The Belle and the Beard by Kate Canterbary (good book club books .txt) 📕

my skirt, twisting it until it was tight and rucked up around my waist. He dropped his gaze between my legs, staring at me with the kind of cool, unaffected focus that should not have turned me on. I didn't know why it did, why this inspection left my skin feeling too hot, too tight, but I couldn't escape it.

And I didn't want to.

"There's a condom in my pocket. Handle that," he ordered.

I was shaking now, every part of me flooded with this confluence of right and wrong. But that wasn't the whole of it because this wasn't wrong. There was nothing wrong with wanting a strapping lumberbear to fuck me into next Friday and there was nothing wrong with asking for it in rude, lusty terms. The part of my brain that set off these shame spirals, it was lying to me. It was lying about beauty and dignity and the space I was allowed to claim as my own. It was lying about everything—and I didn't know why I'd never noticed that before. I was allowed to have this. I was allowed.

His hips bucked when I edged his jeans down to his knees and rolled the condom over his length. He had the sort of erection that was so hard, his shaft pointed straight at the ceiling. I enjoyed them all but this type was special.

"If you don't sit that cunt down on my cock right now, I'll find that little clit-sucking vibrator of yours and torment you for the next six hours."

I groaned out loud because the one and only time we'd played with my toys, there were catastrophic orgasms for all. Linden slept for eleven hours. I couldn't sit, stand, or walk without feeling it for three days.

"Always so imperious," I murmured.

My knees braced on either side of him and my hand on his shoulder to keep me steady, I guided him into my opening. He ran his knuckles up my back, twisted his hand around the band of my bra, holding me in place and then forcing me down as he surged up. I looked down at my obscenely pebbled nipples, the skirt around my waist, the thick cock pounding up into me. I'd never felt as strong and desirable and adored as I did when he was inside me. I'd never felt adored like this before.

Was that the word for this? Adored? Was this it?

Or was this what it meant to feel beautiful?

I didn't know. Beauty was always wrong to me but this was too right. I closed my eyes and allowed myself to disappear into the pleasure of the shaft pounding between my legs and the rasp of his beard on my chest, my neck. I matched his rhythm, rocking my body against his to grab every bit of friction I could, and I stopped thinking. I stopped wondering whether Linden fucked the way he worshipped and if it was possible to be beautiful while also being depraved and if this was what it felt like to fall in love.

24

Linden

I frowned at my reflection in the mirror, adjusting my bow tie again. God, I hated these things. Ties in general but the ones that accompanied tuxedoes were such a pain in the ass. My parents just had to make this anniversary party black tie. As if the event would somehow increase in value because everyone was straitjacketed in fancy clothes.

I called through the bathroom door to Jasper, "You're sure you don't want to spend the night in Dartmouth? Ash and Zelda got a room and Magnolia and Rob are going back to my parents' house."

"We don't need to do that," came her muffled response.

I wandered through the kitchen to keep myself busy, straightening a few stray pieces of mail, placing a runaway lemon back in the fruit basket, pushing in the chairs. Jasper's notebook sat open on the table, her tidy writing calling to me from the page. On the bottom half, she'd jotted a grocery list of avocado, bread for toasting, bread for Lin's sandwiches, hand soap, cinnamon.

I didn't know why that made me smile but it did. A big, sloppy smile that felt hysterical. It was completely hysterical to read this little list and feel an enormous ball of heat in my chest, like the sun now lived inside me, and it was even more hysterical when I heard myself think, You love her.

The bathroom door opened then, while I was fool-grinning at her notebook and burning up from the sun I'd swallowed and thinking outrageous thoughts, and Jasper stepped out looking like that same sun trapped behind my ribs.

"You," she breathed, giving me a thorough once-over. "You clean up quite nicely."

I didn't know when I started moving but I stopped in front of her, still blinded and sloppy and maybe very much in love with her. I trailed my knuckles over the fabric covering her collarbones. "What color is this?"

"It's a very pale yellow," she said as she watched my hand. "In certain lights, it almost looks white. In others, it's buttery yellow. Chiffon is like that, it plays with the light."

"Is that what this is? Chiffon?" It seemed to swirl and billow around her, from her shoulders to her wrists and around her ankles. "It looks good on you."

She made the most adorably indifferent face in the world, saying, "This old thing?"

I traced my knuckles down her arm and back up again. I couldn't stop touching her, though I was also terrified to grab her and hold her the way I wanted because it seemed as though this dress was liable to disintegrate in my hands. There were times for ripping clothes and there were times for waiting until after the big party to do that.

"Did you get this with Magnolia and Zelda? That day when you went shopping?"

She shook her head and the wisps of hair that had slipped over her ears brushed her cheeks. I tucked them back into place, as careful as I could