Missed Connections Box Set

by Jeffe Kennedy

  “Can’t have that.” Holding onto me still, he walked me backward—me doing awkward little penguin shuffle steps—until I sat on the edge of my bed. Kneeling there, he pushed up my cuffs to unzip my boots and pull them off, taking my pants with them. He picked up my foot, holding it, making an amused sound. My purple socks, with glitter and rainbow unicorns. I’d forgotten I’d put them on to make myself happy this morning and forever ago. I groaned and tried to yank my foot away, but he held onto my ankle, looking up at me and shoving the fall of hair away from his face. “Precious. You are so fucking adorable, I can’t stand it.”

  That didn’t sound good. “Damien, I—”

  He pulled off both socks and knelt up, still holding the one ankle, pushing my leg wider, all akimbo, the lace panties stretching and pulling. He cupped my mound, then toyed with the lace, before giving me a fierce look. “Precious,” he repeated, looking around the room. When his gaze returned to mine, it had an odd quality. “You sure you’re okay with this?”

  It made me a little tremulous inside, though I couldn’t say why. I tried a seductive smile, though who knows? On me it probably looked like a crazy grimace. “You’re killing me, luv,” I replied, using his accent. “Don’t you dare stop.”

  “My kind of chick,” he murmured, petting me, gaze dropping to my crotch. I moaned and kind of—undulated. I couldn’t help myself. “Take off your bra for me then.”

  “You still have all your clothes on,” I retorted.

  “Easily dealt with.” He released my foot and pulled the t-shirt off over his head, giving me a good look as he briefly struggled, elbows up, to get it over his head. Smooth and pale, with fine skin and sharp hipbones jutting above the jeans riding low, held in place with a thick, studded black leather belt. He got the shirt off, running a hand through the long side of his hair, giving me a questioning look. His shoulders had more muscle, nice arms, with a Celtic band of black links braceleting one biceps. Cocking a jaunty brow, he asked, “Do I pass muster?”

  I’d become an entirely different person, because I just propped myself on my elbows. “Let’s see the rest.”

  “Saucy,” He commented, but his fingers were nimbly undoing the belt buckle, the clinking the only sounds in the quiet, then the flick of the leather, the hiss of his zipper and the shoosh of his jeans as he shoved them down. He kicked them aside and stood there, naked, engorged penis standing straight out, and spread his hands, smirking.

  Okay, yeah. He was dead gorgeous. I confess I’d kind of fretted that he might have other piercings and I wasn’t at all sure how I felt about that. As he was. Wow. And this was me, with him. It was finally happening.

  “Marcia luv?”

  I’d been staring at his member in fascination, never having seen one so up close and personal. Giving him a smile that I hoped looked seductive and not babbling idiot, I sat up and unhooked my bra. Then skimmed out of the panties, too, since they weren’t on right anyway. My turn to wait while he said nothing. Finally I risked a glance and he gave me this wolfish smile, like he’d been waiting on that, and slowly stalked toward me.

  “Oh, luv, you know what?”

  “What?” I had to make an effort to keep my eyes on his face and not that slowly bobbing erection. For the first time I understood how guys had a hard time with that sort of thing, keeping your eyes politely away from the source of greatest fascination. Damien crawled over me onto the bed, edging me back to lie flat with little pushes here and there, arranging me and finally straddling me so his face hung close over mine. That fall of black hair tickled my cheek.

  “Marcia, luv,” he whispered, like he was telling me a secret. “I am going to eat you alive.”

  I had no reply—except some part of me that shrieked “goody!”—but he clearly didn’t need one. His mouth captured mine and he lowered himself onto me, hands going everywhere. The shock of full body skin-to-skin contact had me gasping, with a feeling of having the spins all over again. Though this was a much better drunk. My thighs slicked together and I felt plush and pillowy against his lithe leanness and I loved it. I wanted the fierce blade of him inside me with a ferocity I’d never known.

  His hand was on my thigh, then on my mound. I spread my legs and his fingers—those long, lovely, pale fingers, slid through my folds, one going up inside me, where only my pink sparkly vibrator had gone before. This felt nothing like that. I cried out. Or maybe that was when he sank his teeth into my neck. I scratched his back, pulled at his hair.

  Another finger inside me and his mouth, hot on my breast, sucking hard on the nipple. I pumped my hips against his hand. Frantic. Crazed. Then screamed as I came.

  Holy. Fucking. Mother. Of. God.

  Maybe Damien said that. I’d lost track of where he ended and I began, his hand so buried between my thighs, his mouth everywhere on me. Then I thought I heard voices. Shit. Was someone home? Damien lifted his head, cocking an ear at the door.

  “Does it lock?” he asked.

  “A hook,” I answered just as quietly, as if I needed to be careful not to be overheard. As if a scream from my lonely and virginal bedchamber wouldn’t have brought my friends running already if they were going to. Damien sprang off of me with surprising grace and alacrity, his neat backside flexing as he strode to the door and inserted the hook. When he bent to pick up his jeans to rummage in the pocket, I caught a glimpse of his scrotum, full and flush.

  He glanced at me, a quirk of a smile that I’d been staring yet again, and he held up the foil condom packet. “Still up for the full thing?

  I stretched, feeling languorous and sexy and maybe even kind of beautiful. In that moment, I lived in my body in a way I never had before. And I wanted more of it. “Yes.”

  “We don’t have to,” he said sitting on the side of the bed next to me, putting the packet of three on my bedside table, where they gleamed a lurid gold compliment to the cherubs on my Meissen porcelain clock.

  “We don’t?”

  His gaze traveled my body, then his hand, from my shoulder, to my breast, down the curve of my waist and over my hip. “You’re so fucking beautiful, you know that? And somehow…” his gaze lifted to the shelf of fairies, the castle.

  “What?”

  I must have sounded defensive, because he looked at me, cupped my cheek and kissed me. Lying on my back, with him kissing me like that, I could have been Sleeping Beauty awaking from a century of slumber. I felt like that, too, finally alive after sleepwalking through life.

  Damien smiled at me, brushing my hair back from my forehead. “There’s a kind of purity to you. An innocence. We could just mess around more, you know. No need for the full shagging.”

  I didn’t say anything right away, terrified he’d guessed my secret and changed his mind. Finally I said, “I’m no angel, Damien.”

  His mouth took that wicked turn and he dropped his hand to my breast, squeezing it, then rolling the nipple so I gasped. “No, that you’re not. You’re more like a succubus, all blushing and lovely and luring me in, devouring me from the cock up.”

  I laughed, loving that idea. Not the beggar girl staring in the window at the lovely pastries, but the temptation herself. Surprising myself, I took hold of him—his cock—I said to myself, enjoying the naughtiness of it, and his full body shudder as I did. He was long, hot, and hard in my hand, with a delicious softness to his skin.

  “I want this,” I said. “I want—” I stopped myself from saying I want it to be you. “I want you.”

  “Hang on, luv—not too much of that or we’re done before we’ve begun.” He reached over for one of the packets, then knelt up as he ripped it open. “You want to do the honors?”

  “All right.” I’d, of course, never done it before, but I read plenty. I took the condom, bemused by its chill stickiness—not at all a sexy thing—and put it over the tip of him, rolling it down the length. He watched with a heavily-lidded gaze, the lip-hoops caught in his teeth, hands flat on his thighs, breathing low, almost as if he were meditating.
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br />   When I finished, those aqua eyes found my face, glinting with mischief, and he edged down. Already between my spread legs, he only had to push my knees up some to open me wide.

  And then he licked me.

  Incredible. Even better than billed. And the Fab Five talked it up a lot, comparing techniques and even once debating adding another criterion because if and how a guy gives oral is major insight into his character. I got their point. Damien kissed me there like he kissed my mouth, with savage tenderness. Hunger and affection combined.

  This makes it sound like I was thinking, which I wasn’t. I thought about all this later, when I had a working brain again, taking out the memory and turning it over and over like a precious jewel, holding it up to the light to see the sparkle. In the moment, I simply dug my fingers into my bedspread, holding on as if I might turn upside down and fall off.

  I came again, and then again, higher, with greater keening intensity. Then as I climbed that peak a third time, gasping for air in that rarified altitude, Damien slid up my body, positioned himself, and pushed in.

  Even as I welcomed it, I tensed for the pain. The wrenching pleasure of incipient orgasm took over, pulling him in. I cried out and he kissed me, my sea flavor on his tongue, somehow primal and perfect.

  And so filled. I’d never felt anything like it. His heat and girth, stretching and completing. As if I hadn’t realized I’d had this empty space until he sealed it up.

  I realized he hadn’t moved, that I was doing all of it, shuddering and trembling beneath him, becoming accustomed to this new way of being. He kissed my cheek. “All good?”

  “So good,” I answered, the mirror of his question.

  He withdrew a little, pressed in again, a rocking that kept our pelvises close together. Waves of pleasure, pink and lilac watered silk, washed over me. In my mind, flowers furled and bloomed. I held onto him now, skin soft and hard beneath my hands. He murmured something in my ear and I moaned an equally incoherent reply.

  And the climax swamped me, taking me under like an ocean swell I hadn’t expected, drowning me in Damien, his natural honey scent under the spicy bay rum, his body, the aloe fall of his hair over my face.

  * * *

  I thought he might have fallen asleep on me, he lay so still. Ice has a whole rant about this, guys falling asleep after sex, particularly on top of her. I didn’t mind though. Maybe it would be different for someone who’d learned lots of male bodies, and enjoyed them in innumerable ways. For me, the experience of having someone else so close filled me with wonder—and an odd contentment.

  Maybe it was just from good sex. God knew Charley swore by it as a stress releaser. The lassitude of pleasure still had me feeling like chocolate in the sun, sweetly gooey. But I loved having Damien’s weight on me, the lean vitality of his body, the way he still fit inside me.

  Though I was beginning to feel a little sore there. The first actual pain I’d felt, which was a blessing. Still, I’d have to move soon and I didn’t want to. I didn’t want this to end.

  Damien felt my shift, however, and lifted his head, not asleep at all. “Hang on, luv,” he said, and reached down to hold on the condom while he pulled out. He grabbed some tissues—pink, of course—from my nightstand and wrapped the condom up in it, cocking a brow at me. I pointed to the Beauty and the Beast trashcan, stifling a giggle at the heresy. But, hey, we all know they had sex, right? That story is rife with sexual tension.

  “Dare I ask if there’s a loo?” he asked.

  “There is,” I said, “but you might run into someone.”

  He brushed that off and pulled on his jeans, commando. Maybe that meant he wouldn’t be leaving right away.

  “Turn right, end of the hallway. That’s the powder room Charley and I share. Though, if you need a shower, that’s at the other end of the hall and your odds of meeting one of my housemates goes up.”

  “Nah, I don’t need a shower. Unless that’s a hint?” He sniffed under his arm dubiously, making me giggle, then unhooked the door and slipped out into the dark hallway. Maybe they’d all gone to sleep.

  Taking advantage of the opportunity, I hopped off the bed and checked the comforter—big wet spot, but no blood stain, thankfully. Using the pink tissues, I wiped myself off, finding a few smears of blood. I should have white tissues, for my lovers. The thought arrested me, that I might do this again, with someone else.

  But I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted Damien.

  This might be all you’ll get of him and you will be chill about that. I imagined myself, sobbing, in a ratty housecoat, holding onto Damien’s booted ankle as he tried to shake me off so he could start his bike and ride away. Ugh.

  Not sure what to do next, I nearly put on my robe, but it’s kind of ratty. I look like a pink Cookie Monster in it, which is normally fine. Ice would have put on her robe, but it’s this gorgeous silk and sequined thing that makes her look like a courtesan. Charley would have some perfect peignoir. My white flannel nightgown wasn’t exactly the thing either. So, after brushing my hair and fixing a few makeup smears, I got under the covers, still naked, not quite able to bring myself to loll about like I had before. Apparently that’s an in-the-moment thing, too.

  The door snicked open, and Damien slipped in, giving me a cocky grin. “No interceptors. Our secret is safe.”

  A pang of anxiety had me thinking he didn’t want to be seen with me, but no—I had been the one to suggest that he wouldn’t want to encounter my housemates. He came and sat on the bed next to me, giving me a considering look. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten under the covers. Probably it sent the wrong message. What was he thinking?

  “Do you want me to go?” He asked, stroking my shoulder over the comforter.

  Shit. I had sent the wrong message. “No,” I blurted. “I mean. I was…cold.”

  “Oh yeah?” He drew down the comforter a little, peeking. “You look pretty cozy now.”

  I smiled at him. “Want to join me?”

  “It’s okay for me to stay? Cuz I can go if you’d rather.”

  “Stay. I’d…really like that.”

  “Me too.” He hopped up again, shucked his jeans, put the hook on the door again, and got under the covers with me. I scooted over to make room. This was why Ice and Charley had queen-sized beds, and Damien rooted around with my extra pillow, making himself comfortable. “Who’s this?” He held up my unicorn, a puzzled line between his brows.

  I imagined myself sinking through a spiraling hole in the bed. Why hadn’t I moved it when I had the chance? I reached for it, but Damien held it away with a mischievous smile, his other arm folded behind his head.

  “Ulysses Unicorn,” I finally said, certain my face had gone pink. “Are you going to turn off the light?”

  “In a mo. Why ‘Ulysses’?”

  “Because I was a strange kid?”

  Damien grinned, booping me on the nose with the worn Lamé horn. “Story, please.” He laughed when I tried to snatch it from him, moving much faster. “The story, or the unicorn gets it.”

  “I thought guys were supposed to be all sleepy after sex,” I grumbled, then realized what I’d said.

  He didn’t notice though, instead making Ulysses gambol through the air over our heads. “The mystery of Ulysses the Unicorn is keeping me awake.”

  “It’s not much of a mystery.” I sighed, biting my lip to keep from giggling at the way Damien was making Ulysses buck. “A boy won it for me at a carnival in sixth grade.”

  “A boy named Ulysses?”

  “No, silly. A boy named Johnny Park. I just liked Ulysses for a unicorn because it began with a ‘u.’”

  “And this Johnny fellow—your first boyfriend?”

  “If you could call him that.”

  “Did you kiss him?”

  “He kissed me. It was weird.”

  “Like I kiss you?”

  “No.” I snagged Ulysses from him finally and tucked him on my other side. “I like the way you kiss me.”

  He
turned on his side, snugging up against me under the covers, getting his head on my pillow, then kissing me, long and soft and tender. “Like this?”

  “Yes.” I sighed dreamily. “And the fierce kisses, too. I like them all.”

  “What’s this smell?” He turned his face into the pillow. “Like flower soap.”

  “Lavender.” That was probably a weird girly thing, too. “It promotes peaceful sleep.”

  He inhaled. “I like it. But I think I’m going to sleep peacefully regardless, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes.” Maybe it was thinking about the lavender, but sleepiness dragged at me. “I do.”

  He reached over to turn off the light, then snuggled against me again. “Good night, luv. Sweet dreams.”

  ~ 9 ~

  I awoke with a start, realizing two things in a panicked rush: that Damien was gone and that I’d never called my mother the previous night. Sitting up, I looked around the room. The hook was off the door, Damien’s clothes were gone with him, and my phone must be in my bag still, down on the coat rack. How unlike me to have totally forgotten about it.

  Either that or it had fallen out somewhere on a Chicago street to be crushed under tires or grabbed by someone to make international calls to Greece or something. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d remembered to check that I had it, also unlike me.

  On top of everything, I had to pee with crazy urgency, so first things first. I threw back the covers and a note fluttered up—on my notepaper with kittens chasing pink candy hearts. Damien. He’d left me a note. My own heart tripped, pierced with tiny claws of joy.

  Woke early. Had to run. Didn’t want to wake you. Call or text me.

  And he’d written his cell number on there. He’d also drawn a unicorn with two horns. No—with one horn and a massive erection. It shouldn’t have made me giggle, but it did.