Professor Feelgood (Page 70)

He pushes my hair away from my face. “Why would you feel shame about this? And what do you mean by meltdown?”

I take a breath and tell him all about my problem. The panic, the numbness, the inevitable shutdown. He’s supportive but also sympathetic.

When I finish, he pushes up onto his elbow and gazes down at me. “So, what happened when you dated guys? You just didn’t have sex?”

I shrug. “I still had it. Rarely. I just didn’t enjoy it.”

“Jesus, Ash. So you’ve never ––” He mimes an explosion. “––before?”

I laugh. “I orgasm all the time. Just not with other people. I was beginning to think it would never happen.”

“And you thought that was your fault. That’s why you told Derek you were broken.” When I nod, he sighs. “I’m no sex expert, and I certainly don’t have enough experience to give you hard numbers, but I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, you’re not alone. There are millions of women out there who don’t come with their partners, and sometimes … yeah, sure it’s because they find it hard to relax. But sometimes …” He shakes his head. “No, screw that. A lot of the time, guys are just shitty lovers. If men had to make women orgasm to get them pregnant, the world’s population would still be in double-digits.”

I laugh. Trust him to say the perfect thing to make me feel better. “Women need to talk about this more, so we don’t all feel defective.”

“I agree. Why didn’t you talk to me about it?”

“Because I didn’t want you to think I was a freak.”

He grabs my waist and pulls me closer. “Woman, I once watched you fit twelve packets of Hubba Bubba in your mouth at once. I was the only mourner at a two-hour funeral you threw for a dead caterpillar. One summer, you spent an entire week randomly moving stuff around my bedroom in an attempt to convince me I was being haunted.”

I put my hand on his chest and run my fingers across the light smattering of hair. “And it worked. Remember when I hid behind your door covered in a sheet, and when you walked in, I jumped out and made you pee?”

“For the last time,” he says, feigning annoyance. “It wasn’t pee. I was carrying a glass of water. For you. And you made me spill it.”

“Uh huh. Sure I did.” I graze my fingers lower, over his abs.

His eyelids flutter for a moment, and when he speaks again, his voice is strained. “What are you doing?”

I move down lower and finger the waistband of his jeans. “Nothing. Just wondering why you’re still wearing these.”

He watches with wary eyes. “Because if they come off, I’m going to spend the rest of the day making love to you and not writing. And then, my gorgeous, sexy-as-hell editor would kick my ass. No matter how much I want it, satisfying my need to be inside you does nothing for my deadlines.”

I lift the comforter and look down. Even under the covers, I can see his erection straining the denim. “Wow, that looks uncomfortable.”

He gives me a wry smile. “If you think I’m not used to being constantly, painfully hard around you, then you haven’t been paying attention. This is my new normal.”

I graze over the long ridge in the denim, and his eyes burn into me. This is thrilling. The power I have to make him look like that.

“When was the first time I gave you a hard on?” I ask, continuing to feel the shape of him. “At the HEA party?”

He keeps his eyes on my face, but his breathing is getting more and more ragged. “No comment.”

“Was it before that? In the bathroom when you were tending my head wound?” He just stares, trying to hide the pleasure that’s playing out on his face, but failing. “Further back than that?”

“Much further back.” His voice is tight.

I sit up so I’m facing him and continue with light, teasing touches. “When?”

His gaze drops to my breasts, and a look of pain crosses his face. “When I was fifteen. I was out on the porch roof one night, and … your bedroom curtains weren’t as opaque as you thought.”

“So, you spied on me getting undressed?”

He looks mildly ashamed. “Not intentionally. But when it was happening, I was physically incapable of looking away. You had the most beautiful body I’d ever seen. You still do.”

I get a flash of Ingrid in that tiny black bikini, but I push it away and try to concentrate on the way he’s looking at me. The way he makes me feel.

“That was when we were fighting, Jake.” I apply some pressure, and he makes a low noise. “You ogled a girl you hated?”

“I was angry with you. I wasn’t dead.”

I don’t know if it’s normal to feel this turned on by giving him pleasure, but my need for him is growing by the second.

“I’d be outraged about this, but …” I look down and grip him through his jeans. He watches with hooded eyes. “I spent a lot of time on that porch roof, too, and you didn’t even have curtains.” When I stroke him gently, he digs his fingers into the mattress. “One night when I was out there, it was late, and I couldn’t sleep. I was staring up at the stars when I heard … noises … coming from your room. So, I creeped over to your side of the roof and … I could see you, lying in bed. And you didn’t look like a boy anymore. You looked like a man.” I press my whole palm against him, and he groans. “And you were … touching yourself.” I look up at him. The expression on his face is bestial. “It was the most arousing thing I’d ever seen. When I got back to my bedroom, I thought about you. That was the first time I made myself come.”

“So, you objectified me?” he says softly, his voice rough. “You masturbated while thinking about me but wouldn’t talk to me?”

I push up onto my knees and lean over him. “I was angry with you. I wasn’t dead.”

With an animalistic sound, he flips me onto my back, and within a few seconds, his jeans are off. He kisses me so hard, I can’t catch my breath, and then his hands and mouth are everywhere at once. With his jeans gone, I’m finally free to touch him, and Lord, it feels good. Knowing he’s this hard because of me, makes me feel like a goddess. The power that I feel makes all the doubt and self-consciousness disappear, and I begin to see myself as he sees me.

I push him onto his back and kiss my way down his body, and then all thoughts fade away as I take him in my mouth. He responds by groaning so loudly, it echoes through the whole apartment. In the same way he knew exactly how to please me, I know what’s going to blow his mind. I don’t think, I just go on instinct. I read his noises, note what makes him grip the bed or tangle his fingers in my hair. I feel the ebb and flow of his pleasure and know the perfect time to straddle his hips and slide down, inch by breath-stealing inch.

When he’s fully inside me, we both freeze, and I have no doubt the awe I’m seeing on his face is mirrored on mine. How can it feel like this? How can I accommodate all of these intense emotions and him at the same time? It feels impossible.

I have so much I want to say to him, so many questions to ask, but right now I just kiss him and try to make the passion I’m feeling speak for me.

When he pulls back, all I can do is watch his face, because there’s nothing more mesmerizing than Jacob Stone in the throes of pleasure. The way he squeezes his eyelids shut and throws his head back is the same image that was burned into my brain as a teenager. I suspect it’s lurked in my subconscious for years, helping to sabotage interactions with men who weren’t him.