’s from a book. Of Mice and Men. He always used to spin these stories for me, see, like about how we were going to do all these things and go to all these places. Usually when we were in bed. Once he told me...” I hesitated, not wanting to remember, not wanting to say it out loud, because at the time it had been wonderful, and now it only caused me pain. But Niall had said he wanted to know the things I didn’t like, so he didn’t do them.

  “Tell me.”

  I took a breath. “He told me that if he won the lottery, he was going to build me a castle.”

  “Huh.” Niall didn’t say anything after that.

  “Anyway, in Of Mice and Men, Lenny always asks George to tell him about—”

  “The rabbits,” Niall interrupted. “I get it. Like in the old Bugs Bunny cartoon. ‘I’ll love him and squeeze him and call him George.’”

  “Yes.” I touched the rabbit on my wrist. “So I called him George. It was a thing my friend Alicia and I did. Give the boys we loved nicknames.”

  Niall made a soft noise. “Do I have one?”

  “No. You’re just you.”

  “Huh,” he said again.

  I kissed him, pushing away all thoughts of anyone else. “I think a trip sounds like an amazing idea. Where do you want to go?”

  He looked far away for a moment before he came back to me. “How about I surprise you?”

  I thought on that. I wasn’t a fan of surprises, in general. Not parties, not quizzes. Once in the eighth grade Evan had jumped out of the closet to “surprise” me, and he’d ended up with a broken nose. But I did like being known, and the best way to find out if someone really knew you was to see what they chose for you. So far, Niall had done an excellent job picking out things I’d like.

  “Okay,” I said. “Surprise me.”

  He slept with me that night, in my bed, spooned up behind me with his breath on the back of my neck. When I wriggled against him, he got hard, and we giggled about it, though the giggles turned to sighs when his hand went to my belly to press me back against him.

  I had no trouble falling asleep.

  His murmured voice woke me, I wasn’t sure at what time, only that I’d been dreaming. “What did he do to you that hurt you so bad? That other guy?”

  “I loved him too much,” I said, still half-asleep. “And he didn’t love me enough.”

  33

  Niall asked me to meet him at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. The aquarium was much the same as I remembered it, minus the sea lions that used to sun themselves on the rocks outside.

  “Too many people threw coins and stuff into the enclosure.” Niall leaned on the railing. “They’d eat stuff and get sick and die.”

  I frowned. “That’s terrible.”

  “Yeah, people suck.” He turned away from the empty concrete display and let the railing press against his back, his elbows propped on it. “I thought we’d go tour the submarine next. If you want.”

  “That sounds fun.” I kissed him. We did that for a while. “This is fun, too.”

  He brushed my hair, tossed by the breeze off the water, out of my eyes. It had become one of his favorite gestures, and surprisingly, it hadn’t started working on my nerves. “You make everything fun.”

  “I do?” I blushed a little, pleased.

  “Yeah. I mean, whatever I’m up for, you’re like, ‘yeah. Let’s do this.’” He paused. “I don’t know, I’m surprised.”

  “Why?” Walking, I took his hand and swung it gently between us. He glanced at me with a raised brow. “Oh. That.” With a sigh, I turned to face him and took both his hands in mine. “Niall. I don’t have to be in charge all the time. I like being taken care of, actually. If I didn’t want to do something you’d planned, I’d tell you. But so far, I like it all.”

  “Good.” He grinned. “Let’s do the Ripley’s Museum, too.”

  My answer had seemed to set him at ease, but the conversation stayed with me all day. It was true that everything he’d laid out for us was fun and all stuff I’d have wanted to do anyway, even if I hadn’t known about it before. And I did like that he’d taken care of all the details to make the whole day magic, so that I didn’t really have to think or do anything but enjoy it all.

  “It’s because you picked them all for me,” I said abruptly while we waited for our drinks to come at dinner. He’d picked the restaurant because it had vegetarian options in case I didn’t want to eat shellfish. Which I did not, but hadn’t told him. I’d said I didn’t eat pig, but had never mentioned crustaceans. He’d been doing a little homework, and it squeezed my heart until I thought it was going to pop.

  “Hmm?” He looked up from the basket of bread sticks in the center of the table.

  “The day. The sightseeing, the restaurant.” I drew in a light breath. “It’s not that I like you taking over and choosing for me. I mean, I would actually hate that.”

  Niall broke the bread stick in half and offered one side to me. “I don’t get it.”

  “I had a lover once—hear me out,” I said at the way his expression twisted. “I had a lover who really just liked to boss me around. He’d buy me clothes and tell me to wear them, and it was supposed to be sexy except he’d get the sizes wrong or choose a color I hated, and he’d get really pissed off if I didn’t want to do it. He always picked where we went out to eat.”

  “I picked out where we went to eat today.”

  “Yes, but...everything you planned for today, everything you ever plan for us, ever, you do because you think I’m going to really like it. Not because it’s only what you want or like. You try to pick things because you think I’m going to like them, and that makes me...” I shook my head and leaned forward a little. “It makes me insane, Niall. In a good way. A really good way.”

  He smiled then, slowly. His eyes blazed. His foot nudged mine.

  “Good,” he said, and then the drinks came.

  He took me dancing, too. The Power Plant Live had enough bars and clubs to keep anyone occupied for an evening. We hadn’t been dancing since the night in the bar after William’s Bar Mitzvah, the first time he’d ever pulled me close. He’d made me his that night, not that either one of us had known it at the time. I knew it now, though, and I wanted him to know it, too.

  I had never been the first to say it. Love. No matter how I’d ever felt about anyone, I’d never been the first to admit it, until tonight.

  “I love you,” I said into his ear as we danced. “And I want you. Now.”

  The music was so loud it was easy to pretend he hadn’t heard me, so I didn’t have to be embarrassed when he didn’t say it back. And he didn’t, not with words, and maybe I imagined the look in his eyes right before he kissed me so hard I couldn’t breathe. It didn’t matter. I felt it, and I said it, and I did not regret it.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Niall said.

  In the hotel elevator, we stood apart from one another, like that would keep anyone from knowing that the second our room door closed behind us, we were going to fall upon each other like wolves on a wounded deer. I could see him in the mirror, just as I could see myself, and there was no hiding the way we strained toward each other without moving an inch. Hell, I’m sure the other people with us could smell it on us. Desire. Yearning.

  He didn’t touch me even when the elevator opened and we walked down the long, long hall as leisurely as if we were strolling along the beach. Like we didn’t want to run. We chatted about dinner and the club, about stupid things I wouldn’t remember twenty minutes later. Our voices rose and fell, and the words came out, but the steady beat, beat, beat of “fuck me, fuck me, fuck me” was all I could really hear.

  He opened the door with his key and let me go through first. I was shaking by the time I got to the bed. My back still to him. At the click of the door, the slide of the lock, I had to close my eyes and concentrate on breathing so I wouldn’t feel faint. The wine from dinner, the cocktails after, I could blame those for the w
ay the world tipped, but the truth was it had nothing to do with alcohol. I’d danced all that away.

  I was drunk on Niall and anticipation, and all I could do was shiver while I waited for him to touch me.

  Oh, finally, to touch me.

  Of course he’d been touching me all night. A hand on the small of my back as we crossed the street. Fingers linking across the table. His front against my back when we danced.

  With my eyes closed, every sound magnified. The slap of his key on the dresser. The shuffle of his shoes on the carpet.

  And then, at last, Niall put his hands on me. He moved up behind me, gripping my hips to pull my ass against his crotch. His mouth found the back of my neck. His teeth, the slope of my shoulder. He bit as he pulled me back against him, and I arched and gasped. My nipples got immediately hard. One of his hands slid across my belly and between my legs, then down to curl his fingers in the hem of my dress.

  “Yes,” I said as he inched it upward.

  Niall’s breath heated my ear as he slipped his fingers inside my panties. He dipped low, sliding inside me for a second before moving up again to find my clit. He pinched it gently between his thumb and forefinger. My head fell back against his shoulder. My hand went to the back of his head.

  “I’m going to fuck you,” he said into my ear, “until you can’t stand.”

  I was already having trouble. Weak knees. His fingers jerked my clit in a steady, relentless pattern, and when he bit down on my bare shoulder again, I cried out.

  I turned. We found each other’s mouths. Kissing, hungry, demanding. Teeth clashing. His hand dug into my hair at the base of my skull, his fingers working deep into the updo. He pulled, hard enough to tip my head back so he could get to my throat with his lips and teeth.

  “I want you,” I told him. “I want you, I want you, I want you.”

  He paused then, for a second or so, looking into my eyes. Slowly, deliberately, he returned his hand between my legs. Slid his fingers inside me, then out, each stroke hitting me just right.

  My fingers dug hard into his shoulders. I widened my stance a little. Letting him in. I wasn’t going to come this way—the position slightly too awkward. But oh, it was going to be close.

  He kissed me again as he eased his hand out of my panties. Pushing me gently, Niall backed me toward the bed. With my fists curled in the front of his shirt, I turned us both as we got there. I meant to push him onto it, to climb on top of him and devour him with more hungry kisses, but he stopped me.

  We didn’t wrestle. Nothing that obvious. But he did give his head one small shake as he urged me onto my back. I ended up propped on my elbows, one knee bent so that my dress showed off my bare thighs. Niall at the foot of the bed, one hand on my calf. His eyes gleamed as I trailed a fingertip up my leg and along the lace of my panties.

  “I want to watch you make yourself come,” he said.

  It wasn’t what I was expecting. “You do?”

  He nodded. A small smile tilted the corner of his mouth and faded so fast I almost missed it. “Yeah. I do.”

  I scooted back on the bed to arrange the pillows in a pile high enough to prop me up. I let my thighs fall open, my dress still shadowing my panties. “Like this?”

  “Yes.” He’d gone solemn and grim-mouthed. “I want to see your pussy.”

  I drew in a breath. I ran my hands up the insides of my thighs, pushing my dress up and out of the way. In the summer’s last gasp of late September, the heat had been too much for stockings and garters. He didn’t seem to miss them. I watched his face, his eyes going dark. His hand went to the bulge in his jeans, rubbing. When I stroked a finger over the lace of my panties, his fingers curled.

  “Niall.”

  He looked at me.

  I slid my fingers into the front of my panties. He licked his bottom lip then caught it in his teeth. His gaze speared and held me. I couldn’t have looked away if I’d wanted to, and part of me did. Part of me wanted to close my eyes, to be made blind. To be made a little helpless.

  I lifted my ass from the bed to push my panties down my thighs. Over my knees. It’s hard to be graceful when you’re on your back, but I managed to somehow wriggle out of the lace and lie back again. Legs closed, coy though not shy. The hem of my dress had fallen down again, shielding me from his hungry gaze.

  We’d already been naked together. He’d already made me come. But this was different, the way he commanded me. I liked it the way I’d liked the restaurant he’d chosen and where he’d taken me to dance. Because he knew what I wanted without my having to tell him.

  When I again slowly tugged my dress up to expose my nakedness to him, Niall unbuckled his belt. Then his button and zipper. I focused greedily on the bulge in his briefs and oh, God, oh, fuck yes, the head of his cock peeking out. He pushed his jeans down low enough to free himself and took himself in his fist.

  “Make yourself come,” Niall ordered.

  I was happy to oblige. I was already wet and slick, my cunt tight around my first and middle fingers as I dipped them inside. I circled the tight, hard knot of my clit with slippery fingertips and let my knees fall apart to give him a clear view.

  His guttural groan was the best response. Niall stroked himself, keeping his fist curled around the shaft. His hips pumped forward.

  “I want you inside me,” I said.

  He smiled. “Not yet.”

  I laughed hoarsely, but I didn’t argue. This felt too fucking good. My back arched a little as I stroked faster. I fucked my fingers inside again for a few seconds then back to my clit. I was already shaking. Breathing hard.

  Sometimes, the best way to keep control is deciding to give it up to someone else.

  “You gonna come for me?” Niall murmured. “C’mon, girl. I want to see you.”

  I was getting closer. Words more difficult to say, catching on a moan. I said his name, I think, or maybe just groaned. The muscles in my belly and thighs were tight. I couldn’t stop my hips from rolling, or my free hand from fisting in the sheets. He wanted me to come; I wanted to make him lose his mind.

  “I’m close,” I managed to say. The first waves of orgasm were building, building. Just a little more, and I would be swept away.

  Niall muttered something I couldn’t hear. I shifted, teasing myself a little to draw out the pleasure. I wanted us to finish together.

  “So close,” I said, looking into his eyes. Wanting to urge him toward me, wanting him inside me, but giving him this, what he’d asked for. To see me. “Jerk that cock for me, baby. Make yourself come for me.”

  His stroking hand slowed then stopped. His mouth twisted. He shook his head.

  Thinking he needed a little encouragement, wanting to give him time to catch up, I slowed my fingers. “I want you to fucking make yourself come for me. C’mon, I’m so close, baby, I want you with me. Come all over me. Cover me with it.”

  “I don’t want to do that.”

  Caught up in my own pleasure, I was sure I’d misheard him. Or misunderstood. “I want you to—”

  “I said no.” Niall shook his head again and, incredibly, pulled his pants up.

  Once, when I was fifteen, I’d been riding in a car driven by one of my good friends. She hadn’t been paying attention and had rear-ended a car that had suddenly come to a stop in front of us. I hadn’t been wearing my seat belt, stupid of course, and though I’d tried to shield myself from the impact, I’d hit the dashboard with my neck and shoulder. It wasn’t the windshield, I could count myself lucky for that, but the feeling of moving and all at once hitting something hard enough to make stars dance in my vision...I’d never forgotten it.

  We’d been moving, but suddenly we had stopped.

  I sat up. “What?”

  “I don’t want to do that.” Niall said. He zipped up, buttoned up, buckled his belt. Stepped back from the bed.

  Everything inside me turned cold, and I became very small.

  I let my dress cover me. Being naked is being vulnerable, and
I was glad I’d only pulled it up, not taken it off. I tucked my knees to the side.

  Pushing his hand up my thigh, having him pull away. Telling him to keep his mouth on me and him moving to use his hand, instead. A dozen little things here or there that he’d fought me on and I’d let pass because it hadn’t mattered so much at the time. But now, this.

  And it mattered to me very, very much.

  We stared at each other, saying nothing. I couldn’t tell my own expression, though I was trying desperately for casually neutral so I could keep myself from bursting into startled, embarrassed tears. Niall looked distant before he wouldn’t look at me at all. He took the remote from the dresser and clicked on the TV then sat on the edge of the bed.

  “I guess we’re...finished?” I asked around the lump in my throat.

  “Yeah. Sure. I’m tired anyway. Drank too much, too.”

  I didn’t know what to say. How to move, where to go. If I should touch him, or even if I wanted to. I breathed in, counting slowly, and then got up and went into the bathroom. I ran the water in the sink and put my hands on it, bracing myself physically against the countertop.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe, I told myself. Breathe, Elise.

  I’d been with men I did not allow to come. Tease and denial had been part of our play, mutually agreed upon and enjoyed. I’d been with men who’d had trouble reaching orgasm—Esteban sometimes did not finish, and I’d learned early on not to take it personally but to trust him when he told me his climax was not the only end point to our play. But I’d never been with a man who flat-out refused to come, especially not when he’d been urging me on to come myself, while he jacked off.

  I’d never had a man refuse me anything, really, when it came to sex.

  Ever efficient, I’d unpacked my bag shortly after we’d checked in. I had my toiletries bag in the bathroom already, along with the pajamas I hadn’t intended to need. Splashing my face with cold water, I tried to convince myself that whatever had happened in the bedroom wasn’t personal. He was tired, a little drunk, we’d veered off course in the way you sometimes do when you’re not on the same page. It wasn’t meant to hurt me. But it sure felt like shit, no matter how I played it out, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t rinse the sour, bitter taste of dismay from my mouth. I took a shower, and couldn’t wash away the feeling of somehow being dirty, either.