Free Agent

by Catherine Gayle

  His mouth seared my neck again before making a wet path along my collarbone, veering toward my breast. “Take off your bra for me,” he said.

  I didn’t even think about ignoring him. Slipping my hands behind my back, I unhooked the clasp. My breasts tumbled free almost immediately, but he caught one in his palm before lowering his mouth to suckle my tit. I felt the suction all the way through my body; it seemed to draw everything in me tighter, making me hot.

  “Fuck, you’re so wet,” he murmured, moving his lips to my other breast while his fingers continued working their magic between my legs.

  “Blake,” I pleaded.

  “Hmm?” He lifted his head briefly, and I imagined he was trying to meet my eyes.

  “Hurry.”

  A rich laugh rumbled through him, reverberating all around me. “I’m just trying to be sure you’re ready for this.”

  “I’m ready,” I insisted. Or as ready as it was possible for me to be. Thirty years ought to be long enough, right?

  He swirled his tongue over my breast again, but then his weight shifted away from me on the bed. I rolled toward him, partially due to the effects of gravity but also due to my need for his heat.

  The sounds of him opening a foil wrapper competed with my heavy breathing, and then he was rolling toward me again. He lifted himself above me, his legs settling between my thighs, bracing his weight with his arms on either side of me.

  I reached up and splayed my hand over his chest. His heartbeat thundered against my palm, almost as erratically as mine.

  “Kiss me,” he said, deep and husky.

  “Hmm?”

  “Kiss me.”

  As soon as my lips met his, his hips rocked forward and he thrust into me. My cry of surprise was swallowed up by his mouth. But it was only surprise and not pain, so I quickly got over my shock—and myself—and reveled in the moment.

  “I’m not hurting you?” Blake asked.

  “No. It’s—” Beautiful. Perfect. Heaven. None of those words quite covered it, not even when they were all combined into one. Because, having spent my entire life as the Designated Ugly Fat Friend, I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d never experience anything like this. “It’s good,” I finally forced out.

  Blake held himself up with one arm and used his other hand to explore my body. His touch was almost reverent and definitely possessive. Or maybe that was all in my mind, just what I wanted to believe for this brief foray I was taking into someone else’s life.

  “Can you take more?” he asked, squeezing one of my breasts in the most delicious way.

  “More?”

  I’d barely gotten the question out when he went deeper, harder. His hip bone ground against my clitoris, and an unfamiliar sound ripped from my throat.

  “Too much?” he asked, all concern.

  I shook my head, wrapping both of my arms around his shoulder and holding on for all I was worth.

  I wanted to capture every moment of this. It was something I could hold on to once he’d moved on and I was back to existing as an old, fat, single teacher, one whom no one like Blake would ever look at twice.

  But Blake stopped, buried deep inside me, and he tipped my chin so I’d have to look at him. “You’re not with me. You’re in some other world.”

  “I don’t— I’m not—” Words failed me.

  He rolled over, dragging me with him, not stopping until I was straddling him with his arm around my waist to steady me.

  I had to brace myself with my hands on his shoulders so I wouldn’t topple over and fall onto him. In this position, my breasts flopped and drooped pathetically. Thank God the lights were out so he couldn’t see them.

  “What are you doing? What’s wrong?” I demanded.

  “Nothing’s wrong for me. But something’s wrong for you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You were lost in your head. I want you to be here with me.”

  “I’m here.”

  “I want you to set the pace, Bea.”

  Set the pace? “But I…”

  “Ride me.” He reached for my hands and dragged them lower onto his chest, flattening my palms on his body. “Brace yourself like this, and you decide what feels good.”

  “You feel good,” I argued feebly.

  “Fucking right, I do. As long as I’m inside you, I feel better than I’ve ever felt before.”

  “That’s not—”

  “Use me, Bea,” he cut in. “Figure out what you like.”

  “I like you,” I mumbled.

  “Good, because I like you, too. More than like you. Like doesn’t even begin to cover it. So use me. My body is at your disposal. You can do anything you want to me.”

  He’d told me that, or at least something very similar, not too terribly long ago. But I still didn’t know what I wanted.

  “Come on,” he said, and he ran his hands over my hips, the tips of his fingers pressing in just enough to avoid tickling but not enough to push me into anything. “Move around a bit and see what feels good.”

  I locked my eyes onto his, and, steadying myself with my hands on his pecs, I rolled my hips in a circular motion.

  “Fuck, that’s good,” he said.

  I concurred, but I couldn’t spare the energy to say as much. I was too busy doing it again, moving in a wider arc this time.

  “Tell me what you want me to do,” Blake said.

  “Meaning?” It was almost too difficult to form the single-word question since my brain was otherwise occupied in taking in all the sensations I’d never experienced before.

  “Do you want me to play with your tits? Rub your clit? Just keep my hands on your hips to help steady you?”

  “I don’t kn— Touch my breasts,” I finally said.

  Almost immediately, he brought his hands up to cup me like a bra, gently kneading every time I rolled my hips toward him.

  I leaned forward, changing the angle, which put pressure on my clitoris every time I ground against him. That slight shift drew a new moan from my lips.

  “Make yourself come,” Blake said. “Use me to make yourself come.”

  “I don’t want to use you. Not like that.”

  “I want to be used.” And as if to prove he meant it, he slipped one of his hands down to my hip again and pressed down, adding more friction to my most sensitive place.

  A moan slipped out involuntarily.

  “That’s it,” he said when I started rolling my hips over him again. “Take what you need.”

  I rolled my hips, rising and falling until I was running out of steam and couldn’t keep it up any longer. Then I dropped forward over Blake’s body, my chest pressed to his, my face buried against his neck, and let the friction of our movements take over.

  He fisted a hand in my hair, holding me close to him, his other hand caressing my back, my butt, my thighs, roaming all over me while the climax built inside me.

  And then it exploded. Or maybe I did.

  “Fuck, that feels good,” Blake murmured in my ear.

  Every muscle in my body went loose and limp as he drove into me from below a few times, using my body the same way I’d used his, until he reached his own completion.

  I lay on top of him for a long time, trying to steady my pulse and remember how to breathe. He kept stroking his hands over my back, my bottom, my thighs, his body heat keeping me captive in a warm cocoon.

  But then he stilled.

  Was he asleep? I couldn’t tell, but it seemed possible, especially with the way his breathing had gone slow and deep, his chest rising and falling beneath me.

  I should probably try to disengage my limbs from his. Could I manage it without waking him? Doubtful. Still, I ought to try because we couldn’t stay like this. I couldn’t stay like this. Allowing him to touch me while we had sex was one thing; but now that we weren’t moving anymore, and my skin was just sagging all over him…ugh. No. I couldn’t stay like this at all.

  I tried to inch my way off his pron
e form.

  “Where are you going?” he murmured in a thick, sated, sleepy tone.

  “I just… I should—”

  “Stay here.” Blake’s arms tightened around my waist, tugging me closer.

  “But I should really—”

  “I need you,” he cut in.

  That was enough to get me to stop in my efforts to disengage my body from his. I’d been prepared for a lot of things, but not that. “You what?”

  “I need you. I need you to stay, Bea. Hell, I just need you.”

  The thing that scared me, though, was that I was starting to need him, too.

  AFTER A FEW more days at the hospital with Bea by my side, taking our relationship further every night we spent together in the hotel while keeping the lights off to appease Bea, Grandma insisted that we had to leave her.

  “You’ve both got jobs to do. You’ve got lives to live. Can’t do that while sitting on your asses and watching me die.”

  I’d tried to argue with them, but to no avail. Eventually, Bea and Grandma had ganged up on me. They’d even gotten Brett—the male nurse Grandma kept harassing—in on it. It seemed Bea had to return home for her niece’s quinceañera.

  Before I was ready, Bea and I had given Grandma our hugs, and we were on a late-night flight back to Portland together. Bea spent most of the flight working on her laptop, doing some lesson plans or grading or something, so I took out my phone and played Sudoku until my battery was almost dead, wishing I had some of those coloring books—the special ones I’d ordered—to fill the rest of the time. Granted, I supposed I could color some mandalas, but whatever.

  It was after midnight in Portland by the time we landed, which meant it was the middle of the night for Grandma. Hoping it wouldn’t wake her, I shot off a quick text message to let her know we’d gotten back safely, checked my other messages—including one from Mia with a link to the unedited photos from our shoot—and then I gathered our bags off the carousel.

  I’d left my car at the airport, but Bea had taken an Uber to get there so she wouldn’t have to pay for parking over an undetermined period. I hauled our bags to my car and loaded them into the trunk before helping her in the passenger side.

  Exhaustion might as well be my middle name right now. Too bad I’d never mastered the art of sleeping on a plane—I just couldn’t relax up there—maybe it was the altitude or something. Whatever it was, I hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep, even though Bea hadn’t been any sort of company for me, since she’d worked the entire flight.

  In the time I’d been with Grandma, my body had started to adjust to East Coast time and to not getting the workouts I was used to. Jetlag was going to kick my ass; practice and games would kick it even harder.

  “Guess you need to get home to Neville and Luna, hmm?” I said, unable to stifle a yawn as I started the ignition.

  She nodded, but there was a question in her arched eyebrow.

  “What?” I asked, unable to stifle my grin.

  “Just surprised you remembered their names.”

  “I remember shit when I make a point to remember it. When it’s something to do with you,” I said, barely stopping myself from saying when I care. “So I’m taking you home, then?” I asked as I backed out of my parking spot and navigated my way out of the PDX lot.

  “My neighbor checked on them after she got home from work today. They’ll be all right on their own for one more night.”

  “Yeah?” My pulse kicked into high gear. I shot a glance in her direction. She was blushing, which was barely visible on her skin, especially with the darkness surrounding us, but it was sexy as fuck. That blush had to be as hot as anything to do with her had ever been.

  We’d explored each other every night since that first one. No lights, but still.

  I couldn’t get enough of her. And it wasn’t purely physical. For a long time, I’d thought I would never love anyone but Grandma—not really love them. But I couldn’t have been more wrong. I was absolutely in love with Bea Castillo, only I didn’t know how to convince her of it. More than that, I wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to love me. Putting up with me was one thing—loving me was a lot to ask of anyone.

  “I just don’t think you should be alone tonight,” she said, interrupting my thoughts. “I mean, we can go back to my place if you’d rather…”

  “Mine’s good.” Mine was better than good, actually, because I had condoms there, and I was ninety-nine percent sure we could make use of them, given the change in our relationship over the last few days we were in New York. Plus, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Bea wouldn’t have any handy.

  Her inexperience was both endearing and sexy as all hell.

  I glanced in her direction when I pulled up to a stoplight. She bit her lower lip and nodded, once again proving how innocent she was. My house it was, then.

  “We can look at the pictures together when we get there,” I said.

  “The pictures? She sent them already?” Somehow, Bea’s voice had gone up an octave or so. She dug out her phone and powered it on. “I don’t have anything.”

  “She sent them to me.”

  “Let me see.”

  “We’ll look together,” I insisted. “Once we get back to my condo.”

  Bea pouted, but the light turned green so I couldn’t exactly whip out my phone and pull them up for her just now, anyway. I chuckled at her indignation.

  When we went inside twenty minutes later, I took a quick look through the massive pile of mail that had accumulated while I’d been gone. Bills, junk, more bills, lots more junk, and a couple of packages at the bottom… I took the junk straight to the trash can in my kitchen and grabbed a couple of bottles of water from the fridge.

  “Can we look at them now?” she called out from the living room.

  I set my packages and bills on the counter for a moment. I could go through them later. “Impatient much?” I teased, but I knew exactly how anxious she was to see them. Hell, I was pretty anxious to see them, myself, because I had high hopes this would be exactly the impetus she needed to help her see herself the way I saw her. Granted, there was every possibility it could have the opposite effect, but I was choosing not to allow my thoughts to go there.

  “Hmph,” she said.

  “I’m coming,” I said, my arms laden with water and some snacks for us both, as well as the mail I intended to open. “We’ll look at them together.”

  Her phone rang just as I joined her again on the couch. She glanced at the screen, and then her expression dropped.

  “What’s wrong?” I demanded, opening both of our water bottles and setting hers on the coffee table in front of her.

  “I’m sorry. Have to take this. It’s my mother,” Bea grumbled.

  “At this hour?”

  “She knew when our flight was due.” But when she swiped her thumb across the screen and placed the phone at her ear, her tone immediately turned syrupy-sweet. “Hi, Mama.” For a long time, she just listened, her face dropping by degrees until it was nothing but a mask of annoyance—an expression I was all too familiar with, as she’d often sent that same look in my direction. And when she finally spoke, it was all in Spanish, so I didn’t understand a lick of it. But there was no hiding the agitation in her tone.

  Five minutes later, she hung up and looked like she wanted to toss her phone through my wall.

  “What was that all about?” I asked cautiously, tearing into the first bill and starting to sort them into piles.

  “I missed the dress fitting Mama had arranged for.”

  “And that’s bad because…?”

  “Because Mama says it’s bad,” she bit off, pressing her eyes closed. “I’m sorry,” she said when she opened them again. “I shouldn’t be taking this out on you.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s not okay at all. Mama just—”

  “You don’t get along with her?” I scanned another bill, but this one was just an invoice—the payment was set up t
o pay out of my bank account automatically—so I set it in a separate pile.

  “I wouldn’t say that, exactly. She just wants to run my life for me. My family—they’re not like your grandmother.”

  “No one’s like Grandma,” I readily agreed.

  “No.” Bea’s sigh was palpable. “So any chance you’re busy on the eighteenth? Do you have a game, or better yet, a road trip?”

  “Why do you want me gone?” I asked, unsure whether I should laugh or be concerned.

  “Because if you’re gone, then I have an excellent excuse for why you can’t come with me to Paola’s quinceañera.”

  “What’s a quinceañera again? I still don’t get it.”

  “It’s like a Sweet Sixteen party, only she’s fifteen. It’s kind of like her Welcome to Womanhood party or something.”

  “And you don’t want me there?” I tried not to sound hurt, but it definitely stung. Bea had been by my side through everything with Grandma, so I’d hoped we were moving into meet-the-family territory on her side of our relationship equation, too.

  “I just don’t want you to have to face my family yet.”

  “Or maybe you don’t want them to have to deal with me,” I bit off. Was she embarrassed to be with me? Sure seemed that way.

  “No!” she insisted. “That’s not it. It’s just—my family—they’re a tough pill to swallow, even for me. And for you, they might be overwhelming.”

  “I’m going to have to meet them eventually.”

  Her brows shot up. “Are you?”

  “Aren’t I?” I bit off. “Or maybe I’m just reading too much into the last week or so.”

  “What do you—"

  “I just thought that after you flew all the way across the country to be with me, maybe that meant you were ready to be my girlfriend. I thought that since you finally let me touch you, you were ready to be with me.”

  “I am ready—”

  “To be with me,” I cut in. “Not just sex. That’s not what this is about.”

  “Then what is it about?” she demanded.

  “It’s about you not wanting to bring me around your family. It’s about you being embarrassed about me for some reason.”