The Story Guy (Novella) (12 page)

“To my ad.”

“To your ad, Estragon.”

“I always related more to Vladimir.”

He stops me as I am getting out my keys and turns me toward him. His eyes are twinkly, and I have never seen his eyes twinkly. It’s a good look for him, twinkly.
“Thanks for waiting, Carrie.”

Something is tight right under my throat, and it’s making it hard to swallow and my vision is kind of blurry. “Yeah, well. I’m still waiting. Get out of my dreams, baby, and get into my car.”

He folds himself into my sensible compact, and we randomly laugh the entire mile back to my building. I am starting to feel all nervous, which is ridiculous for the role of the seducer, but he smells really good and is so cute in his long dress coat and tie and silvery wire-rim glasses. I’m not sure what I am going to do with him first.

When I unlock the door and step inside, it turns out I didn’t have to worry about a thing, because Brian—well, he’s got this one. His hand is at the small of my back, pulling my blouse out from my skirt almost before my coat is off. As soon as I feel his skin against mine, his deliberate touch gliding up my back, I am gone. Just
gone
.

I can hardly catch my breath as he teases the rest of the hem up and away. He unties the silky bow at the neck with a sharp pull, and even as it unknots with a soft
snick
he has his other hand under the shirt, releasing the hooks of my bra. My skin is so tight, and he is looking right into my eyes, his expression nearly grim, except his eyes are so hot and his throat is working over hard swallows.

He leans in, so close, and breathes in, slowly, at my neck. “Brian,” I think, but I’m really saying his name out loud, my whisper mixing up with the sounds of his hands over my rustling blouse.

“Yeah,” he whispers back, but his voice trails off, his focus entirely on my body. When he takes my blouse and bra together up over my head, he moans, softly. And then my hands are caught in the tight wrist cuffs neither of us thought to unfasten, but instead of starting over, he just leans down, my arms trapped over my head in my shirt, and takes one of my nipples into his mouth.

Oh. Oh, holy shit
. When he pulls gently with his teeth, sucking hard at the same time,
just like that
, a big, bounding pulse starts up in my low, low back. Lower. That hard beat in my clit is out of time with my heart, which isn’t synced up with the pulse driving through my ears, and I’m breathing so hard I’m sucking in the thin white silk of the blouse in my mouth where it’s tented over my head.

His mouth is hot and wet and just as he devours a nipple, the soft skin under one
breast, he licks up to my neck and then travels to the other breast, the other achingly pointed nipple. Frustrated, I clumsily unbutton my cuffs and pull off the shirt, and without hesitation, he takes my mouth again. His tongue is deep, teasing over the ticklish palate behind my teeth, running over the inner part of my lower lip. I’m breathless, and I’m topless, and he still has his coat on.

“Hey,” I choke out, because his hands are grabbing on to my ass, his fingertips meeting in the middle sinking deep and rubbing deeper, even through the layers of wool and satin. It’s completely dirty, just the filthiest ass grab I’ve ever experienced, and it’s gorgeous. It’s even better because it’s combined with a long, wet kiss to my inner elbow and the feeling of his searing-hot erection pushing into my hip in slow circles.

I try again, through the pink haze. “Brian?”

“Yeah,” he whispers against my skin.

“Take your clothes off.”

“Okay,” he says, and then steps back, only a little, leaving barely any space between us. He pins me in his stare, looking at my swollen breasts all scraped with little red trails of beard burn, my body all the way down to my feet. He smiles, just a little, and shrugs off his coat, then his jacket. I can smell his cotton-in-the-sun smell as those heavy articles pool on the floor, and then he is tugging off his tie, and my mouth is dry.

The fingers on his buttons are fast, and when he pulls off his shirt, his body is so lean and hard that there are muscles that bunch over his ribs. He starts unbuckling his belt and I mime him, undoing the thin ribbon belt threaded on my skirt, shimmying out of the skirt and my woolly tights in one go. He stops, taking in me in my satiny panties, seeing, I’m sure, how they’ve gotten wet and clinging.

I can see every ridge of his cock pushing against his dark briefs. He takes a deep breath. “Carrie, I don’t know.” His voice is low. All gravel. “I’m so worked up. It’s been so long. I want to make this good for us.” When he says this, he pushes a hand down, right over his hard-on, and presses in, his eyes fluttering closed. Facing each other, one of my shoulders just brushing his vulnerable skin where it dips under his bicep, I compulsively mirror him. I brush my fingers over my heavy-feeling clit and I am surprised by an involuntary push of my hips into my hands.

Dropping to my knees feels exactly right, and when I kneel in front of him, I
spread my thighs a little and rub my cheek into the soft knit covering his hardness and I can’t stop myself from pinching at my own nipples, just a little.

It’s so easy to be consumed by this shamelessness with him. The way he kisses, let alone the way he touches me, is so sharply
present
that it is impossible to think about anything other than the one single second in front of me.

With Brian, maybe all that we have is this single second in front of us.

When I pull the wide elastic of his briefs over the shining head, he widens his stance and sifts his fingers through my hair. I want it in my mouth, and then it is, tender and hard at once, already streaming bitter wet salt. He smells like that clean sun smell, even here. His breathless groan makes me squeeze my thighs together, hard, and I pull his underwear completely down so I can slick my hands from my sucking mouth to the base.

I meet his eyes, and I can’t help but smile around him because he looks so adorably wasted. When he smiles back, I pop off with a kiss and say, “I want you in my mouth until you come,” and I do. That’s what I want.

His unsteady breath is so satisfying and before he can speak, I realize I also want to completely give myself over to this, to let him float into a space of utter decadence, so I stand up and I push him onto the sofa, following him down long enough to let him taste himself in my soft mouth, and our kiss is wet and sloppy and moaning.

When I drop to my knees again, his burning eyes on me, I push his legs apart at the thighs. His gaze is easy to find, easy to hold because it is so beautiful and melting, and I make sure to hold it while I lick both my palms, slowly.

“
Jesus
, Carrie.” And his head falls back when my slippery hands twist over his whole length. I’m going to swallow him. I’m going to pull him inside of me. I’m going to
send
him.

My entire body seems like it’s simmering at the same syrupy consistency. Licking him, sucking at the fine texture of his skin at the head of his penis, following the full vessels underneath with my tongue—it’s all as easy as breathing.

The harder he pants, the more searching and less careful his hands become over my face and lips and neck, the more my hips pump and my body undulates, the more of his length I can swallow and taste.

When he’s nearly bucking, I’m arrested by a sharp throb signaling how close I am
myself. I look up again, and he’s watching me, so I steady our eye contact as I release him from my mouth and hold him in my hand. Then I tease into my ruined panties and penetrate myself, my breath hitching at my two fingers, hitching again when I watch how dark his eyes get.

When my hand is slick, I bring my shiny fingers to his tight balls and slide over them. His mouth is open, his tongue reaching, and he brings my fingers to his mouth, closing his eyes as he sucks in, his tongue swirling over and through them.

And that’s what it takes. I pull my hand away so it can return to my sex, and I jerk his cock to my mouth, licking from where I painted him right to the tip. Pumping myself, sucking him deep, our orgasms are wet and sloppy, my cum spilling through my fingers, his cum spilling from my mouth.

We both rest for a minute, and I am so happy, leaning orgasm-drunk against his warm thigh, patting my sensitive sex gently. We’ve made just a complete mess of ourselves, and I love that.

I love that I could give him these long moments of total unraveling. I love that this part of it is so easy for us. I love that I was brave enough to stop being so comfortable and I love that he was brave enough to accept comfort.

“Your apartment is really nice.” His voice is a little slurred, and I love that, too.

I laugh, and now I can’t stop laughing because Brian Newburgh is sprawled, naked, open-thighed, on my sofa. And he still has his socks on. I snap the elastic in them. He closes his eyes and rests his head on the back of the sofa and laughs in a sleepy way.

I haul myself up, hands on his fairly epic bike-riding thighs, and lean over him to kiss. He smiles against my lips, and because it’s Brian and he
kisses
, he reaches up to frame my face and so I wrap my arms around his neck and sink in.

I think this is the laziest kiss we’ve ever shared. I can imagine falling asleep kissing him like this, our heads drifting deeper into the pillow until the kiss has nothing left but our mingled breath.

But no one is falling asleep right now. Not when Brian moves a hand from my face to play with a breast, skimming into my armpit and over the sensitive skin underneath my breast, his touch so light that I’m already squirming for it to be firmer, to move to my sparking nipple.

I push into his touch, and he answers right away, rolling my nipple, then reaching up to pull his thumb over my bottom lip. He pushes his thumb into my mouth, then slowly pulls it out against my suction, using the wetness I’ve left to touch my nipple again. All the while watching me, bumping his hips slowly up into mine.

“You’re so sexy,” he says. And he says that so clear-eyed, so thankful, that it’s true. I
am
sexy. Nothing we do together could be wrong. So I stand up and take his hand. And his grin breaks ten years off his face.

“Come to bed,” I say. And he follows me behind the screen, toeing off his socks and smoothing his hands over my bottom under my panties. It’s very gratifying to feel something else rallying against my lower back. He rolls me onto my mattress, bracing himself on his forearms above me. He drops his head into my neck and kind of nuzzles his long, lean body against mine.

“You have no idea, Carrie the Lieberrian, how good you feel.” He brushes his face over the curls around my ears. “That first Wednesday, in the park, I saw you before I noticed you were holding the umbrella, and I had one thought, just one.”

My heart stutters. “What was that?”

“Please.”

Genuinely surprised, I kind of choke. “You must really have a librarian fetish if a short girl in glasses and a tweed skirt had you begging to the hookup gods.”

“I directed that request toward any possible divine entity that might have been listening at the time.” I laugh, but his face gets serious.

“No, you don’t understand,” he whispers against my ear. “You were the first thing I had asked for, just for me, in a long, long time.”

I think of all the things he must have asked for, the kinds of things he had needed to ask for, just to keep himself and Stacy going for so long.

I think that I am sort of defibrillating, or something, because what’s inside feels too big and too warm. I hitch my legs around his hips, just to pull him closer, to get him to hold me in against the overflowing big feelings. “Brian,” I sigh.

“Carrie.” He’s taking tastes of my mouth again and sliding gently over the wet satin barely covering my sex below. I can feel his shoulders trembling and as I get restless from the way he’s touching and kissing me, I get this sense that he’s holding back
somehow.

“You have me,” I say, “asked and answered. Take what you want.” I run my fingers through his hair as his kisses get deeper.

“Want
you
,” he breathes, pushing the base of his penis in short thrusts against my clit. All the tight and breathless feelings in my chest are dropping lower now. He leans up, breaking our kiss, and looks me over. “Do you still need these?” He taps the arm of my glasses, which are crooked and smudged.

“Yeah, I do. It’s the only way I can see you.”

He smiles and slips off his own smudged and crooked glasses, dropping them on my nightstand. “I can still see you. I can’t
unsee
you.” While I digest that, he fills his hands with my breasts, and I can’t help arching into his soft squeezing. The way his tongue moves against my nipple is so pretty, but his closed eyes and knitted brow make his tonguing somehow filthy—beautifully filthy.

He trades hands for tongue so my other breast isn’t lonely, and then he drags his open mouth down, down, over the little hill of my belly where he kisses my navel, and then he’s slowly easing off my panties, barely hooking the elastic in his fingers, and the scratchy friction is so nice that the lace on the waistband is catching on brand-new goose bumps.

When he has them down to my thighs, I lean up and help him. As soon as I’m naked, he’s cradling the backs of my thighs against his arms, hooking open my legs with his shoulders. He starts up little kisses by my hip, and then he stops.

“What?” I look down, bracing myself up on an elbow.

He looks up at me with fully engaged dimples and brushes his left hand over my ass and onto the side of my hip, right where it flares out, and starts tracing with a single finger and a lot of fascination while glancing up at me.

“Oh, yeah. I have a tattoo.”

“You’re killing me. That’s so hot. What does it mean?”

His finger tracing over the looping copperplate script makes me shiver. “It’s
PS3568.A854 W4837 2003
. The Library of Congress call number for Wilson Rawls’s book
Where the Red Fern Grows
.”

He leans over to kiss it and raises his eyebrows expectantly. I smooth my hand
over his short hair. “The first book I ever read that made me cry. I was seven and hadn’t realized books could do that. Just
finish
you like that. I was sitting in a beanbag chair in the school library when the book ended, weeping, looking at all the books on the shelves all around me, and I decided then and there that I never wanted to be anywhere else.”