Hold on Tight

by Serena Bell

  He became slowly aware of how slick they were with sweat, how hard she was breathing. He extricated himself and rolled off her, staring at the ceiling, trying to catch his breath, trying to get his bearing. Trying to understand the sensation he had that his world had shifted around him, as profoundly and as seismically as it had in the wake of the literal explosion.

  “Wow,” she said.

  He was drowning in something—gratitude, he thought. As if he’d been waiting all this time, his libido held in suspense, and only now finished what they’d started all those years ago.

  He made it into a joke, because that was the only way he could get his head around it. “Whew,” he said. “That was some serious foreplay. Eight years.”

  They both laughed.

  “It kind of feels like that, right?”

  He reached for her hand.

  His body was heavy as lead, that post-sex torpor he’d missed like a mo-fo sneaking over him. In a minute or two he’d be asleep, and he didn’t want to be that guy. So he made himself lie on one side, facing her. It was a little awkward, but all the endorphins made everything easier. Maybe next time he’d take the leg off. Get that last inch or two, that sensation of burying himself as deep as it was possible to go into her.

  What would she think about that? How would she react to his residual leg, to the scars and lumpiness and just plain not-thereness of it? Not everyone wanted to make love to a one-legged man. Although if anyone would take it in stride, it would be Mira. Nothing got her.

  “That was good,” he said. “No, fucking great. That was fucking great. Thank you.”

  “So you got to be my first, and I got to be your first.”

  “Do you think of me as your first?”

  “Yeah,” she said. Quietly. All the kidding around gone out of her voice. “I do. Maybe I wouldn’t have if it hadn’t been for Sam, but no matter what happened after, no matter how weird it was, you can’t deny we had sex.”

  “I shouldn’t have denied it. In the PT’s office.”

  “You were—”

  “A grumpy asshole,” he finished with her.

  “You’re not as grumpy now.”

  “A lot has changed,” he said. And thought about it. Everything that had come to pass since he’d met her. The new legs, training for the triathlon, working toward going back into the army. How much of that would have happened if it hadn’t been for her and Sam? He’d been so stuck, so stuck in his vision of himself as broken. “You and Sam got me back on track. I’m grateful to you in so many ways.”

  There was a strange expression on her face.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I’m grateful, too,” she said.

  “What’s changed for you?”

  “Wait here a sec,” she said.

  She got out of bed and wrapped herself in her robe. She thumped down the stairs—he took advantage of the moment to get up and throw away the condom—and came back up with a stack of drawings in her hands. She laid the pages in his lap.

  They were colored pencil and watercolor, that strange mixture of pale and vivid. Although they were soft and vague, he recognized immediately who she’d painted.

  Jake and Sam. Running races, playing pinecone baseball, sitting together on the Ferris wheel, suspended above a city of murky color.

  He grazed a finger across Sam’s hair. She’d painted it with so much love, each brushstroke, almost each hair, distinct. And they looked alike, man and boy.

  Father and son.

  “These are amazing,” he said. “You’re amazing.”

  “I don’t know about that, but you got me thinking. And if I turn out not to have a job after Monday, maybe I’ll try to find something a little more about design and a little less about programming. Another way to shake off my dad’s influence.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about that,” Jake said.

  “About what?”

  “About shaking off your dad’s influence. You’re on the other side of the country.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not far enough,” she said. “Anyway, the point is, I’m grateful to you, too. Thank you.”

  There was something in her voice now that he recognized. He became aware that she was still standing up. Wrapped tightly in her robe. “You’re trying to get rid of me again!”

  “Sam asked me about sleepovers, earlier. I just—I don’t want to build expectations for him that we can’t live up to.”

  “You’re kicking me out.”

  “Are you mad?”

  He thought about that. He’d have no right to be mad, would he? She’d been honest with him, every step of the way. As he had with her. And tonight, when he’d convinced her to let him stay, he’d known he was using sex to muscle his way in.

  Even if there had been times tonight he’d forgotten that this was supposed to be simple. Even if he’d talked to her about things he’d never discussed with anyone else. Even if he’d lost himself so completely in sex with her that afterward had felt like waking out of a dream—or from unconsciousness.

  Eight years ago, he’d had trouble with this boundary, too, but he was eight years older and a soldier, and he could hold the line now like a grown man.

  Sam, and sex. Those were the rules. Those were what the rules had to be.

  “What are the parameters here? Do I have to leave right this second? Or just before Sam wakes up tomorrow morning.”

  He’d surprised her. “Um, before Sam? I guess?”

  “Okay, that’s good. I need to get an early start to Oregon tomorrow, anyway. But not right this second. Because I have some other plans,” he explained.

  “Other plans?”

  “That sex was great, but—”

  She made a face of mock outrage. “But? But what? I ended a year-plus-long drought for you. I didn’t hear you complaining.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t complaining. But it wasn’t enough.”

  She made a small, strangled sound.

  He lay down beside her and kissed her all over her throat, all over her chest, circling in until he kissed her nipples, then licked and sucked them, one after the other. His other hand played in her curls, found her clit. She closed her eyes. “Mmm,” she said.

  “Faster? Slower? Harder? Softer?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and he laughed and eased a finger inside her, loving the soft feel of her, curling his fingertip into her G-spot and making her moan. He could feel it, that moan, in the pit of his belly, at the bottom of his spine, where his own body was drawing up tight. He slid a second finger inside her and she made a fractured sound, which he swallowed with a kiss that turned into a leisurely exploration of her mouth, until she was humming.

  He kept his hand where it was, not wanting to rush things. He wanted this to last a long time, long enough to watch her face, to watch the pleasure mount behind her eyes, to watch her mouth fall open.

  When her hips rose off the bed so she could get a better purchase on his hand, he teased, “Want something more?”

  She answered him with a noise that definitely wasn’t any word he’d ever heard. He got a condom from the nightstand, and he rolled it down and slid the head of his cock, so hard the condom felt too small, into her folds. She gasped and pressed up to him, and he was halfway in her without trying, she was that wet, she was that open. And tight, too—how was it possible she could be so wet and so tight at the same time? She was gripping him, and he was never going to last, except that just then, the socket of his prosthesis bumped her thigh and stopped his progress.

  He hesitated, and she felt it.

  Their eyes met.

  He rolled off her.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said.

  “Wait,” he said.

  “If you lose your erection …” She made it sound like a threat. Which made him smile.

  “If I lose my erection I’m going to make you suck me until I get it back,” he said. He made it sound like a threat, too, and her eyes narrowed and she emitted a sound that roughly transl
ated might have been, “Nngha.”

  He sat on the edge of the bed and reached down and pulled the prosthesis off. He didn’t turn to see how she was reacting. It was Mira, after all. She would react however she did, and it would somehow be okay.

  He began rolling back the layers of socks that compressed his residual leg, peeling himself like an onion back to his skin.

  The silicone sheath came off second-to-last with a sucking sound he hated, but in the scheme of what they were doing, it was just one of those things, like the wet sound of his body in hers. And then he pulled off the liner and saw the thing that looked like a thigh only all wrong, and he had a millisecond of panic. That he’d done the wrong thing, that she’d scream and run away, or worse, stay, and be secretly disgusted.

  But then he remembered.

  It was Mira.

  His heart slowed down.

  He knew her, knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t going to make a big fuss over his stump, kissing it and petting it and pretending like it was something special. Nor would she make a fuss of him, as if he’d done something brave instead of what had to be done. And she didn’t—she put her hand on his arm, handed him a new condom, and waited for him.

  She didn’t have to do anything to make him hard again except lie back on the bed and smile and beckon. He rolled to her, braced himself on his arms. With effort, he found a balance point, a strange, awkward triangulation that let him be on one knee and his shorter residual leg.

  She let him find his way, then guided him back to her. Her heat and wetness waited for him, like a reward, like a blessing.

  He buried himself to the hilt and he couldn’t help himself—the groan ripped out of him, loud and desperate, as he got that last inch he’d been craving, as he got the full effect of driving his body into and against hers, as he watched her eyes roll back in her head with pleasure.

  It was awkward fucking her like this, more awkward with only one leg to brace him, but it felt more like him. With the prosthetic it had felt all wrong, like there was something between them. Like the fucking condom, which—well, if he had his way, he’d have peeled that back, too, and thrust straight into her wet heat without it.

  Fucking her—oh, fucking hell, making love to her—like this was off, but in all the right ways. He could have everything, all of her, could brace himself and give himself completely into her, like a crazy backward gift, because of course, she was the gift.

  His balance was off, his thrusts ungainly and uneven, but he didn’t give a shit, because she’d grabbed his ass in both her hands and was tugging him into her with so much force. Anyway, all the thrust was coming from his ass cheeks, and the tension there was becoming part of the tension in his lower belly and dick, part of the tension on her face, and it was all one big giant gathering storm of fucking awesomeness. The first time, the glory had gotten lost in frustration and triumph, in proving something and quenching thirst and scratching an itch. This time it was all glory, all bliss, the look on Mira’s face, all wrecked and open, a silent scream and her eyes squeezed shut and her hands coming off his ass and flopping back on the pillow behind her head as she arched up into him and he started to come.

  “Fuck, fuck!”

  Probably he yelled it, because he was beyond caring. He was beyond anything except the sensation of her clenching around him, the look of total abandon on her face, the fresh salt smell of her rising up from where their bodies met, and the wide, ripped-apart sense of falling and rising and turning inside out, the sense of being wrung, of having the resistance purged from him, of being remade, recast, and finally, finally, of crashing back down, spent, wherever and however she wanted him.

  Chapter 21

  “Jake. Jake. Wake up.”

  It was too late. The sound that had roused Mira from sleep was the sound of her door opening, the herald of Sam’s morning entrance. She’d somehow forgotten to lock the door, and apparently, they’d accidentally fallen asleep after—after that—

  —that epic, totally amazing, good-sense-melting sex. That colossal error in her personal judgment, that slow, should-have-been-able-to-stop-but-could-only-hang-on-for-the-ride slide down a slippery slope into really, really complicated.

  Oh, God. Opal had been so right. “Not supposed to” was a flimsy barrier to the chemistry between her and Jake.

  Jake scrambled to sitting and yanked the covers up. “Whoops. Sorry!” He looked as dazed as she felt. Maybe more so. His hair was mussed, his were eyes sleepy, and a pattern of pillow creases crisscrossed his cheek.

  She had woken to discover her face snug up against his chest, her hand on his morning erection, but luckily he would not need to know that, since she’d disentangled herself before calling him awake.

  Sam came over to Jake’s side of the bed. He regarded Jake thoughtfully. “You slept over.”

  “I did,” Jake said.

  “C’mere, Sam,” Mira said, but her son stayed where he was, scrutinizing Jake. She started to feel the beginning edge of worry about how thoughtful he looked.

  “Does that mean you’re a good friend?”

  Jake gave her an uncertain look, then dove in. “Yes. It does.”

  The kind of good friend who could make you come several times in one night, harder than you’d ever come before, and who could also somehow manage to leave you wanting more. Because she did. Because who wouldn’t? He’d been everything she needed. Commanding. Needy. Masterful. Desperate. Rough. Grateful. And funny. Don’t forget funny.

  He’d felt so good inside her. Not only the sensation of being stretched and filled, but the connection it forged between her body and her emotions. Her heart. As if she’d let him in every way, not just the obvious one.

  And it wasn’t only the sex. There was everything that had led up to it. His rescuing them, his cooking for them, his almost running away and then not. All the secrets laid bare—the story of what had happened to his leg, their mutual confessions about how they’d avoided each other with the truth about Sam, and the biggest truth he’d told her, the truth about how humiliating it had been for him when his knee got caught in the sofa.

  I kept thinking about how I couldn’t do what you needed me to do.

  She hadn’t been bullshitting him when she’d answered him. When she’d told him he’d been everything she needed.

  And when he’d made love to her without his prosthesis—she didn’t have to be some kind of super-genius to figure out that had been complicated for him. Hard. Like getting naked, only naked-er.

  So yeah. He’d been inside her, and they’d been inside each other, and there was a limit to how long she could keep running away. A point past which all the stupid rules she’d made for herself had to take a backseat to the fact that this thing had a life of its own.

  So … maybe …?

  Maybe she could stop fighting him off? Stop keeping him at bay? Let what was going to happen happen, and …

  And have her heart broken twice in exactly the same way?

  Only this time, of course, her heart was not the only one on the line.

  Now there was a seven-year-old tilting his head to one side, exactly the way he did when he was trying to figure out a difficult riddle. Oh, hell.

  “You slept in my mom’s bed,” Sam said. “She doesn’t even let me do that.”

  “Because you squirm and snore and you put your head on top of my head, and because sometimes you turn all the way around and stick your feet up my nose.”

  “My feet wouldn’t fit up your nose,” Sam said.

  “It was late and cold and it didn’t make sense for Jake to go back to his house last night,” Mira said.

  Also, we were both limp, boneless, ecstatic pools of human being, and there was no way either of us was moving. The last thing she remembered thinking was, I should make him leave before we fall asleep. And then she’d heard her door creak.

  She needed to get Sam off whatever puzzle was running in his brain. She needed to not let him think too hard about the situati
on. Because even though he was a little kid, he had a fatherless little kid’s obsession with the missing piece in his life. Too much more time to think about it and he’d have slotted Jake right into the Jake-sized hole he’d left in their lives.

  Not so different from what she’d been doing herself.

  A change of subject was in order.

  Mira said, brightly, “Let’s go downstairs and make some pancakes.”

  “Ooh, pancakes!” Sam said, because luckily, even smart seven-year-olds had the attention span of hamsters.

  “I could use a shower first,” Jake said. “Then I could make pancakes. I know how to do that.”

  Shower. Jake in the shower.

  “Maybe I need a shower, too,” she said.

  “We could, you know, conserve water,” he said, his eyes hot on hers.

  Yes, yes, they could.

  But she’d let herself get distracted at a fatal moment, and Sam hadn’t.

  “You slept over. And you’re a soldier,” he said, and she could see it coming with all the force of a slow-motion impending disaster.

  “My real dad’s a soldier.”

  “Sam, do you want to watch Saturday morning cartoons?”

  But Ninjago had nothing on the need for a small boy to understand his paternity.

  “Are you my real dad?”

  He’d seen it coming, but that didn’t keep it from bowling him over. He’d stupidly thought he could only be surprised by bomb blasts and unexpected appearances, but it turned out that a simple line of questioning could carve its way through his defenses. Then, when the inevitable words wound their way into his heart, they pierced like a single, perfectly aimed bullet. Are you my real dad?

  The last twenty-four hours had led to this moment, the fear he’d felt as he’d hurried to rescue Sam, the sense of peace it had given him to hold and comfort his scared child. The relief and freedom he’d experienced last night with Mira, the hurt he’d tried to tamp down when she’d told him she wanted him to leave, mixed with the relief he’d felt that she was holding him at exactly the distance at which he wanted to be held. Approach, avoid. Have sex, but don’t stay the night. Friends with benefits, a father pretending to be a babysitter. It was the perfect, safe distance.