by Julia Kent
Cool air hits the tip of my nose, inviting me to breathe in deeply, so I do. It takes four long, slow, methodical breaths for Mallory to join in, the impulse like a yawn. In my classroom, this works.
Turns out adults aren't all that different from four-year-olds.
“Are you okay?” I finally ask her, putting my hands on her upper arms, my light touch about giving her healing energy. Whatever I've got is hers, my higher self working to bring us both up to a better, calmer, more nurturing vibration.
“No. That was horrifying. Will bolted into the cabin and tried to close the door behind him but the bear was too fast and strong. I was tidying the kitchen counter and suddenly, Will was shoving me into the bedroom, trying to lock the door, but there aren't any locks! The bear somehow got the door open, so we hid in the closet. It didn't seem to want us–it just wanted food. Everything in the kitchen was in the refrigerator or put away. We had our phones and texted you.”
“We were out of range until we got closer to the house.”
“That's what Will said. And then we just… well, we screamed. Tried to get it to leave. But it was big and Will said there could be a mama and–”
“Deep breath.” We breathe together. Her energy cools, slightly. I take the sage stick and light it, not to drive bad energy away but more to cleanse the space.
Also, I just like the scent of sage.
“Will said we just needed to wait it out. Bears don't eat humans, and this one was small.”
“He's right.”
“But that was scary as hell.”
“It was.”
“How are you? I saw you two fighting.”
“It's–that was our first fight, I guess. First fight before we even sleep together.”
The way Mallory's mouth makes an O when she's surprised cracks me up. She looks like the AlwaysDoll, a sex device Perky protests against because of the use of toxins in the made-in-China products.
“You haven't had sex yet?”
“No. This weekend was supposed to be it.”
“And now we have two cavemen out there drinking pee juice to make the bears go bye-bye.”
“Right. So sexy.”
The two of us make caveman grunts and then devolve into laughter. Ah, the energy is changing.
Here we go.
The unmistakable sound of a window opening somewhere in the cabin makes us look at each other.
“Hey! Fletch! Bet I can write my name in the snow!”
“Oh, God,” Mal groans.
“It’s a perimeter, Dickhead! Not a dick cursive lesson!”
“They're getting pretty drunk, aren't they? Fletch is using Will's stupid nickname from high school. He called him Dickhead and Osgood called him Lowman.”
“BET I CAN PEE FURTHER THAN YOU!” Will shouts. “LET'S SEE WHO'S GOT THE LONGER–” a distinct pause hangs in the air until he finishes, “–STREAM!”
“We've descended into whose dick is bigger,” Mal sighs. “They're pretty drunk.”
I drop my voice. “Whose dick do you think might be bigger?”
“This! This is why the females can't do this! They don't have the arc!” Fletch's voice stretches out into a hint of a Boston accent, the word sounding just a bit like ahk.
“I think our date is going to be with Netflix – not dicks – tonight,” Mallory sighs. “Only two hours of internet per day?”
“I don't think they'll be awake in two hours at the rate they're going,” I whisper, my arm around her shoulders, the gesture turning into a tight hug we both need.
“I'm so sorry, Fi,” she says into my hair.
“Me too, Mal.”
“No, I mean–you haven't had sex yet? With him? Have you looked at him? He has a body to die for.”
“Mallory!”
“I might be engaged, but my eyes still work. You two have been dating for how long?”
“Three weeks or so.”
“And no sexytimes?”
“I didn't say no sex. Just not the sex.”
Her eyes dart all over the place as she leans in and asks, “What is the sex? Like, anal?”
“NOT ANAL!” I shout.
“Aw, man!” groans one of the guys from the other room, in a tone of serious disappointment.
“Who said that?” we hiss at each other, my heart jamming in my ribs as I look through the open bedroom door and see Will and Fletch in the kitchen, opening yet another beer.
“Might be better if we never find out who, exactly, said that,” Mal whispers.
“One more, Dickhead, and I think we get the job done,” Fletch says, lifting his beer bottle to toast with Will.
They miss.
“Eye-hand coordination is lost,” Mallory bemoans, pulling out her phone. “What do you want to watch?” she asks, opening the app. “I don't even want to think about what my bed smells like after that bear was in there,” she says with a shudder.
“We should go check.”
“No. I'll do it later, after Peefest is over. This is Will's phone, so we can use his data if we need to.”
“Movie or television series?”
“Movie. A rom com where the guys don't get drunk and pee the bears away.”
“I think we can find something that meets those criteria.”
“It's harder than you think.”
They overhear her, because someone shouts, “That’s what he said!” and two guys fall apart laughing.
Mallory quietly closes the bedroom door. We crawl into bed.
“You're shaking!” Mal says, face tight with worry.
“I'm just remembering one of my past lives.”
“Your what?”
“I went to a workshop where we did regression via hypnosis. In a past life, I ran a camp in Northern Canada. I died in a polar bear attack.”
“Fi!”
“And now I think this is why the bear came. So I could relive it, survive, and have Fletch save me.”
Skepticism radiates from Mallory's brow. “I think the bear was just hungry.”
“If you say so.” I can't stop shaking, though.
“You really believe that woo stuff? Really?”
“I don't not believe it. Why?”
“Because you're smart. Educated. You have a master's degree and – ”
“You think the way furniture is positioned in a room can make someone go bankrupt.”
“Feng shui is an ancient art that – ”
“Or cause them medical harm.”
“It's a study of energy that – ”
I cut her off with a palm. “I only told you about the polar bear because I needed a friend.”
“I am your friend!”
“Then support me. You don't have to believe what I believe. But can you respect the feelings I feel?”
“Of course!” We dissolve into a hug.
“You always smell like frankincense,” Mal whispers into my neck. A long sniff, then she pulls back.
“Better than asparagus pee.”
We both look at the back of the bedroom door as Fletch and Will make some He-man sounds.
“You're not who I thought I'd be snuggling up with, watching rom coms,” I confess as I get up and pull two quilts from a stack on top of a cedar chest in the corner.
“Me, either,” she murmurs, squeezing my arm. “But if I had to pick anyone but Will, it's you. Don't tell Perky.”
I snort. “If Perky were here, you'd say the same thing to her and tell her not to say anything to Fiona.”
“I would.”
We laugh.
And then we watch.
We watch until the DISH internet hits two hours and expires.
And then we use all of Will's remaining data before we walk out into the living room to find the guys fast asleep on separate couches, pants mercifully buttoned and zipped, bear successfully kept away by the power of rented beer.
Each of us takes one of the quilts from the bedroom and covers our respective guy, then goes to bed.
Wh
ere I try to weave my tangled energy back into a coherent whole before I drift off to sleep.
Chapter 17
Moonlight on snow outside casts a glow in the room, and as I wake up, I notice three things.
1. The digital clock says four a.m.
2. The curtains are open, which is why the glow is so bright.
3. Fletch has one hell of an erection and is currently kissing the back of my neck.
“Mmmm,” I say, turning over, wondering what we're going to talk about. His hand is on my hip, sliding up over my ass, rounding the curve, and moving up my ribs. I'm wearing a long, thin nightdress and panties, since I went to bed assuming nothing would happen tonight.
This is a pleasant surprise.
“Sorry we fell asleep in the living room,” Fletch whispers in my ear. The warm rush of his breath coupled with his hand on my bare breast under my nightgown makes every word in my brain spark like a firework.
“How many beers did you drink?”
“Enough that it took a gallon of water to balance it all out.”
“A gallon?”
“Yeah. We've got a foot-thick yellow perimeter out there now. I made Lotham drink a shit ton, too, and whizz it out before we both went to bed.”
“You really know how to talk to a woman in bed, you sexy whizzer, you.”
A deep, amused rumble from his chest cuts through the weirdness. He pulls back, the touch gentle, his breath smelling like mint toothpaste. “Let me try again.”
“I'm all about redos.”
“This is one do-over I have to get right.”
“Given that I'm half naked and your hand is on my breast, I think you're already in a good position.”
“I'm looking for an even better one,” he says against my neck, but then pulls back, eyes serious. I can see he's fully present, the beers long gone from his brain, his attention focused and full, all aimed at me.
“I don't understand. It just can't be this easy,” I blurt out.
“Why not?”
“Because you've been here all this time. All these years.” I rotate in the bed, the sheets pulling from my waist as I twist to look him in the eye. “I avoided you for so long. We live in the same town. You work two towns away. Your nephew is one of my students, Fletch.”
“Chris. I like it better when you call me Chris. Especially in bed.”
“Don't like nicknames?” I say with an over-the-top affect. “Imagine that!”
“I see you're feisty in bed, too.” The comment comes with a nice squeeze in the right place.
I squeeze right back and he laughs.
“Fine. Chris. And if you call me Feisty again, all bets are off. I've spent a long time trying to escape that name. Trying to escape you.”
He smiles and brushes a long piece of my hair off my shoulder. “Yeah. How do you think it felt, carrying a torch for you all these years, knowing you couldn't stand me?”
“You dated plenty of women. You weren't pining away for me.”
“First of all, Fiona, how would you know I dated 'plenty of women'? I thought you didn't pay me a whit of attention all these years.”
Damn it. Caught. “I didn't. But I knew. People talk.”
At the mention of other women, the air between us changes. His confidence drops, a tentativeness in him emerging that feels a little shaky, less secure. I've cracked open a conversation most people wouldn't touch when they're naked with another person.
“Maybe I was pining away for you. Maybe you didn't notice that.”
“Ha ha.”
“I don't want to talk about anyone but you.” Our lips touch as he leans in for a kiss. “I don't want to think about anyone but you.” Another kiss. “And I certainly don't want you talking or thinking about anyone but me, ever, Fiona.”
This kiss is different.
“I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier,” he says, cutting the kiss short but punctuating it with another. “I shouldn't have done that. It was reckless and unfair. I was just so damned pumped. Seeing you run toward the door, toward the bear, it was...” He sighs.
“You already said enough. We're fine. It's fine.”
“Are we?”
I answer with a kiss, my hands encircling his waist, palms seeking the heat of bare skin at the base of his back.
“I know,” he says between open-mouthed kisses that make the cool air where we're not under the warm down comforter feel even icier, “that I keep saying this.” Kiss. “But damn. I can't believe I'm in bed with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I'm about to have sex with Feisty.”
Instead of being angry, my belly curls in with laughter, his fingers on my breast moving down to catch the movement.
“You're about to have sex with Fiona. A twenty-nine-year-old woman who is the grown-up version of that girl who fought for her no,” I say, the words coming out with confidence.
His hand halts, but doesn't pull back.
“You always have your no with me, Fiona. Always.”
“I know I do. But right now, that no is sound asleep, blissfully dreaming about how it will rise up when called forth. Now is not one of those times, Chris. Make love to me. With me. I just want you. I can't believe it either, that you were here all this time, and I rejected you. This is me not rejecting you, right here, right now.” My hands move up the bare skin of his back, memorizing the hard curves of muscle as he touches me, his shoulder blades and lats like gears in a machine.
“I love–damn,” he says, cutting off what he was about to say, pulling one hand off me to rub his hair and breathe out through his nose. “Too soon, right?”
“I don't know. Is it?”
“I love being with you. It's so easy, like you said before. Too easy. Almost like all that energy and universe and abundance stuff you talk about is real.”
“It is real!”
“You're turning me into a believer.”
And with that, our lips meet, the kiss deep with hunger, words we're so close to saying caught on our tongues, behind our teeth, in our throats. Our bodies will have to say them instead.
The first time you make love with someone is always its own form of art, a blank canvas you fill in with whatever your heart, eyes, and hands guide you toward. He tastes like mint and beer, the softness of his mouth so pleasing, so different from the hard lines of his body. Chris is thick, a former football player who has only hardened and broadened over time, his wide bone structure layered with strength coiled in his thigh muscles, which I touch openly as I tug at the waistband of his boxers.
Duly noted. He's a boxers kind of guy. Suits someone whose nickname is Hot Boxer.
Sitting up, he lifts the down comforter, letting a shock of icy air into the warm cocoon we've created as he peels off his shirt, the moon nicely approving of the display. With the window behind him, the light makes the hair on his arms and chest glow like a halo, as he looks at me with encouragement.
Peeling off my nightgown takes a bit more effort, but as I succeed and fling it off the bed, the cool air tightens my nipples.
“You look even better than the last time I saw you naked, in the hot springs.”
“I do?”
“Yes. Because unlike then, now I know I get to have you. Be in you. Make you come and come inside you. We get to be together this time. Last time was an accident. A gorgeous, wet, beautiful accident. But this? This is so much better.”
I didn't know words could push me so close to climax, but his do.
His mouth is on my nipple now, the fiery heat making me gasp as his body stretches and he's over me, full and powerful, only the thin strips of our underwear keeping us from being fully nude. I reach down to fix that, pulling mine off, leaving them under the covers and kicking them down.
He does the same.
The thick, raw heat of his erection makes me want to open myself immediately and guide him in, but it would be too quick, over too fast, and that's not what this is about. Sensing my hesitation, he stops the swirling o
n my nipple and looks up, eyes vulnerable, expression so open, it's like looking into the eyes of a soul you've known for thousands of years.
And loved for thousands more.
“You okay?”
“More than okay. Just thinking.”
He kisses the spot between my breasts. “About this?” A kiss on one nipple. “Or this?” The other nipple gets some attention. “And this?”
I moan, parting my legs by instinct. “I'm thinking a piece of me is going to explode if you aren't in me, now.”
“Mmmm,” he says, kissing a trail down. “How about we make you explode without me in you, and save that for a second explosion?”
“I don't know if there's enough energy in the world for me to handle that.”
“Then let’s generate more.”
Before he slips completely out of my grasp, I run my hand along the rolling waves of his ass, the muscle hard and taut, my mind making a map of the terrain, his movement lower leaving me only his shoulders to explore. The second his tongue touches my clit I am electrified, a whimper escaping because it's been too long since anyone's done that.
And this.
And holy hell, no one's ever done the other thing before. Whatever maneuver he's doing now, he's right–it's generating some vibration I didn't know could be created.
We're making a new kind of energy. Wet, hot, slick, filthy, naughty, dirty energy.
And who knew Chris was so good at it?
Baring my body feels right with him, the glide of skin against skin, the permission to let my hands go where they want to, the dropping of boundaries so perfect. His mouth is on me, fingers in me, his whole self focused on giving me what I need, and that is what finally tips me over–knowing that in bed, as in regular life, Chris Fletcher gives his all.
Every last piece of himself.
We're quiet, the sound of my orgasm released as sighs and groans, his work finished as I fist his hair in my hands and pull up, one more second of attention on me a painfully exquisite sensation that I have to stop. He kisses me until I pull away and slide down, wanting to give him what he just lavished on me, hoping the reciprocity holds.
