A Fine Specimen

by Lisa Marie Rice

  He kissed her cunt exactly as he’d kiss her mouth, tongue deep inside her, swirling and licking like she was the world’s most delightful lollipop. He was enjoying it so much he relaxed into it, completely forgetting about himself and his hard-on. He just dove into her, listening to the small moans she was making, feeling her thighs tremble.

  He licked and sucked to his heart’s content, stealing glances up at her face now and again. She was bright pink, the blush extending down to her beautiful breasts. He sucked gently at her clitoris and felt her tremble sharply, her hands suddenly in his hair, pulling, panting wildly. He sucked just a little harder and she gasped, her cunt contracting sharply. In a second she’d be coming…

  Alex quickly pushed her onto her back, opened her with his fingers and pushed his dick inside at the exact second she started coming in sharp little contractions, groaning in his ear.

  The plan had been to stay still until the climax ended then start moving, but the plan was blown out of the water by the feel of those tiny muscles milking him, her arms and legs holding him tightly, long neck thrown back…

  Without moving a muscle, just by being inside her, he went off like a rocket, pushing hard against the arm of the couch with his toes so he could get inside her as far as he could possibly go, feeling every inch of her climax against the super-sensitized skin of his cock. His climax was so hard it was entirely possible he spurted every ounce of liquid in his body into her, because when it was over he collapsed on her, utterly spineless.

  They lay there until the light had drained from the sky, the only illumination in the room coming from the streetlight outside. Caitlin’s wriggling shook him out of his near coma.

  “Alex.” Her voice was breathless. She pushed at his shoulders without budging him an inch. “Get up.”

  Get up? Why? Things were absolutely perfect exactly as they were. He loved lying on her soft, slender body, lips against the skin of her throat. It was his favorite position in all the world.

  “Mm.” He was playing possum, but he genuinely didn’t want to get up. She wriggled some more and his dick started growing again inside her. She wanted more? Oh yeah. Just give him a minute here…

  “Alex.” Her voice was sharper now. “Get up, please. I need to shower. I need to…to go to the bathroom.”

  Ah Christ.

  He placed both palms flat on the couch seat and lifted himself up. She scooted out from under him and he mourned the cool air that hit his dick. It had been way more comfortable, snug and warm inside her.

  She disappeared into the downstairs bathroom and he didn’t stir for a long, long time, thinking nothing, just feeling.

  He looked at the heap of their clothes, his on top of hers. She was going to come out naked from the shower. His dick hardened happily at the thought.

  Waiting for her, he looked around his living room. Caitlin’s presence in his house had changed it almost beyond recognition.

  She had cut some branches from the shrubs in his backyard and put them in vases. The effect was odd but dramatic. Her laptop had taken up residence on his desk. Her books were scattered over the coffee table and her papers were piled on every available surface—the seat of a chair, on top of the entertainment center, under the phone.

  Yesterday’s cotton sweater was still hanging over a dining room chair and one of her slippers peeped out from under the couch. God only knew where its mate might be. Knowing Caitlin, it could be anywhere from the bathroom to the bedroom, or even in a corner of the kitchen.

  He hardly recognized the place as his own. His house usually looked as if no one lived there. Now the house looked messy—but lived in. The house looked like a home.

  Caitlin was, hands down, the most low-maintenance woman he’d ever met. She didn’t require constant attention or flattery or enormous amounts of money. He hadn’t once heard a version of “how do I look in this?” The eternal question that was such a freaking minefield.

  Alex’d had a couple of affairs that had spilled over into temporary living-together arrangements and he still shuddered at the memories. He’d felt hunted in his own home, required to constantly dance to the women’s moods and thoughts and whims. Making an effort and always coming up short.

  Caitlin was the opposite. Give her a table, a chair, her laptop and a book and she immediately sank into a study coma. Went a million miles away. If anything, Alex sometimes found himself making noises or even once harrumphing, simply to get her attention. He felt like a high-schooler doing handstands to impress the pretty new girl in school.

  She came out of the shower, smelling of his soap and Caitlin.

  “Tomorrow night,” Alex said, picking up her tee shirt, slipping it over her upraised arms, “let’s see if we can make it to the bedroom.”

  “Sounds enticing.” Caitlin lifted the heavy mass of her hair and let it spill outside the shirt. “But I’ll be busy tomorrow night. Or rather, tomorrow afternoon. I don’t know how long I’ll be, so maybe it would be better not to plan on dinner.”

  His hands stilled but he kept his voice casual. “You’ll be busy?”

  “Yeah.” Caitlin’s voice was muffled as she bent down to find her shorts and flats. “I have an appointment with a real estate agent at three. I’ll start house-hunting tomorrow. I’m going to have to hurry because I’ll be starting my new position next week and I’d like to have found a place to stay and be settled in.” Caitlin shifted some papers on the coffee table, a wry smile on her face. “The sooner I get out of here, the sooner you can go back to having a neat house. I’m pretty hopeless at keeping things in order.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Alex stood to pull on his jeans.

  “You’ll what?” Startled, she let the papers drop again.

  Alex patiently picked them up. “I’ll come with you. I know this town inside out. I can help you find something suitable.”

  “That’s nice of you, Alex,” Caitlin said, looking up at him uncertainly. “But really, there’s no need for you to go out of your way. You’ll be busy. You have this pesky thing known as a job.”

  “I can take some personal time off. No problem. I’ll help you look for a new apartment,” he said.

  Over my dead body, he thought.

  Chapter Ten

  “Well, you’re no help,” Caitlin grumbled three days later as she and Alex walked into Alex’s house.

  She’d received official notification of the fellowship from the Frederiksson Foundation and was due to start the following Monday. The good news was that the Foundation was going to pay her an extra ten thousand as a housing allowance—and the bad news was that she didn’t have a house to rent yet. After three exhausting days of house-hunting, she was no nearer to her goal that she’d been at the beginning.

  It was after eight and she was tired and dispirited. She dumped her purse and a bag of groceries on the kitchen counter.

  “How can you say that?” Alex asked reasonably. He ferried in the rest of the groceries from the car and started putting them away. “I saved you from making some huge mistakes. Remember that split level in the boondocks? I swear you could hear the coyotes howling. And what about that apartment over on Southside? You practically needed a passport to get there.”

  “Well, okay,” Caitlin conceded. “A few of the properties were a little out of the way, that’s true. But come on, Alex, Baylorville isn’t L.A. Everything’s reasonably close to everything else. And anyway, all the apartments were close to bus stops and I intend to buy myself a car soon anyway. What about that last apartment? That was smack in the center of town.”

  “That last apartment we saw had termites, I’m sure of it. I could hear them crunching. Speaking of crunching, what’s for dinner?” Alex asked. When she glared at him, he shrugged and started setting the table.

  Caitlin planted her hands on her hips. “Alex, the building was made of brick and steel! How could it have termites?”

  “Insidious little creatures,” Alex agreed. He folded the napkins and brushed his hands. �
�Probably mutants. Hey, didn’t we have some beer around here somewhere?”

  “I put a six-pack in the fridge behind the lettuce. Stop changing the subject, Alex. Do you realize that we’ve run through three real estate agents in three days? I start at the Frederiksson Foundation on Monday. I’m never going to find an apartment at this rate.”

  “We’ll find something, don’t worry,” Alex soothed. He brushed her cheek with his lips and pushed her glasses back up to the bridge of her nose.

  She rolled her eyes. “Not like this. Not if you keep nitpicking. Nothing the agents show us is good enough. The apartment’s either too hot or too cold or too expensive or too big or too small.”

  Alex clucked and shook his head. He reached into the fridge, grunting with satisfaction when he found the six-pack. He cracked one open and took several slugs from the can. “I can’t help it if there are so many lousy properties on the market.”

  “Look, Alex, all I need is a small apartment. I don’t need the Taj Mahal. What was the matter with that cute little place on Greenwood?”

  “It faced north, honey.” Alex took another swallow and shrugged. “Can’t have that.”

  “Alex,” Caitlin took a deep breath, “I’m not a tree. Moss will not grow on my north side. It was comfortable and convenient and cheap.”

  “You’ll have sky-high heating bills this winter.”

  Caitlin held her breath for a count of three then let it out slowly. “We’re in Southern California. How much heat can I consume?”

  “What about el Niño?” Alex frowned, considering. “Or la Niña. Or El Niñito. Whatever. Hey, do we have any peanuts?” he asked, grabbing a second beer and carrying the cans into the living room.

  “Here.” Caitlin pulled out a drawer next to the sink. She picked up a packet of salted peanuts and tossed it at Alex from the living room door. He caught the bag one-handedly, ripped it open with his teeth and dumped the peanuts into a bowl which he set on the coffee table. “For your information,” Caitlin began, “el Niño—”

  But Alex was gone. As always when he got home, he ran upstairs and changed into sweats. A few minutes later, he padded back downstairs barefoot and cleared some of Caitlin’s papers off the couch to sit down. She walked around the couch so she could see him.

  “For your information,” she continued, “el Niño was years ago and la Niña’s over and el Niñito doesn’t exist. And what was so wrong with that apartment off Carson?”

  Alex thumbed the remote. “Ah…did you see the color of those walls? Puke brown. Come on, Caitlin, you would have had nightmares with those walls.”

  “Walls?” Caitlin frowned. The apartment had perfectly normal off-white walls. “There wasn’t anything wrong with the color. The color was—” But Alex wasn’t listening. He had settled with a heavy sigh into the sofa and the sounds of baseball commentary drifted from the TV.

  “What’s for dinner?” he asked over the announcer’s voice.

  Caitlin looked at Alex watching the game, rolled her eyes and gave up. “How about those steaks we bought? And maybe a salad.”

  “Sounds great.” Alex cracked open another beer. “Well done, please. I hate blood.”

  Caitlin turned on the kitchen radio and started preparing dinner. She marinated the steaks, washed the salad and made the vinaigrette dressing, her heart heavy.

  He hadn’t once asked her to change her mind. He hadn’t asked her to stay. If he hadn’t asked by now he wasn’t going to. That was simply a fact.

  And it made finding a new place even more imperative. She was starting her new position on Monday.

  She didn’t have great expectations. Her old place in Grant Falls had been a cheap one-roomer, masquerading as a studio apartment. Every single property she’d seen in Baylorville was better than what she had been living in.

  She hated not knowing where she was going to live. It was going to be hard enough starting a new position, meeting all her new colleagues at the Foundation. Trying to strike the right note as the new kid on the block who didn’t want to make waves but who did want to contribute. Hit the ground running. She needed a stable home base. She wanted to have that part of her life settled before facing a new job and a new life.

  She was so rattled, not knowing from one day to the next what she was doing.

  Of course, Alex was sabotaging her attempts at finding a place to stay, which would have been fun to watch if the subtext were “don’t go away, stay with me”.But it wasn’t. He hadn’t once offered to simply extend their live-in arrangement. He never gave any clue at all that her future plans had anything to do with him.

  Every time he passed up an opportunity to tell her he’d like her to stay, her heart cracked a little. What was the point of getting straight A’s since she was five, of getting a PhD, of being really book-smart if she was going to be so dumb about her private life? She’d been telling herself from day one that Alex was going to break her heart and then telling herself right back that she was just along for the sex. Have an affair with a man whose hotness quotient was off the charts, just for the experience, then leave. She’d lectured herself a thousand times not to get emotionally involved, but here she was.

  Ha, ha.

  The eternal tug of war between head and heart. She was just like so many others in academic life. Book-smart and life-stupid.

  She absolutely loved living with Alex. Not just for the sex, though that was…yeah. Whew.

  It was hard for her to admit how lonely she’d felt before, but now it was impossible to fool herself. Being with Alex was incredible, the best thing that had ever happened to her. It was as if she’d been color-blind up until now, and the world had suddenly exploded with color.

  What a fool she was. In a fit of optimism, she’d even bought packets of herb seeds to plant then, at the last minute, had a return to sanity, quietly flushing the seeds down the toilet before Alex could see them. He’d vaguely mentioned buying some herbs but he hadn’t. If she planted them herself it was a big fat statement dug right into his garden that she wanted to stick around.

  Everything was like that, bending over backward not to make a statement, doing her best to leave a small footprint. She made sure she used as little room as possible in his closet, kept her few cosmetics in a small bag on the floor of the bathroom, made sure she didn’t buy any new books because she’d already added too many to his overflowing shelves.

  But you can’t try not to cast a shadow forever. She was making herself sick trying not to impose on him, searching his face endlessly for some clue as to what he felt for her, trying to read his body language. Oh, the sexual body language was easy enough to read. No problems there. He wanted her. That was plain to see. But sex alone wasn’t enough.

  It was so hard playing it cool. She found herself wanting to talk about her plans with him, what working at the Frederiksson would be like, sounding him out on the Baylorville power structure so she’d be better positioned not to step into holes like a newbie. But of course, planning her future with his advice presupposed he even cared what her future was, which wasn’t a given.

  And worse…she’d reach out to smooth back a lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead, but then clench her nails into her palms to stop herself. Sex was fine and when they were in bed, she could touch all she wanted. The more the better. Out of bed, there seemed to be some moratorium on shows of affection.

  It was madness and a recipe for deep unhappiness. She deserved better.

  It was absolutely impossible to know what Alex wanted.

  He wanted nothing at all, apparently, because he never talked about it. All his discussions were relentlessly based in the present. He hadn’t shown any signs of tiring of her presence in his house, but he never talked about the future in any way. It was as if the future tense had been banished from his vocabulary.

  He certainly hadn’t asked her to leave. But then again, he hadn’t asked her to stay, either.

  Caitlin grabbed one of Alex’s razor-sharp knives. Using it
to cut the lettuce was probably overkill but she had no choice. Alex didn’t have plain old salad knives—all he had were pricey samurai blades.

  She thought of the dull, cheap department store knives with the faded plastic handles back in her apartment in Grant Falls. Alex wouldn’t have stood for dull knives. Like Alex himself, all his equipment was in superb shape.

  She should get out of his house before she dropped one of his expensive knives on the floor or cracked one of his imported terracotta pots or tipped over one of his fancy designer floor lamps. She should get out before she ruined something important to him.

  Should I stay or should I go now? The song got it exactly right.

  The thought of just staying on was so incredibly tempting. Alex wouldn’t say no. But Caitlin needed some stability, her things around her, as she faced her first big, important job. Just staying, without Alex inviting her, meant she could be out on her ear in a heartbeat.

  And yet, living with him was just so wonderful.

  It was easier than she would have expected. Though she’d had two affairs with fellow students, she’d never actually lived with a man before. She hadn’t really known what to expect.

  A week ago, the thought of sharing quarters with Alex Cruz would have terrified her. She had found him so intimidating, so overwhelming. She could never tell what he was thinking or feeling. He was this huge, sinfully attractive puzzle, which she was certain she couldn’t ever possibly solve.

  To her surprise though, he never browbeat her. Incredible as it seemed, he dialed down a lot of that I’m-King-of-the-Mountain macho authoritarianism when they got home. The small temporary household they’d created had turned into a participatory democracy instead of a dictatorship.