Out of the Blue

by Kathryn Nolan

  His hips kept me pinned as his long fingers gripped my thighs, spreading them open. I was only wearing thin bike shorts, so of course I could feel every delicious inch of his hard erection. Lips brushing mine, he dragged his cock deliberately across my sex. My toes curled against his back as he moved his hips sinuously between my legs, each time putting more and more pressure against my clit. I clutched at his hair and gasped.

  “Oh god, don’t you dare stop.” I sighed.

  “Never,” he said. “I’ve been fantasizing about watching you come while fucking my own hand for four years now.” He ground harder, deeper, held me pinned to that wall, and dry-fucked me like we wore no clothing at all. A drop of sweat rolled down the column of his throat. I caught it with my tongue, licked his salty skin as he released a strangled moan. He scraped his teeth across my lower lip. Our kiss turned greedy. Sloppy. With every thrust, the pictures on the wall rattled and shook, and my cries grew louder.

  “I’m close already,” I moaned. “Yes… just… Cope, faster please.”

  He moved with a furious finesse. “Tell me what you think about when you touch yourself.”

  I arched into his touch, his fingers holding me tight. It had been so long—four years exactly—since I’d felt this way.

  “The cabin in Tahoe,” I managed to say. “You took me on that soft rug in front of the fireplace so many times I couldn’t walk the next day.”

  He grunted against my ear, breath short and harsh. His shoulders and biceps flexed from exertion. “I think about that weekend all the time, sunshine.”

  We’d gone for our one-year anniversary, twenty-three years old and insatiable for each other. I’d woken the next morning with rug burn and bruises, every muscle tender, every strand of hair twisted into knots.

  His mouth teased the shell of my ear, nuzzled through my hair tenderly even as what he did to my clit was filthy. “I laid flat on my back that night, and you rode my face until you couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Pleasure spiked through me. “Yes… yes… I loved using your tongue like that.”

  “It’s still there for you to use,” he said. “I had to jerk off last night, thinking of you.”

  I was so close. So fucking close and picturing Cope’s fist working up and down, forearm flexing, head back. “Tell… tell me.”

  He stared at me as I started to unravel and unwind. “I thought about sitting on that damn stool with your pussy bare and glistening for me. I thought about eating you out right on that island, enjoying you like a fine meal while you screamed my name.”

  His fantasy came true.

  I came so hard I could only flail against his body, clutching his hair. I was airborne again while still experiencing aftershocks. Clinging to Cope, he walked us right into the living room and onto the couch. He laid me down gently, then tore off my bike shorts with eager hunger on his face. A second later, he lowered his body on top of mine.

  We went still, although our muscles shuddered, and my internal walls still quivered with pleasure. This was real, not some delicious fever dream. He pressed our foreheads together and lifted my right leg up and over his waist. I couldn’t stop touching him—his stomach, his arms, his shoulders, his face.

  “I missed you so much. I missed this so much,” I said. Cope kissed me—hard, brutal—and I arched my body against his, ready for more. He shoved his shorts down to stroke his cock. It was as beautiful as I remembered—thick, long, veined, perfect.

  “Please,” I whimpered. “Please. You know how I need it.”

  Cope was shaking from restraint. He slid my underwear to the side, and the head of his cock brushed at my entrance. “Bare, Serena?”

  I nodded. Kissed him. “I’m still clean and safe. Are you?”

  He nodded with his eyes closed. When they opened, the vulnerability there was the man I fell in love with—the man who used humor to protect himself, who would do anything for the ones he loved. The man who would gladly move mountains to keep me safe.

  “Are you sure?” he asked. “You have to tell me you’re sure or… or we have to stop. I won’t survive it if this isn’t real.”

  I stroked his forehead. “That day you came to me and said you found cheap tickets to Vegas, well… I’d been looking at those same tickets too. Because I didn’t know what to do with the fact that I wanted to marry you, desperately. I sort of hoped, if we were there, we’d get swept up into the moment and do it.”

  I had never, ever admitted that—I’d barely admitted it to myself.

  Cope’s eyes searched mine, and then we were kissing, kissing like there was no limit to our time together. And then I felt his cock, and then his hips shifted, and then, after four long years, Cope was inside me again. My body stretched to accommodate every single inch of his huge length. My nerve endings sang with pleasure and the sweet, heady feeling of being filled by the man I craved the most. We shared a grateful moan as he held himself still, allowing me to adjust, allowing both of us to acknowledge the full euphoria of a sensation I thought I’d never experience again.

  “You have no idea…” He moved out of me, then drove back in with a sigh. “You feel fucking incredible.”

  I reached down and grabbed his ass, pulling him tight against my body. “I believe I was promised to be pinned down and ridden hard.”

  “Good,” he groaned. “Because there’s nothing I want more than to feel you come on my cock.”

  He didn’t need any more convincing to give me what I desired. His thrusts were steady and deep and fast—fast like a couple who hadn’t fucked in years, like a couple who had never stopped wanting each other. Fast like two people clinging to each other on a couch, bodies moving as one, the sun filtering in through the window on their slick skin.

  There was no more talking.

  Our lips stayed together, and Cope fucked me hard and dirty—the couch scraped across the floor, the house filled with our sounds of pleasure. Every fraught groan of his, every frayed breath, every frenzied kiss had me eager to climax again. My nails dug into his muscles, urging him on. He growled my name against my throat and closed his teeth around the skin, nipping me, marking me, taking me so deeply I’d lost hold of my rational thoughts. He reached behind and grabbed my hands, held them down onto the couch and circled his hips.

  “How do you…” I bit my lip. “How do you do that?” I studied the joining of our bodies, memorized this moment, that feeling, of being wholly connected with my husband again.

  “Do what?” The smug bastard still managed an arrogant twist of his lips when I’d been reduced to just biological urges. He did it again, stroking his cock deep, using it to work the angle I needed to get off.

  “How do you know what I want?” He was pressing hot kisses to my cheek and along my jaw.

  “You taught me how to fuck you, Serena,” he rasped. “You taught me how to give you the pleasure you deserve.” He dropped his hips and ground against my clit. My back arched right off the cushion. “Do you think I could forget how amazing this feels?”

  He hitched my leg higher and increased the pressure of his lower body onto my clit. He was so fucking deep, and the orgasm waiting for me felt even more powerful than the first one.

  “Come with me, please,” I whispered.

  He let go of my wrists, wrapping his hand around the arm of the couch for leverage, driving between my legs with purpose. His other hand cupped my face so we could watch each other release.

  Seeing Cope orgasm had always been the hottest part for me—all that good humor and confidence unraveling at the seams, leaving him nothing but a man bound to his baser needs.

  “Serena,” he grunted. “Fuck, I can’t… it’s too good.”

  “Yes,” I panted, staring at him with anticipation. I was already starting to clench around his cock, and he was fucking me relentlessly. “Come with me, please. I need to see you.” I wrapped my arms around his neck and held on tight, let him ravage me on this couch the way he yearned to. His breathing was harsh, voice hoarse, my
name falling from his lips over and over. My orgasm struck out of nowhere, an absolute detonation of sheer ecstasy, and as my body lit up with joy, my husband came with a shout and a curse.

  He buried his face in the crook of my neck, kissing my cheek as he caught his breath. I was comprised of nothing but aftershocks and a bone-deep satisfaction. I nuzzled the hair at his temple and trailed my fingers up and down his spine, relearning the patterns of his body. It took a whole minute, maybe more, before our breathing slowed to normal.

  “Do you remember the first time we had sex?” he asked. His voice was scratchy, muffled against my skin.

  I smiled at the memory. “Of course. We had sex on that old couch of yours, in that apartment in Ocean Beach. You had invited me over to watch a movie, and it was so obvious what your plans were.”

  “Is it because I never actually turned on the movie?” He was kissing between my breasts and lightly along my stomach.

  “And because I got there, took off my jacket, and we were hardcore making out not one second later.”

  He nuzzled his nose against my ribcage. My thumb caressed the hair at his temple. “You rocked my world that night.”

  I laughed. “Shut up.”

  “Oh, you did. I saw Quentin the next morning and still had my sex hair and the string of hickeys you’d left on my neck—”

  “Oh my god, I didn’t—”

  “— and he took one look at me and said, ‘So when’s the wedding?’”

  “Well, he was only off by about two years.”

  Cope propped himself up on his elbow, face dreamy and contemplative. He swept the hair back from my forehead and kissed me there, kissed the tip of my nose, kissed my mouth. We gazed at each other for a long time until his pining was as tangible as the birdsong outside the window.

  There exists a split-second in surfing when you decide to ride or bail, to fly free or pull back. Both choices have consequences, both are equally important. I could see my other choice here: to bail yet again. To pull back, to claim that our differences couldn’t be overcome and to revert to the way my life had been only a week ago, a life where I was safe from future pain but heartbroken just the same.

  Our fight last night about our breakup had lingered because the regret and guilt I carried still weighed heavy on my mind. I wasn’t ready to apologize for all our other stuff yet—there were too many complicated layers we both needed to sift through, too much to own, too many patterns to analyze.

  But I was twenty-four when we broke up, young and even more hard-headed. Whenever I thought back to how I’d handled everything, I flushed red with shame. I’d spent three whole months in Australia lonely and anxious and pretty damn sure I’d made a huge mistake.

  I was just too stubborn to admit it.

  “Cope,” I said, touching his face, “I’m so sorry for how things ended between us. I’m sorry for not reaching out, for leaving you here after what you’d gone through, for not making it clear what I wanted. I’m sorry about all of it.”

  He blinked, eyebrows knit together, like he hadn’t expected a word I’d said. “You don’t have to apologize right now.”

  “I need to. I don’t want to…” I shook my head. “We can’t ignore it any longer.”

  He tucked a curl behind my ear. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Serena. I should have stayed. I should have waited for you. I was an immature dick who let the woman of his dreams walk out the door. I didn’t even try. I was furious with myself, for months. Kept driving by the house at night, and would see your van and the lights on, and it felt like a life that wasn’t mine anymore.”

  “Oh, Cope, I was just so angry and stubborn. And I never should have forced your hand,” I said, needing to own this part fully. It was the only way forward for us.

  His mouth curved into a sheepish smile. “Yeah, well, I left without saying goodbye like some grade-A douche bag. Who does that?”

  “People like us,” I said, returning his smile. “Two young people wildly in love, stubborn as hell, and much too impulsive for their own good.”

  “I still think about it a lot. And regret it, though,” he said.

  “I do too,” I admitted, and there was a loosening of the remorse I carried in my chest. A loosening and a deeper understanding.

  His head dipped for a sweet, lingering kiss. The kind of kiss romantic dreams are made of. “So when are we going to address that you had a Vegas plan with an ulterior motive too?”

  I burst out laughing. “If you’re going to be smug about it, then I wish I never told you.”

  He laughed with me, held me close. “In what universe did you think I wasn’t going to be smug about this?”

  “I guess in the same universe where you innocently requested polite sex.”

  His cocky grin had my toes curling. Again. “I have always been a gentleman around you, Serena Swift.”

  “That has never been true,” I said, shocked. “You are such a freaking liar.”

  In the real world, my bodyguard was going to have to drive me to Aerial’s headquarters soon, where we’d once again confront a company’s lies while trying to uncover the extent of their misdeeds.

  But trapped within the golden sunlight of our living room, there was a privilege to this slice of time, the two of us kissing as if we’d never been apart at all. And I could only hope, with every fiber of my being, that the risk we were taking together wouldn’t break our hearts all over again.

  25

  Cope

  An hour later, and I was walking Serena through the parking lot of Aerial, staying three feet behind her, per protocol, and completely silent in my black-suit-and-sunglasses combo. I was oddly grateful for the role of agent here—it kept me from doing what I wanted to do, which was run through the streets of San Diego yelling, “Serena and I had sex!”

  Technically, I’d been tempted to do that the first time we had sex on that old couch in my apartment. But Quentin had talked me out of it.

  She turned around, just outside the lobby doors, smiling at me as brightly as the summer sun shining above us. She wore a long, dark-purple skirt and a white tank top, her hair loose over her shoulders. I knew that expression on her face—relaxed, satisfied, happy.

  This was the way Serena looked after she caught a perfect wave or while watching the sunrise every morning. This was the way she looked waking me up in my sleeping bag on camping trips. Stay there, she’d say, I’ll make you campfire coffee.

  “Cope?” she was saying, but it was hazy. Muffled. “Cope? Your phone is ringing?”

  I blinked and shook my head. We had sex one time, and I was already distracted—not great for a man whose sole job was to not be distracted.

  Although who the hell was I kidding? She’d been nothing but a persistent, frustrating, beautiful distraction this entire time.

  I checked the screen. Marilyn Banks. Dread filled my stomach. Holding up a finger, I said, “I need to take this. Wait in the lobby but where I can see you, okay?”

  She smirked at the directive but complied. Beneath that newly calm exterior, I did catch her twisting her fingers in her lap a few times on the car ride over. Our sex euphoria was, unfortunately, fading away and being replaced with whatever the fuck was going on in this exact building.

  “Good morning, Marilyn,” I said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “I was just calling to check in. I spoke with Falco last night, and he confirmed your daily reports that things have been pretty simple with Ms. Swift.”

  I miss you every day. I think about you constantly. I’ve never been able to stop.

  “Simple is the perfect way to describe it,” I hedged.

  I caught the sound of papers rustling. “Although he did mention that you asked him to keep an eye out for a few fans that gave you a bad feeling? Anything I should be made aware of?”

  I wasn’t sure what I felt worse about: withholding my former relationship with Serena or not divulging that my client was involved in a whistleblower scandal
. “Not really, no,” I said. “Just one of those gut feelings, but she has a competition tomorrow, and if I see them again, I’ll make note of it and coordinate further.”

  “Excellent, and please do,” she said. “Falco also reported that there doesn’t seem to be any of your recent issues working for Ms. Swift. He said you seem eager to work and focused.”

  I’ve been fantasizing about watching you come while fucking my own hand for four years now.

  “That’s good to hear,” I said.

  “She even reported to Falco she was pleased with your work thus far.”

  A strangled sound came out of my mouth. I stared up at the sky. “Uh-huh.”

  Serena, coming against that wall as I ground our bodies together, her skin hot against my mouth, our bodies slick with sweat, the throaty way she moaned my name over and over and over—

  “This news is promising,” Marilyn said, interrupting my horny memories.

  “Told ya I was the best,” I joked.

  She hummed and then said, “You’ll notice I did not imply, in any way, that you were off the hook or no longer under my scrutiny.”

  I cleared my throat. “Yes, ma’am, I understand. I really do appreciate this second chance.”

  Even as I said those words, they sounded oddly hollow to my ears. Probably because every person in my life right now believed I was unhappy. I felt it though, a quick squiggle of doubt when I tried to picture doing this job after my Serena assignment was up. When I went back to protecting multi-millionaires who only cared about themselves and not the way their actions affected others.

  It was The Serena Effect, being around her passion again, her sense of justice and purpose in doing the right thing. I’d been raised to do just that, and when we were dating, it was early enough in my career to trust that I was.

  “Stay sharp,” Marilyn added. “And call if anything concerning comes up.”