hand to her hip. For one horrifying moment she thought he’d stop her—maybe tell her that grown adults did not dry hump in the middle of one’s living room—but he just urged her on. He never stopped kissing her, never stopped exploring her mouth. As if kissing was his be-all and end-all rather than just the first step to get to sex.
God, I am so messed up.
He squeezed her ass and nipped her bottom lip. “How we doing?”
“Good.” Was that her voice? She sounded like she was doing something requiring a whole lot more exertion than kissing Gideon Novak. If this is what kissing is like, am I going to survive actual sex?
Who cares? It’d be a glorious way to go.
He used his grip on her hip to pull her closer yet, lining up his cock with her clit. “And now?”
She hissed out a breath. Please don’t stop. She could come like this if they kept it up. “Really good. But—” She didn’t want to talk about it, didn’t want to do anything to make this stop, so she went in for another kiss.
Gideon tightened his hold on her hair just enough to prevent her from moving. “But?”
His insistence on honesty had seemed like a good idea at the time—how could she improve if she didn’t know what she was doing wrong?—but in practice it felt like he was stripping her bare in a way that had nothing to do with sex. She closed her eyes, because it was easier to answer when she wasn’t meeting his gaze. “Isn’t dry humping kind of juvenile?” Are you going to mock me if I orgasm from this? Maybe make a joke about cobwebs or how long it’s been for me?
His chuckle pulled at things low in her stomach. “Does this feel juvenile to you?”
“No.” It felt hotter than it should have and even a little dirty. She wanted it too much, and that was the problem. She forced herself to open her eyes and found him watching her with a contemplative expression. “What?”
“Pleasure isn’t something you can put limits on, Lucy. There isn’t a right way to go about it. Would you tell someone who was eating one of those double-chocolate-death desserts you love so much that they were eating it wrong if they did it differently than you?”
“Of course not.” She blinked. How had he possibly remembered her favorite dessert?
“Then why is this wrong?” He urged her to rock against him again. “Feels good to me. Feels good to you. No reason to overthink it.”
When Gideon put it like that, it sounded so simple. Deceptively simple. She started to ask another question but forced herself to silence it. This insecurity wasn’t her. This was the ghost of her relationship with Jeff coloring the current interaction.
Exactly what she’d been afraid would happen.
“Thank you for agreeing to this, Gideon. You didn’t have to and—”
“Lucy.” He framed her face with his big hands, preventing her from looking away. Those dark eyes were so incredibly serious. “Stop thanking me for this. The matchmaking shit? Sure. Not this. You’re crazy if you think I’m not getting something out of it—same as you. Enjoy it. Enjoy me. It’s as simple as that.”
Easier said than done. The malicious voice that had spent far too many years lurking in the back of her mind wouldn’t be silenced. Not completely. Pity fuck. She pressed her lips together. “I want to have sex now.”
“No.”
She frowned. “What?”
“No.” He sat up, forcing her to grab his shoulders to stabilize herself, and then stood, taking her with him. “You want me to teach you? Then we’re doing this on my terms. You were enjoying the hell out of this and something tripped you up.” He laid them down on his ridiculously comfortable couch. She sank into the cushions as his weight settled over her. It felt good. Right.
It scared the shit out of her.
“Gideon.”
“My terms, Lucy.” He kissed her again. Before it had been sweet, and then intense, but she hadn’t realized he was holding back until that moment. Gideon kissed her like he owned her. He took her mouth, urging her to meet him halfway.
She held back for all of one second; it was impossible to maintain distance with his very presence overwhelming her. So she let go, tangling her tongue with his. The second she did, he started to move.
It had felt good when she was on top, but it was nothing compared to him pressing her into the couch as he stroked his cock against her clit. One long slide up and then another back down. The desire that had been put on hold while she’d let her insecurities get the best of her seared her—with interest. As if it’d been waiting for her to just let go and enjoy this moment for what it was. Pleasure. No questions asked.
She arched up to meet him. “That feels good.”
Gideon hitched a hand beneath her knee and drew her leg up and out, opening her farther. He kissed her again and kept up that slow drag that had sparks dancing at her nerve endings. Her body wound tighter and tighter with each stroke until she teetered on the brink. Lucy writhed against him, trying to get closer, to get him where she needed him, to do whatever it took to reach that edge. “Gideon, please.”
He shifted back and she sobbed out a breath at the loss of him. But he didn’t make her wait long. He slid a hand beneath the waistband of her yoga pants and into her panties. His rough curse would have made her smile under other circumstances, but she was too busy holding her breath. So close. Please just touch me.
He did.
He made a V with his fingers and slid it over her clit in the exact same motion he’d been doing with his cock before. She lasted three strokes before she came apart in his arms, her pleasure drawing a cry from her lips and blanking out her mind into delicious static. He softened their kiss to the barest brushing of lips and then shifted to the side so his weight wasn’t completely on her.
Lucy blinked at the pale gray ceiling and tried to reconcile what had just happened with reality. I just came. Without pressure. Without having to force it or fake it. A world-ending orgasm and Gideon was the one who’d coaxed it from her. “Wow.” As soon as the word popped out of her mouth, she cringed. What a stupid thing to say. She was hardly a virgin and she wasn’t an idiot teenager, no matter what they’d just done.
Gideon gave another of those low laughs. “All flavors, Lucy.”
Against her better judgment, she couldn’t help comparing what they’d just done to her experiences with Jeff when they’d first started dating. Night and day. Even though it’d taken her and Jeff a bit to work up to sex, he’d always had an air of impatience about him when they were intimate—like he couldn’t wait to get to the next step. Add that to his competitive need to make her come multiple times every time they were together and the pressure had twisted with the desire until it made her jumpy every time they’d been alone together. Things had changed a little once they’d finally had sex, but then other elements had come into play.
Boring.
Uninspired.
Like fucking a doll.
“Lucy, look at me.” Gideon’s voice drew her out
