Worth the Fall

by Mara Jacobs

  He followed her with his mouth and she rewarded him by grinding down on him. “Fuck, yeah,” he moaned, then sucked hard on her nipple.

  She tried pulling him again and this time he followed, holding on to her back as he eased her down across the bench seat, scooting her up so that her head was even with the steering wheel. His mouth was back on her breast, one hand holding it, the other finding its way down her stomach to the opening of her jeans. She heard the snap and felt the zipper open and knew that if she was going to stop him, it should be now.

  Instead, she lifted her hips as he reached with both hands to shimmy the denim off of her, pushing the pants to the floor of the truck cab. He moved up her body and she wrapped her arms around his neck, reveling in the sheer volume of him hulking over her. His hands took her face again and he whispered, “Okay?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered back. “Good.”

  He nodded his agreement and kissed her again, deeply and yet softly, as his hands roamed all over her body then slid into her panties. He fumbled a bit, but then, oh then, he found a spot…the spot…and she moaned her approval. He continued to rub, but then moved from the magical spot to one that still felt good, but wasn’t quite as…magical. She twitched her hips, wanting his hand to return, but instead he pulled his hand completely away and started unbuttoning his own fly.

  She did want to feel him, take him in her hand, but she’d been so close.

  “God, I can’t believe this is happening,” he said as he rose up and yanked his jeans and boxers down. “I’ve…it’s like…you’re….”

  What? She wanted to scream, desperate to know what was going through his mind. She always wanted to know what he was thinking and feeling. And never as much as now—to know if this meant anything more to him than a little extended celebration on their big day.

  Or if she meant more to him.

  ***

  Petey couldn’t believe Alison Jukuri’s naked body was laid out beneath him. As he fumbled in his wallet for a condom, he tried to think about anything else other than how badly he’d wanted her for the past year.

  Hockey. Think about hockey or you’ll come before you can even get the condom on.

  So he thought about hockey…and ice…and how hot she’d look lying naked like this on the ice.

  His fingers shook as her rolled the condom on while looking down at her. Jesus, she was a cute little thing. He hadn’t thought so at first. In the beginning, she was just his girlfriend Lizzie’s smart-ass, short-stuff best friend. But she’d grown on him in the past year. And in the past few months, he’d been dying to get her alone, separate from the pack of friends that he and Lizzie had somehow formed after their break-up.

  And now they were alone, and he was pulling her panties off of her. It wasn’t his first time, but he suspected it was Al’s, and he’d like to make it a bit more special for her. But dear God, if he didn’t get inside her soon….

  She kept her hips tilted after lifting them for the panty removal and all thoughts of taking his time and making it special—yeah, right, in a truck?—flew from his brain, much like the blood flow had. All thoughts and blood flow found their way straight to his dick, which was now prodding along her opening.

  He saw her flinch just a tiny bit. “Is this okay? Do you want to stop?” he asked. Please say no, please say no.

  “No,” she answered, to his overwhelming relief. “I’m okay. It’s just….”

  “What? What do you want? What can I do?”

  He’d been having sex since he was fifteen. Not regularly (he had dated Lizzie for several months), but with enough girls that he thought he could provide what Alison was asking for…if she’d ask for it. He wasn’t experienced enough to know what would do it for her on his own. Truth be told, all that stuff south of the border on a girl’s body was still pretty much a mystery to him. But he wanted to make it good for her. It meant more to him than just getting his rocks off with a willing partner.

  She meant more to him than that.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Just…um…can you come down here to me?”

  He’d been kneeling on the seat while he’d struggled with the condom, so he lowered himself, careful to keep his weight on his forearms. Her breasts, which had tasted so fantastic, nestled against his chest, her belly along his.

  And that mouth of hers. Usually used for witty and biting remarks, its purpose tonight was so much better. He lowered his mouth and kissed her again. She was right there with him, kissing back, tangling her tongue with his. She wrapped her arms around his neck, her hands running up and down his back, across his shoulders, driving him fucking insane with want.

  He reached down and guided himself into her slowly. Or, he tried to go slowly anyway, seeing if it’d be too much for her. He looked down into her eyes, and she licked her lips, then bit the bottom one as he pushed in further.

  “Okay?” he whispered and she nodded. He pushed again, lodging himself all the way in. Holy shit, she felt so good. Warm and wet and oh, so very, very tight around him. “I’m sorry,” he groaned as he started rocking into her. “I’m not going to last very long. I just…you just…feel so good.”

  She wrapped her arms tighter around him, nuzzled his neck, then licked him—fuck, that was amazing—before whispering back, “It’s okay. It feels good like this. Just let yourself…um…just do what feels good.”

  Shit, it all felt good. But it was even better when he picked up his pace and slid in and out of her little body with more force. She wiggled under him and tilted her hips a little. To his great embarrassment, that was all it took.

  He poured himself into her. She clung on tight and he collapsed on top of her when it was over. He was barely able to comprehend that she hadn’t come, but he was drained and it felt so good to just lie on top of her body that his mind wouldn’t quite compute it all.

  He knew he didn’t fall asleep, but it was several minutes before he could move. “Sorry. Am I squashing you?”

  “No. It feels nice,” she answered, but shifted underneath him.

  Damn, this could not be comfortable for her. He started to pull out of her, but she held him tight. “Just a little bit longer?”

  Like she had to ask. “As long as you want,” he said and held her close, not fully believing what had just happened. What it’d been like to be inside her body.

  To still be inside her.

  After a while, she wiggled again, and he knew he was getting too heavy for her. She made a sound of protest when he pulled away from her, but he was determined to get his weight off of her. As he pulled out, the condom started to slide off his now depleted dick, and he quickly reached down and retrieved it, feeling the warmth and wetness that their bodies had created.

  He knew they’d be good together. Nobody would have guessed it, they were so different, but he knew. Giving her some space to get dressed, he left the truck and disposed of the condom in a trashcan. Lake Superior glowed in the moonlight in front of him. He breathed in the fresh air and listened to the waves lap onto the sand.

  It was supposed to be a night to say goodbye, graduation and all. But all Petey could think was this was the night when his life began.

  Nine

  A puck is a hard rubber disc that hockey players strike when they can’t hit one another.

  ~ Jimmy Cannon

  Alison shook eighteen years of cobwebs from her mind as she drove to Katie’s house the next morning. Damn Petey for making her remember something she’d done a pretty admirable job of forgetting.

  And it hadn’t been easy.

  She didn’t have patients this morning. Normally she’d either be doing much-needed chores around her house or be over at her mother’s. She chose not to go to her parents’ house because she wanted to give her mom and Sherry some time to catch up alone.

  And there was no way she was going to stick around at home this morning.

  She could have gone to the hospital to visit her dad, but her visiting times were pretty regular and she did
n’t want to mess with his schedule too much. She’d go see him in the afternoon at her normal time.

  So she’d quickly dressed and tip-toed past Petey’s room, feeling a little better when she heard deep snores coming from behind the door.

  At least he hadn’t been up all night thinking when he needed some rest.

  She’d left the house and started driving, not really knowing where she was going. She could go to her office and catch up on paperwork, but there wasn’t much with the lighter patient load right now.

  She ended up calling Katie from the car to see if she wanted to go out for breakfast, and Katie’ talked her into coming over to her house. It hadn’t been a hard sell.

  “So, Sherry’s home? That’s great, right?” Katie asked her after Alison was settled at the kitchen table. Katie poured her some coffee, bringing it to her and then settled her large, pregnant girth into a chair. She leaned over and breathed deep from Alison’s cup. “God, I miss coffee.”

  “Not too much longer and you’ll be able to have a cup.”

  Katie’s already gorgeous face lit up even more as she rested her hands on her belly. “The doctor says two more weeks, but I think I could go any day. I mean, obviously we know exactly when she was conceived, but I think she’s going to be an over-achiever like her father and show up early.”

  “How do you know exactly—” Alison began and then stopped. It seemed like Katie and Darío had been together a lot longer than nine months, but they’d had a one-night stand that had created the little bun in her oven.

  A thousand smart-ass retorts ran through her mind about usually conservative Katie getting knocked up, but they died in her throat. Looking at her dear friend, so happy to be with child, Alison was overcome with feelings of…of….

  “Is that nissu I smell?” she asked when she didn’t want to think any more.

  “Yep, made it this morning. It should be cool enough to put the icing on now.” She made a move to get up, but Alison waved her down.

  “I’ll get it. You just relax, little mama.” Katie beamed and Alison got up and set about putting the icing Katie had made onto the still slightly warm Finnish breakfast bread. She had her back to Katie but heard her deep sigh of contentment which filled Alison with happiness and something else. Envy? Maybe a touch, though oddly enough she’d never been envious of the breathtakingly beautiful Katie before.

  She slathered on more icing than was probably needed, but it felt like a morning that called out for sugar.

  Something in what Katie had just said came back to her. “She? Did you say ‘she’ when you were talking about the baby? I thought you guys decided not to find out the gender?”

  “We did. We haven’t.” She got a cute smile on her face when Alison turned around to look at her. “We’ve just always called her a she. We really don’t know. But I think we may have willed her into a girl.”

  “You know that’s not possible, right?” she joked. At least she thought she was joking, but by the look on Katie’s face she wasn’t sure. Katie fairly glowed with emotion.

  “Oh, Al, there’s so much about my life that shouldn’t be possible, and it suddenly is, so I’m not counting out something like willing a baby’s sex.”

  “So, will you be disappointed if it’s a boy?”

  Katie waved her question away as nonsense as Alison set the plate with the nissu on the table, then returned to the cabinets for plates and forks.

  “Of course not. I’m delirious at the thought of either. I think Darío put the idea of a girl in my head and it just stuck. We’ll be very blessed no matter what.” Alison set the gathered plates and forks on the table and took her seat as Katie continued, “My God, after all these years of wanting a baby, I couldn’t care less about the gender.”

  “I know. I’m so happy for you, Katie,” she said, patting her friend’s arm. Katie looked at her like she was waiting for the shoe to drop, or the “but”. There was no but. There was no other shoe.

  Katie and Lizzie were both new wives and new mothers and were deliriously happy. And Alison was genuinely delighted for them.

  And yet she felt just like her patient Denise—that everyone was getting on with their lives but her.

  She dug in to the nissu.

  A few bites later she thought to ask, “Should you wake up Darío while it’s still warm? And awesome, by the way.”

  “Thanks. And Darío’s been awake and gone for a couple of hours now. He went to the SDC to work out, then he’s going to meet Mark for breakfast to talk golf.”

  Their friend Mark managed the university’s golf course, which was currently buried under three feet of snow.

  “If you can’t play it, might as well talk about it?”

  “Something like that. Poor Darío. He’s never really seen much of a winter and certainly not a U.P. winter. But I really wanted to be near family—and you and Lizard—when the baby came. He’s been a real trooper about it.”

  “He’d do anything for you and you know it.”

  She smiled dreamily. “I know. I’d feel badly about it, except I’d do anything for him, too.”

  Alison shoved another bite of the pastry into her mouth and just nodded.

  “God, I feel so awful, I didn’t even ask how Petey’s doing. They got him to your house okay? He’s settled in?”

  The nissu got stuck in her throat. She took a large drink of coffee, then another before answering Katie.”Yes. His mom and Lizzie brought him home yesterday afternoon. By the time I got there he’d been up, fixed himself something to eat, done the dishes and got back in bed.” Her voice caught a little at the end when mentioning—and thinking about—Petey in her bed. And the lovely things they did there.

  “Wow. Not surprising, though. A little thing like surgery’s not going to keep Petey down.”

  “It didn’t seem to, no.” Not if his flinging her body down on the bed was any indication. And oh, had she enjoyed being flung.

  “And stuff like showers and that kind of thing? His dad coming over to help with that, or are you going to hop in the shower and soap up that amazing bod?”

  She nearly choked on her coffee, but Katie was already laughing. Ah, yes, that would be quite a joke, wouldn’t it? Brainy Alison and brawny Petey getting hot and sticky in a shower together.

  “I guess his dad’s probably going to come over. I didn’t really get many of the details.” Because she’d been too busy kissing the man. “We barely spoke when I got home last night before I went to bed.” That was true, there hadn’t been much talking. “Oh man, I thought having Petey around would be bad enough, but Lieutenant Dan, too?”

  Katie reached for her phone and hit a button. “Let me call Darío and ask him to stop by and see if Petey needs any…man help.”

  “Thanks,” she said, more for Petey than herself. She’d be out of the house most of the day (even if she had to sit in the parking lot of Pat’s IGA and read a book!), so she wouldn’t really have to deal with Petey’s dad. But she knew Petey would much rather have Darío help him out than have to deal with his father one day out of the hospital.

  With no pain meds.

  Katie spoke to her husband for a few minutes, and Alison gathered that Darío was fine with swinging by her house to check on Petey.

  “Let me ask Al,” Katie said then turned to her. “Door locked or anything?”

  She shook her head, and Katie relayed the info to Darío. They said a few more things, then Katie giggled, said something in Spanish that Alison didn’t want translated, and disconnected.

  “He’s just finishing up breakfast with Mark, then he’s going to head to your place.”

  “That’s nice of him.”

  “He’s a nice guy,” Katie said as she smiled a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile and lifted a forkful of nissu to her still grinning mouth. She paused and winked at Alison. “A very nice guy.”

  Alison took another sip of her coffee, thinking it had gone a little bitter.

  ***

  Petey woke up not
knowing which was more painful—his knee or his raging hard-on. They could probably both be eased by a good rubdown, but he was pretty sure the person he most wanted as his private nurse this morning wasn’t going to be putting her hands on either of his aching body parts.

  “Al?” he called out. He glanced at the clock—ten in the morning. Surprised that his knee had allowed him to sleep so late and so deeply, he eased his body slowly to a sitting position. He was pretty sure Lizzie said something about Alison not having patients on certain days, so she was probably just ignoring him.

  Again.

  “Come on, Al, I know you’re probably still pissed about last night, but we’ve got to talk about it at some point,” he boomed loudly enough for her to hear him down the hall even if she still had her door shut.

  “Do we really have to talk about it? Because I’m prepared to pretend I didn’t hear a word you just said,” Darío Luna said from the doorway, scaring the crap out of Petey.

  “Jesus Christ, you can’t just sneak up on a guy like that.”

  “Hardly sneaking. I’ve been here for nearly an hour waiting for you to wake up.”

  “Still. A little warning would have been nice.”

  The Spaniard shrugged, walked into the bedroom and settled into the upholstered chair by the window.

  The same chair Al had sat in last night when she’d snuggled up with that throw-blanket thing.

  “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you be painting a nursery or something?”

  “We did that weeks ago. I was out anyway, and Katie called and said to stop by to see if you needed anything.”

  “Did Alison let you in?” He was totally going to be in the dog house if Alison knew Darío had overheard him talking about what happened last night. Or what didn’t happen.

  “She’s not here. She’s at my house having breakfast with Katie.”

  Oh. That little sneak had dashed out before he had a chance to…what? Talk with her? Or pin her to the bed again and not let her up this time, even if she ground her foot into his knee? Actually that sounded pretty good—the pinning her down part, not the knee-grinding part.