Read Online The Opposite of Love by T.A. Pace - Free Book Online Page B

his face as though he trimmed it that way. He was charming, made her laugh, and a Bears fan? Her father would definitely approve. James had started to take on that shininess that men did when she found herself taking them seriously as a potential mate. But most importantly, there was chemistry. She was aware of her insides when she was with him, of a pulsing electricity she hadn’t felt in years and didn’t know she still could.
    It was three weeks into their relationship—their seventh date—when she took James to bed. He’d started getting physical with her on their third date, stealing touches of her breasts and squeezing her behind when they made out on the sofa, but then he stopped trying around the fifth. It wasn’t that she worried he’d give up and go away—she was prepared for that. And if he wasn’t the kind of guy who was willing to wait a little while, he’d save her a lot of time and energy if he bailed out early. When she decided it was time, it wasn’t that she was desperate for sex; Derek had her needs covered. She simply wanted James. Bad.
    The way he touched her as they walked from the car to the house, one hand barely grazing her lower back… it made her tingle. When he kissed her goodnight, his lips betrayed his desire, his breath was hot on her neck, and he trailed small kisses from her ear to her chin. Honestly, it was all she could do not to pull her blouse off and say, “Keep going.” Every time she felt his erection through his jeans, she craved his hardness in her hands, her mouth, and yes, deep inside her. But sex was not something she would decide to have in the moment, when hormones raged or alcohol lowered one’s inhibitions. She'd been less impulsive since Derek had come along. Whether that was because she was getting older or because she was having sex regularly, she couldn't say.
    One Saturday in May, she and James left her house to go to a show, and she’d already decided. Later that night when she stopped the make-out session on the sofa to ask whether he’d like to go upstairs to her bedroom, he smiled, nodded, and led her upstairs without a word, as if he might screw up ‘yes.’
    The first time hadn’t been exceptional, but then it rarely was. The tempo was too fast and the way he buried his head in her hair and pressed his entire weight on her made her feel claustrophobic. He spent the night without discussion and in the morning she lay with her back to him as he ran a hand lightly over her side, making her aware of her own curves. His touch on her naked waistline and his lips on her shoulder made her squirm. He traced his fingers over her rear end, then over her hip and to her hip bone, where he teased the ridge with a feather-soft touch and she sighed. “I love your hips,” he said, and he gripped her hip bone like a handle, digging his fingers up to the knuckle under the ridge, pulling her behind to his groin with a quick burst of force. The remains of sleep left her and she gasped, froze for a moment, waited for his next move. He released her hip and moved his hand between her legs, and his erection against her backside stoked her desire.
    James was a corporeal lover, at times more brutish than Melanie’s past boyfriends, but he was also a quick study and after a few weeks of evening and morning sessions two or three times a week, he was giving her orgasms without fail. What struck her as more intimate than the sex, though, was sleeping next to him. He tended to talk in his sleep—nothing that made any sense at all—but she found herself listening in those vulnerable moments to his subconscious spilling out in strange bits of emotion and imagery. “You don’t belong here,” he said once, his face creased in frustration. “Can and will be used against you,” another time. And “The pink one.” Sometimes she had to laugh.
     
     
    On a Saturday morning several weeks after she and James started having sex, Melanie slept in. Slipping quietly out of bed at