by Emma Hart
Slowly—torturously, almost—he circled my clit, rubbing it as I squirmed beneath his touch. I clawed at the sheets as he angled his hand and rubbed a finger along my pussy. He slipped it inside me, moving it in synchronicity with his thumb on my clit.
It was an explosion of sensations inside me. My skin was covered with goosebumps, and a thin sheen of sweat coated my chest and stomach. Mason pumped his fingers inside me expertly, curling them in just the right spot, almost pleading for me to orgasm all over them.
I almost did.
But he slowly pulled them out, making sure to give my clit one last, long rub.
Then one by one, he put his fingers in his mouth and licked them clean.
I had no chance to respond to how fucking hot that was because his mouth was on mine by the time my brain had formed words.
There was nothing nice or friendly about this kiss. It was pure desire, and I succumbed to it and him entirely. My body melded around his like it was made to be there, and he easily guided himself inside me.
It was all hunger, all desperation and neediness. Mason slid his hands up my arms and, once again intertwining our fingers, he pinned my hands to the bed.
I arched my back as he moved inside me, bringing me dangerously close to the edge of an orgasm. I was stuck in place, almost entirely at his mercy. He buried his face in my neck, kissing and nipping at my skin between heavy breaths.
Everything built at once. The heat, the adrenaline, the endless waves of uncontrollable pleasure that touched every inch of my body without apology.
I was consumed by him. By this feeling. Every gasp and every shiver and every moan that escaped my parted lips was a freaking prayer and plea.
A prayer that this wouldn’t be the last time I’d feel this way, a plea that he wouldn’t stop right now until I was ready.
He didn’t. He raised his head, pushing my hands further into the bed, driving his cock deeper inside me.
And I came undone.
It hit me like a firework, an insane explosion of endorphins that did more than consume me. It enveloped me, enthralling me with its intensity, leaving me capable of nothing but moans and muscle clenches and heavy breaths and incoherent gasps of his name.
His hit him, too. Maybe hard, maybe not, I just didn’t know. I was so wrapped up in the fog of my own release that, for a moment, I was sure I’d forgotten my own name.
Isabel?
Iris?
Who knew?
Not me.
Mason released my hands, uncurling his fingers from mine, and slumped down. He held most of his weight off to the side, and for that, I was grateful. I really didn’t feel like having to control my own lungs and not suffocate from his body weight.
“That was fun,” I breathed after a moment.
He turned his head, burying his face in my neck, and laughed. “I agree.”
I blew out a long breath. “Okay, Jesus, get off me, I can’t breathe.”
Another laugh escaped him. He slowly pushed up onto his hands and shifted back, pulling out of me. I moved up the bed and propped myself up onto my elbow, thankful for him grabbing a towel from the bathroom next door and throwing it on top of me.
I stuck it between my legs with the dignity of a skinned cat and hobbled into the bathroom after him. He laughed when he saw me, but I flipped him the bird and wiped myself clean, then sat on the toilet.
Mason stopped and stared at me.
“Can I help you?” I asked.
“Are you going to pee in front of me?”
“I am if you don’t get out of the bathroom.”
“It’s my bathroom.”
“And I have to pee,” I replied. “Unless you want to pay for the antibiotics for the inevitable UTI I’m going to get.”
He stopped, his hand around his half-limp dick. “I admit that I forgot how annoyingly pragmatic you are after sex.”
I shrugged. “A post-sex pee is absolutely necessary, thank you very much. If you don’t like it, you know where the door is.”
“Yes, it’s my bathroom.”
“And this isn’t the first time in my life I’ve ever peed in front of you,” I reminded him dryly. “Granted, I was drunk that time, but—oh, my God, can you stop watching me? I can’t pee under pressure.”
“You came in here.” He fought back his laughter. “I was here first.”
“Oh, my God, Mason, it’s not a competition!” I placed one hand over my eyes. “I can’t look at you, and God knows I can’t sidle home like a cheap hooker because Grandma is probably waiting to see if this is just for one night.”
“She’s going to harass you anyway.”
“Yes, but I don’t want to be harassed while I’m half-covered in your sweat!”
“On the bright side, you could be half-covered in something else of mine.”
I dropped both my jaw and my hand. “Oh, my God!” I grabbed a spare toilet roll and threw it at him. “Was that necessary?”
“Do you need to keep invoking a deity? Last I checked, he frowned on sex before marriage.”
“He had a virgin impregnated. He doesn’t get to take the moral high ground here.”
“He’s God. He is the moral high ground.”
“Then my pre-marital sex isn’t an issue, is it?”
“You have some weird logic, Imogen.” Mason shook his head and slung the towel he was holding over the side of the tub. “You want a snack?”
“Did you just ask me if I want a snack when I’m sitting on your toilet?”
“You don’t want one? All right.” He shrugged and headed out of the bathroom.
“Whoa, whoa!” I yelled after him. “I didn’t say no!”
“Jesus, woman. What do you want?”
“What snacks do you have? Since you ate my garlic balls.”
“You don’t need the garlic balls. You’ve spent enough time with mine!”
“Don’t be crude!” I shouted downstairs. “I’ll take a snack. Surprise me.”
“I just did. That was twenty-five minutes!” he hollered back.
“In your dreams!” I laughed, and—oh.
There was the pee.
I was screwed if I ever had kids.
I finished my business on the toilet—like it was a secret now—and used a little too much toilet paper cleaning up. I finished the roll, so I grabbed a fresh one and changed it, making sure it was the right way around.
Over.
Not under.
Only savages put their toilet paper the ‘under’ way.
I walked back into the bedroom to the sound of Mason rummaging through the kitchen downstairs. I grabbed my panties from the floor, but they weren’t exactly clean, thanks to him.
I put them on the radiator to hopefully dry out some—ahem—in the hope they’d be suitable enough to wear the entire twenty feet to my front door tomorrow morning.
Instead, I opened the top drawer of Mason’s dresser and pulled out a pair of his boxers. They were surprisingly comfortable, and I truly believed that every woman needed to sleep in a man’s boxers at least once in her life.
I tugged them on then sat on the bad, pulling the comforter up close to me. I’d just grabbed the remote control for his TV when I paused and looked down at myself.
This was what I’d done in college.
When we’d been in his room—and later his apartment in his senior year—I’d always worn his underwear after sex. Usually his shirt, too, if he’d made off with my bra.
It was a routine that hadn’t been done for years, yet I’d slipped into it without thinking. Totally subconsciously.
Because it wasn’t weird at all to me.
It felt so completely natural to sit here, on his bed, in his boxers, with my lips still swollen from his kisses and my skin still tingling from all his touches.
“Snacks.” Mason clomped into the room, totally naked, and dropped an entire picnic load of snacks onto the end of the bed. “Are you wearing my boxers?”
“Yes,” I said
simply, leaning over to see the snacks. “What did you bring?”
“Just about everything. There’s ice cream if you want some.”
“What kind of ice cream?”
He hesitated. “Cookie dough.”
My jaw dropped. “You have my favorite?”
“I figured I had to win you over at some point. If my fucking awesome personality didn’t do it, the ice-cream would.”
“Well, I see why you’re a lawyer with that stunning logic.”
He threw a bag of chips at me. “You can get your own ice cream.”
“What? I’ve always wanted a hot, naked lawyer to serve me ice cream.”
“Imogen.”
“Yes, Your Honor?”
Mason gave me a withering look. “That’s how you address a judge.”
I sighed. “You should really be a judge.”
“I’m not quite there in my career yet.”
“That’s a shame. They can forgive speeding tickets, can’t they?”
“Why? Do you have one?” He paused. “It’s your grandmother, isn’t it? Jen has a speeding ticket.”
“Please don’t talk about my grandmother when you’re naked. It’s really killing the whole hot-naked-lawyer-serving-ice-cream mood.”
“I should have known,” he muttered, turning around. “I should have known you wouldn’t have changed that much.”
I laughed, falling back against the headboard. He carried on muttering away to himself as he went downstairs and I loaded up Netflix on his TV. I popped open the chips he’d thrown at me and scrolled until I found Friends.
I knew he liked it.
I adjusted my position so I was lying on my side when my elbow hit something hard under the pillow. Frowning, I reached under it and pulled out a brown, plastic baby doll that was as naked as I was the day I was born.
And it was a little boy.
“That’s an interesting addition you’ve got there,” I murmured, studying the doll. “You should really have a diaper on.”
“Who are you—oh.” Mason put two bowls down on the dresser in front of the TV while he opened the top drawer. “I see you’ve met Stanley.”
I looked from the baby doll to him. “Stanley?”
“Stanley,” he confirmed. “Maya decided that was his name, so he’s called Stanley.”
I nodded slowly. “Does Stanley have a home?”
He nodded and made the give me motion with his hands. I tossed Stanley his way, and he caught his leg. Mason turned around and walked into the room across the hall, then tossed the doll across the room.
“Is that really how you should treat Stanley?” I asked.
“He landed on her bed. It’s fine.” He brushed it off with a wave of his hand and pushed his bedroom door closed. “I locked the front door and checked for your grandma.”
I blinked. “Oh, Jesus, is she still keeping an eye on the neighborhood?” I finished by making the birdy gesture.
“She gave me two thumbs up.” He picked up the bowls and handed me one, then sat on the bed next to me. “Not Friends.”
“Mhmm.”
“I didn’t sign up for this.”
“Well, neither did I, so hush.” I tapped his nose to shut him up. “You’ll survive.”
He sighed. “I suppose I’ll have to.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN – IMMY
Reality Check
I was pregnant.
My ankles were swollen, my boobs were all veiny, and my stomach closely resembled an oversized beachball.
And there were four kids at my ankles.
One was a baby less than a year old who was covered in their own poop, two were toddlers who were both crying for my attention, and the fourth was—
Maya.
My breathing quickened as I surveyed my surroundings. It was a kitchen I didn’t recognize. The backyard was large but open, and there were three dogs running around. Two Labradors and a Shih Tzu that looked a lot like Dolly.
Dolly.
Maya.
Holy shit.
Where the hell was Mason?
Why wasn’t he in this dream?
A dream.
Holy shit, this was a dream.
All I had to do was wake up, and all these little crotch demons would disappear.
Wake up, wake up, wake up. Wake up, Imogen!
I gasped into the darkness. A thin sheen of sweat covered my brow and the back of my neck, and I was glad I’d stolen one of Maya’s hair ties earlier before bed.
Maya.
I glanced to my side. The light that eked its way in through the cracks in the curtains illuminated Mason’s face, and I stared at him for a moment.
He was so fucking handsome. It was almost painful to look at him—it was unfair for someone to look the way he did and be so smart and just such a good fucking person.
And a good dad.
A good dad.
God.
I pushed the covers off me and quietly got out of bed. My feet padded silently against the wood floor as I made my way into the bathroom, shut the door, and turned on the light.
Catching a glimpse of myself in the mirror, one thing became obvious: I looked like hell.
I used the baby wipes from the shelf to remove my makeup and wipe my face. After washing it with cold water, I retied my hair into a knot on the top of my head and used the toilet.
Then went back to the mirror.
What the hell was that dream all about?
Was it because I’d found the baby doll under my pillow? Had that triggered some kind of reminder that Mason wasn’t the same guy I’d fallen for in college?
Was I holding onto a person who didn’t exist anymore?
Was I overthinking everything here?
Or was it just me being a pain in the ass?
I was prone to that, after all.
“Ugh,” I groaned quietly, running the tap once more to splash my face with cold water. The chill of it against my burning cheeks jolted me out of the post-dream haze I was in.
I didn’t have time to think about what that dream meant right now. I needed to sleep, and if I let my brain run away with some theories, I’d never get back to sleep.
I dried my face with the towel hanging on the ring next to the sink and shut off the light, then headed back into the bedroom.
Mason turned on the lamp on the nightstand and looked at me through sleepy eyes. “You okay?”
“I just needed the bathroom,” I lied, slipping back into the bed.
He made a noise that could have been either an argument or an agreement, then switched off the light and rolled over to face me. Wrapping one strong arm around my body, he tugged my back against his chest and bent his legs so every part of us was touching.
Warmth quickly spread through my body, and I took a deep breath as I relaxed into him.
I’d done nothing but overthink ever since I’d seen him step out of the moving van.
And four a.m. was not the time for philosophical conversations, because he was already asleep behind me.
So instead of allowing my brain to run away with all sorts of things that would just freak me out and keep me awake, I turned my thoughts to yarn and threads and paints and brushes…
***
A big sign that read ‘CLOSED FOR STOCK TAKING’ was on the door of Art by Numbers, and I’d bribed Hannah into helping me with the promise of lunch.
And pay.
She didn’t do anything for free, even for family.
“Isaac said he had Mason’s puppy in,” Hannah said, counting a box full of yarn. “Is she better?”
“I think so. He called Mason this morning and said he wants to keep her until tonight, but she should be fine to go home.” I put a box back up on the shelf and pulled down another one. “And he’s getting his car back this afternoon so I don’t need to take him.”
“And how do you know all this, hmm?”
“I assumed you knew I knew,” I replied, clearing my throat. “Since you asked.”
/> “Grandma said you didn’t go home last night.”
“That gossipy old—” I stopped and took a deep breath. “I did not go home last night,” I confirmed.
Lying to her was pointless. Grandma would have called her at six a.m. to tell her I was a hussy who’d stayed out all night.
“She said you’re a hussy who stayed out all night.”
See?
“Such a hussy that she freakin’ cheered me on from the kitchen window,” I muttered. “Fine. I know what you’re looking for: I slept with Mason last night.”
She squealed and clapped her hands.
“You’re not a seal, Hannah. Don’t do that.”
She laughed and hugged her notebook to her chest. “Tell me more, tell me more. How did it happen?”
“Kind of by accident,” I mused.
“By accident? Immy, people don’t have sex by accident. Unless you were both naked on a Slip’N’Slide and he just happened to have an erection that ended up in the right place.”
I rolled my eyes and grabbed another box. “No Slip’N’Slides were harmed in the making of my orgasm. After we took Dolly to Isaac—who is hot as hell, by the way—we grabbed some pizza because neither of us had eaten. I kind of threw a bit of a hissy fit and tried to leave, but then he made me listen and admitted that seeing me again had stirred up old feelings.”
Hannah raised her eyebrows. “And you’d know all about that.”
I ignored her. “He said if I didn’t feel anything, then I needed to walk out there and then, and it was whatever, and we’d just be neighbors.”
“And you didn’t leave?”
“Oh no, I left.”
“Imogen!”
“Hold your horses, hold your horses. I went back. Obviously.”
“Right. Of course. So how did Grandma end up cheering you on?”
I sighed. “He kissed me on the doorstep. She saw. He told her I wouldn’t be home last night.”
She choked on a mouthful of water. “He said what?”
“Yeah. So. That’s how I couldn’t go home last night. Luckily, I managed to get in and out of the house before she could ask too many questions.”
“Because there will be questions,” she finished. “What happens now?”
Shrugging, I opened a box. “I honestly don’t know. I had a weird dream last night where I was pregnant, and there were, like, babies everywhere, and they were all mine. Maya was there, too. I woke up in the middle of the night, but I didn’t want to mention it to Mason in case it was just me being weird.”
