The Belle and the Beard

by Kate Canterbary

  "Nice to see you again." She stretched her arms high over her head which did the best things to her tits. The very best things.

  As I admired the full flare of her curves, I rolled a condom down. Held myself by the base, an offering to my sweet, sleepy goddess. She was allowed to be tired. I'd reached for her at all hours of the night and most of the day yesterday. She was well used.

  She shifted her hands to the headboard as she settled herself over me. We didn't have to say a word. We knew this now, we knew each other, and there was no need to discuss every move. We knew this.

  When she sank down, I was reminded I fit inside her like I belonged there, and not in the old sense that a cock belonged in a cunt. I had it on good authority that a cock belonged in any number of willing places and this one wasn't simply willing, it had been made for me. It was mine.

  Jasper moved over me with a steady pace, one designed especially for Sunday mornings. Every slide and stroke had me gripping her hips harder, holding her down longer. This was all I needed, this was it.

  She leaned down, dragged her breasts over my chest, up to my jaw. She liked the way my beard chafed her skin and I liked the way her tits swung in my face as she fucked me. Even better when I managed to catch one of those nipples between my teeth.

  "I'm"—she started, the word stretched out over a sigh—"I'm there. I'm right there."

  It just didn't get any better than this. There was no way. "Yeah, you are, baby." I held her hips down as her muscles pulsed around me. Every orgasm of hers—every fucking one—felt like she was milking my soul right out of me. It was only a matter of time until she snatched it. "Get it. Get it, Jas."

  The spasms rolled through her, pulling and sucking at my tip where it was buried deep inside her. Her body wanted me there, wanted to keep me there, and that did something to me. It fucked me up in a good, weird way. Made me think about keeping her in this bed all day, keeping her here always. It made me want to say that out loud, which was the truest sign I was fucked all the way up.

  "I can't come again until you do," she panted, one hand working her clit while the other gripped the headboard. "Please. I need you to."

  We were messy now, both of us hot and misted with sweat. I could hear the wet between her legs. Just like the lazy Sunday way it started, I wanted it this way too. I wanted it rough and unclean, and I wanted to feel her fingers around the base of my cock every time she worked herself the way she needed. Nothing about this was pretty. It wasn't beautiful, even when the most beautiful woman I'd ever met was bearing down on my shaft with such force I seriously wondered whether I might black out.

  "I can't believe how hard you are," she whispered. "It's rude."

  "You're rude," I growled back. "You shove those tits in my face one more time and I'll bite them."

  She slammed down on me and when her breasts brushed up against my jaw again, I took hold of those beauties. They were mine now. I teased her with my beard because I knew she loved it and I teased myself with the feel of her light brown nipples on my lips because I loved it.

  I felt myself teetering on the edge, just close enough to fall over, but Jasper was enjoying herself, even if her brows were pinched in fierce concentration, and I wanted another few minutes.

  I lost myself in nipping at the tender underside of her breasts and pinching those nipples between my fingers. She didn't like pain in the grand sense—she didn't want anyone belting her and I respected that—but she had no problem with bites and pinches and pulling hard enough to mark her with fingertip-sized bruises—and I was into that. I didn't want to belt anyone but I didn't know how to fuck without doing it rough. I didn't know how to do it without leaving marks.

  And that was what I did to those gorgeous tits. I marked the fuck out of them and I lengthened and swelled every time she let out another breathy wail-sigh that told me she felt those bites in her cunt.

  "Lin," she called out. "You're—" She lost her words on a sob. "Now, now, now. I need it now."

  Reaching up, I closed my hand around her throat. My hold was loose but it did it for both of us. She ground against me, forcing my cock as deep as I could go, and purred as I filled the condom. I didn't know how she could feel it but she did. She felt it enough for her body to work me even harder. Everything was liquid heat, everything inside and outside too.

  Jasper leaned in close and rubbed her cheek against my jaw. Her eyes drifted shut. I slipped my hand into her hair, held her close.

  "What do you need, Peach?"

  I figured she'd want me to lick her or pet her clit or take her into the shower and do this all over again. Something like that.

  Instead, she rested her forehead against mine, saying, "I really want some toast. An extra toasty slice too. Nice and browned. Just butter and some of that clementine marmalade." She shrugged. "Probably two slices. Yeah, definitely two."

  The only thing I knew was I wanted this every weekend. Every fucking one of them. And that was a really dangerous thing to want.

  We weren't due in New Bedford for dinner with my family until later in the afternoon so I talked Jasper into a post-breakfast walk in the woods. She wanted to make lists about her lists, or something of that sort, and I could not allow that while the conditions were bright and dry.

  I couldn't allow us to stay in bed all day either. Regardless of what I'd vowed on Friday evening, sixty hours of sex wasn't going to fly. Aside from the fact I was not twenty-five anymore, I didn't want to use Jasper. Not even one bit more than was right—which was a line that never clearly materialized in the moment but glared obviously after the fact.

  Enough people had used Jasper and they'd used her in ways that were wrong from the start. I wasn't going to be one of those people.

  "Are we looking for anything today?" she asked. "A specific tree or something?"

  "Nothing in particular," I said, watching as she picked her way around a cluster of rocks. "We might be able to find some chanterelles though. We've had a good amount of overnight rain in the past couple of weeks."

  "And chanterelles are…?"

  "Mushrooms," I replied, reaching for my phone. "Here. I'll find a photo so you can keep an eye out."

  She leaned against my chest while I searched for a good image. Her hair was coiled in a low bun and smelled so lovely, just so lovely, and I could see down her shirt from this angle. Life was really good.

  "Why are we looking for these mushrooms?"

  "My mother likes them," I replied. "She doesn't have much patience for foraging but she's appreciative whenever I bring some home."

  Jasper nodded as she studied the image on my screen. "So, you're trying to butter her up with fungus? Are you that worried about bringing me home to meet the family?"

  I pocketed my phone, giving her a bland stare. "No. I'm not worried."

  "But you'd like to get on your mother's good side. With the fungus."

  "Believe me, Peach, bringing you home by itself lands me on the good side." I grabbed a fallen branch and tossed it out of the path. I wasn't sure how much I wanted to tell her—if anything—about my mother's anniversary party deadline. I didn't want Jasper thinking any part of this was a game to me. I really didn't want her to think I was manipulating her. "My mother is very interested in seeing me paired up."

  "That is not new information." She glanced over at me, a cheeky grin stretched across her face. "She did not hide her enthusiasm the other day. There was definitely a minute when she looked me up and down and said to herself, 'Yep, those are some good birthing hips.'"

  I barked out a laugh but didn't disagree because my mother would absolutely do that. "The chanterelles will give her something else to focus on for five and a half minutes. That will help with the overall hovering and gushing. She might even hold off on asking you how many kids you'd like to have."

  "Not for long," Jasper said with a laugh.

  "Just ask her about Magnolia and the babies or Ash and Zelda's wedding," I said. "That will distract her."

  "Okay
, got it." She gave me the cutest wink in the world, one I was certain she didn't intend to be cute but came out that way nonetheless. Then, "So, family dinners are a pretty big deal for y'all, huh?"

  This part of the trail was completely empty. That was normal around here. We were far from the primary trails, and even in the busiest of seasons, these woods rarely reached anything resembling busy.

  "I can't decide if I'd call it a big deal or a normal mechanism of my family's functioning. The truth lies somewhere in between."

  "Then you've made a tradition of it."

  "I think we inherited the tradition, at least some parts of it. I think it goes back to my grandparents or even my great-grandparents."

  "Yeah, that's a tradition." Jasper pointed at an oak tree ahead. "Is that your mushroom?"

  "That's chicken of the woods. Not a chanterelle."

  "Do we like that?"

  I shook my head. "Not a ton, no."

  "Okay, well, back to your multigenerational traditions, please. I want the full briefing before you send me in."

  "It's not a multigenerational tradition, that much I know." I laughed because my parents were some of the least traditional people I knew. At least they'd started out that way. "Look, this might come as a shock but my parents were pretty countercultural before they had us. Anti-establishment, fight the power, down with the man."

  "Is that why you and your siblings have botanical names?"

  "Babe, you should hear our middle names. Magnolia got off easy with Lynn but Ash's middle name is Indigo."

  "That's precious. Bless him and his bespoke-suited heart." Jasper stopped, turned to face me. "And what about you?"

  "Wolf."

  "What?"

  "Yeah. I know. Wolf is a crazy name."

  She gave me an owlish stare, her dark eyes round and her lips parted. "That can't be true."

  I nodded. "Wild, isn't it?"

  She turned her stare to the ground. "No, I mean—wait. I don't know how to explain this."

  "Don't tell me your middle name is also Wolf. That would be weird."

  "No, I don't have a middle name but you have a very wolfish way about you." She glanced up. "I've thought this for weeks. Since I met you."

  "Tell me how you want me to take that, Jas."

  "There's no particular way I want you to take it," she replied, her fingers on her temples because she found something about my response exasperating. "Just know that your parents got that one right and I won't be able to sympathize with you on their countercultural ways since it's worked out quite spectacularly for me."

  I brought my hand to her shoulder, tugged her close. "I like the sound of that."

  "I…I am just trying to process this new bit of reality. You should probably finish your story about dinners and traditions and everything while I have this existential moment."

  "Well, my parents made a big deal about making the old ways fit into their lives and getting rid of anything they found unnecessary or overly formal. I've never paid much attention to the details but I know there's a holy war over the right time to eat on Sundays."

  "There's a wrong time to eat?"

  We continued down the trail, Jasper tucked under my arm and the sun shining down on us. "That's what I've gathered but I gotta be honest, I dipped out of those debates early on. All I know is my parents are on the side of regular evening mealtimes and my grandparents are on the side of post-church services, mid-afternoon mealtimes."

  "You know what's funny? We used to do all this ethnographic research to prep the candidate in advance of campaign stops outside Georgia. Regional customs and moments of local culture, even the little things like how it's soda in St. Louis, pop in Omaha, and Coke in Little Rock, even if it's not actually Coke. We can't send a candidate to New England and have them order a milkshake, you know? It has to be a frappe unless you want to get dragged on social media over some local speak. But I don't think I've ever tuned into the demographic divide over mealtimes for Sunday family gatherings. I wonder if anyone has picked up on that."

  "It might just be my family."

  She sawed her teeth over her bottom lip as she thought about this. "Probably not. You'd be surprised how far seemingly small divides, especially the ones that track back to ethnicity and faith, spread."

  "What about you? What are your strange old family traditions?"

  Her shoulders went up in a shrug but they never fell. "Don't really have any."

  "What do you mean? I thought the South was all about traditions."

  "Mmhmm."

  She shook out of my hold and moved ahead quickly, leaving me several steps behind. Since my quads were still overworked from all our time spent between the sheets, I didn't match her pace. It seemed like she needed the space, even if I didn't understand. She'd asked about this, hadn't she? Wouldn't she expect me to ask about her family in return?

  "Hey. I found your fungus."

  I looked up ahead and spotted Jasper beside an old oak. She circled the tree twice before dropping her knees to the ground. I figured it was another chicken of the woods clump because chanterelles didn't grow directly on wood.

  "Are you sure about that?" I called.

  She didn't respond while I caught up to her and it seemed like I'd earned that, either by questioning her foraging ability or prying into topics she wasn't prepared to discuss with me. When I came up on her, I asked, "What did you find?" Before I let her respond, I closed my hand around her elbow and yanked her up, away from the oak. "Those are not chanterelles."

  "What are they?"

  "Jack-o'-lanterns and jack-o'-lanterns are poisonous."

  She stared down at the large spread of orange fungi. "Oh."

  My heart was pounding. It didn't make any sense, not really, since these weren't lethally poisonous. Unpleasantly poisonous, yeah, but that was it. She wouldn't even get sick from touching them. She'd have to eat them before things turned hairy. But I should've warned her not to touch anything. Should've told her what to avoid. What the actual fuck was wrong with me?

  I relaxed my hold on her elbow, smoothed a hand up her arm and over her shoulders. "Here's a quick rule for you. Don't touch anything until you've confirmed its identity from two sources."

  "Okay but"—she had an indignant set to her jaw, like she objected to me calling foul on her find—"these look exactly like the photos you showed me."

  "They do look similar but they're different, babe. These are growing in clumps, see? And they're directly on the base of this oak. Chanterelles don't grow on wood and they tend to pop up without friends nearby." I bent down, grabbed a stick, and angled up one side of the orange caps, pointed to its underside. "See here? These little wrinkles that stop at the base of the stem? They're called gills. Chanterelles have fine ridges that cover the underside and stem."

  "You know, I thought we were just wandering around and looking for little orangey things in the forest. I didn't realize this was going to be so complicated."

  I looked up at her. I didn't realize it was going to be complicated either.

  I pushed to my feet, looped my arm around her waist. "Do me a favor and don't touch anything. Okay?"

  She shoved her hands in her pockets. "Under most circumstances, I'd argue with you about that kind of limitation but I'm going to let this one slide."

  "Good plan," I said. "Let's turn back, okay? It's probably too late in the season for chanterelles anyway."

  I didn't lie to Jasper when I said I wasn't concerned about introducing her to my family today. It wasn't as though I was bringing her home in some significant way. This wasn't like the time Magnolia brought her now-husband Rob home and that was it, the real deal, the this is happening announcement. This wasn't like the time Ash brought Zelda home and they nearly set the backyard on fire with all the sexual tension sparking between them.

  This wasn't like any of that. This wasn't permanent and it wasn't complicated either. It didn't have to be. Even if I had a whole lot of fun with Jasper and I was getting pretty
good at saving her from herself, this had an expiration date.

  "Okay, let me give you some advice." I pulled in behind my brother's Porsche and killed the engine. "My mother is a collector. She picks up broken furniture off the side of the road and takes hand-me-downs from everyone. She'll try to collect you too."

  Jasper laced her fingers together and dropped them to her creamy white skirt. It was one of those full skirts, the kind that fell just past her knees and seemed like it would flare out if she twirled. The wool fabric was slightly rough to the touch, but on the drive down here some pawing helped me discover it had a silky lining. I'd happily spend time on my knees if I could do it with my head under that skirt.

  "Do I want to be collected?"

  "Unless you want to help her organize a quilt raffle down at the church or get in on a meal train for someone's sister's cousin's best friend, probably not. My recommendation is to—"

  "Linden."

  "What's up?"

  She fluffed her hair over her shoulders, letting it fall against her dark green sweater. The neck was high and there wasn't a stitch of skin showing but that sweater was devastating. It just…it killed me.

  "I know how to handle just about everyone." She gave me a pointed look. "Just about."

  I gestured to the house because we could not talk about how thoroughly she could handle me while parked in my parents' driveway. Could not. "Then don't let me slow you down, babe."

  She tucked her hair over her ear and gave me one of her sinful smiles, the ones that made all her forced, fake smiles look like a low-quality inkjet printout of her, a loose replica but nowhere near the real thing.

  "As if you could."

  I reached for the door handle, saying, "Stay there. I'll come around."

  But she already had her door open and climbed out before I could get halfway there, the enormous bouquet of flowers she'd insisted on bringing cradled in her arm along with a small basket loaded with something called pimento cheese, olives, and a variety of crackers. "I see we're still ignoring simple requests."