Never

by Lulu Pratt

  “That doesn’t mean we should do anything,” Lara insists.

  “You’re lonely and so am I. We’re both tense. Why not?” I lean in closer to her, and I see Lara tense up a little bit, but I can also see that she’s not exactly, at least on a purely physical level, against what’s happening between us.

  “Because we shouldn’t,” Lara says, but she doesn’t sound convinced.

  “If you can tell me right now, in all honesty, that you don’t want to, I’ll finish my beer, wish you a good night and go home,” I tell her.

  The silence drags out between us for a long few seconds, and I start to think she’s actually going to tell me that she doesn’t want it, that I’ve misread all the cues I’ve gotten from her.

  “It’s wrong and I shouldn’t,” Lara says quietly. “It’s wrong, but I want to.”

  I don’t say anything. Instead I finish leaning in and kiss her, full on the lips. For just an instant Lara tenses, and the next second, when she begins kissing me back, I realize that it was in surprise, not because she’s going to tell me to stop. I feel her move on the couch slightly and open my eyes a crack to see she’s putting her wine glass aside so it doesn’t spill. After that we’re both involved, kissing each other more and more heavily.

  I try to take it a little bit slow, to give Lara a chance to tell me to stop, or that she doesn’t want to go any further. I start with my hands on her waist, feeling the tension in her body, and then work up to her breasts gradually, over the top of her shirt. When Lara doesn’t stop me, I cup her breasts a little more obviously, giving them a quick squeeze.

  It’s almost weird in a way. Memories flood back into my brain about what it had been like with Lara before, versus the subtle little changes that have happened to her body since, the little ways she’s more confident in kissing me or touching me. Her hands move over me in quick little movements, sliding down my chest and hesitating just a bit at my abdomen before dipping down to the front of my jeans. My cock has already started to throb, hardening from just kissing her and knowing that she might want more.

  I get my hands up under her shirt, and Lara reaches down to tug my T-shirt free of my jeans. I can feel the heat of her body getting more and more turned on by the moment, even as she moans against my lips. After a few moments I get brave again and slip my hands around to Lara’s back, to unhook her bra under her shirt. She breaks away from my lips and I think she’s going to tell me to stop, but instead she pulls my T-shirt up along my body, and I realize she’s taking it off me altogether.

  I make my own move, tugging Lara’s shirt up along her ribs, over her head. We both stop for just a second, looking at each other. I am almost certain that Lara is going to tell me we can’t go ahead, that we need to stop.

  “Do you want me to stop, Lara?”

  Lara thinks about this for a moment and then shakes her head.

  “No, I want you,” she says.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Lara

  I pull Ethan in for a deeper kiss, and feel his hands moving over my body, tracing over my curves. I can’t help but notice that in the time since we broke up, Ethan’s added muscle to his body. He’s strong, broad across the chest and back, with thick upper arms. He gives my breasts another quick squeeze and then reaches around to unhook my bra, lifting it away from me almost before I realize what he’s doing.

  He pulls me back and down on top of him, pressing my body against his and letting his hands drift down to the curve of my ass. I moan against his lips. Any thought of comparing him to what he used to be is out of my mind for good as things heat up between us more and more, as our clothes fall away bit by bit, even while our arms and legs get tangled together. Ethan’s lips dip down to my neck, and I moan again as he kisses and nibbles my sensitive skin, moving along the column of my throat to my chest.

  Ethan’s hands pull me against him and I pull back as he lets go of my ass to cup my breasts again, bringing them up to his mouth. His lips close first around one and then the other nipple, sucking and licking, sending little crackling jolts of pleasure seemingly straight to my pussy as I squirm in reaction. I find myself rubbing up against the hard ridge of his erection, with nothing between us but my panties and his shorts. I’m already soaking wet, and the heat of Ethan’s cock only makes me wetter as I rock my hips against his.

  “God, Lara,” Ethan murmurs, looking up at me.

  I smile down at him, breathless, more turned on than I can remember being in months. While I haven’t exactly been with a ton of guys since Ethan and I broke up, none of them has been able to get me nearly as hot as he’s got me right now.

  “You’ve picked up some more skills,” I tell him with a smile.

  Ethan chuckles, reaching up to my face to pull me in for another hungry kiss. His tongue plunges past my lips and I think that if I can’t feel him inside me soon I might actually die, but Ethan seems determined to take his time. His hand cups me through my panties and his fingers rub through the thin fabric, slowly along my labia, barely, barely, missing my clit.

  I touch Ethan all over, marveling at the way he’s grown physically in such a short time. His muscles moving under his skin on his chest feel amazing, and he’s grown a little more hair there. I push my hips down to get better contact with Ethan’s fingers and he moves the fabric aside, finally coming into contact with my soaking wet bare skin.

  “You’re so wet,” he says, barely breaking away from my lips, and I mumble something back to him agreeing with that assessment. Really, I’m too turned on to think about anything so mundane as words. I wish, for a second, that he’d just rip the damn panties off and somehow get inside of me right away.

  Instead, Ethan tumbles me off him and onto the couch, twisting around to pin me on my back against the cushions. I yelp in surprise, but the next moment his fingers hook into the waistband of my panties and pull them down over my hips, removing the last little bit of clothing on me. He tosses them across the room and I don’t even care where they’ve landed, not right now, at least. I just know that soon, hopefully, I’ll get what I want so badly I can taste it.

  Ethan kisses his way down from my lips to my neck, my neck to my breasts, staying there for a few moments to give my pebble-hard nipples some attention, and then moves on to my ticklish belly, chuckling to himself as I squirm in reaction.

  “Some things never change,” he says, and I don’t know if he’s talking to me or to himself. But then he’s slipping down between my legs, spreading them wide, looking up at me from just below my hips. I know what’s coming but even that doesn’t stop the shock of pleasure that lights up my nervous system when Ethan buries his face against my pussy, nuzzling against me for a moment before beginning to lick and suck.

  He teases me for what seems like an hour, barely bringing the tip of his tongue up to my clit where I want it most and then dipping down to my inner labia, keeping me right on the edge as I moan and squirm and writhe, grabbing at his head and shoulders, trying to twist my hips in such a way that he can’t avoid giving me what I want. I forget about everything but the need to get relief, bucking up against Ethan’s mouth.

  Finally, Ethan begins to focus on my clit, sucking it between his lips and swirling his tongue around the little bead of nerves, flicking against my pleasure center until I’m panting and gasping for breath. He pins my hips down with his arms and holds me right where he wants me, working me with his mouth until I couldn’t hold back if I wanted to. I grab his shoulders as the tension between my hips shatters and wave after wave of pleasure crashes through me.

  Ethan doesn’t let up, and it feels like my climax goes on for an hour as he keeps just enough pressure on my clit to keep me going, backing off every so often and starting over again. I come until I’m gasping for breath and trembling from the pleasure tingling through my nerves, and my clit is almost unbearably sensitive. I’m just about to tell Ethan to pull back when he does, licking his lips and looking up at me with a little grin.

  “That’s the m
ost fun I’ve had in a while,” Ethan tells me as he moves back up my body to kiss me on the lips. I can feel the hard, hot ridge of his erection pressing against my hip, and even though maybe two seconds ago I would have said it would take me an hour to be ready for more, the reminder turns me on all over again.

  I kiss him back, pressing my body against his, and wrap my legs around his hips. I’m soaking wet, and as I push my hips down, I love the feel of his cock, covered still by his shorts, against me. From the way Ethan tenses against me I can tell he likes the way I feel just as much.

  “Give me two minutes to catch my breath and we can take care of your needs too,” I say, rubbing against him a little bit. Ethan groans, and I feel his weight shift on top of me, and then, deliciously, his shorts are gone and there’s nothing at all between us. I should probably stop things here, I should probably ask him if he’s got a condom or tell him I can look for one in my bathroom, but I don’t want to wait, or stop to think.

  Ethan waits until my breathing has slowed and then I feel his fingertips brush against my labia as he guides the tip of his cock up against my pussy. He thrusts into me slowly and my toes curl as he fills me inch by inch, pushing against the little bit of resistance as my body tries to tighten around him. I push my hips down to take him deeper, faster, and Ethan chuckles lowly in my ear as we find our rhythm. It takes us a couple of moments. I’m only too eager and Ethan seems to be wanting to hold back a little bit, but once I fall into his movements, it feels so good that I don’t even care that he’s taking his time.

  We move together, Ethan pushing deeper and deeper inside of me, and every movement of his hips rubs up against my still-sensitive clit. When the tip of Ethan’s cock starts brushing against my g-spot every third or fourth thrust, I almost can’t bear how good it feels, he fits inside of me so perfectly, it’s like my body was made to take him.

  Before I know it, we’re both speeding up, touching each other everywhere, kissing each other again and again, and the tension is building between my hips until it’s almost unbearable. I twist my hips and try to consciously flex my inner muscles around Ethan’s thick, hard cock inside of me. Wanting nothing in the world more than to feel him climax with me, he keeps slowing down just when I’m on the edge, the same as before, until I’m just short of begging him to bring this ecstasy its end already.

  Ethan speeds up again and I can’t hold back any longer. All at once the tension deep down in my hips just snaps, and I climax for the second, maybe the third, time that night, grabbing at Ethan’s back and shoulders, crying out as the pleasure washes through me again. He manages to hold back a little longer, but just as my orgasm is starting to ebb, I feel his whole body tense, and then his climax brings me back to my own heights yet again.

  I don’t know how long we keep going. After a while I realize that we’ve stopped, panting for breath, and then I drift off, with Ethan’s comfortable weight pressed against me, until I’m asleep. By the time I wake up again, Ethan’s fallen asleep too, and I realize that we’ve probably both been on short sleep rations, between taking care of Riley and all the stress that comes along with it. It’s something like three in the morning and I shift Ethan on top of me, moving him little by little until he wakes up.

  “That was amazing,” he says, smiling at me dreamily, and I feel like someone has dumped ice water down my back.

  “We can’t ever do it again,” I tell him. The afterglow of our sex together has completely deserted me, and I have this feeling like panic welling up. What the hell have I done? It’s been five months since Alexis died and here I am fucking her husband! It isn’t just that — while I was able to forget everything, all the hurt, all the complication, all the drama, while we were going at it, every last bit of the problems between Ethan and me seem to come rushing back to me in the aftermath.

  “What?” Ethan sits up and I slip off the couch, looking around the living room for my clothes.

  What the hell came over me? Why did I go along with him?

  “We can’t have sex again. We can’t even kiss. We can’t get involved physically,” I reply, finding my shirt first and then hurriedly pulling it on over my head.

  “Why not?”

  I look at Ethan. “You’re a widower, and my sister, who you started dating after we broke up, has only been dead for a few months,” I say.

  “She’s dead, Lara. Us not having sex isn’t going to bring her back,” Ethan points out.

  “No, but us not having sex will let me stay objective,” I insist. I remember what I said to my father during our fight, but even more clearly, I can remember the crushing way that I’d felt when I came home to discover my sister with my ex-boyfriend.

  I say to myself, You’re just a comfortable rebound for him at the moment. As soon as he gets over Alexis all the way, he’s going to go after someone else, and you can’t afford to get hurt by him again.

  “What’s going on, Lara?”

  “You should go home,” I say. I finally find my panties and put them on as well, though I know as soon as I get rid of Ethan I’m going to take a shower, and I realize that he came inside of me, and that I’m going to have to get Plan B or something similar the next day.

  “Are you sure?”

  I nod in response to his question.

  “Take care. I told Dad that I don’t want Riley on my own and I mean it,” I say, trying to soften the blow a little bit. Ethan gets up, quickly gets dressed, and even though he keeps looking at me curiously, I make myself stay quiet until he leaves.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Ethan

  I look at the big binder that Lara has brought out while Riley plays on the living room floor and shake my head to myself. Alexis had done a pretty big first birthday deal for our daughter, but Lara apparently wants to eclipse that, or maybe she’s just making up for lost time.

  “I’ve got a few different theme ideas we could go with, and of course a couple of guest lists to look over. I feel like that’s going to be the really tough part,” Lara says, sitting down with a cup of coffee across the table from me.

  It’s been weird ever since we had sex, and I guess I should have expected that. In a way I have to admit that Lara was right. We need to, at least for now, be able to take care of business without feelings being involved. Maybe when Riley’s a little older and things are more settled we can revisit the feelings that obviously never completely died out.

  “She’s turning two, it’s not like she’s even really going to remember the birthday,” I point out, a little amused at the different themes that Lara has come up with, even as I obediently flip through the book. When did she find time to put this together, anyway? We’re both being run ragged with the schedule, even if it’s a lot better than anything either of us could have come up with on our own.

  “There will be pictures, and when she’s older it will mean something,” Lara says firmly.

  I look up from the book and I can see that she’s actually truly serious about this.

  “We could take pictures of her at the park with a damn pony, and a cake, and it would mean something to her,” I counter.

  Lara sighs and looks over at Riley. “It’s not just about her, it’s about showing the people in the family who need to know that life is going on,” Lara says quietly.

  “Yeah, I can see a point in that,” I admit. My parents, and Nathan, amongst other people in the family, have all been anxious to reassure themselves that I’m doing okay, that Riley’s okay without Alexis, that Lara’s handling her new role as Riley’s adoptive mom. Nathan’s questions have gotten a little pointed whenever I drop Riley off with him, so Lara’s started being responsible for that task.

  “I just want everyone to kind of back off us a bit, and this is one of the better ways of doing that,” Lara says.

  I nod my agreement with that idea.

  “I’m just looking out for costs, the same way I did with Riley’s first birthday,” I say, giving Lara a weak smile. Lara looks away, not at Riley, but a
t the floor. She hadn’t been around for my daughter’s first birthday, and had only barely been around for Thanksgiving and Christmas. It’s amazing to me that all this has happened in less than a year, that this time, last year, Lara was still freezing me and Alexis and even Riley out.

  “In any case, it shouldn’t be that expensive,” Lara says finally.

  “Some of this looks like it’s on the pricy end,” I point out, flipping through the book again.

  “That’s just a ballpark, the actual party is going to be a lot smaller,” she tells me.

  I look through things in more detail. Obviously Lara has put a lot of thought into this, and I have to admit a big party, as long as we invite the right people, will put a lot of rumors and bullshit to rest. It may even be fun.

  “We just have to make sure that the people we invite to the party will all get along,” I say, halfway thinking out loud and halfway making a point to Lara. I look up from the binder she’s put together and see her nodding.

  “Yeah, that’s the biggest thing,” she agrees. She glances at Riley. “I don’t want anything to ruin her birthday if we can help it.”

  “Well, we know we have to invite all the grandparents,” I say. Lara makes a face but nods again, agreeing with me on that point. If either Nathan or my parents were left out of Riley’s birthday, it would cause even more drama. We can only hope that they’ll get along for the sake of their granddaughter.

  “We should invite some of your friends, yours and Alexis’,” Lara says. I raise an eyebrow.

  “But not any of yours?”

  Lara shrugs. “I don’t have all that many friends from high school that I’m still close with, or who still live in the area,” Lara says.

  “And those who are here and who you’re close with?” I ask.

  Lara blushes and looks away slightly.

  “They sided with me on the issue of you and Alexis,” she says quietly.