I was maniacally and fiercely aroused, and I was completely ill-equipped to deal with these feelings.
A broken hymen while horseback riding at thirteen; lots of random kisses with random guys for fun and practice; a few inconsequential and forgettable gropings in high school and college; a drunken, laconic coupling in my dorm room with my physics lab TA last year. These were the pithy total of my adult sexual exploits.
In all honesty, I’d enjoyed the horse ride more than the man ride. At least the horse had been a stallion. Looking back, my lab TA was more like a Shetland pony—hairy and small.
Truly, I didn’t know what I was doing, what we were doing. This was beyond bizarre. If the Father of Calculus or Intrepid Inger had brought me backstage at the Green Valley Community Center, I doubt I would be having such divergent thoughts.
Instinct told me to tackle Beau, maul him before he discovered his error and tousled my hair like I was still a twelve-year-old. At the very least, the crazy part of my brain had made up its mind to tempt his mouth down to my chest. Nothing fantastic had ever happened to my nipples before. I was pretty sure I’d die a happy woman after Beau Winston did something fantastic to my nipples.
Speaking of nipples, I didn’t realize I’d brought Beau’s hand from my hip to my breast until hot sparks of desire radiated from where I pressed his palm against me, the only barriers between our skin, my lace bra and the thin fabric of my dress.
Beau stared at me, his mouth parted in stunned surprise. His eyebrows jumped, and his eyes widened at my forward gesture. I arched forward, again without consciously meaning to, straining to close the distance between our bodies, wanting to feel his hard against my soft.
And then I learned what a hot look was.
Because Beau Winston was giving me a hot look.
I wanted to label it as incendiary, but as it was the first hot look I’d ever been aware of receiving, I decided instead to make his hot look the baseline by which all other hot looks would be measured.
I didn’t get much time to mull over what units of measurement I would apply to hot looks—would it be Celsius? Calories? Watts? Voltage? Or lumens?—because Beau did three things, driving all thought and ability to reason from my brain.
First, his fingers at my breast worked, massaged, and caressed while his thumb brushed over the nipple. His hand felt greedy, rough, and fantastic.
Second, his other hand reached around, gripped my bottom, and squeezed as he brought me against him.
Third, he kissed me. Beau Winston was a helluva good kisser.
And, oh God, parts of me tensed, clenched, braced in a completely new way, a way that made no sense at all, but sent all the amorous flutters diving straight to my pelvis and heat to my lungs. I was abruptly starring in the music video for Beyonce’s Naughty Girl and desperately trying to figure out how to get Beau’s clothes off.
He dominated, pushing me against the wall, his hands under my dress, on the bare skin of my hips then into my lace underwear, grabbing my bare ass. Nothing about him was soft. He was hard edges, solid granite everywhere I touched. And I touched him. I touched him in a fevered frenzy because I didn’t know what the hell was going on or when it would stop. I hoped never. Peripherally, I heard my wizard’s staff clatter to the ground.
I’d always thought of Beau as a really, really nice guy. But he didn’t kiss like a nice guy. Not saintly in the least.
He kissed with dangerous and punishing hunger, his mouth greedy and demanding. He bit me—my bottom lip—then soothed and tasted the abused flesh with his tongue while grinding his hips against mine, his hard length growing against my belly.
“Fuck, Jess…,” he growled, then pulled his mouth from mine, his breathing labored. He bent to bite my jaw, lick my ear, suck the soft skin into his hot mouth while one hand pushed my little gray dress up to expose my lace-clad breasts. The fingers of his other hand danced around the hem of my panties but moved no farther. I felt his hesitation and I clawed him. I dug my nails into his shoulders and bucked instinctively, wanting him to touch me.
The non-crazy part of my brain told me I was going to be seriously mortified by my behavior at some point in the future, but crazy was now the overwhelming majority. Sanity had lost the popular vote.
In response to my crazy, he tugged the cup of my bra down. Then his wet mouth was on the center of my breast. Then his tongue swirled over my nipple as a tortured-sounding moan rumbled in the back of his throat. Then I panted because it was fantastic.