Everything in Between

by Hubbard, Crystal

  Zae’s fingers played in the dark gold hair of his chest. “You don’t manscape.”

  He shook his head. “All that primping isn’t for me. Plus, it itches somethin’ fierce when it grows back in.”

  “So you’ve done it before.”

  “Once. An old girlfriend wanted to wax it off, so I let her.”

  “Hurt, didn’t it?” Zae laughed.

  “I thought she ripped my nips off. It felt like she was taking the hair off with a blowtorch.”

  “Now you know what women go through to be perfect and beautiful,” Zae said.

  “Do you ever wax anything?”

  The sparkle in his eye and the twitch of his mouth clued Zae in to what body parts most interested him.

  “I wax my nipples,” Zae said. “They’re normally very hairy.”

  Chip’s eyes popped with a start. “You’re kidding, right?”

  She answered with a wicked laugh.

  In one swift movement, Chip pressed her onto her back and took her right nipple in his mouth. He circled it with his tongue, teasing her first with its gentle rasp and then its satiny underside. Lightly sucking, he pinched his lips around it, drawing it to pebbled erection. With a moan, Zae arched her back, offering him the fullness of her bosom. Chip held her in place with a hand on her abdomen.

  She let her knees fall wide apart, and she hoped his long fingers would venture further down.

  Chip pulled away to look at her. “You don’t wax these.” His right elbow resting on his pillow, he propped up his head with his right hand. “They’re too smooth.” He caressed her nipple with his thumb. “They’re too perfect.”

  “That’s nice to hear after nursing three children.”

  He passed his hand over the faint stretch marks on her lower abdomen. He didn’t understand why women were so self-conscious about the little physical reminders of their lives. Zae’s stretch marks, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes when she laughed—they were signs of life—the life she had given and the life she’d lived. They added to her remarkable beauty, rather than detracting from it.

  “How did you manage to live so long without marring this perfect envelope you were born in?” he asked. “You don’t have a single scar.”

  “Lucky, I suppose.” She shrugged. “I had my share of skinned knees like everyone else. I heal well.”

  Chip repositioned himself on the bed, sliding away from the headboard to clasp Zae’s left knee. He kissed it, tilting it slightly outward to more easily ply his lips to the soft skin of her inner thigh. The curls framing his face tickled the apex of her thighs, and she laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” he smiled against the dark curls at his lips.

  “I was thinking about the condom nicknames the kids gave your girlfriends.”

  “I didn’t realize people were so interested in my love life.”

  “Did you love any of them?”

  He parted her with his tongue, giving her a long, luxurious stroke before saying, “No.”

  Zae inhaled sharply, her hips inching to meet his tongue. “Why haven’t you used condoms with me?”

  Chip sat up. He licked his upper lip. “Aren’t you on something?”

  Zae rose on her elbows. “I’ve been practically celibate for eight years. I haven’t needed birth control pills.”

  Chip gripped her hip. “The night of the wedding…is there a chance…?”

  “We’d have known long before now. I’ve been tracking my periods since I was fourteen. I know when I’m ovulating.”

  “Of course…” He eased back onto the pillows, pulling her into his arms.

  “You seem disappointed.”

  “No.”

  “Relieved?”

  “Not that, either.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.”

  She took his hand and placed it between her thighs. “Put your finger on this.” She moaned as he followed her suggestion. “And I’ll put mine on this.” She took him lightly with just her fingertips, caressing him to his full, straining length. “I love being with you,” she whispered in his ear, her breath coming hard and quick with the work of his finger. “I never feel more alive than when I’m with you.”

  “I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Zae.”

  “Nicer than this?” she whispered in his ear, her words drawing pictures that her hand brought to life as it worked Chip’s hard flesh. She nibbled and suckled his earlobe between words, stoking his fire along with her own. She straddled him, leaving room between them so their hands could continue their thrilling work.

  Unable to stand it anymore, Chip whirled onto his knees, flipped Zae onto her back and shoved himself into her with a loud groan of relief. Zae shaped her body to his, fully receiving him. Their muscles hardened with the effort of their union. Chip, his head thrown back, displayed his sculptural beauty. Starting at the tip of his chin, Zae’s gaze traced the angular line of his jaw, the column of his tense neck and the cords and veins standing against his skin, the breadth of his shoulders and the broad, well-shaped muscles of his chest. She wrapped his arms around his torso, pressing the stack of muscles to hers to feel their movement.

  Chip widened her legs and tipped her hips a little higher, sinking deeper within her. Zae clapped her hands to his hard buttocks, helping him drive himself home.

  Chip gritted his teeth. His jaw muscles ached from the effort to prolong what Zae’s tight, hot tunnel sought to steal from him. He’d never had this much trouble controlling himself. Not since he was a horny sophomore in high school eager to boink any girl who’d have him had he been so helpless to control his own body. He’d never wanted any woman as he wanted Zae, yet the touch of her body rendered him incapable of maintaining the control he needed to please her as well as he could.

  But when he opened his eyes and gazed at Zae’s face, he saw that her struggle was no less than his own. Where he fought to maintain control to prolong the buildup to that moment of ultimate pleasure, Zae wantonly submitted to every sensation of their union. His chest hair grazing her sensitive nipples, the bunching of his abdominal muscles against hers, the slap of the heavy, fleshy twins at her backside with each lunge of his hips—every detail of their coupling aroused her, leaving her body mindlessly reacting to delicious pleasure.

  His sweat dripped onto her chest to swim with hers. She reached between them to feel his hardness in motion, coating her fingers with the musky spice of her nectar. Chip took her hand and sucked her fingers, earning a decisive response from her sheath. It tightened around him, weakening him. With a groan of surrender, Chip stiffened, his buttocks clenching, his back arching, his arms locked as his heat shot from him.

  Zae hooked her ankles at the small of his back, riding the short, hard pumps of his body. A tiny moan escaped her with each one, her inner muscles gripping him in rhythm, her climaxes moving through her like soldiers in formation.

  Even though he was spent, Chip continued his thrusts, building Zae’s army of ecstasy until he shrank and let her push him out of her. He lay on his back beside her, panting. “I’m sorry,” he managed, once his breathing slowed enough. “I couldn’t hold out any longer.”

  “You don’t have a thing to apologize for.” She chuckled lightly. She whistled under her breath. “I’m the one who should apologize. You touch me, and I just blow.”

  “That sounds pretty good. You might have to show me that sometime.”

  Resting her forearm on his chest, she propped her chin on her hand to meet his gaze. “It would be my pleasure.”

  “Mine, too.” He grinned.

  “So what are we waiting for?” Zae crawled between his legs. She gave him a gentle, cursory wipe with the bed sheet, then took him in one hand.

  “Sweetie, it’s too soon.” He smiled. “I’m not as young as I used to be.”

  “Neither am I.” Holding his gaze, she circled the plump, dark pink knob atop the slumping staff in her hand
s. “Don’t underestimate the elderly. We know things the young’uns don’t.”

  Chip winced. She was being gentle, but he was still sensitive from their previous interlude.

  Zae eased the discomfort by wrapping her lips around him. With little more coaxing than a few tricks of her tongue and cheeks, Zae jumped Chip’s engine. Like a good Marine, his shaft snapped to attention, awaiting further duty. “Experience over age, soldier,” Zae teased. “Never forget it.”

  “Yes, sir…” Chip gasped, his last coherent thought before Zae took him to an endless universe of spine-bending pleasure.

  Chapter Eleven

  The muted light of the brass lamp on Zae’s night table bathed Chip’s body as he lay on his stomach in her bed. His head pillowed on his arms, he smiled when Zae lowered the bed sheet past his buttocks.

  “See anything interesting?” he asked.

  “Yes.” Zae reached for her glasses on the nightstand. She slipped them on and peered at his back. “You’ve got a funny spot. I noticed it in the shower. I thought it was dirt or something at first, but it doesn’t come off.” She picked at it with her fingernail, even though she hadn’t been able to scrub it off in the shower.

  “It’s just a mole,” he mumbled into the pillow. “I’ve got another one on my inner thigh. Want to check that one out, too?”

  “I already did. And it’s just a mole.” She rolled him onto his back.

  He grinned at the sight of her. With her bed-tousled hair and nerd glasses, she was an amazing vision of geek sexiness.

  She took his right hand and examined the nail bed of his thumb. “You have a dark spot here. It could be a sign of anemia.”

  “I was working on a house last week,” he said. “I banged my thumb. It’s just a blood bruise. It’ll go away.”

  “When was your last physical?”

  “I don’t know.” He closed his fingers around her hand. “A couple of years ago. Why the concern?”

  “How old is your father?”

  “Who?”

  “Your dad,” she snapped impatiently. “How old is he?”

  “Seventy, next year. His father is ninety-four. They still go fishing together practically every weekend in spring.”

  Zae kneeled over beside his supine figure, her fingers lightly moving over his skin. She pinched his skin to bring to better relief a tiny, strawberry bump. “What’s—”

  “Birthmark.” He took her hand and folded it into his. “I’ve kept myself alive for almost thirty-six years. I think I can manage a while longer. The proper incentive would definitely help.”

  Zae switched tacks, her scrutiny and touch becoming less clinical and more artistic. “Your skin is nice and man soft,” she sighed.

  “What’s ‘man soft?’ ” Chip asked, rolling onto his back. “I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”

  “My skin is soft one kind of way,” Zae started. She dragged her fingertips along her forearm. Chip added his fingertips to hers, starting a trail of pleasant goose bumps on her skin. “And yours is soft in a manly way. It’s like velour.”

  “Thanks.” Chip laughed. “I’ve got the skin of an old lady’s track suit.”

  Zae ran her knee along his hip. She cupped the slack length of flesh between his legs. It instantly responded, fast overfilling her grip. “This is really beautiful. It’s stately and neat.” With her thumb, she traced the thick cabled vein lining the underside of his shaft.

  “You seem the connoisseur,” Chip remarked.

  “Not really.” Zae snickered. “I don’t have much basis for comparison. I’ve only been with two other men in my life. Colin was the first man I ever loved and the only man I ever made love to, until…”

  “Dr. Dudley.” Chip smothered a laugh in his forearm.

  “Yes,” Zae snapped saucily.

  “I still can’t see him with you.”

  “He’s not with me. He never was. He was someone who satisfied an occasional need.”

  “He was your booty call.”

  “I think he’d like being called that.”

  Zae caressed his upper right thigh, her hand gravitating to the long scar running from his hip to the middle of his calf. Time and expert surgery had softened the scar’s appearance, but the pale, thick lines still looked like railroad tracks. Zae considered scars to be badges of courage and strength. Chip’s was a symbol of his resilience. “Gian said you were one of the best rats in the field, with your big ol’ self.”

  “Yeah, most of the other fellas were skinny little things. I’ve got good flexibility and reflexes because of my martial arts background, and I’m strong, so I could do things the little’uns couldn’t.”

  She lay over his hip, her head toward his feet, his scar under her fingers. “It must have been terrifying. I’m terrified now, just thinking about you disarming booby traps and crawling into blown up buildings to defuse bombs.”

  “I was never scared until after I got shot.” He kissed her buttock. “Gian was the best leader you could ask for, in good times and bad. I don’t think too many other commanders would have carried me two miles through enemy territory, bleeding like a stuck pig.”

  “Gian said you were as close to death as any corpse he’d ever seen.”

  “Fooled him, didn’t I?”

  Zae took him in an awkward hug. “Would you have stayed in the military? If your leg hadn’t been injured so badly?”

  “I never had to think about that. It’s a miracle I even walked again.”

  “Would you have gone back?”

  The merry light in Chip’s eyes dimmed along with his smile. His features seemed to age instantly in contemplation of the end of his military career. Zae cupped his face and pressed her forehead to his temple.

  “I don’t think I could have. That last mission took too much from us. We lost four men in the explosion I’d gone in to prevent. When that building collapsed around me, I thought I was a goner. But Gian was on the other end of my radio and he talked me out of that building. It was like playing Blind Man’s Bluff, only I had Gian’s voice on a radio guiding me through the wreckage. No sooner than I was clear of the building, we took fire.”

  He winced, a slight shudder moving through his body with the memory. He embraced Zae, dragging her to his chest, instinct telling him there was no safer place on earth than in her arms.

  “My leg exploded under me,” he went on. “I didn’t feel it, at first. I looked down and saw my flesh hanging from the torn shreds of my pants. I went down, right there in the open. But Gian came and got me. He didn’t hesitate, not for a second. He dragged me over his shoulder, ran me to cover, and gave me a quick field dressing. I don’t remember much after that.”

  “You were probably in shock from pain and blood loss.” Zae stroked his scar.

  “I can’t feel that. Nerve damage.”

  Her caress strayed higher, to the base of his abdomen and the crinkly golden hair there. He stirred, rising to meet her hand. “You can feel that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Steering him with his rigid length, she guided him over her. He settled atop her, tenderly kissing her jaw and chin. Their bodies communicating effortlessly, they joined once again, tears spilling from Zae in their breathy exertions.

  “I can’t imagine not having you in my life,” she whispered so softly, he almost didn’t hear her.

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Famous last words…”

  “I don’t think God brought me through all He did just to run me over with a truck while I’m crossing the street.” He smiled. A droplet of sweat fell from his brow to trickle along her collarbone. “Especially not after making me the happiest man in the world.”

  “Don’t give Him any ideas!” Zae choked on a sob. “He can’t resist a challenge.”

  Chip used his thumbs to wipe away her tears. “God saved me for a reason. I think this is it, right here. I’ve never felt more right about anything as I do about loving you. He works in mysterious ways, but I
promise you this: He won’t take me from you.”

  His certainty pleased her, and she so wanted to believe him. “Colin’s death was the flood?”

  He smiled, his eyes again bright with his love for her. “Now that would make me your rainbow, wouldn’t it?”

  * * *

  “Mom, are we going to breakfast?”

  Zae heard CJ’s voice, and her body wanted to respond, but exhaustion dulled her reflexes. CJ had already turned and left the room before Zae could yank the bedclothes over Chip’s head.

  “I need to talk to him,” Zae said, throwing off the covers. “He’s probably in shock right now, catching his mother in bed with you.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Chip spoke into his pillow. “He knows a lot more than you give him credit for.”

  “This is an entirely new situation for him,” Zae insisted. “He was barely three years old when his father died, he’s never seen me with another man, never mind seen me in bed with a man.”

  “He told me that he likes to give backrubs to the girls at school.”

  “So? He’s a nice kid.”

  “He says he does it so he can tell who’s wearing a bra and who isn’t.” Chip chuckled. “The kid’s got skills I still don’t have.”

  Zae paused, her legs hanging over the edge of the high bed. “I guess he’s growing up a little faster than I thought he was. I still need to talk to him, though. I don’t want him to feel that I’m hiding you from him.”

  “Mind if I wait here?”

  She kissed his shoulder. “You’d better.”

  Leaving Chip buried under her comforter, Zae scurried out of bed. She pulled on her red chenille robe and shoved her feet into fluffy black slippers. Her heartbeat tapping out her anxiousness, she went down to the basement, CJ’s likeliest location.

  “Didn’t you barge into my room just now, asking about going to breakfast?” Zae nodded toward a stainless steel mixing bowl full of Frosted Flakes and milk nestled in the center of her son’s crossed legs.