Chapter Fifty Seven

“You don’t have to be nervous,” he said.

She finished the water and looked toward the end of the bed where Timothy now sat.

“Why would you think I’m nervous?” she replied. "I never said that I was"

“You’re not talking.” he said.

“I was drinking.”

He shrugged and took a gulp of his water.

“Guess what I mean is that this doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. We can just take things as they come.” he explained.

“Right. For the few hours until morning” Chloe glanced at the clock. It was almost two in the morning. “I’ve had a really long day.”

“Me, too.” Timothy finished his water and walked around to the other side of the bed. “I was hoping you weren’t going to expect sex all night long. I mean, not that I wouldn’t be glad to oblige. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t fall asleep on you. But it might be a good idea to get some rest.”

She hadn’t meant to, but Chloe smiled. “I never said that I was expecting sex all night long either”

He nodded and smiled at her. "Great then. We agree.” He proceeded to arrange the pillows before pulling back the duvet and sheet.

Chloe had been watching over her shoulder and set her glass on the nightstand beside his before easing into the bed to pull the bedcovers down on her side. She normally slept in a nightgown but she wasn’t about to walk across the room where she’d put her clothes to retrieve one. The robe would do just fine for tonight. Her pillows didn’t require a lot of adjustment and she lay easily on her side of the bed.Timothy lay on his side. He pulled the covers midway up his chest. The chest that was still bare and undeniably enticing.

“This is the only time I’m a fan of lights-out in the bedroom.” It was an easy comment made seconds before he leaned over and hit the button that turned off both bedside lamps simultaneously.

The room went dark and Chloe’s heart began to pound a different rhythm. It wasn’t a totally unfamiliar feeling but one that she didn’t welcome now. She pulled the covers up, tucking them tight beneath her armpits, and closed her eyes. She could do this. She could sleep in the same bed with a guy....There was nothing she couldn’t do...

But this wasn't just any guy... It was Timothy.

Except, at the moment, she was having a hard time regulating her breathing knowing that if she just extended her arm she would touch him. That thought probably wasn’t the smartest one she’d had tonight since it only increased her breathing and had her clenching the sheets. Chloe was counting down from one hundred when something moved beneath the sheet. It could have been her imagination since her mind was going at a rapid pace, but no, it wasn’t. His foot touched hers and she jumped.

“I'm sorry. Didn't mean to scare you. It's just that I.. I can't sleep.”

"I can't sleep either," Chloe replied.

"Why is that?" Timothy asked her, knowing the question was unnecessary. He knew damn well why she couldn't sleep. But he had to find a way to distract himself, and he was hoping that talking would do the trick.

"I... I guess it's just that I'm.... I'm really going to miss you... You know, when you leave" Chloe said softly. For some reason, she just had to tell him...She had to let the walls she had built around herself fall for a little while. She had to open up. There was silence as Timothy said nothing. He didn't move either. He just lay stiffly on the bed and for a moment, Chloe almost regretted voicing out her emotions. Of course, she thought. What did she even expect him to say after rejecting him?

She was taken by surprise when he suddenly moved. She gasped in surprise as he reached for her, pulling her to the center of the bed and pinning her underneath him. Before she could say anything, he crushed his lips to hers again... He kissed her... Hard and fast. He continued to kiss her until her gasp turned into moans and she returned his kiss with equal fervor…

"You know when I said that I didn't want you to expect sex throughout the night?" he whispered against her lips.

Chloe nodded, unable to speak.

"I lied… and I'm going to miss you too when I leave… badly"

“Don’t,” Chloe said as she shook her head. “Don't just say things you think I want to hear. I don’t want your pity.”

“Does this feel like pity?” He took her hand and pressed it to his erection, which was straining the fabric of his boxer shorts. “And don’t tell me it doesn’t mean anything. What do you think, that men are like dogs or pigs, that they’ll respond on cue every time, no matter how great an aversion they have to the woman they’re with?”

“I didn’t say that, I just—” She tried to pull her hand away. He didn’t let her.

"This—” he drew her hand up the length of his engorged penis, and down it “—is not some autonomic glandular response to the mere presence of a female. If you haven’t figured out yet how outrageously attracted I am to you, then you’re completely delusional.”

Chloe went still. “Don’t say that. It…”

“Complicates things. I know.” Timothy kissed her hard, pulling her under him, pressing her into the mattress. It was a demanding, possessive kiss, and he didn’t let her up for air until she’d softened and begun to respond. And then he released her mouth only to feverishly yank at her robe.

She didn’t try to stop him, and it was a good thing, because Timothy wasn’t sure he could stop. His hunger for her had slipped its leash, driving him, propelling him toward the inevitable. Roughly he pulled the robe off of her. His own boxer shorts followed next, goaded by the perfume of her arousal, by the urgency of her soft hands on his body, by his own ungovernable need, too long denied.

She wrapped herself around him as he mounted her, as he pushed into her, into the tight, slick depths of her. She gasped, and clung to him, and he groaned deep in his chest, overcome by the sharp, biting pleasure that rocketed through him.

She moaned his name, again and again, arching against him, bringing them even closer together. The bedcovers were tangled around them; automatically he kicked them away.

Sex had never been like this for Timothy. Never before had reason fled so completely, to be replaced by pure mating instinct, the visceral, primordial need to join himself with another. He suspected the same was true for Chloe.

She moved like a wild thing beneath him, locked into an age-old rhythm, uttering guttural, uninhibited sounds that pushed him right to the edge. She curled a leg around his thigh as if to lever herself over him. Timothy easily rolled the two of them to position her on top. Her slim thighs flexed under his fingers as she raised and lowered herself, drawing him into her slippery, welcoming heat. He slid his hands over her hips, her slender waist, up her rib cage and higher.

Her breath caught as he stroked those beautiful, dainty breasts and plucked the stiff tips. Her feminine muscles tightened around him, and he groaned and laughed at the same time, perilously close to climax.

He felt Chloe's fingers on his face, her touch soft and delicate as she traced his features. She stroked his eyelids and brushed her fingertips over his lashes. Her fingers moved down his nose and across his cheek, where they discovered his dimple.

“You’re smiling,” she said.

“I’m happy.” His hands caressed her everywhere as the two of them moved in tandem..

Her fingers lit on his mouth, as if to silence him. Perhaps she wanted to think of this as pure physical gratification, nothing more. A simple act of sex devoid of the threat posed by intimacy and emotional entanglements. His lips grasped her fingertip and his tongue teased it. A little sound escaped her. Her movements became faster, more frenzied. Clasping her hips, he angled them, and his own, so he’d stroke her in just the right place.

Chloe's hair whipped Timothy's face. Urgent sounds escaped her as she reached for her release. He felt it gather in her, felt her body tense, and shudder, and rock under the force of it, felt her intimate flesh contract around him, urging him to let himself go. Timothy bucked hard under her, clamping his fingers around her hips, emptying himself in waves of pure scalding pleasure. She collapsed on top of him. After a moment they shifted to lie entwined, their lungs pumping like bellows, their hearts galloping in unison.

After a while, she snuggled closer to him. He asked, “Are you cold?” They were both naked and damp with sweat, and the room was chilly.

She nodded and groped with her feet for the robe he’d discarded earlier.

“I have a better idea,” Timothy said, and pulled her up with him.

A scant minute later, Chloe found herself standing under the hot spray of the shower with Timothy . In the diffuse light filtering through the steam and the smoked-glass shower doors, he looked like sin incarnate, with his strong, finely hewn features, his swarthy coloring and that incandescent smile. Not to mention his powerful, perfectly proportioned body, revealed to her in its entirety.

Timothy had the kind of muscle definition that resulted from hard work and a high-octane lifestyle. His chest was wide and hard, with just the right amount of crisp dark hair, tapering over a flat, corrugated belly and thighs thick with sinew.

Chloe pushed her wet hair off her face and watched him roll the bar of soap in his hands, looking her over as if deciding where to start. She could have told him that certain parts of her were even now clamoring for his attention, but something told her that Timothy would work his way around to them eventually. He brought the clear, blue-green soap to his nose. It was a natural glycerine soap scented with a distinctive fragrance called Mist. Timothy's eyes held an appreciative glint as he said, “Smells like you. Turn around.”

She did, letting the spray pummel her front as Timothy spread lather on her back. His big hands moved in circles down to her waist and over the flare of her hips.

He murmured, “You’re exquisite, Chloe.”

The buzz of sensual awareness had never left her, and now it grew stronger as he lazily washed her, paying close attention to the sensitive skin of her bottom.His slippery fingers caressed her, kneaded the muscles, lightly skimmed up the rear cleft, sending an electric jolt through her. Chloe leaned her palms on the tile wall and raised her face to the spray as Timothy gave the same loving attention to her legs. Each time his fingers stroked up the insides of her thighs, they inched a little higher. She was trembling slightly when he turned her to face him.

Her gaze moved from the soap he was rolling between his palms, to his face. The hint of a smile touched his dark eyes, along with something else, something that caused a tingle of anticipation to race along every nerve ending. Chloe felt almost drugged as she watched his hands, so dark and rough in contrast to her skin, slide up and down her arms, lathering them thoroughly, massaging each finger in turn. Slowly he rubbed the bar of soap across her shoulder and circled one breast, his intense gaze following its progress. She felt the nipple tighten, felt a voluptuous heaviness settle between her legs.

Never, had she wanted to have sex twice in one night. Now, for the first time ever, she was eager for a repeat performance. Chloe knew it had nothing to do with her protracted period of abstinence. What she and Timothy had just shared was a first for her. Dropping her gaze, she saw that she wasn’t the only one ready for round number two. Timothy remained rampantly, unashamedly aroused as he smoothed lather over both breasts with the painstaking care of a pastry chef icing twin cakes. He paid special attention to the erect peaks before directing his attention to her stomach, hips and thighs, leaving a frothy layer of bubbles in his wake.

“When do I get my turn?” Chloe asked.

“I’m not finished.” Timothy proved it by pressing a soapy hand between her legs, which immediately threatened to buckle. “But if you’d rather I stopped…”

“No!” Chloe grabbed his shoulders for support as his slick fingers began a leisurely exploration. “Don’t stop.”

And he didn’t. He caressed her with loving skill as his other hand tipped her head back. He sipped at the water trailing over her eyelids. He licked the droplets clinging to her lips. She shivered. Her legs parted, of their own accord. So did her mouth. His tongue slipped between her lips as his fingers circled her most sensitive spot, wringing a groan of pure animal need from her.

Shamelessly Chloe rode his hand, rocking into his caress, clawing his shoulders, feeling the exquisite tension in her belly coil tighter and tighter. In the next instant, Timothy was lifting her and turning her, and bracing her back against the tile wall opposite the shower head as she instinctively wrapped her legs around his hips. He pressed into her in one long, smooth stroke, never taking his gaze from hers. Something passed between them then, something both frightening and exhilarating. In that instant Chloe knew that she’d been changed forever. No matter what the future held for her, Timothy had left his stamp.

She had never experienced anything like the fierce, stabbing pleasure of taking Timothy inside her body. It was a sensation so intense, it was akin to being turned inside out, body and soul.

The shower spray bounced off his back and her lower legs as he drove himself even deeper into her, holding her up with seeming effortlessness. The soapy lather between their bodies acted as an erotic lubricant between her sensitized breasts and the rough hair of his chest. Their mouths mated as enthusiastically as their bodies, his tongue thrusting and retreating in the same primal rhythm.

Never in her life had Chloe felt so thoroughly, so ruthlessly, so deliciously possessed. Timothy relinquished her mouth at last, though the pace of his love making never slowed.

“You’re going to come more than once this time.”

“I know.”

His dimple was the last thing she saw before he lowered his mouth once more.