Lost King by Piper Lennox (best self help books to read .TXT) 📕

really went all-out getting this place cleaned up, huh?”

“With friends like mine, you have to. It’s fun, having the house full of people every summer for a few weeks, but it’s also exhausting.”

“Because you have to clean so much afterwards?” she asks, voice muffled; she’s got her mouth on my back now, quietly kissing the nodes of my spine until she’s on her tiptoes. “Or because you start feeling all...Gatsby?”

“Gatsby?” I laugh and turn, expecting to find her absolutely wasted. She must be, to say something so random.

But, if anything, she looks more sober than when we first got to the bar.

“Yeah,” she says, “always throwing these big parties, but then vanishing. Going off by yourself somewhere. Watching all the action, but not being a part of it.”

She starts; I’ve just sent the music video playlist to the projector system, and the speakers boom to life around us. I scramble to turn it down to a low hum.

Ruby walks backward to the largest sofa. “That’s who you are,” she says. “Gatsby.”

The blanket pools under her feet. She nearly trips, but I grip the fabric in both fists and pull her back to me. Hard.

“Hey, wait,” I laugh. “Gatsby dies in the end.”

Brows knitting together, she thinks, then cringes with a smile. “Shit, you’re right. He does.”

“So...?”

“So,” she sighs, pushing my hair back, “sucks to be you.”

I put some slack in the blanket, leaning her away from me in the totally empty threat of letting her fall. She gasps, then bursts out laughing when she realizes she’s safe.

17

“One down, four to go.” Theo lowers me to the sofa with the blanket, calculated and confident, then follows my gaze to the stars embedded in the ceiling. “Shouldn’t be too hard, now that I’ve set the mood.”

“Careful. You’ll eat those words.”

“Words are the last damn thing I’ll be eating.”

Just like in the rideshare, his hands move fast. He pushes three fingers into me and buries his smile in my neck when I groan.

“And here you said you weren’t a screamer.”

“That’s not a scream,” I point out. But even I have to admit, it’s pretty damn close.

Theo gets my head spinning. He fingers me the way I’ve only been able to do myself, with this intuitive pressure and speed, but even better. His fingers are larger, and faster, and absolutely fucking relentless.

A familiar pressure builds between my hips: something I haven’t felt often...but know very well.

“Theo,” I stammer, “you—you have to stop for a second.”

He slows, but doesn’t stop. “Does it hurt?”

“No.” I shake my head and swallow; I’ve panted and moaned my way to a serious case of dry mouth. “But if you don’t stop, you’ll make me....”

I can’t say the word. It’s on par with “moist” in terms of hitting my ear completely wrong.

With a confused smile, he asks, “Make you come? Isn’t that the point?”

Again, I shake my head. “Not that.” I sink my teeth into my lip and hold up the edge of the blanket, which is still spread out underneath me. “I don’t want to get your blanket…wet.”

Theo looks down, still moving his fingers. He’s already beckoned a decent amount of liquid from my body as it is. I feel it soaking into the blanket under my butt.

“That’s what you’re worried about?” he laughs, when it all pieces together. “First of all, don’t be. And second, saying ‘I don’t want to get your blanket wet’ was the worst way to tell me.”

“Why?”

“Because now I just want to see this thing fucking soaked.”

He smiles again, but it’s not playful or joking, this time.

It’s downright dangerous.

Without warning, he thrashes his fingers against my G-spot. I let out a noise that, I hate to admit, might actually be a scream.

The pressure builds. My hips lift from the blanket, my thighs stiff and shaking, as I feel the liquid pour out of me.

Theo moans deep in his throat. “Fuck, Ruby, that’s it.”

The sensation is overwhelming: not an orgasm, but just as powerful and earth-shattering. My ears ring. I forget to breathe.

He doesn’t stop. Over and over, he draws this response from my body, groaning every time it happens, until I feel that the blanket under me is, in fact, soaked through. The fabric is cold but comforting. I feel filthy, but worshipped.

“Theo,” I gasp, when he moves down the length of the couch and sucks my clitoris into his mouth. Combined, the feelings are too much. Too damn good.

I come twice in a row, mere seconds between one peak and the next, before winding my fingers into his hair and pulling him up. “I can’t,” I sob. “I can’t.... No more.”

He obeys, but I think it might be more his own situation than mine making that call: when he comes up to kiss me, I feel his erection against my stomach, even harder than it was in the rideshare.

“Fuck,” he groans, swallowing the sound down as I grope him through the fabric. “You’ve got me rock-hard, Ruby.”

“I noticed.” Hand jobs are, so I’ve been told, a bit of a specialty of mine, so I quickly slip my hand into the open fly and pump him. He groans again, then louder when I use his pre-ejaculate to swipe my thumb around the head.

This is what I like about giving them: the up-close seat to a man’s twitching muscles, shuddering chest, and the low symphony of moans they insist on guarding too closely.

“Be loud, Theo.” I wrap my hand around him again and squeeze. “I want to hear what I do to you.”

“You can’t feel it?” he laughs, but gets interrupted by his own panting. He lowers himself to his forearms overtop me, bracketing my shoulders with