Starlight (Peaches Monroe) (Volume 2) Paperback – September 2, 2013

by Mimi Strong

  As we boarded the bus, elbow to belly with tourists, Keith suggested we introduce ourselves as newlyweds from Nebraska. I thought that was an excellent idea, and told everyone my name was Pam. Keith said his name was Jack, which gave me the giggles, because he was not a Jack at all.

  The tourists were friendly enough, except for a few older guys who grumbled about the cost and inconvenience of everything while their wide-eyed wives made the I-can’t-believe-I-put-up-with-this-for-thirty-years faces. We met a newlywed couple from Queensland, Australia, named Trevor and Heather, who suggested we join them the next day for a tour of Universal Studios.

  Keith said we had to stay in the hotel room all day because I was ovulating and we were trying for a honeymoon baby. The couple got red-faced, and then Trevor leaned in and said they were doing the same. Heather rolled her eyes and said, “Yeah, but it doesn’t take all day.”

  We laughed and laughed, because everything is a billion times funnier when an Australian says it.

  For the rest of the bus tour, I wondered if I was ovulating, and Keith somehow knew, thanks to his earth muffin, meditating, salad-eating ways. I’d had my period right before the trip to LA, so probably not. We’d been using condoms, but staring at Keith’s face and thinking about him fertilizing my lady garden got me flustered. Bare skin on skin. Juices commingling. Extremely raunchy metaphors and mental images. For example, him coming inside me and painting me with his ecstasy, slicking my walls with one coat after another.

  I kept crossing my legs and trying to focus on what the tour guide was saying, but pretending to be a newlywed had gotten in my head and there was only one cure for the fever I had.

  CHAPTER 13

  “I feel dirty,” I said that evening as we were driving back to his apartment. The sun hadn’t set, but the sky was like milky tea on the horizon.

  “I can draw you a nice bath. I’ve got some aromatic epsom salts.”

  I reached over and squeezed his bare knee, right at the hem of his camouflage cargo shorts.

  “No. I mean I feel dirty. Like Reverse Cowgirl dirty.”

  “Is that a dance? You want me to take you out clubbing?”

  Squeezing his leg again, I simply said, “Not a dance.”

  He nodded slowly. “Good thing we’re going straight home, then. Wait, I know what Cowgirl is, so wouldn’t Reverse Cowgirl just be… Missionary?”

  Feeling both embarrassed and turned-on at the same time, I said, “It’s still with the girl on top, but the girl faces your legs.”

  “Would this girl be you?”

  “Unless you want me to phone our new Australian friends about a swap. That Trevor was one tall glass of water.”

  He laughed. “No swapping. You’re all mine for one more week.”

  One more week.

  I didn’t like him saying that, even though it was the truth.

  He grabbed my hand, pulled it up to his lips to kiss sweetly, then moved it down to his crotch. I stroked his hardness through his shorts.

  He said, “All this Cowgirl talk is making me Cowboy Up, if you know what I mean.”

  I shifted to the edge of my bucket seat and unzipped Keith’s zipper so I could slip my hand into his shorts. “Hello, Lone Ranger,” I said, gripping his cowboy tightly. “Or should I say Woody?”

  He smiled, his eyes steady on the road despite the distraction.

  “Call me whatever you like.”

  “Definitely Woody,” I said, caressing the ridges of his glans. “And this is Woody’s cowboy hat.”

  “I’m going to pull over this van and wear you like a hat, missy.”

  “Ooh, you’re so manly when your voice gets deep like that.” I switched into my high-pitched girlie voice. “You’ve been such a big ape of a man all day today, sticking out your chest and talking deep. My pussy is getting so wet for your big manly cock.”

  He turned and gave me a look of respect. “Don’t stop. And keep doing the voice. It’s weird, like you, but I dig it.”

  The granite-hard cock in my hand didn’t disagree. Keith liked me talking dirty and ditzy to him.

  “You know I’m no virgin,” I said softly, my voice still high. “But I do feel innocent and scared by the big world. Except for when I’m in your big, strong arms. You make me feel safe.”

  “Go on.”

  I felt the pressure of being put on the spot, and my throat closed up. I pulled my hand out of his shorts and got some bottled water from my bag.

  Keith chuckled and zipped up his shorts. “To be continued as soon as we get back to our apartment.”

  “Yes.” I handed him the water, not commenting on him calling it our apartment instead of his apartment.

  But, after a minute of driving, I said, “Your apartment, not our apartment. I am going home in a week. This is fun, what we’re doing, but I’m not under any illusions. I won’t be waiting by the phone, waiting for you come visit, pretending we have a future.”

  “You could come to Italy.”

  “Hah!”

  He frowned, glancing over at me with a glowering look. “Fine, there’s no deal yet, but they haven’t said no, either.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to doubt you’d get the job. That was just my honest reaction to the idea. I mean… Italy? What would a flight out of Washington even cost? Never mind. We’ve had a nice day, Keith. Let’s keep having a nice day.”

  “Sure.” He tapped his fingers on the steering wheel, eventually falling into rhythm with the song on the radio.

  We got back to the apartment building, and I felt heavy on the walk to his door. My feet were swelling in my shoes, the way they do if I eat a ton of salt and get too much sun. I still felt dirty, but I did not feel sexy.

  Inside the apartment, Keith grabbed two towels and said, “Swim time.”

  I just wanted to lounge around with my phone, texting Shayla, but I stripped down to my underwear and followed him to the pool.

  Once in the cool water, weightless again, I started to smile.

  “What are you grinning about?” Keith asked, paddling around me with a pool noodle wrapped under his armpits.

  “Just happy.” I stared up at the sky, which was turning navy blue as the sun disappeared. “Do you use this pool every night?”

  “Used to. With Tabitha, or with my sister. The three of us typically had the place to ourselves. We used to play this game…” He paused, looking troubled. “Never mind.”

  I rolled onto my back in the water, the other pool noodle stretched across my upper back to make floating easy. Keith was paddling with his back to me, and I hooked my feet under his armpits to tag along like a caboose.

  “What happened with you guys?” I asked.

  He continued to paddle, towing me with him. “I don’t get why people are always so curious about breakups. What happened doesn’t matter. If I tell you Tabitha went with her cousins to a party in Las Vegas and slept with her ex-boyfriend, I don’t know what good that accomplishes.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  He kept paddling, his back to me. “Nobody does shit with sorry. Sorry and a dollar will buy you four quarters.”

  I wiggled my toes, which were still hooked under Keith’s armpits. “Some people say talking about the bad stuff helps. Every time you visit a bad memory, you get to re-frame it in a new light.”

  He threw his arms up and submerged again, slipping away from me. A few seconds later, he came up near the edge of the pool.

  Grinning, his dark brown eyes mischievous, he said, “That sounds like a lot of new age talk coming from the person who says she’s not into meditation.”

  “I went to therapy. Therapy isn’t new age talk.” I splashed water his way.

  “Why’d you go to therapy?” He swam toward me, looking shark-like.

  I put my foot on his chest, keeping him away, but he leaned down to kiss the top of my foot and stroke my legs, massaging my calf.

  “That feels so good,” I said.

  He quirked his eyebrow sexily
, then grabbed my other leg and propped both feet on his broad, muscular chest.

  “Why’d you go to therapy?” he asked more insistently.

  I floated back on the water, closing my eyes. “Have you ever been in a sensory deprivation tank? They’re full of saltwater, so you float more easily. Sounds kind of fun, but also terrifying.”

  He rubbed his hands slowly all the way up and down my legs, making them feel about a mile long, and really sexy.

  “You’re avoiding my question,” he said, his voice low and husky.

  “I kinda freaked out over some stuff at college and had to drop out. My parents thought I was fine, but my family doctor referred me to a therapist.”

  He squeezed my calves and then the backs of my thighs, making me shiver, even though I wasn’t cold.

  “I used to get really worked up,” I said. “I’d get so worried about things that didn’t matter, and I’d be paralyzed with fear. I’d miss exams and deadlines for papers. My marks were bad, and that only made it worse.”

  “Then you turned to drugs.”

  “No, I did not.” I laughed at the idea. “Who knows. Maybe the right drugs would have helped, and I’d have a degree right about now.”

  “Trust me on this one, drugs would not have helped.”

  I opened my eyes and tilted my head to look at him. “Oh my god. I’m so sorry, Keith. I totally forgot, and I’m being so insensitive.”

  “Cocaine is great for dieting. But you didn’t hear it from me. Expensive, though. I mean, you think Jenny Craig is pricey, with having to buy all the special meals from them. Coke is way more expensive.”

  “Jenny Craig destroys lives, though.”

  He laughed at my joke, then pulled my feet away from each other and pulled me against him. I wrapped my legs around his waist.

  “Tell me more about your struggles with Jenny Craig addiction,” he said. “Is there a support group? Do you meet in a church basement three nights a week to talk about your struggles with Jenny Craig and drink bad coffee?”

  “Not anymore. I’ve been three years clean.”

  He grinned and ran his palms up and down my back as he stared into my eyes. The sky was darker than the pool now, which was lit by recessed lights a foot under the water line. The pool around our bodies was dark blue and green, with tiny highlights of yellow tiles glinting like precious metals.

  Keith asked, “Do you believe in free will?”

  “I dropped out of college before getting heavy into philosophy.”

  “You don’t need a degree to have thoughts.”

  “I’ve read about these identical twin studies, and I think a lot of our fate is predetermined, just by how we are.”

  “Me, too.”

  “And here we are. So it must be fate.”

  “Everything in our lives has led us here,” Keith said. “Bad habits, bad decisions, bad temper.”

  “I don’t have a bad temper.”

  “Excuse me, Peaches Monroe, have you met yourself? Yesterday I flushed the toilet while you were in the shower, turning your water cold, and you whipped your face around the shower curtain like you were going to take my toothbrush, turn it into a prison shiv, and stab me repeatedly. And that was just for a small water temperature infraction.”

  “A small temperature infraction? Are you kidding me? Your shower barely spits out water, then suddenly there’s a fire hose pinning me to the tiles. I only looked around the shower curtain to get some warning about what plague was coming next.”

  “I have a soup pot full of snakes, but I’m saving those for Sunday brunch.”

  “What makes you think I’ll still be here Sunday? Maybe I’ll—”

  The water churned around us, and then he had his hands on my ass, squeezing my buns and pulling me close as he shushed me by kissing me.

  I wrapped my arms around his neck and rocked my hips, eliciting a reaction within his swimming shorts. In seconds, he was hard and pressing back against me, grinding me in a way that was not unpleasant at all.

  Around his lips, I said, “Maybe I’ll stay.”

  He pulled back from the kiss and gazed into my eyes. The blue lights under the water line made his face look upside-down, all the shadows pointing in the opposite direction as normal. His eyebrows had triangular shadows above them, like the eyebrows of jack-o-lanterns.

  “I had fun with you today,” he whispered. “I’m glad I’m not some asshole with a nice house in the Hollywood Hills, but nobody to cuddle tonight.”

  I reached down between us and grabbed his hardness. “I’m going to cuddle you so hard.”

  “Reverse Cowgirl,” he said. “You promised.”

  Before I could try to wiggle out of the promise, he grabbed my hand and hauled me out of the pool. We raced back to his place and barely toweled off before we were in bed.

  My skin was cool from the swim, so I insisted we climb under the covers for a cuddle and warm-up before the main event. We kissed for an eternity, all warm and cozy together in the dark, our bodies entwining. Whenever his cock nudged between my legs, I had to hold myself back from pushing down onto it, bare.

  Finally, I grabbed a condom and rolled it on before it was too late.

  “Cowgirl time,” he said, pushing me into position.

  “Close your eyes. Don’t look at my butt!”

  “That’s the best part.”

  Since he wasn’t going to close his eyes, I closed mine. With my weight on my lower legs, my back to Keith’s upper body, I straddled his cock. The head slipped in easily, but instead of taking him all the way in, I arched my back and slowly leaned back, until I was lying on his chest. I craned my neck to kiss him.

  “This is amazing,” he said, reaching both hands up to cup my breasts. “I can touch you everywhere.” One hand moved down between my legs, making me gasp as he grazed my swollen clit.

  He groaned as he rotated his hips and dipped further into my pussy. I shifted down a few degrees, taking him deeper, then deeper still. He kept stroking my clit and thrusting in and out at the same time, while his other hand squeezed one breast, then the other. The stimulation was so intense—almost as if there were more than the two of us, yet we were aligned, with his arms moving in the same range as my arms would, so we also felt like one person. One very sexy person.

  He got me close to coming a few times, and I was in no hurry at all, until I was. And then I desperately needed to come.

  Ignoring all the worries about him seeing the view of my ass, I sat up, ready to ride like a cowgirl in reverse. His cock was firm and full, limiting my angle at first, but after some assurances from him that his flagpole really did bend that way (and felt good), I leaned forward even more, grabbing onto his muscular upper thighs for purchase.

  “Ride ‘em cowgirl,” he moaned.

  I rocked back and forth, enjoying the angle of penetration. With my eyes clenched shut, I heard the sound of his breathing become more ragged as he got closer to coming. The sound of his raspy breaths were the sexiest things I’d ever heard. When he started to moan, I began to quiver, my inner walls clenching him tightly. He was hard like a fist, and as his breathing changed again, relaxing, I started to come.

  And for a moment, I felt like I really was riding a bucking bull. I threw one hand up over my head. “Yeehaw!”

  He grabbed me by the hips and thrust into me, raising his hips all the way off the bed and me along with them.

  I grabbed onto his knees and held on for dear life as I shook with a rapid succession of orgasms that made me see flashing lights.

  Everything was still again. I caught my breath, then sighed. I looked down to find my right leg was straight out in front, alongside Keith’s legs, and my left leg was folded, my foot under my buttock.

  Interesting. I could work with that. I rolled to my right, and soon I was lying on the bed, both of us in spooning position.

  “Hmm,” Keith said, tickling me as he reached between us to hold the condom tight as he withdrew. “Um.”

  “
What?”

  “Just a little wetter than I expected. Hang on.” He rolled away from me and flicked on the side table lamp.

  “Bright liiiight!” I whined.

  “Phew,” he said. “The rubber’s not broken, so I guess it was just water from the pool.”

  “Oh, damn.” I reached my hand down between my legs. Yup, there was a puddle.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer, but I heard him sniff as he leaned back toward me.

  “Keith, I didn’t pee the bed.”

  “I didn’t say you did.”

  “Uh, you just smelled me. I heard you sniff.”

  “I’m just breathing normally, I swear.”

  We were quiet for a moment, Keith being careful to breath so quietly I couldn’t hear him at all.

  Finally, I said, “Fine. You got me. I’m a squirter. Not every time, but I guess certain angles trigger this totally natural function that’s totally not pee. It’s a real medical thing. You can Google it if you don’t believe me.”

  He grabbed some tissues from the bedside table and handed them to me. “Two for you, and two for me. There’s a little garbage bin right over there. You can go have a shower if you want, but I’d like to get tidied up and have that nice cuddle you promised.”

  I used the provided tissues, and then a few more. Even dried off, I still felt a negative emotion. Not shame, because I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I was embarrassed. I think any girl would be.

  Keith was back under the covers. “C’mere,” he said, patting the bed.

  I thought through all the excuses I could give to run out of that room.

  “C’mere,” he said again, softer this time.

  He patted the bed. Pat, pat.

  Sometimes, after a long, weird day, all you really want is for a guy to pat the bed next to him. If he happens to be a good listener with a kind heart, take him up on the offer. You’ll be glad you did.

  We had a great cuddle that led to comfortable pillow talk. I told Keith about my birthday ritual of going to DeNirro’s* with my family and taking pictures of us all around the red-checked tablecloths.