He shifts a little and presses a kiss to my hip, trailing his lips across my stomach before moving up to my sternum. He settles there, nuzzling his face against my breasts, and I shudder again. The fabric of his pants against my naked flesh is a heady combination. He manages to slide his arms around me, and I automatically return the favor, holding him close. I let out a long, shaky breath as I try to calm my still wildly-pounding heart. I clear my throat, hoping it doesn't come out as scratchy as it feels right now. "What was that about?"
"What was what about?" he mumbles, pressing his lips against my breast, making me shudder all over again.
I sigh and shift a little, surprised at how awkward it feels to say the words. "All the…uh…going down on me…stuff." I roll my eyes at myself. I'm an adult. Currently, I'm a naked adult lying in bed with the guy she's fantasized about for the better part of a decade—a guy who, for what it's worth, took no convincing at all to run off in the middle of the day to have sex—and I can't manage to say "going down on me" with any amount of confidence or grace.
"Oh. I just wanted to make sure that—I mean, I didn't know if you'd really…"
My eyebrows jump up in a combination of surprise and amusement. Josh Lyman, of all people, is suddenly bashful? The man that literally just had his face between my legs is turning vaguely pink at the idea of talking about it? It's on the tip of my tongue to tease him about it when my brain catches up to what he's asking, and my heart aches at the sweetness of it.
"I didn't fake it, Josh," I answer softly, scratching my fingers across his scalp again.
"It's okay if you did," he answers, suddenly avoiding my eyes. "Last night, today…I know it's different for women, so I just wanted to make sure that you—"
"Josh." I give his hair a tug, waiting until he looks up at me. "I promise you—I didn't fake it."
"But—"
"Josh!" I exclaim, exasperated. "I wouldn't lie about this. Why would I lie? What would I get out of faking an orgasm and then lying about it?" Do women really fake it that often? Do they fake it that often with him? Is that why he's so worried about it? Because Josh is good at sex. I can't imagine any reason that any woman he's been with in the past wouldn't have been thoroughly satisfied. Or has he just listened to too many bitter women who maybe don't participate in the act as much as they could and wind up feeling slighted? Maybe he's watched a few too many romcoms somehow and has gotten the idea that because some women fake orgasms some of the time, that all women are faking it, especially the first time she has sex with a guy.
"Are you sure?" he asks, lifting his eyebrow at me speculatively.
I roll my eyes and cup his face in my hands, pulling at him until he gets the hint and slides the rest of the way up my body. "I promise you. I didn't fake a thing." The corners of his mouth curve up into a soft smile just before he presses his lips to mine.
It's always a little weird—kissing someone after oral sex. You really can taste yourself in their mouth, and it can be odd. For some reason, though, it's not weird with Josh. It's actually kind of amazing. He's kissing me, our mouths are moving slowly against each other's, our tongues are moving in a strange, perfect tandem, and I'm everywhere in him. No—we are everywhere. I can taste him, too, the multiple cups of coffee consumed in too short of a time, the pastries and junk food he's ingested all morning without noticing, and whatever it is that makes him Josh. All of it's there, both of us, blending together into something that somehow makes sense.
Or maybe my brain's on overdrive from having four orgasms—non self-induced, I mentally specify—in the space of twelve hours and I'm romanticizing everything.
Before he settles against me completely, I snake my hands in between us, fumbling with his belt buckle. I tug at it a few times before I realize he must have done something funky to it after hastily throwing on his pants just a little while ago. I feel my lips quirk at the memory of him stumbling around like a newborn animal while Ronna stood outside the room, Josh grabbing any piece of clothing he could find, including my own pants that he tried to stuff himself into.
The thought of Ronna makes me remember that I have a job I'm supposed to be doing right now. Lou still needs me to go on TV and behave like a normal human being.
That thought, however, is pushed from my mind again as I feel Josh's hands join mine, our fingers tugging and pulling together to get the stubborn strip of leather to succumb to our will. I grin against his mouth at the absurdity of it all before he breaks away, pulling himself up to his knees. Smiling at me ruefully, he yanks at the belt a few times until it finally gives up the fight. Within moments, he has his pants undone and shoves them down to his thighs before collapsing against me, his mouth finding mine instantly. His hands tangle in my hair, tugging just hard enough at the strands to make me shiver. I draw my feet up and push at his pants with my toes, managing to shove them down to his ankles before he takes over, kicking his legs to remove them the rest of the way. I can't help but gasp a little at the friction he creates in the process, the thin cotton of his boxers rubbing against me, and the odd, detached part of my brain notices that he's only a little hard against me.
Not that I'm judging. He's in his forties and I know it can take some time to recover after sex. Hell, I've been with guys significantly younger that haven't been able to rouse themselves after sex enough to see if I have a blanket to cover me, never mind be working toward a second round so quickly after the first. He doesn't seem concerned with it. He actually seems quite content to pay attention to me for the time being.
I'm not gonna fight it.
Never mind that Josh is an amazing kisser. I spent a lot of years trying not to let myself think about it too much, and for the last several weeks, it's been almost all I could think about. That first kiss, though…it wasn't any indication of what he's really capable of.
His lips trail down my neck, gently sucking and nipping at my skin. I wouldn't be surprised if I wind up with tiny little red marks all over my body by the end of this, but I can't seem to bring myself to care. I'm sure it'll matter when I'm on national TV with a hickey on my neck, but right now…I never want him to stop.
He comes to the hollow of my throat, his tongue tracing delicate patterns there, and I feel him grab at my left hand, carefully pulling it from its place in his hair. He twines his fingers with mine as he stretches our arms out across the bed, and my heart flutters in an odd way.
He kisses my collarbone for a few moments before looking up at me and smiling. "You have so many freckles." I have no idea how to respond to that; of all the things we've said and done between last night and this afternoon, that feels the most intimate. I can't even begin to explain why, either. I do actually have a lot of freckles. The combination of Irish and Italian DNA left me with fair skin that, miraculously, doesn't burn a lot. It does freckle, however, but not in a way that he would have really seen before now. My chest, my shoulders, my arms…all of it fairly covered in slightly less pale dots, sometimes giving me the illusion of not being entirely pasty.
He drops his head down to my skin, his lips immediately landing on a freckle. Moments later, he slides to the next one, then another, and another, slowly working his way from my clavicle to my shoulder. His fingers squeeze mine, and my breath catches in my throat. I glance down at him, but he's focused on my freckles, his mouth attempting to make contact with every one of them. There's a part of me—albeit a very small part—that wants to tell him that we probably don't have time for this sort of thing. Whatever "this sort of thing" is. I don't hate it—I don't hate it at all. I guess I'm just not sure what his goal is.
He sucks against my skin gently, and something he said earlier floats through my hazy brain. He kept mentioning it being romantic, or at least how certain things were making it less so. …Is that what he's trying to do now? Last night was fantastic, and earlier today was a hell of a lot of fun, but I don't suppose "romantic" is a word I'd use to describe either encounter. We've spent most of a decade lusting after each other—I'm taking a not-so-big leap of faith in assuming he's felt the same way—and that didn't leave a lot of room for much other than the actual act. Not that I'm complaining about that; I certainly don't feel like I was missing out on anything. We just didn't do the whole seductive, candlelight thing.
Does he want romance? Does he want romance with me? Josh has never struck me as someone overly romantic, but what do I know? There had to be something that kept bringing Amy Gardner into his orbit, something other than the good sex part.
I shudder, and this time it's not entirely because of the magic of Josh's mouth. Thinking about him with anyone else right now is weird and not at all exciting.
Fortunately, he doesn't notice that I've managed to distract myself. He brings our joined hands to his lips and kisses my knuckles, and I feel a shiver of an entirely different sort run through me. He untangles our fingers and smiles at me, settling himself against me to kiss me once more. He takes hold of my right hand stretches it out across the bed, and I squirm against him a little in anticipation of the next round of what my mind can only describe at the moment as worship.
He drags his lips down my neck again before starting in on the freckles on the right side of me. My hips buck a little, and I realize we've been slowly pushing against each other for some time now. He's made quite a bit of progress in his recovery, his erection rubbing against me promisingly. I pull my legs up, running my feet up the outside of his thighs, until I can hook my toes in his boxer shorts. I shove them down to his ankles in one quick motion, reveling at the feel of being pressed against him. His eyes dart up to meet mine, and we grin simultaneously. I slide my fingers through his hair and give him a gentle tug, but he ignores me, intent on paying homage to all of my freckles.
Maybe it makes sense, though. Despite our odd run-in this morning, he was very sweet. Awkward as hell, but sweet. Earnest, I guess. I'm not entirely sure what was going on his head; part of me is sure that he woke me and pretended to be asleep, but if that's the case, I haven't been able to figure out the motive. Was it to make sure I was really there? To get me out? To talk to me? But, he was sweet, in his uncomfortable, rumpled way. Sucking toothpaste out of the tube is weird, but I appreciate what he was doing. The way he looked at me when he asked how I was feeling, everything about how disheveled and sleepy he was when he found me hastily throwing on my clothes. I don't know if that was his attempt at romance, or to maybe make up for the definite lack of finesse and restraint from both of us a few hours before. Maybe that's what this is about now.
Maybe I should just relax and let myself enjoy the fact that right now I'm with a guy who wants to pay this sort of attention to me, despite the fact that we have so many other things we should be doing right now. God knows it has to be good for him to be distracted right now, and if he wants to focus his considerable energy on me, who am I to argue?
I'm assuming he's wearing pants at this point because the captioning for this episode mentions a belt buckle clanging, so I figure he put his pants on to answer the door. Also, am I the only one who's still trying to figure out what Josh was doing with the rolling over, touching her shoulder, rolling away thing? Was he trying to wake her up? Make sure it was really her? I mean, I would think if he were trying to get her out, he wouldn't have hastily thrown on his clothes and ran to find her in the bathroom. Did he just want the upper hand? I'm still confused by that moment.