Stripped by Jasinda Wilder
Page 49
“Can you put on some music?” I set my purse to one side and unbutton my shirt, toss it by my purse.
I’m wearing a button-down blouse over a tank top, and a pair of capris. Good enough for dancing. I’m excited at the idea, but nervous. Dawson pulls his phone from his pocket and fiddles with it, then plugs it into some dock built into one of the walls. Music swells through the space, and it’s such perfect music to dance to. I’ve never heard it before, but it’s all Dawson. It’s symphonic, orchestral, but with heavy gothic overtones to it, and guitars and drums layered through it, giving it a hard edge. The lyrics are pensive and dark and vaguely religious. I can’t help but move.
There’s no technique to this; it’s just pure movement. My body flows, stretches, twists, and becomes an extension of the music. I leap, and bend, jeté and roll into pirouettes, and there’s nothing but the music and my body moving. Such purity of expression forces things inside me to give way.
I’d forgotten about dancing. I’d let it go in the face of work and school. I’d lost it. Lost that part of myself, and now…Dawson has given it back to me. I dance, and I dance. Another song by the same band comes on, and I keep dancing. I feel him watching, and I don’t care.
No, that’s not true. I do care. So much. I feel his gaze, and I dance harder for it. I want him to see me as I am. He’s asked me several times to tell him one true thing, and so now I do. I tell him one true thing, not with words, but with something more tangible, something that comes from deeper within me. Words can lie. Words can deceive and delude and conceal and avoid. But the things you do, how you move, how you touch, those things cannot lie.
When the music ends, I’m left panting, heaving, sweating. Dawson is standing with his arms crossed, an expression on his face that I can’t decipher. I catch my breath and wait. He comes toward me, his eyes are hot green-gray, the color of desire. He reaches for me, smearing sweat on my arms, brushing the hair from my face, infinitely gentle, touching me with pent-up desire.
He hesitates a beat, and then kisses me.
And now I’m lost all over again. God, his kiss devours me. Sucks me under with the riptide force of his heat and power and sexuality and dominance. Even the light taste of toothpaste on his lips is sensual. I inhale the scent of shampoo in his hair and the citrus aftershave or lotion or whatever it is. His hands touch me and caress me and hold me and incite need inside me. He kisses me, kisses me, kisses me.
And I kiss him back.
I’m free. I give in completely.
Chapter 13
He’s all there is. All there will ever be. I’m falling through eternity, and his touch is the fabric of that forever. His kiss is the substance of infinity. These thoughts make no sense even to my own mind, but they remain true in some strange way.
His arms are like prison bars, but it’s a cell I have no desire of escaping. He’s all contradictions, hard yet soft, sweet and salty, perfect and flawed.
My hands are curled against his bare chest, my nails scraping his skin as our mouths merge. My ni**les are pebbled against his chest, stiff through the material of my bra and the thin cotton tank top. His shorts are a barely-there layer of slippery rayon, and I feel the stiff, thick, hot intrusion of his manhood against my belly, physical evidence of how I make him feel. That presence, that thickness against my stomach, it scares me. It’s huge and hard as rock, and…I want to see it. I want to touch it. I want to feel it…and to taste it. I feel sinful and wrong just thinking that, but so help me, it’s true. I want to taste all of him. I want to feel all of him.
I want to give him all of me.
But he needs to know he’d be the first, the only one. I try to make the words come out, but I kiss him instead.
I’m lifted, cradled in his arms, and our kiss doesn’t break as he carries me through his house. My hands clutch his shoulders and his neck, and I gasp for air into his mouth, panting, eyes closed, fighting for clarity and lucidity and unable to be anything but swept away by need.
We’re in his room. I’m on my back on his bed. I pull his lips down to my greedy mouth. Strong and insistent fingers strip away my shirt and toss it aside. My bra is black and basic, clasped in the back by three hooks and eyelets. I arch my back, and he makes short, efficient work of unlatching it, pulling it from me and setting it aside.
I cross my arms over my chest, and he lets me. He lounges on his side next to me and stares into my eyes. “Let me see you, babe. ”
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head.
He laughs, and traces an idle pattern on my belly with his forefinger, lazy, roaming circles leading downward to my khaki capris. His eyes are on me, and I force my lids open, force my gaze to his, and lie stone still as he pinches the edges of my waistband together and releases the clasp. I don’t move as he slowly unzips, baring a sliver of black lace to match my bra. I continue my still acquiescence to his stripping of me as he takes the waistband of my pants in his hands and works them down over my generous hips. I don’t help, but I don’t hinder, and soon I’m naked but for my underwear.
A familiar state of undress, but I’ve never felt more vulnerable.
His eyes burn green-brown-gray, hints of blue at the edges. Unmitigated desire and fire scorching me from his gaze. One hand on my belly, then a single finger dipping under the black elastic, beneath the Victoria’s Secret printed in pink script. I blink, twice, and swallow the pulsating knot of fear. That finger, his right index finger, slides around the circumference of the elastic, from hip to hip, and then again, gently tugging down. I do not lift my hips; I keep my eyes on him and let him strip me.
He’s already stripped me bare. Now he’s merely completing the task. He’s seen everything else, and now he’ll see me completely nude.
But he stops when the underwear are just barely covering the top of my cleft. “You take them off. If you want this, take them off. ”
This is my last chance; I see that. If I deny this now, he’ll know I’m too afraid.
Am I?
I’m not nauseous, not hyperventilating, not doing any of the things that usually accompany my strongest emotions. I’m terrified, because I feel the three words of truth bubbling on my lips.
Well, there are two truths vying for utterance, and both come in three-word sentences.
I go for the easier one. “I’m a virgin. ”
He doesn’t respond at all. He just stares at me for a long, silent moment. Neither of us even breathes.
Then he quirks one eyebrow. “That explains a lot. ” He licks his lips, and in that tiny motion, his nerves are revealed. “How, though? I mean, how can you be a virgin and a stripper? That doesn’t…it doesn’t make any f**king sense. ”
“Can you put on some music?” I set my purse to one side and unbutton my shirt, toss it by my purse.
I’m wearing a button-down blouse over a tank top, and a pair of capris. Good enough for dancing. I’m excited at the idea, but nervous. Dawson pulls his phone from his pocket and fiddles with it, then plugs it into some dock built into one of the walls. Music swells through the space, and it’s such perfect music to dance to. I’ve never heard it before, but it’s all Dawson. It’s symphonic, orchestral, but with heavy gothic overtones to it, and guitars and drums layered through it, giving it a hard edge. The lyrics are pensive and dark and vaguely religious. I can’t help but move.
There’s no technique to this; it’s just pure movement. My body flows, stretches, twists, and becomes an extension of the music. I leap, and bend, jeté and roll into pirouettes, and there’s nothing but the music and my body moving. Such purity of expression forces things inside me to give way.
I’d forgotten about dancing. I’d let it go in the face of work and school. I’d lost it. Lost that part of myself, and now…Dawson has given it back to me. I dance, and I dance. Another song by the same band comes on, and I keep dancing. I feel him watching, and I don’t care.
No, that’s not true. I do care. So much. I feel his gaze, and I dance harder for it. I want him to see me as I am. He’s asked me several times to tell him one true thing, and so now I do. I tell him one true thing, not with words, but with something more tangible, something that comes from deeper within me. Words can lie. Words can deceive and delude and conceal and avoid. But the things you do, how you move, how you touch, those things cannot lie.
When the music ends, I’m left panting, heaving, sweating. Dawson is standing with his arms crossed, an expression on his face that I can’t decipher. I catch my breath and wait. He comes toward me, his eyes are hot green-gray, the color of desire. He reaches for me, smearing sweat on my arms, brushing the hair from my face, infinitely gentle, touching me with pent-up desire.
He hesitates a beat, and then kisses me.
And now I’m lost all over again. God, his kiss devours me. Sucks me under with the riptide force of his heat and power and sexuality and dominance. Even the light taste of toothpaste on his lips is sensual. I inhale the scent of shampoo in his hair and the citrus aftershave or lotion or whatever it is. His hands touch me and caress me and hold me and incite need inside me. He kisses me, kisses me, kisses me.
And I kiss him back.
I’m free. I give in completely.
Chapter 13
He’s all there is. All there will ever be. I’m falling through eternity, and his touch is the fabric of that forever. His kiss is the substance of infinity. These thoughts make no sense even to my own mind, but they remain true in some strange way.
His arms are like prison bars, but it’s a cell I have no desire of escaping. He’s all contradictions, hard yet soft, sweet and salty, perfect and flawed.
My hands are curled against his bare chest, my nails scraping his skin as our mouths merge. My ni**les are pebbled against his chest, stiff through the material of my bra and the thin cotton tank top. His shorts are a barely-there layer of slippery rayon, and I feel the stiff, thick, hot intrusion of his manhood against my belly, physical evidence of how I make him feel. That presence, that thickness against my stomach, it scares me. It’s huge and hard as rock, and…I want to see it. I want to touch it. I want to feel it…and to taste it. I feel sinful and wrong just thinking that, but so help me, it’s true. I want to taste all of him. I want to feel all of him.
I want to give him all of me.
But he needs to know he’d be the first, the only one. I try to make the words come out, but I kiss him instead.
I’m lifted, cradled in his arms, and our kiss doesn’t break as he carries me through his house. My hands clutch his shoulders and his neck, and I gasp for air into his mouth, panting, eyes closed, fighting for clarity and lucidity and unable to be anything but swept away by need.
We’re in his room. I’m on my back on his bed. I pull his lips down to my greedy mouth. Strong and insistent fingers strip away my shirt and toss it aside. My bra is black and basic, clasped in the back by three hooks and eyelets. I arch my back, and he makes short, efficient work of unlatching it, pulling it from me and setting it aside.
I cross my arms over my chest, and he lets me. He lounges on his side next to me and stares into my eyes. “Let me see you, babe. ”
I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head.
He laughs, and traces an idle pattern on my belly with his forefinger, lazy, roaming circles leading downward to my khaki capris. His eyes are on me, and I force my lids open, force my gaze to his, and lie stone still as he pinches the edges of my waistband together and releases the clasp. I don’t move as he slowly unzips, baring a sliver of black lace to match my bra. I continue my still acquiescence to his stripping of me as he takes the waistband of my pants in his hands and works them down over my generous hips. I don’t help, but I don’t hinder, and soon I’m naked but for my underwear.
A familiar state of undress, but I’ve never felt more vulnerable.
His eyes burn green-brown-gray, hints of blue at the edges. Unmitigated desire and fire scorching me from his gaze. One hand on my belly, then a single finger dipping under the black elastic, beneath the Victoria’s Secret printed in pink script. I blink, twice, and swallow the pulsating knot of fear. That finger, his right index finger, slides around the circumference of the elastic, from hip to hip, and then again, gently tugging down. I do not lift my hips; I keep my eyes on him and let him strip me.
He’s already stripped me bare. Now he’s merely completing the task. He’s seen everything else, and now he’ll see me completely nude.
But he stops when the underwear are just barely covering the top of my cleft. “You take them off. If you want this, take them off. ”
This is my last chance; I see that. If I deny this now, he’ll know I’m too afraid.
Am I?
I’m not nauseous, not hyperventilating, not doing any of the things that usually accompany my strongest emotions. I’m terrified, because I feel the three words of truth bubbling on my lips.
Well, there are two truths vying for utterance, and both come in three-word sentences.
I go for the easier one. “I’m a virgin. ”
He doesn’t respond at all. He just stares at me for a long, silent moment. Neither of us even breathes.
Then he quirks one eyebrow. “That explains a lot. ” He licks his lips, and in that tiny motion, his nerves are revealed. “How, though? I mean, how can you be a virgin and a stripper? That doesn’t…it doesn’t make any f**king sense. ”