Forty-Eight

WHEN Arianna could finally open her eyes, she stared at the screen of her phone, still dazed, until she realized that Eric was not doing anything but watching her, his chin tucked in both his hands, and he was lying on his front on the bed.
“Eric…” she breathed his name in a sound that was both a laugh and an embarrassed cry.
He breathed in, deep, slow. “God… I’ve never watched anything so erotic. Baby, you’re the sexiest, seriously hottest woman I have ever met.”
She was still breathless. “Eric… you just… watched?”
He nodded, his eyes still dazed. “You were magnificent…”
“But you said you’re going to do it with me?”
“You said you wanted to watch me, too,” he told her, then his lips twitched naughtily. “Are you ready?” he asked as his hand reached for the hard, angry rod that protruded from the shaved area in the apex of his powerful thighs.
She suddenly felt like her tongue just got shoved down her throat and she couldn’t give him anything but a whimper and a nod.
With a sexy grin, he changed back to his position before she closed her eyes a moment ago and lost herself in his mesmerizing voice and her self-exploration.
She made herself comfortable in her own bed and would have covered herself with her blanket except she saw him shake his head as he started to move his over his manhood again, and she stopped.
She bit her lower lip when his eyes settled on that spot between her thighs, and impulsively, she opened them further, and his moan corresponded to the arousal she saw deepen on his flushed, handsome face.
Instead, she took Riqui, and used the pillow croc to lay her head on, mostly because she could smell Eric’s cologne on it.
And she watched him do his thing.
Unlike him, she was quiet, except for her breathing… soft gasps, and the moans she couldn’t keep in as she watched how virile he was in every movement of his muscles, the way he turned his head, or his eyes when they connected with hers, and the exquisite expressions on his face as his body got tauter and tauter, his jaw more pronounced.
She lost her breath so many times… when he closed his eyes, when his tongue slipped out again to wet those pleasurable lips… and a hand that controlled its whipping until he finally let go.
She stopped breathing completely when he came, the familiar manly groan from him shooting through her earphones and sending a thrill of current throughout her naked body, and her eyes were unblinking, not wanting to miss any second…
He was breathing hard and harshly when he opened his eyes to check on her. And her lips were still a bit open so she closed them.
Then she swallowed.
Loudly.
He was still breathing hard, and she could hear him in both ears.
Her eyes followed the glistening thin spread of his perspiration as he lay there in a languid form on the sheets, his seed drops of whitish cream on his trembling abs.
And all she wanted at that moment was to kiss his lips, to rub herself against him.
“The look on your face right now is killing me, Yna…” he whispered to her through the lines.
She closed her eyes as the vibration of his voice tickled her body again. And she just knew…
With her eyes closed so she wouldn’t have to see his face, her hand reached for her pussy again, and she played with her clit a moment, dipped two fingers inside her, and reached for that special spot…
And shocked, yet delighted, she felt herself coming again… hard.
His murmurs and croons of encouragement still whisper in her ears when she came back from that, and she opened her eyes and he was smiling at her in wonderment.
And there was nothing she wanted more than anything but to have him there with her to nuzzle his neck and cuddle with, and to spend moments of kissing… and kissing…
“I miss you so much,” she whispered to him.
His whole face softened. And he took a deep breath. “Do you know that just one word from you and I’ll be there?”
At the look on his face right then, she believed him. “Oh, Eric, we can’t. That’s just so immature of us, you know. They’ll laugh at us and my brother will mock me to death.”
“They don’t have to know,” he replied mutinously.
She laughed softly, then whispered. “I love you… but we have an arrangement. Everyone knows about us. We don’t need to sneak around.”
He took a deep breath, then closed his eyes and groaned as if that was how he could get rid of his impatience, then he opened his eyes and looked at her. “I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s just that I’m so obsessed with you that I want you with me all the time.”
She pursed her lips as she looked up at the ceiling of her room, still wondering how someone like him could say something like that to someone like her. It was all just so… unbelievable… still.
“You know I don’t like it when you’ve gone quiet,” he told her as he reached for a box of tissue from the side of the bed to clean himself up with.
She reached for her clothes. “I’ll dress up in case someone comes in to ask me something or other,” she murmured to him as she started to put her panties back in.
He nodded.
“Not that I’m asking for your opinion.”
He frowned. “No, you’re not. Hey… did I upset you, baby?”
Oh my god… he only had to use that tone and she melted like butter on a hot pan. And she wasn’t even upset about anything.
“I just miss you so much and this is the first time I’m going to be away this long.”
Since he reminded her of that, she, too, started to feel bad about it.
She wore her pajamas back quietly, and she had to remove the earphones because the wires were in the way of her movements. He watched and waited for her until she was back on the bed and comfortable.
He also had his blanket covering his lower body again. But her eyes lingered on the bunched muscles on his upper arms and chest, then she had to look away because she knew he must be noticing it.
“Baby?”
Oh. Yes. He thought he’d upset her. “No, I am not upset or anything like that. I was just thinking.”
“About something that upsets you? Is it something about us?” he asked, his chiseled face still looking worried. It was so unfair, that even on a small screen, he still managed to be the most handsome man she had ever seen.
But he was more than that.
He was sensitive and loving, so fair and so kind, and so wonderfully sweet.
And he loved her.
“Arianna…” he called in a cajoling voice.
She smiled at him, then rolled her eyes. “Well, if you must know. Sometimes I still get overwhelmed that someone like you could be with someone like me… and that your father is okay with it, and my mother is fine with it. Even Tommy isn’t giving you a problem and now, he’ll side with you in an argument more than he’ll side with me. I just… I just sometimes still can’t believe it, given our first meeting, and—”
“What can I do for you to forget about that night, baby? I will do anything—”
“Who says I want to?” she protested. “I was so scared that night… I knew that. But…”
His face, which had darkened with guilt, was arrested when she paused as she tried to gather the words to explain to him how she felt.
“But in hindsight, I can now remember how gentle you’ve been, how you thought of my needs even when you were drunk or that you didn’t even know it was my first time,” she told him softly, minding in case someone was walking right outside her bedroom door, though she knew her voice wouldn’t carry that far. The door was solid wood, and the walls were thicker, unlike in their previous hut of a house where everything was made of bamboo and used drywall partitions and they all could talk through walls. “You didn’t even know me. You think I was a call girl, and yet, you tried to take care of me. The more I think of it and remember, the more I find it hard not to love you…” she confessed, her face heating up, as she bravely met his stare. “So, no, I don’t want to forget it, or anything about you. Just in case it… we don’t work out, I feel so lucky I experienced you, Eric.”
She couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her lips because he was already grumbling at the part when she said they might now work, even though she could tell he was liking everything he had heard from her so far.
“Maybe I should just tell your mother we’ve had sex and how many times so she would marry you off to me already, then we can all be done with this?”
“Are you crazy?” she exclaimed.
There was a knock on the door. “Ate Yna, talk low. Inay is already sleeping. You’re going to wake her up.”
She bit her lower lip as Eric asked her what was going on.
“I was loud, and Tommy told me to be quiet outside the door since Inay is sleeping.”
“It’s late. Are you sleepy?”
“Not really. I was going to read a book but…”
“Yes?” he asked as he settled on his pillows for a more comfortable position to sleep.
“We’re still talking.”
He watched her for a moment, and she could see his brain working through the aliveness in his eyes. “Baby?”
“Yes?”
“Can I watch you read until I fall asleep?” he asked.
That felt weird and silly. And it made her feel giddy that she smiled at him. “Okay. I’m not going to talk to you right about now, anyway, since you’re going to work early tomorrow and you need to be sleeping.”
He nodded. “I feel sleepy after that… lovely activity we did,” he told her teasingly. “Thanks, babe.”
She rolled her eyes, and he laughed softly, a sexy sound in her ears.
“I’ll just let this be, okay? Goodnight, Eric.”
“Goodnight, my babe.”
She took the Kindle and turned the screen on, and it was already on the page where she’d stopped. She glanced at him, and his hooded eyes looked truly sleepy. She formed her lips into a kiss, and he did the same for her, grinning.
A few minutes later, he was snoring softly through the earphones. And it was a calming sound for her.
An hour later, she fell asleep facing his sleeping form on their video call, the phone hooked to the charger so the battery would not go low and terminate the call while they were sleeping.