A Handful of Fire

by Alexis Alvarez

  “Where?” I kneel between her legs and bite the inside of one thigh. She cries out and arches her hips up, trying to get to my mouth.

  “You know where.”

  “You’re going to say the words, Shai.” I lick up her inner thigh, stopping just short of her little panties, and she moans, pushes down. For a second her warm mound is on my mouth, but I pull back. “Tell me.”

  “Here.” She lifts her hips again. “Please?”

  “Uh-uh. Say the word.”

  “On my… pussy.” Her voice trembles, and I don’t know if it’s because she’s embarrassed to say the word pussy, or because she’s so turned on, but I don’t care.

  “Again.”

  “Gabriel!” She pulls at my arms. “Please. Lick me on my pussy. Please.”

  I can’t say no to that, so I tell her, “Hands up by your head. If you move them, I stop. Understand?”

  She nods. “Yes. Please.” She shifts, restless, puts her hands to her nipples.

  “Uh-uh,” I warn her. “I’ll tell you if and when I want you to touch yourself.”

  “Okay,” she whispers, her eyes drifting shut, anticipating—I’m sure—the feel of my mouth.

  I take my time.

  We lie together, the sheet over our twined legs and arms, and I can feel the beat of his heart against my cheek. His chest is strong and muscular, and I feel safe. Protected. His arms are around me, and that’s even better. I’m floating in the afterglow of my passion and there’s nowhere else I want to be, ever. This is heaven, right now.

  I kiss his shoulder, lick along his skin and bite, a small nip. He growls and gives me a light slap on the ass. I squeal and grab his hand, flattening it onto my ass, and push into his palm. “You like my ass?”

  “More than like it,” he says, his voice low. “I fucking worship your ass. You have the perfect ass, Shai. I want to bite it and grab it. Spank it. Fuck it.”

  “Perv.” But my voice holds affection. These are not things that appealed to me in the past, but I’m so attracted to this man that my mind flips. Maybe, with him, these things would be sexy, fun, arousing.

  “I’d never hurt you,” he whispers into my ear, and trails kisses down my neck. “Not really.”

  “I know.” I twist into him, letting my breasts rub his skin. “I trust you.”

  “I trust you.” He rubs my ass, then lets his hand trail up my body to cup my breast. His hand moves to my face, traces my scar, and I freeze.

  “How did this happen?” His voice is low and kind, but I pull away.

  “It’s from a long time ago. When I was a kid. An accident. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “And this one?” He touches my belly.

  “The same thing.”

  “Car accident?” He’s pushing. “Tell me.”

  “Not a car. It’s a long time ago and everything’s fine now. It’s just—thinking about the past makes me sad, so I’d rather not. Not now. Someday I’ll talk more about it, okay?”

  His hand stills. Then he moves it off my scar to my stomach, then runs it up to my neck. “You never take off this locket.” His voice teases. “What’s inside, the nuclear launch codes?” He fingers the silver chain. “Can I open it?”

  I freeze again. “No! I mean, it’s private. Old pictures. I don’t show them to anyone. I’m sorry about all of this, but I’ll tell you about stuff when I’m ready.”

  “Sure, Shai. When you’re ready.” Something in his voice is more distant.

  I shudder, but I can’t talk about my surgery and my sister’s death, I just can’t. It’s too much for me even to think about sometimes, let alone opening up to him. If he knows what happened he’s going to leave me entirely, so the slight distance in his voice is no big deal at all.

  I turn around and paste a smile to my lips, curving them up. They say that if you make fake smiles enough, you can trigger your brain into a genuine one.

  “You never talk about your childhood.” He traces my shoulder.

  I bite my lip. “Not that exciting, I guess. My mom and dad live in Oak Park and I see them on holidays and stuff. I get together with my cousins from time to time. They’re a few years older but we always got along. It was nice having them around when I was a teenager to go places, like the mall, or the fair. It was lonely by myself.”

  “The life of an only child,” he muses. “You need other people.”

  “Yeah.” My eyes well up with tears. Alarmed, I wipe them, pushing Mani’s memory away. “Tell me about what it was like for you, growing up.” My heart is racing and I do the mantra the therapist taught me, long ago. Deep breath in. Blow it out, three beats. In. Out. I close my eyes.

  “My parents were always traveling. My dad was a lawyer—still is, retired, and Mom went with him everywhere. They had a nanny to take care of us kids while they were away, which felt like always. I spent a lot of time outside building forts. We lived by the forest preserve, just across the street, and the nanny didn’t exactly care where we went, as long as we were quiet during her soap operas and game shows, and were on time for dinner. My two brothers and I built these amazing structures. The local paper even featured them once, pictures of the forts and us.”

  “That’s so cool.” My memories recede fast. I let myself fall into his story, imagining him and his brothers tugging fallen branches, tramping through muddy leaves, shouting to each other, faces bright.

  “Yeah. Sometimes assholes or drunks would tear them down, but we’d rebuild a new one, even better. We even made a two-story one with windows.”

  “That’s so impressive. Can I see the pictures sometime? You still have them?”

  “Oh, yeah. I saved that stuff. I kept thinking,” he swallows, “that when Michael was all better, we’d build one together. Someday.”

  “I think he’d like that,” I encourage, putting my hand on his chest.

  “I don’t know. It’s still hard with him.”

  “You’re doing it. Coming back tonight, that was perfect. He wanted you, you know. And when you came, it was like you answered his request. It was huge.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “So you and Arielle?” I’m scared to ask, but I have to.

  “We’re over.” His words are clipped and he stiffens. “For good, this time.”

  “Okay.”

  I want to shout and laugh and jump, but instead I place my palm flat on his skin, feeling his heart beat. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  He shakes his head. “Not yet. I want—I don’t know what I want right now.”

  Okay. I nod. If he can accept me pushing the scar conversation away, I need to be able to closet this. I relax back into his body, and his arm curls around me, his hand stroking my skin. We lie this way for a while, just breathing.

  He mumbles something I can’t catch. “I want…”

  I lift my head up, find his eyes. “What, Gabriel?”

  He looks at me, his eyes full, then glances away. “A lot of things.” He hesitates. “I guess…” He trails off again, then looks up at me. “Security.”

  “Security?” I didn’t expect that, and my eyebrows furl in confusion.

  “I want Michael to be healthy and strong,” he says, finally. “I want us to be good together again, tight. That’s what I want for now. My work is fine, I don’t need to expand. Financially I’m stable. I suppose I’m focused on feelings, too. I want to feel safe, that the people I love aren’t going to leave. Shai, when my wife died it was a shock. It happened so fast, you know? And then to have Michael—” He grabs me into his body. “Having him get sick? That was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I never want to feel that again about another person. That crushing fear. That desperate pain. I don’t think I could handle that again, being with a person who holds a cancer inside of them. Just the fear of knowing what might happen. It would kill the rest of my soul.”

  I pull away, my heart pounding fast. “But you can’t predict that, Gabriel. And would you even want to?” I try to explain, need t
o explain. “What if we unlocked everyone’s genetic code and you knew which people had a propensity for disease? Then you’d miss so many opportunities for love and adventure and happiness. It’s not fair to them, or to you.”

  “I don’t know anything about fair, Shai. Life hasn’t been fair to me. Why should I need to be fair?” He tugs me in. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter, because nobody can tell the future. I don’t want to know it, even. I’m just telling you how I feel, whether it makes sense or not.”

  “So what if you met someone awesome, a woman you loved, but she, maybe, once in her life, she’d had a tumor, or something. Would you not want to be with her?” My stomach is acid. I want to tell him about my past—about the operation we both underwent, about losing my sister, but I’m terrified. What if I tell him and he pushes me away? I can’t risk it.

  He shakes his head. “Shai, right now the only person I want in my arms is you. Beautiful, warm, kind you.” He puts his lips to mine. “Right now you’re the only one I want, okay? I want you.”

  I don’t speak, because his tongue is doing things to me that take my words away and replace them with breathy moans. We move together, and I forget everything but his touch, his hands, his smell, his eyes. Behind my eyelids, colors flicker. I scream and launch into free-fall, and he catches me, over and over.

  I wake up with a noise in my throat, a bad dream receding fast, tipping over a waterfall and disappearing. I blink hard and focus on the room to let it go completely. I’ve learned that these dreams can be erased if I just think about lots of other things, fill my mind, as I awake. Don’t let them get in a single claw, and they wither up. It seems like it won’t work, since I know the trick, see the magician behind the glass, but it always does.

  Gabe’s beside me, and he stirs, too. “Shai?” He pulls me back to his body. “Come here.” He kisses my lips and for a second I worry about bad breath, then stop caring, just enjoying the feel of his mouth. “That’s better.” His voice is lazy, relaxed. He strokes his hand over my stomach, then rests it on my breast and fingers my nipple. “This is good, too.”

  Instant arousal builds and I shift my thighs. “Gabe.”

  “Mmm.” He tweaks the nipple. “You like that?”

  “Mmm hmmm.” I put my mouth to his and kiss him while answering. “Yeah.”

  “What else do you like?”

  “You.”

  I run my hand down his arms, his stomach, over his thighs. I avoid his crotch, teasing him with my fingertips, raking my nails lightly down his chest, getting so close to his thighs and then moving my hands away.

  “Your touch feels so good.” He closes his eyes and leans back, an invitation, so I get up on my knees and straddle his hips. I lean forward to massage his shoulders, then push down onto his hips as I reach behind me to stroke his legs. “Fuck.”

  I can feel him harden under me, fast. Within seconds he’s fully erect, and I wiggle on him, positioning him so he rubs on my clit.

  “Ride me,” he orders, his voice a lazy, sexy command. “Lift up so you can slide my cock right into your pussy. Then ride me hard until we both come good.”

  When he first took me upstairs, he asked if he should use a condom. He told me he was clean. I told him I was clean too, and that I was covered. Then I forced myself to forget about just how completely covered I am, so I could enjoy this experience, each and every single fucking delicious second. Like this one, feeling his hard body, eager for me. Seeing his face, ready to come undone.

  “Oh, you want me to do all the work?” I tease, shifting my legs apart and reaching down to guide him in. He’s big, and I gasp in pleasure as the tip of his cock pushes at my entrance. I sink back down slowly, taking him inch by inch.

  He groans in pleasure. “Yeah, fuck. I’ll do some work, too, you’ll see.”

  Once he’s fully inside me, I stay motionless, enjoying the feel, but he gets impatient. “Right now, Shai.”

  “Or else what?” I lean forward, letting my hair brush his chest, and bite one nipple. He sucks in his breath.

  “Or else I’ll take you over my lap and spank your sweet ass,” he promises, grabbing it and squeezing.

  I laugh in alarm and some arousal. “What if I want to spank you instead?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “You really want to?”

  “No! I said it just because you did. Do you… want to spank me?”

  He smiles, a sexy little smile. “Someday, if you let me. Not for pain, but for pleasure.”

  “Pleasure is good,” I agree, starting to move on his hips, riding him up and down. His fingers clench around my hips, and he adjusts my movement, pulling me forward as I go up, pushing me backwards as I go down. We fall into a rhythm, and he’s rubbing me just right. It feels good to ride him, and I play with the sensations. It’s fun to lean in and kiss his lips, tease him by letting my hair brush his chest. Sometimes I pull off his cock almost entirely, then slowly lower down; I change up the motion to pump fast with tight motions. He loves all of it, encouraging me on with his groans.

  As passion builds, I move with more vehemence. My breasts bounce. His eyes are feral, burning; he likes what he sees, and that makes me loose with even more abandon, moaning, touching my own nipples, going up and down on him with all the power I have in my thighs.

  “Yeah, Shai, fuck, yeah,” he growls, and reaches up with one hand to stroke against my clit as I ride him. The double pleasure of his cock and his fingertips makes me insane.

  “God, I’m going to come,” I gasp, and before he can answer, I do. The orgasm grabs me and tosses me into the atmosphere and I shout out, grabbing his shoulders and using him like a prop, a vibrator, rubbing myself against his hard length and his hand furiously, until I cry out and tremble as the wave crashes and build and crashes, flooding me with such sweet sensation that I clench my entire body, all my muscles, to squeeze even more out of my skin. Somewhere in there he comes, too; I feel him stiffen inside me and he roars my name and squeezes my hips hard enough to leave bruises, but it feels fucking good.

  We lie together and I’ve never felt safer or more cherished than here in his arms.

  The next time I wake up, it’s dawn. Shai is beside me, sleeping. She doesn’t snore. Her luscious lips are parted, and she breathes silently. I see her chest rise and fall, and look down her smooth body, thinking about how she felt and tasted, the sounds she made, and I’m hard. I mean, morning wood is one thing, but this is full-on ready-to-fuck hard.

  I shift and groan. I want to wake her, but she looks peaceful, so I let her sleep. Maybe I can jack off in the shower and then Natalie will be here to make us breakfast. She and I and Michael…

  Michael. Reality rushes back in. Shai is Michael’s therapist, and she just stayed the night. With me. For sex.

  I sigh in frustration and forget my erection. I’m not sorry; it’s just a twist. Something we’ll figure out. I mean, I just broke it off with Arielle, although—to be honest—things there were broken for a long time. And I wanted Shai for a long time, too, in my bed. I don’t want a real relationship, but I don’t want to lose Shai as Michael’s therapist. Or as herself.

  That thought is fucking distressing as hell, and now I’m not thinking about sex. No longer able to sleep, I get up and grab some clothes, watching Shai as I do. Her face is serene and lovely in the pale light. I wish she would have told me more about her accident, those scars. Does she think I find them unattractive? I don’t. I find her hot; the scars don’t matter. When you lo—

  How will Michael react to knowing that Shai spent the night? Should we even let him know? Probably not. It would be too confusing. It will have to stay a secret.

  I shower and check on Shai—still sleeping—so I head downstairs. It’s five a.m., but I’m accustomed to an early start. I need to communicate with people in Japan and Malaysia and it’s late afternoon there now—perfect for meetings.

  An hour later, Shai comes in, fully dressed, hair brushed. She doesn’t meet my eyes. “Gabriel? I’m going to go h
ome.”

  “Stay. I was going to invite you to stay for breakfast.”

  “I don’t know.” She bites her lip. “Michael—it’s not appropriate for him to know that we, um, slept together.” Her face turns red. “I feel so, I don’t know.”

  “We’ll just tell him you came early for therapy, or something.” It’s not the best excuse, but it will work. I want to spend more time with her, without thinking about terms or relationships. Just existence. Why does that have to be so complex?

  “I’m sorry. I just—I should go.”

  I get up and pull her into my arms. “I’m not sorry.”

  “I’m not sorry either,” she says. “I loved it. A lot. But it’s just so… unprofessional. God, I’ve never done this before. Never so much as looked at another patient’s parent!” She’s near tears. “Gabriel, I need you to understand that.”

  “I do understand that.”

  “What I feel for you is so different from anyone else.” Her voice catches. “But it was so unprofessional.”

  I shake my head. “I was as much a part of this as you. I don’t care about professional. I don’t think this will affect the way you work with Michael, right?”

  “Of course not! I’ll always treat Michael the same way, no matter what happens with us.” Her voice is emphatic.

  “Then our relationship won’t affect him, and it doesn’t change your professionalism regarding him.” I take a breath. “Life gets complicated, sometimes. But I have no doubt that you’re an excellent therapist.”

  “I could get fired if Allison found out.” She’s winding a piece of hair around her index finger, over and over, and she tugs on a snarl so hard that she pulls a strand of hair out. We both watch, silent, as she waves her hand and the strand drifts down to the floor, undulating in the invisible air currents in the room, tiny whorls brought alive by our movements and our voices. “I probably should be fired.”

  “Nobody will find out,” I reassure her. “It’s all right. It can be our secret. You can stay over nights, leave mornings. I’d like that.” I nibble her neck, feeling my arousal grow again. I want to take her into my arms and lose myself there again.