“Don’t. Baby. Seriously.”

“It feels good.”

“I know. A little too good. You keep that up, I’m gonna …”

She pulls at my wrists until I let go, puts them on her tits. “Go ahead.”

“You want me to come in my pants?”

Her eyes drift closed. When I thumb her nipples, she sucks in a breath like I’m hurting her, and it’s really, really good. Then she bears down on me even harder.

“Caro, I mean it.”

“I mean it too,” she says.

“It’ll be messy.”

“You have to wash those pants, anyway.”

“Yeah, but still.”

“I’ll clean you up. With my tongue.”

That’s the end of the conversation. My whole upper body breaks out in goose bumps—a sure sign I’ve only got seconds left. I get my hand behind her back, draw her down, stick my tongue in her mouth, and I’m kissing her when my toes curl and I have to throw my head back, close my eyes, the head of my cock unbearably sensitive, tingling fluttering clamping tightness moving up, out of me, hot against my skin, slick and slippery as she slows, kissing my neck, mouthing over my collarbones.

Jesus. Jesus.

I put my hand on the back of her head, and she giggles, tucked into the hollow between my shoulder and my neck. “That was an interesting noise.”

“Shut up.”

“Like you were dying.”

“Swear to God.”

“It didn’t sound pleasant.”

“It was pleasant. Never doubt it.”

She’s shaking against my chest, my arms wrapped tight around her.

“We’ll do you in a minute.” I sound like I’m under water. “Then we’ll see who’s laughing.”

That sets her off again, and I watch her, smiling, because we’re ridiculous.

Ridiculous and happy.

Me and Caroline.


After I catch my breath, it starts to sink in that I’m a dickhead.

Like, literally. I just let the head of my dick call the shots. Genius.

I rub my hand up and down Caroline’s back. She’s tense, her muscles twitching and tight.

“How close were you?”

She breathes a little laugh. “Um, close?”

If I was her, I’d be annoyed. First she gives me an ultimatum and I ignore her for three weeks, then I wake her up, coax her back to my apartment, and don’t even get her off?

“I suck.”

She props herself up on my chest and smiles. “I don’t know, I was kind of enjoying how completely useless you got there at the end.”

“I bet.”

“No, seriously. You’re always so in charge. You’ve made me come, like, a million times, and I’ve only …” She gets bashful, looks away.

“I like making you come.”

Caroline shifts to the side and gives my chest a shy smile. She strokes her hand over my chest, down my stomach. “I like making you come, too. A lot.”

“You sound surprised.”

“I didn’t always like it. Before.”

I’d guessed as much.

“It wasn’t—it wasn’t bad, really. It just wasn’t …”

“Like this.”

“Yeah.”

Her fingers find the button on my jeans. “So I said a minute ago that I’d, uh, clean you up.”

“You don’t have to.”

“But if I want to.”

“If you want to, knock yourself out.” I catch her chin, tip up her face so I can see her eyes. “But if you don’t want to—tonight, or if you’re still coming around next week or in a month, and you don’t want to then, either—that’s fine. I mean, I know you love lists and schedules and all that shit, but there’s not, like, a list of stuff we have to do or some timetable we have to do it on. Where we are now … it’s good.”

I laugh at myself. Good. “Okay, it’s fucking awesome.”

She pushes her nose into my neck and kisses me there. Not the kind of thing I ever would’ve thought I wanted a girl to do, but Caroline can do it all night long if she wants. It’s nice. Like when Frankie used to wake up in the middle of the night and crawl into my bed, all warm and soft. Comfortable.

“Thanks,” she says.

“Don’t thank me. We already established that I’m a dick.”

Her arm tightens around me. “You’re not. You’re great. I mean, you’re kind of also a dick. But mostly great.”

She’s quiet for a minute, and I’m thinking about how right I feel with her and how I’ve never had this with anyone else. Never let any girl this close.

I’m glad it’s the same for her. I know that makes me a jerk, because it means everything that happened to her with Nate had to be kind of shitty in order for her to come to me and think what we’ve got is anything different—anything special at all.

But I’m glad anyway.

I want everything with Caroline to be special.

After a while, her hand starts meandering down my stomach, and she unbuttons my slacks and lowers the zipper. I lift my hips to help her peel them off. She slips the pad of one finger underneath the waistband of my briefs and follows it across my stomach, which makes me suck in a breath.

I could go again. Soon.

“Take these off,” I say, grabbing a fistful of her pajama pants.

She does, while I take off my briefs. She’s a little shy about it, and she leaves her panties on. They’re purple, with dark purple lace at the top.

“Nice,” I tell her.

That makes her smile. She shoots a nervous look at my crotch and starts to maneuver her way down there, but I grab hold of her armpit and haul her back up so I can kiss her. She’s pressed against me, skin to skin, nothing but a tiny scrap of panties separating us. I kiss her slow and lazy, knowing how lucky I am and wanting to soak in it for a good long time.

When she finally pulls her mouth away, I’m hard again, and she’s squirmy, pressing herself into me.

She starts to kiss her way down my chest.

“Let me get you off,” I say.

“I promised.”

I can only see the top of her head, and I can’t tell if she means that funny or serious.

“You don’t have to,” I remind her.

“Shh.” She takes her time getting down there, and the way she does it … Jesus. All those shy glances, somehow I got thinking she didn’t know what she was doing, but by the time she puts her tongue on my cock, one quick swirl around the head, I’m already half dead.

“Tease,” I choke out.

She grins. Sticks out that pointed pink tongue of hers. Licks me clean.

I keep my hands fisted in the blankets so I won’t put them in her hair. Caroline and me have messed around a lot, but tonight’s different, and I don’t want to fuck it up. Traumatize her or whatever. She can do whatever she wants to me, but I’m not going to push her.

It’s fucking hard, though. To keep still. To keep from showing her exactly what I want her to do to me. She wraps her fingers around the base of my cock, and there’s this spot where she could put pressure and doesn’t. She licks and sucks the underside where I’m so sensitive, but she flicks right over the place beneath the head that makes me insane.

I give up on the blankets and rub my hands over her shoulders, up her neck, into her hair. Not clutching at her, though it takes a monumental effort not to. Just touching her.

She cups my balls, but her fingers are so gentle, her mouth so … polite. It’s nice.

It’s good.

She lifts up her head. Crawls up until she’s a couple of inches from my face. “Hey.”

“What?”

“You don’t come with a guidebook. Tell me what you want.”

“You’re doing great.”

I jerk off the bed before I understand why. She pinched my nipple, twisted it. Not in a cute way.

“The fuck? That hurt!”

“Tell me what you want.”

Her eyes are intent, her mouth set in this no-nonsense line. She looks like classroom Caroline, sure of herself, ticked at me for keeping her from completing this lesson to her satisfaction.

I love her like this.

“Suck me,” I say. “Hard.”

She smiles this little smile. Totally satisfied with herself. “Thank you.” Her head drops down again. “Now, keep talking to me, or I’m going to drive home and you’ll be all alone with your right hand. Or is it your left, since you’re left-handed?”

I don’t think I’m supposed to answer the question. Not when she’s crawling down my body, ass in the air. I want my hands on that ass. Get her turned around, pussy in my face, dripping all over me while she sucks me off.

I’ve said shit like that to her on the phone, when I was too far gone to stop myself, safe because I was a couple thousand miles from her. But it’s different to think about saying it to her face. Does she like that, or does she just put up with it? Where do girls like Caroline draw the line?

When she wraps her hand around me, I reach down, show her where to pull the skin tight. “Here.”

She takes over. Then she’s licking me again, flicking her tongue over the head, sucking me into her mouth. Sucking hard.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

She pops me out of her mouth long enough to say, “That’s more like it.”

There are no girls like Caroline. Just Caroline.

She’s more than enough.

She sucks me, licks me, tongues me in the spot I show her until I’m lifting off the bed, my legs stiff, my dick so hard I can’t possibly last. When she goes for my balls this time, I show her where to stroke behind them, where to press—oh, fuck, she’s a quick study.

“Turn around,” I say, but I’m not sure she understands me. Not sure I can make words that actually come out sounding like English.

“Caroline. I—can you—gnuh.”

“Eh?” she teases.

I sit up, grab under her arms, haul her up my body. Her lips are shining, wet, and I kiss her, get my tongue inside her, get my hand in her panties and my fingers into her slickness. She’s slippery, soaking. God damn.

She moans into my mouth. “West.”

“Turn around,” I tell her.

“What?”

“Turn around. Get your hips up here”—I tug her toward my face—“and your mouth back down there.”

“That’s … Can’t we just have sex now?”

For a second I’m dumbfounded. When I manage to gather a few brain cells together, I say, “Honey, we are having sex.”

Her cheeks are already pink, but now they turn red. Which is hilarious. I mean, I’ve got my fingers inside her, she’s riding my hand, still moving in this soft up-and-down even as we’re talking, hair all loose around her shoulders, fucking beautiful—and now she’s going to get shy on me?

“What did you think this was?” I ask.

“I know. I mean, yes, I’ve heard Quinn’s sex-doesn’t-have-to-include-a-dick lecture, too. But I meant, you know, were we going to have sex sex. Penis-in-vagina sex. Sex.”

I raise an eyebrow. “Penis-in-vagina sex?”

“Shut up.”

“No, I mean, that’s romantic. That’s probably the most romantic proposition I’ve ever heard.”

She’s laughing. “Shut up.”

I move my fingers and push her onto her back. Look deep into her eyes. Say, real serious, “Caro, I would love to have penis-in-vagina sex with you.”

She smacks my arm, and then I kiss her, and then … damn. It’s like we’ve been playing around and now we’re not. At all. The kiss gets intense, fast, her hands are everywhere, grabbing at me, positioning my hips where she wants me, where I’m grinding against her. Her panties are in my way, and I’ve had enough of that. I yank them down, pull them off her ankles, push her knees apart and lick between her legs until she’s making these quiet, helpless sounds that I fucking love.

“West,” she says.

Yeah. I know. She wants me inside her, and if I don’t get there in the next thirty seconds, the world might as well end.

“Hold on. Don’t move. Not one inch.”

I get up, grab a condom from the desk, rip it open, and roll it on with my eyes on Caroline on my bed, legs spread open, wet and ready, her body, her mouth, her smile, her eyes.

“I’m getting cold.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

Then I’m back over her, my dick sliding over her warm, soft pussy, our mouths meeting, her arms around me. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I reach down. Find the right spot, the right angle.

I ease into her. Inch by inch. Slow, because I don’t want to hurt her, because it’s been a while for both of us, because I don’t want to embarrass myself and come before we’re even hardly started.

Slow, because I want to watch her face, and, fuck, it is romantic. It is special.

It’s Caroline.

When I’m all the way in, her knees spread wide, her eyes right with me, I kiss her. I just stay there, not moving, because I’ve wanted to be here, with her, for so long, but I didn’t think I ever would.