Maybe you'd have tried to stop me if you could

Nick would have been happy to go along with what Cinder wanted, even if he was a little apprehensive about interacting with her in her present state. He would have been fine if she wanted to take the lead and control the sexual situation they were about to engage in, if that would be what would make her most comfortable.

But right now, he was too confused about what was going on.

Cinder had told him that she was trying to “take care of him” as an excuse for him to do sexual acts with her, and he assumed the reason for this farce was because she was too embarrassed to be up front about what she wanted.

He would have been perfectly fine going along with that scenario. As long as Cinder was taking the lead, he’d let her do just about anything she was willing to do to him.

But…

Cinder wasn’t doing anything. She was straddling him, sure, and her amber eyes were hot with desire. But beyond that, she was still as a statue, no grinding, no touching, not even breathing as far as he could tell.

It was like she was waiting for him to be the one to make the first move.

Which was a very tricky position for him to be in, given their existing relationship.

Dani cleared her throat loudly and Cinder jumped in his lap.

“Wh-what is it!?” She snapped, turning around and glaring at the tomboy.

Dani gave her a pointed stare. “Are you just going to sit there?” She asked, raising her eyebrow. “Or are you…?”

“Sh-shut up!” Cinder’s face was on fire. She smacked Nick on the chest lightly. “He’s the one who-! Whoooo…”

She trembled on top of him as pleasure shot through her body. Apparently, Echo was getting impatient, and a light smack like that was enough to trigger her collar at this point.

Frankly, Nick couldn’t blame her. He knew how important it was to ease Cinder into this and give her as much time as she needed to feel comfortable about what she was doing, but the way she was waffling wasn’t working for anybody- certainly not for Cinder herself, who only seemed to be getting more impatient and uneasy.

If there was a way he could help her, he wanted to. But apparently, the only choice he had was to take the lead after all, and hope Cinder would be okay with it.

Once Cinder came down from her mini-orgasm, Dawn saw her opportunity and pounced on it without hesitation.

“You know, Nick does like it when a girl just leans back and takes all the loving he has to give her,” she said with a gleeful smile on her face. She licked her lips. “So, if you want to really inspire him, then that’s an idea.”

Like Nick, Dawn could see where Cinder was dragging this out towards. And just like him, she wanted to help Cinder take the steps necessary- only in her case, she wanted to throw the other girl into the deep end and see if she could swim.

Cinder was paralyzed. She’d already come this far, and she was too proud to back out now. But if she let things keep going on this route, then…

“F-fine!” She stammered out, her eyes shooting back down to Nick. She bit her lip and shook her head, and dug her nails into his chest. “Then… get these stupid clothes off!”

She grabbed Nick’s shirt and tugged with all her might. It was sexy to rip the clothes off of someone, right?

…Well, maybe it would have worked if Nick’s shirt had buttons. But it was a t-shirt, and Cinder wasn’t exactly brawny. Her efforts basically resulted in stretching the gray fabric around on his chest, and not actually getting any closer to tear the garment off of him.

“Come on, damn it! Fucking stupid piece of shit!” Cinder muttered, her face burning with embarrassment. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go! She-she was supposed to be freeing him from his physical restraints so he could take his passions out on her body! Not-not that she wanted something like that! She wanted to be in control!

…

Yes, exactly, Cinder wanted to be in control, she was the dominant one here! But being in control would be like admitting that she actually wanted to have sex with him, which she definitely didn’t. Kissing him, sure, but sex? No way! And-and not touching, either, nothing like that!

So, that was why she was stuck like this, and no other reason.

“Uh, let me get this off,” Nick said, sitting up slightly, causing Cinder to adjust the way she was sitting in his lap. Her eyes widened as he began to work his shirt off.

“W-wait, no!” Cinder hastily covered her eyes. “What are you doing?!”

What are you doing? Dani and Dawn both thought at the same time. At this point, they’d completely stopped playing around with each other, too engaged with what was going on right in front of them. Seeing Nick and Cinder being together like this…

It was quite a show, as Mary and Holly could attest. They’d finished clearing the table by this point, and were sitting together on the couch. Mary was polite enough to pretend not to watch (though she hadn’t left the room…) but Holly couldn’t take her eyes off.

…And not just because she was a voyeur! She was just as worried as Nick about Cinder, and she knew better than to trust the flustered girl’s word. She wanted to make sure that things didn’t end up going too far.

Nick was counting on her, and that meant a lot.

“I… I’m the one who’s supposed to be in charge, here!” Cinder insisted, swatting Nick in the chest again. She recoiled from the pleasure shooting from her collar, and nearly fell right off the bed as her body shook on top of him.

Nick had to wrap his arm around her waist to keep her from falling over. She twitched and jerked upright, then stared at him with wide eyes.

“Y-you…!” She stammered out.

“Just be careful,” Nick said, looking into her eyes. He adjusted his grip and helped her down onto the bed, before Cinder knew what was happening, their positions had switched. Now Nick was the one on top of her, and she was the one helpless to even fight back against him.

“I-!”

“Cinder, it’s fine!” Dawn slipped out of Dani’s grasp and crawled over to her, her eyes glazed over with pleasure. She leaned down and whispered into Cinder’s ear. “Deep down, this is what you want, isn’t it?” She encouraged the other girl.

Cinder stiffened and her eyes went as wide as oranges. She looked up at Nick, and swallowed loudly enough for the whole room to hear.

“I… I can’t do anything about it,” she mumbled, turning and staring at the wall. She rested her hands beside her head, and blushed. “I’m just here for you… to take your pleasure from me… so… get on with it already!”

It was mortifying for her to just lie back and take it. But what was she supposed to do?

If she wanted to get this collar off of her, then she would have to let Nick use her a little. Otherwise, she would have to touch him, and if she did that…

Would she be able to stop herself?

She felt Nick’s hand on her cheek, and a moan slipped past her lips before she could stop herself. She shivered under his touch, inadvertently (or not) leaning her face in closer to him, as if her body couldn’t resist his touch.

It was Ella working against her! It had to be! So-somehow!

Cinder didn’t want to admit the possibility that she might actually want this, want him to-

Nick leaned down and pressed his lips gingerly against hers. Another kiss he’d initiated… and it drew a tiny “Yeep!” from her mouth.

Such a gentle, tender kiss… and Cinder didn’t know what to do about it. A shudder of pleasure surged through her body and she bucked up against Nick, only then realizing how close he was to her. She leaned up against his chest and moaned into his mouth, and when his lips pulled away from hers, she whined in disappointment.

Cinder didn’t want to want it, but she couldn’t help herself. What she was feeling, what she was going through right now…

“More…” she whispered, staring up into his eyes. It was embarrassing to admit, but right now, Cinder was being totally honest.

Nick couldn’t believe his eyes. The woman staring up at him… it was still Cinder, wasn’t it? But the look in her eyes… she looked so much like Ella!

It was a stunning and unexpected reminder that the two of them were one and the same. The beautiful girl beneath him had two separate sides, but at their core, they were one and the same, and that… it was more than he’d expected.

He gulped and froze up with indecision.

Right now, Nick was at a crossroads. He knew as much. And it wasn’t an unusual feeling at this point- he felt like every damn choice he’d made tonight was a massive crossroad for him, with convoluted and twisted potential outcomes!

There was nothing he could really do about it. He had to make a choice.

He kissed her again- but not on the lips this time. He kissed Cinder on the nape of her neck, and felt her shudder beneath him. In response, he tucked his arm over her raised back and held her close to his chest, bringing her as close to him as possible to see how she reacted.

If she didn’t start kicking and screaming and clawing his eyes out, that was a good sign. …Right?

With his arm under Cinder like this, he had more leverage to lift her, which freed up his other arm to start exploring other places. But even as he started to move, he remembered the conversation he’d had with Holly earlier that night.

I have to be careful with how I do this. I can’t go too far. Nick knew that, for all of her bluster, Cinder didn’t want to have sex with him. Maybe she was open to doing other things, but the one clear statement that she kept coming back to all through the night was that she did not want to have sex.

Well… there were other things they could do than strictly having sex.

With Cinder’s skirt pulled askew, his hand found her thigh without much difficulty. Her breath hitched in his ear.

“Wh-where are you touching?!” She snapped at him, but her voice didn’t sound as angry and hostile as he would have expected from someone who actually didn’t want him touching her there.

If anything, the flustered tone in his ear was that of a woman who sounded like she wanted him to keep going. He couldn’t see her face due to his own face currently being buried in her neck, but Nick had the distinct feeling that right now, Cinder was playing “hard to get” with him.

But consent wasn’t so easy.

“What’s the matter?” He murmured in her ear. “You don’t want me touching you there?” It was just her leg. Contact that could be considered, at most, sensual. Not even heavy petting- she didn’t earn any Victory Points for it!

But he still retracted her hand.

He could almost feel the muscles in her face contract into a pout against his shoulder.

“Just… if-if you must,” she mumbled out, burying her face even deeper into his bare chest. “I don’t care, okay?”

Another obvious lie. He could feel how much she cared, because she was still squirming against him. The arm he had around her lowered, drifting down towards the small of her back, and he felt her tight waist shimmy against it. She was enjoying having his body on hers, even as she denied it profusely with her mouth.

He returned his hand to her thigh. It drifted a little higher, right up over the hem of her long sock, and made contact with her sweaty flesh.

It was strange- this was the most familiar he’d gotten with her body in all the times that they’d kissed. And it was Cinder who was letting him do it. He thought that when he finally got this far with her, it would be Ella in control of things. But maybe that was why it worked this way. Cinder wouldn’t have let Ella get this far.

To be with Ella, he had to get past Cinder’s defenses. He had to get the approval and acceptance of both of them, or nothing would ever come of their relationship. It was a complicated and tricky proposition, but… Nick was willing to go along with it.

Provided that she was as well.

Her skin was colder than he’d expected, given how hot she was running. Her could feel her face burning against his neck, but below her skirt, she was ice cold. He ran his hand along her thigh, scooping up the sweat that had gathered there, and gave her a gentle squeeze.

“Oh-!” Cinder twitched in his embrace again. Her body shook. She let out a moan, right in his ear, a deep, throaty “Ahhhhhnnnnn!”

“Ow!” Nick jerked back and nearly dropped her onto the bed. The pinch in his shoulder was like a set of needles piercing into him.

“Nick!?” Dawn had been watching from the sidelines, enjoying the scene, but she was suddenly all business again. She scurried over as Dani jerked upright, eyes wide.

“What-what happened!?” She stammered out, wiping her moist hand on bedcover. No one had been paying attention to her, so she’d taken the opportunity to do a little self-expression on her own. But the masturbation session had been cut short by Nick’s outburst.

Even Mary and Holly had jumped to her feet in alarm.

“It-it’s nothing,” Nick said, his face red. He rubbed his shoulder, where several tiny indents could be seen in a ring right beside his collar. They were a little red.

Dawn’s jaw dropped and she looked at the stunned latina shaking in his grasp.

“Did… did she just bite you?” Mary exclaimed from the couch. She hadn’t gotten a good look (not that she was peeping, or anything!) but she was pretty sure of what she’d seen.

“I-I didn’t, um… mean to,” Cinder stammered, her face aflame. Why had she done that!? One moment, Nick was touching her, and the next thing she knew, she’d sunk her teeth into his shoulder and nibbled on him!

Why the fuck would she do something as disgusting as that?!

“Cinder?” Dawn looked worriedly at Cinder, not sure what to make of the whole thing. She was worried for the both of them.

“I…!” Cinder’s mouth was moving but she couldn’t get the words she wanted to say to form. What could she tell him? “I’m sorry I bit you?”

…Well, yes, that would be a good start, but it would mean admitting fault, and Cinder wasn’t exactly an expert at doing that.

She looked helplessly up at Nick, almost scared of what he would say. She knew how she would react if someone tried to bite her!

But she didn’t see condemnation or scorn when she gazed into his eyes.

Just the opposite.

Nick looked at her with a gaze that radiated pure acceptance and understanding, and it just about melted her heart then and there. Tears started to well up in her eyes, and her lips quivered.

“I… I’m sorry, I don’t know why I-! It just… it just happened…!” Cinder didn’t even know how to begin to apologize, especially because Nick didn’t even seem mad at her. But all of her instincts told her that she had to.

Without knowing what else to do, she leaned up and tried to kiss him frantically before he could react and try to stop her.

“Whoa, hey!”

Unfortunately for Cinder, she wasn’t fast enough. Nick grabbed her by the shoulder with his free hand and held her back. Not for the logical reasons to stop her, the reasons that anyone else who had just been bitten by a prospective lover would use to justify not letting their mouth anywhere near them, but because he could feel the desperation coming off of her in waves and he didn’t want her to come apart on him.

Cinder stared into his eyes, and the wave of sadness and remorse that she’d been feeling just a second ago?

Gone.

“You don’t want to kiss me!?” She jerked away from him as anger replaced those other emotions that had been rooted in her gut. “Why!? Why not?!” She demanded furiously, narrowing her eyes into a glare.

“It’s not that!” Nick protested. He shook his head. “I just… you looked so desperate, I didn’t want you to force yourself.”

Cinder blinked, surprised by that response.

“Oh… uh…”

For once, she was actually calm. Maybe it was because the intensity of all the previous situations had left her feeling overwhelmed, but she actually didn’t want to smack him around at the moment.

It was actually a bit of a weird feeling if she was being honest with herself. She raised her head and looked him in the eye, and her face burned sheepishly.

“…I’m sorry I bit you,” she said again.

“It’s fine. You didn’t even break the skin,” Nick assured her.

“Just try not to do it again in the future?” Dawn asked Cinder, hoping that the other girl wouldn’t throw things off again. “Please?”

Cinder nodded, but pointedly didn’t look at either of them. She was too embarrassed to do that.

Nick wasn’t sure how to salvage tonight, to be honest. Whatever had been building between himself and Cinder, it had all but completely cooled off now. He wasn’t even hard at the moment, even though he was on his bed with three women again.

Not sure what else to do, his eyes dropped to her lips and he leaned forward and captured her mouth in another kiss.

Cinder gasped, eyes wide, and then began kissing back before she realized what her body was doing. It just felt so right to kiss him, she couldn’t help herself! She sank into his embrace and moaned into his mouth, feeling the pleasure washing over her body and loving every second of it.

Yeah… as twisted as it was, this definitely felt like what she wanted, and she couldn’t get enough of the pleasure!

Dawn sighed in relief as she watched the two of them kiss. Again. As long as they were doing that, she supposed, things were on the right track. And as long as there wasn’t any biting involved, of course. That was never fun.