Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100466 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 502(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
He has the light brown hair and the green eyes, but he's a little too sharp, a little too intense.
He doesn't quite fit into the beautiful, modern backyard, with its long, rectangular pool and its succulent garden.
He doesn't quite fit with me, even though I'm wearing one of his long, linen shirts over my swimsuit.
Jackson watches as I pull the sliding glass door open, step outside, move across the long, concrete path.
His eyes stay fixed on me as I undo the buttons of the shirt and drop the soft fabric on the sand lawn chair.
He looks me up and down slowly, noting every inch of exposed skin. The fuchsia bikini leaves little to the imagination.
It's not out of an old pulp novel. It's a modern thing. Thin straps. Bra cups. Barely any booty coverage.
We don't fit together. We're from different worlds. He's refined and mature—someone who knows about love and sex and wine and law—and I'm still a kid, at least in my head. New and inexperienced and eager to learn.
That isn't true now. It wasn't true then. But I surrender to the roles anyway.
I'm the student, and he's the teacher. My innocence is as sexy as his knowledge.
Only I'm not a helpless ingenue. I'm aware of the effect I have on him. I notice the way his pupils dilate, the way his breath catches, the way his body tunes to mine.
I sit next to him. I turn toward him, and with a tentative voice, I ask, "What do you think?" I want his approval. I want it too badly.
He notices. He soaks in my need, lighting up from the inside slowly, one lumen at a time. He looks at me, all tall and proud and wise, and he speaks in a tone I've never really heard on his tongue, one with the perfect mix of demand and softness. "Did you come out here to seduce me?"
"What if I did?"
Something in him changes. He shifts from the in-control man I know to the one he only is in my head. The man who ties you up then holds you all night.
The man who's strong for you.
His eyes fix on mine. "Stand up."
I do it without thinking.
He looks me up and down slowly, savoring every inch of my exposed skin. "Show me."
I hold his gaze as I undo the knot holding my top together.
The nylon falls to the ground.
His eyes dip to my lips, collarbones, breasts. "Show me everything."
I should be scared or nervous—I'm stripping for my best friend's brother—but I'm not. I'm perfectly in the moment. There's nothing between his request and my action.
I slip the bikini bottom off my hips and kick the fabric off my feet.
Jackson looks me up and down for a long moment, and then he pulls me onto his lap.
The book on his thighs falls to the ground.
My legs hook around his.
His lips find my lips. His hands find my chest. He kisses me patiently, teasing me again and again as I roll my hips against his.
Again and again—
Fuck.
I try to hold on to the fantasy. The image of his hand on my breast. The feeling of his cock hard between my legs.
But it isn't real. I don't have the sense memory. Only the poor substitution of ex-boyfriends.
The space slows me down, but not enough. I come fast. I always do with this one. It's too easy. A groove worn into my brain. A scene used too many times.
Especially with my last boyfriend.
But I push that thought aside for one more glorious moment. I soak in the sensations of my body.
The rhythmic contractions of the muscles in my core. The rush of blood and the release of neurotransmitters that fill me with pleasure and need.
That's all love is.
Neurotransmitters.
That's everything. Love, sex, knowledge, emotion, need, want, friendship, sadness, stress.
It's all hormones firing in our brain, telling us to slow or speed or cry or laugh.
And mine say the same thing they always do: I need him.
I'm not satisfied.
I want him more.
I'm more painfully aware of the state of my sex life.
That's why I use this scene so many times. Because my ex-boyfriend wasn't here.
He didn't want to tear my clothes off. He didn't even want me, really.
I know it's normal, medically speaking. Sure, on average, men have higher libidos than women, and men are more likely to experience spontaneous desire (they get horny for no reason at all), and women are more likely to experience responsive desire (they want sex only after someone else initiates). But people aren't averages.
And everyone responds to stress differently.
Of course, my boyfriend lost his sense of lust during the exhaustion of residency.
Of course, between his lack of exercise, poor diet, and phone addiction, he didn't crave the visceral experience of moving his body with mine.
I knew why he didn't initiate, why he rejected my advances, why he didn't really participate when we had sex—