Six Weeks, page 4
She could see the struggle he was having in that brief speech. Cousin. Lover. Cousin. Lover. The roles didn’t mesh well. Once again, he was clearly having to separate them and choose one above the other.
Seeing him hurt pained her but she didn’t know how to make it any easier on either of them.
“It was your cousin Katie who taught me how to kiss,” she said. “We used to practice on each other. I pretended she was the star of my favourite movie. I don’t remember who she pretended I was.”
“She probably didn’t have to pretend.” His tone was wry. “Why would anyone have to pretend with you?”
That bland question revealed a lot about how he thought—but not, she believed, about Katie.
“We were very young,” she said. “Probably ten or eleven.”
He smiled as he smoothed the tumbled hair away from her face. “Then I’ll try to contain my jealousy.”
Jealousy. The word startled her. Jealousy was an emotion she related to long-term relationships. It was what husbands and wives felt about each other. It had no relation to Austen and her.
Perhaps he only meant it as a result of his possessiveness. That wasn’t quite so disconcerting.
“Come here,” he said, pulling her to him again. He kissed the tip of her nose. “Stop thinking.”
He kissed her mouth again, and she didn’t have to think anymore. His lips were the antidote to thinking. She only wanted to feel.
He moved his hands under her sweater, his fingertips cold, yet they trailed fire. He slid them over her bra, his big palms dwarfing her modest breasts.
Jaya gasped as he cupped her tits, knowing he could feel how tight and hard her nipples were through the lacy material.
Austen pushed away the lace covering. Now he held her naked breasts in his grasp. His hands were no longer cool as his fingers stroked the sensitive skin, then the velvet softness of her nipples.
Jaya swayed towards him, giving in to the wild pleasure of his touch as he squeezed, tugged and shaped her flesh.
Because his hands were hidden under her sweater, she couldn’t even see what he was doing but it felt so incredible, every tiny ministration measured out to an exquisite degree to keep her on a high, sensual precipice.
She peeked up at Austen.
He was watching her face closely—gauging her reactions, she realised.
Jaya shivered. His intensity and concentration were as much a turn-on as his kisses or his talented fingers.
“Cold?” Austen asked, the only sign of any strain he was under showing momentarily in the huskiness of his deep voice.
“No, hot,” Jaya replied truthfully. He was making her burn.
He chuckled quietly. “It must be all those clothes you’re wearing.”
Jaya giggled. “Right, the clothes—not the man.”
He leaned closer. “It’d better be the man.”
Jaya stepped away, displacing his hands, and flung the sweater up over her head.
She shook out her hair. The sweater fell to the floor. “It’s definitely the man.”
The cups of her bra were still pushed down off her breasts and the straps falling off her shoulders. If that wasn’t an invitation to pick her up and take her to the bed…
“Christ,” Austen said again.
A moment later, he was down on one knee, pulling her roughly to him.
For a split second, Jaya was confused. Then she saw how his movement had brought his head on level with her breasts and how—
“Oh,” she cried out softly as his lips captured one hot nipple. She clutched onto his broad shoulders as he started to draw on it, hard and fast, as if to make up for his former restraint.
His fierce suction sent waves of heat pulsing through her limbs, turning her bones to molten liquid.
She lost her grip on his shoulders. All she could do was brace against him. The big bulk of his body was strong, secure, like a boulder the world could beat against, and nothing could move.
All that seemed to be keeping her upright was his strong hand splayed across her back. She nearly sunk down to her knees with him when he switched to the other nipple and showed it the same hot ravenous hunger.
The whole time he was devouring her breasts, his free hand moved restlessly over her body, across her belly, under her skirt.
He reared back, his fingers moving along the waistband of her long skirt. “How do you open this thing?”
Jaya stepped away, her legs a little shaky, and undid the side clasp and zip. The skirt slid down to the floor. Her tights followed. Then Austen reached around and helped free her from the still clinging bra.
Naked, she stood before him.
She wasn’t tall or model thin. She wasn’t graceful or elegant. Her bra size was a very good grade in school.
She dared not even glance at Austen because she knew he saw the truth now. There was no place to hide.
“Beautiful,” Austen pronounced, his voice ragged and extremely convincing.
He slid one hand between her legs, his touch both firm and delicate as he traced her pussy lips. He pushed his finger deeper inside her cleft, first the one, then two fingers, finding her hole and measuring it with the span of his fingertips as if sizing her for fit.
Heat swamped her cunt, drenching his hand.
Embarrassed, Jaya tried to jerk away but Austen was ready for her, catching her hips and keeping her close.
Suddenly he was on both knees and his face was in her bush. The hot lap of his tongue seared her. He was eating her out. She’d never received stand-up oral before.
Oh my.
The thrust of Austen’s tongue made her rock her hips against his face.
Oh God. Oh yes.
He guided one of her legs until she was half-standing on his outstretched thigh, her foot balanced on top of his knee. The pose opened her up to his voracious mouth. He flicked her clit with his tongue and drew on her inner lips in powerful sucks.
His mouth was agile and enthusiastic, and she was completely at his mercy.
She trembled as he speared his tongue into her hole.
If he wasn’t careful, he would finish this right where he’d started. On his knees.
“Austen.”
His name was a plea.
He drew away from her with obvious reluctance, his lips clinging to her pussy lips.
“I want to…” He glanced up at her ruefully. “I think you know what I want to do.”
Yes, she knew. Devour her.
But she wanted the same chance with him. She hadn’t even seen him yet.
He got to his feet and started stripping off his clothes. Just like that, yet it was the most natural thing in the world.
She wanted to see him naked. She was going to see him. Easy.
He moved quickly yet without undue haste. Big and blond had never been Jaya’s taste but the body he revealed was a miracle of clean male skin and long, strong muscles.
That wasn’t the only thing that was long and strong.
His cock jutted from a nest of dark blond hair. Nine inches at least, and thick with it. A python, one that she was ready and willing to let devour her.
It seemed natural for her to reach out and touch him but her action made Austen draw in a hissed breath and swiftly snatch her hand away.
His rejection hurt.
Jaya stood naked and awkward before him. “Don’t you want…?”
He put his arms around her waist. “I do want. Very much. But I want something else more.” His fingers tightened. “I want to be inside you.”
Jaya let out the breath she’d been holding.
“I want that, too.”
He picked her up and carried her to the bed, where he laid her down in middle of it. He straightened only for a minute, to don a condom, before he moved on top of her and started kissing her.
Their kiss this time was deeper, longer, more soul-searching. It held nothing in reserve.
He used his fingers in her pussy, rubbing her all over again and bringing her back up to a peak. He took his time, not hurrying her, though Jaya knew every second that ticked by must have been agony for him. His cock had already been iron hard when she’d first touched it. Now she dared not even draw a fingertip across its length. Every inch of his taut body told her how close he was.
As she moved restlessly against his hand, Austen shifted his hips and brought his shaft to the entrance of her cunt.
He paused on the brink, seeming to ask a mute question, and Jaya answered it just as silently by sliding one leg around him.
One hard thrust, and he was inside her.
Even with such careful preparation, the size and girth of his penis was a shock.
Austen paused, looking down at her, his forehead wrinkling as he watched her struggle to accommodate his intrusion. She writhed beneath him. He was the largest man she’d ever been with.
“Can I help?” Austen finally asked, his lips quirking in a way that was both wry and humorous.
His hips nudged hers as he spoke, taking his cock another inch deeper into her pussy.
“That isn’t helping,” Jaya said, striving to speak as lightly as he had, though she could see the sheen of sweat on his brow. No doubt he could see the perspiration on hers.
“Sorry.” He lowered his forehead to hers. “God, you’re so tight!”
He wanted to move—she could feel that need thrumming through his entire frame like a drumbeat, incessant, unstoppable.
“You’re so big,” Jaya shot back. She ran her hand down one well-muscled arm. He was big all over. Just the look of him was a turn-on.
She pushed up to meet Austen’s heavier weight, making him groan. His patience was starting to pay off.
Next time, she tried a grinding motion as she moved against him. Mm, even nicer.
Austen looked down at her. “Are you going to keep doing that?” he asked, his teeth clenched.
“Yes,” she said, moving again, more confidently now. “It feels so good.”
“It’s not nearly so satisfying being your human scratching post,” he told her roughly. He pushed his hand between them, his fingers seizing on her clit before she could press it against his hardness again. “How about this instead?”
For a moment, Jaya couldn’t speak. Her clit was on fire, and he was holding the match. Then he started moving inside her, fanning the flames, making her burn.
The combination of his fingers on her clit, and his cock in her pussy was devastating.
Jaya cried out—something, she didn’t know what, but that wordless sound was one of pleasure and encouragement, and Austen seemed to understand it perfectly.
He withdrew his hand, bracing it on the mattress beside her as he drew back for his first full thrust.
He drove his cock inside her, filling her cunt and making every internal muscle she possessed strain to hold on to him. She couldn’t do it. Every time she tried to keep him, he was gone again, then back again, harder and deeper this time, until he was pounding her pussy and fucking her more thoroughly and completely than she’d ever been fucked before. And all the time, he was staring down into her eyes.
Jaya came first, her entire body convulsing around his cock. Her pussy grabbed at him, her reflexes milking every last throb of sensation out of his expert fucking.
Only after she’d finished shaking did Austen drive hard into her and find his own climax, searing her with his hot jism even through the latex barrier that separated them.
“Think about me,” he’d said, days ago…a lifetime ago.
Now, in this moment, he was all that existed for her.
* * * *
“What have I got, six weeks?” Austen was lying on his back as he asked the musing question. Jaya was curled up, facing away from him, ready for sleep. But he was wide awake—and it seemed he liked to talk post coitus. How annoying.
Jaya stifled a yawn. “Six weeks for what?”
“Six weeks together,” he said. “Dating. That’s your magic number, isn’t it?”
She stared at the curtains covering the panoramic window. “I don’t have a magic number.”
“An expiration date, then,” Austen amended. “Whatever you call it, I call it a hard deadline. After that day, you turn into a pumpkin. I wonder if you’re going to cry on my shoulder about me?”
“That would be silly,” Jaya said, her throat feeling tight. “By then, you’ll be over…this, whatever it is, and we’ll be back to normal.”
Even as she spoke the words, they sounded wrong. That was magical thinking, to imagine she and Austen would ever be the same after this. As close as they’d been less than an hour ago, she knew that she was losing him—and there was nothing she could do about it. The path they’d started down was a one-way bullet train.
She felt Austen shift beside her on the bed. “Do you believe that?”
Jaya wrapped her arms more tightly around herself. “I want to.”
“Well, I don’t,” Austen said in a flat tone.
She sprang upright, twisting around to face him. He was glorious in his nakedness, without even a sheet to cover the place a fig leaf usually did on a classical statue. He would need a very large fig leaf
Trying to ignore his nudity, she told him, “That’s a cruel thing to say.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Is it?” he demanded. “Is it cruel to say I would prefer to have more of the sex we just had, instead of none? Is it cruel to not want to hear you go back to talking about other men you’ve slept with and how bad you feel about breaking their hearts? Is it cruel to not want my name to be yet another one on that list?”
Jaya stared. Was that what their normal relationship had meant to him? Had that so-called normalcy been inadvertent torture for Austen?
“You never said…” she murmured wonderingly.
His mouth twisted. “No, I never said. I held it in until I couldn’t anymore. It was foolish pride on my part. I didn’t want to admit my name belonged on that other list. The list of men who wanted Jaya but could never have her. It took me a long time to realise the broken-hearted ones are the lucky few who at least had the chance to win you.”
It was the longest she’d heard him speak in years. How long ago had he started working on holding it in? How long had he cut himself off from her—and why hadn’t she noticed it?
“I haven’t been a very good friend,” Jaya told him.
If he was surprised at her sudden statement, he didn’t show it. “No,” he said, “but then neither have I.”
Jaya stared at him. “You’ve been—” She shook her head, unable to put her feelings into words. “You’ve always been there for me, Austen.”
“In a sense, yes,” he said. “I may have been there in a physical sense but most of my attention was caught up in hiding the truth about how I felt from you. Instead of listening to you, I was concentrating on formulating my responses, analysing my replies in advance to make sure they didn’t give anything away. I wasn’t really there, not fully.”
Jaya’s laugh was brief. “You did a good job. I would never have guessed the truth.”
He reached for her hand. “I often suspected my possessiveness gave me away.”
She spoke without thinking. “You were always—”
Austen finished the sentence for her. “I was always possessive. Is that what you were going to say?”
She knew they both understood the implication of that statement. He was always possessive. He had always wanted her.
God, what a mess!
Jaya looked down at their entwined hands. The contrast between the two of them had never seemed so great.
“What do you think it means, your possessiveness?”
He followed her gaze. “That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” she said with quiet emphasis.
A corner of his mouth lifted. “Yes, in six weeks or less.”
She snatched her hand away. “I don’t have a deadline, you know.”
“No, it just always happens that you tire of a man at the same point in the relationship. At least you’re predictable.”
Remembering what he’d said about the men who’d had a chance to win her heart—and those who hadn’t gotten that opportunity, she said urgently, “I don’t want to break your heart, Austen.”
No matter what happened between them, it seemed important that she said this to him.
“Don’t worry,” Austen told her, his voice as cool and deep as usual. “You won’t get the chance.”
* * * *
I’ve only got an hour tonight, the text read. Important motion tomorrow.
Jaya didn’t even respond. What could she say? She’d never been on this side of a relationship before. She was always the busy one, the quick kiss and ‘gotta run’ one. Even when her boyfriends had busy and high-profile jobs, she was the person placing the boundaries on their time together, oblivious to any hint that they wanted more.
Well, she wasn’t going to hint. She wasn’t going to make him think she wanted more. He’d started all this. What did she care if he was regretting it now?
She didn’t need to say I told you so. He could order the transcript of that particular conversation. Print it and frame it for his wall, right next to the abstract painting above his bed she admired.
Jaya supposed an important motion outweighed an opening night at the theatre, since they had so many of those, followed by many quick closing nights as well. She’d invented a lot of opening nights when her time with a boyfriend was winding up. After only a couple weeks, were she and Austen already waiting for the curtain to fall?
Maybe this was his way of protecting himself. Or maybe this was his way of making the final kiss-off a little less of a surprise. That was what she’d done in the past. Made her waning interest obvious, sometimes brutally so. So she could later justify herself—You should have seen it coming.
She should have seen this coming. Gone was the shared laughter, the little intimacies even the most strained relationship depended on. Now he picked up his phone right after he rolled off her. She guessed it was work but maybe, maybe it wasn’t always. Maybe it was something else. Or someone else.
Someone who didn’t have so many walls up. Someone with fewer boundaries.
