by Liv Rancourt
I made quick work of sliding the condom into place, and even quicker work of sliding him into place. Our heads fell together naturally, resting on each other’s shoulders. I rode him slow and easy, though it didn’t take long till he pinned my hips in place and quickened the pace. Waves of heated pleasure built, and crested, and surged again. He brought his thumb over the spot where my body joined his and started to rub, and I almost wept it felt so good.
There was something healing in the private bubble we created in his old car. The motion of the ferry moving over the water, and of our bodies moving together, solidified our connection. With him so deep inside, I couldn’t be dishonest, couldn’t be anyone but myself.
And I loved him. Maybe I couldn’t say the words, but the feeling was real.
The rhythm between us shifted again, speeding, tightening, till I crashed over him in a climax so strong I couldn’t make a sound. He followed me with a heavy humming growl, thrusting so hard I bonked my head on the roof of the car.
When we could catch our breath, we laughed, soft and intimate. “I thought I would die,” he said, “when I woke up and you were gone.”
“I’m so sorry.” I cupped his cheek. “I thought you only wanted sex.” Rubbing his lips with my thumb, I tried to pull my thoughts together. “We were acting, but we weren’t really, but then we were again.” I squinched my face. “That didn’t come out right.”
He chuckled, the kind of low, happy sound I could listen to forever. “I know what you mean. I don’t think either of us expected”—he kissed me as gently as the late summer sun on the water—“this.”
“This,” I echoed.
“I knew what I wanted from the first time I kissed you, but I never thought you’d want me,” he said. “Which is why, you know, I acted like an asshole half the time.”
“Perhaps not the most effective strategy for attracting a woman.” I rocked my hips and he hissed, already half-hard.
“Next time you try to pull a disappearing act,” I said, “I’m going grab you by the balls and hang on.”
He wrapped both hands around my butt and pulled me closer. “You do that.”
We both startled when the first passengers came past the window, and did our best to straighten ourselves without giving anyone a free show. We had to crawl all over each other to switch seats so Randy could drive, and he ended up taking me all the way home.
Because there was no place else either of us wanted to be.
About the Author
Liv Rancourt writes light, funny, contemporary romance and urban fantasy. Her novel Hell…The Story was a 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award quarterfinal entry. Previous publishing credits include Forever & Ever, Amen; A Vampire’s Deadly Delight; and several short stories in the Ten Tales series.
Liv’s day job is as a neonatal nurse practitioner, and she’s taken care of small and sick infants for almost thirty years. Before she got serious about writing, she spent her free time fronting a rock band and hanging out in the church choir. Currently, she lives in Seattle with her husband, two teenagers, two ferrets, one crabby cat, and one sweet puppy.
She can be found online at her website and blog (www.livrancourt.com), on Facebook (www.facebook.com/liv.rancourt), or on Twitter (www.twitter.com/LivRancourt).
More from This Author
(From Forever and Ever, Amen by Liv Rancourt)
Between her ex and her job and her teenagers, there weren’t many chances for fun in Molly’s life. The one guaranteed bright spot was Friday Happy Hour with her best friend Sam, when they met at Coopers, the kind of place where it was too dark to see the dirt. The bartenders played ‘80s music, which helped them pretend they were back in college as they rocked out to the B52s or Pat Benatar.
Over the years they’d come to an understanding. Molly knew what it cost Sam to balance her kids, her husband and her work, and Sam knew all about Ford. Or as much as Molly was willing to tell her.
But this week they made an exception. They planned to meet at The Mystic, the new “it” restaurant in town. It was a spare and modern place that still managed to be comfortable, though their fellow diners were mostly young and beautiful, which made Molly feel old and — well, old. The floor was polished concrete and the furnishings had an industrial look that was softened with velvet cushions. The first cocktail Molly ordered had lavender liqueur in it, and the little pupu plates on the menu combined small bites with lush sauces and truffle oil that looked more like art than food.
“So did Diana torture you today?” Sam usually started off with a question about work so Molly could get it off her chest. Molly was the human resources manager for a medium-sized medical supply company, and Sam job-shared a project manager position for a graphics firm. Part-time work was a concession to having four kids, although her lawyer husband earned enough that she didn’t really need to work at all.
“No, thank God. She took the afternoon off so I actually got some stuff done.” The waiter brought their appetizer — tiny tarts filled with a deep orange substance that the menu called tomato foam and topped with a swirl of brilliant green pesto.
“What was she on about this week?” Sam asked.
“The usual. She’s all hot to get the Dallas scores up, to show that we have happy employees.” Molly shrugged. “I figure if we pay them, they ought to be happy.”
Sam smiled, giving Molly another opportunity to envy her lovely coral lips and the faint brush of peach on her cheekbones. Sam always wore makeup. They’d been sisters at Chi Omega and stayed friends after college. Sam’s straight, fawn-colored hair was usually pulled back in a ponytail, although once or twice Molly had seen it down. She’d never seen her without the lipstick, which Sam treated like a religious ritual. “Diana must get a bonus if you raise the scores.”
“Good for her. She rides me like a pony and then she gets the money.” Molly tipped her head up to catch the waiter’s eye. “I think I need one more.”
Sam picked up the drink menu. It was printed on heavy cardstock with a hand scrawled list of fancy cocktails. “Maybe the bartender makes it up as he goes along,” she said, thinking out loud as she scanned it. “Let’s try the one called Satan’s Whiskers.”
Molly, too, scanned the menu. “I’m not sure what gin and Satan have in common, but okay.”
While they waited for their drinks, Sam brought up one of her favorite topics. “So, you hate your job, right?”
“Come on, Sam, I know where this is going.”
“And your husband is in the 35 percent tax bracket, right?”
“Knock it off.” Molly stared out the window, shutting her friend out. This conversation was more of a rhetorical exercise, an area they’d basically agreed to disagree on. That didn’t stop Sam from bringing it up every week.
The glare from the headlights on First Avenue turned the big windows into mirrors. Molly could see a slice of herself perched like a bird between the young and trendy diners that surrounded them. Her short curly hair had dried right for a change, and she wore a tailored black suit softened by the green silk of her blouse, a color chosen to play up her bright blue eyes. If it had really been a mirror, she would have picked over the crow’s-feet and scattered gray in her curls. Instead, she waited for Sam to get to the end of her lecture.
“Quit dodging. File already.”
“I’m not dodging.” Molly met Sam’s gaze head-on. “Ford owns the courtroom.”
“He wouldn’t dare mess with you. It’d be too easy to dig up dirt on him. And fuck it, sometimes you need to stand up to the things that scare you.”
Hearing the F-bomb drop from Sam’s perfect lips always made Molly smile. “Sky down, girlfriend. It’s not worth it.”
“Right. Whatever.”
Sam sounded distracted, which was surprising. Usually she was good for several more rounds of the “you really need to file” game. Sam was the only one who knew that Molly and Ford’s “divorce” was more of an informal separation, a gentleman’s agreement, and Molly planned
to keep it that way.
She noticed her friend staring at something across the room and figured talking about her kids would bring her back. “Is Patrice working on an application for St. Boniface?”
“Later. Don’t turn around.” Sam spoke through her teeth and smiled at the waiter as he passed them their drinks. Molly’s head twitched in the direction Sam was staring, because that’s what happened whenever someone told her not to turn around. “Don’t,” Sam hissed.
“What is it that I’m not supposed to be looking at?” Molly asked as she took a sip of Satan’s Whiskers. The citrusy gin cocktail wasn’t all that strong, or else the first one was already getting to her.
“There’s a guy at the bar and he’s been checking you out since we got here.”
“Doubtful. I’m not that interesting.” Molly leaned back and laughed. “We’re the wrong generation for that kind of action here.”
“He’s worked himself up to smiling. I’m going to go bring him over.” Sam half stood in her chair.
“Ah, hello, mother of four and happily married.”
“Not for me, for you. You ain’t got nothing a good lay won’t cure.” Grinning at her own joke, Sam headed toward the bar.
“Spoken like a woman who’s given birth four times,” Molly said to herself. She slowly turned around to see where her friend was going. Sam’s camel-colored wool slacks retained a knife pleat down the back, as if they’d just come from the dry cleaners, and her creamy silk blouse was barely wrinkled.
Molly had envied Sam’s polish since she was nineteen years old. With Sam’s curves, all it took to change her tailored daytime vibe to something more sophisticated was to unbutton the top couple buttons on her blouse. Molly watched Sam approach the man at the bar. When she turned around those two buttons were undone.
Sam played it up by laughing, chin up and shoulders back so he could get a glimpse down her cleavage. After a couple minutes, she led the guy toward their table. He looked smooth, as if he crossed the bar to meet strange women all the time. His caramel skin, black hair and dark lashes suggested he was from the Middle East somewhere — maybe India — and he wore a deep red turtleneck with jeans and a leather jacket.
“Molly, this is … oh, I’m so embarrassed. What did you say your name was?” A blush bloomed under Sam’s Perfect Peach makeup.
“So pleased to meet you, Molly.” He took her hands and planted an air kiss near it. At Sam’s invitation, he joined them at their table.
Tall and dark had always been Molly’s type, and as the stranger settled into the chair next to her, Molly felt her eyes open just a bit wider and her breath get short. It was uncomfortably close to the way Ford made her feel.
“You ladies are unaccompanied,” the stranger said. His voice sounded like it had been rubbed by steel wool.
“That’s a three dollar word for Girls Night Out,” Sam laughed.
Molly sat there with a ruler running up her spine and a foolish grin. She watched Sam elegantly swirl the remains of her Satan’s Whiskers cocktail. Sam had always been the boy-magnet.
“May I buy you another?” The stranger gestured at Sam’s glass.
“Actually, my, uh, nanny just texted me.” Sam tossed off the rest of her drink. “I’ve got to go home and deal with a science project that’s gone awry.”
“Is everybody okay?” Molly was like an aunt to Sam’s kids, and their constant escapades left her with a mix of humor and worry, though in this instance she suspected there was no real problem at home.
Sam pushed away from the table. “Only a little blood. Sorry to bag on you, Mol. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
And that quickly she was gone, leaving the slightly tipsy Molly with a strange guy in an unfamiliar setting. Molly was still deciding how to proceed when the stranger leaned in closer. His scent, a rich mix of aftershave and MAN, in capital letters, sparked something down below her belly button.
Molly shifted in her chair, looking for some breathing room. He was a little intimidating, and not just because he was so much taller than her. “What did you say your name was, again?”
“Where’s your husband?”
This time she edged the chair away. “I asked you first.”
He laughed, a mellow sound compared with the gruffness of his voice. Molly’s spine softened.
“Okay, well, since you’re being secretive, I won’t tell you where my husband is, either.” Molly reached for her drink, hoping her hand was steady enough not to spill.
“You don’t want to know.”
“You’re probably right.” Molly laughed and managed to take a sip of her drink. Like this guy actually knew where her husband was. It didn’t bear thinking about. “What are you doing here, anyway? Guys our age don’t usually make lateral moves.”
“Lateral?”
“You know, hitting on someone who’s old enough to have been your prom date. Usually a guy like you wants some twenty-something pretty to help him deal with the midlife blues.”
The words were out of her mouth before she knew it. If nothing else, Satan’s Whiskers had put her internal editor to sleep. She watched nervously for his response.
Fortunately, he just raised an eyebrow and smiled instead of getting huffy. “You know little about men.”
“I know as much as I need to.” If her sleeping editor let some extra bitterness into her words, Molly ignored it. She placed her forearms on the table and leaned toward her new friend, torn between the desire to trace his lips with the tip of her finger and the fear that he might bite. She credited the fear to his resemblance to Ford.
He laughed and flagged down the waiter. “We’ll see.”
Molly trailed a finger down the hand-written cocktail menu instead, debating whether she had the intestinal fortitude for another round of Satan’s Whiskers. She glanced up to see the stranger staring at her, his gaze uncomfortably intense in the restaurant’s candle demi-light. “Red?” she asked.
“Pardon.”
“Your eyes are red.”
He blinked slowly and his smile faded. Before he could speak, the waiter came to their table. The stranger ordered them another round of cocktails, and after that the night slid into a crazy patchwork dream, the kind where things were disagreeable but too muddled for Molly to feel real fear. There was some drinking that might have involved tequila, some nervous laughter, and more of that warm feeling down below. She did remember that, more than once, when the light hit the stranger’s eyes at just the right angle, they turned scarlet, like staring into the heart of a fire. They left the bar, things got blurrier, then Molly woke up in her own bed, and for some reason it was noisy.
• • •
“Mom? Mom, wake up.” Molly heard pounding on the door. Her daughter’s voice sounded like it came from Pluto. “Mom?”
The bedroom door cracked open just as Molly pulled her eyelids apart. She had to shut her left eye to focus her right, but when she did she saw a slice of Flora’s worried face peeking into her room. “I’m here,” Molly whispered, because that’s all the sound she could make.
“It’s like eleven thirty.” Flora pushed the door open wider. “I’m supposed to go to Petland with Hillary to get some volunteer hours this afternoon.”
Molly stopped listening after she heard the time. “Eleven thirty? You said it’s eleven thirty?”
“I’m not even joking. I need to be at Petland at like noon.” Flora came in and dropped onto Molly’s bed. The cream-colored comforter was all twisted up, as if Molly had been doing yoga in her sleep. Flora was wearing her Saturday casual clothes, which still involved vintage black lace. Molly couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen her daughter wear anything pink or yellow. She also wondered how a fifteen-year-old girl found so many syllables in the word “Mom.”
“Um, okay. Just let me get up and dressed and … ” Molly stopped struggling to sit up when she heard Flora gasp.
“Gross, Mom, you’ve totally got a hickey on your neck.” Flora was nearly squealing by the en
d of the sentence.
“I do not.” Molly put on her best mother’s voice.
“Do too. Jamie, come see this. Mom’s got a hickey.”
“Flora, stop it. Jamie, I do not have a hickey.” By now, Molly was standing up, more or less. She tried to push her bedroom door shut so that her son Jamie couldn’t get in. He was three years older than Flora and at about six feet, two inches tall, he towered over his mother and sister. He pushed back against the door and slid his shoulders through.
“She’s right, Ma, you do have a hickey.” Jamie’s voice was deep like his father’s, and at times like this, she had trouble remembering which one she was talking to. Jamie and his father shared more than their voice. They had the same name: Wallingford Jameson Spencer.
Molly rounded the end of her bed and leaned against the polished maple bureau, staring into the mirror that hung on the wall behind it. “No no no no no,” she whispered, fingertips touching the dark welt that was plainly visible right above the pulse point on the right side of her neck. Her shoulders were narrow and if her slim hips had started to widen recently, it was only to be expected when someone was forty-three years old.
“Um, I’d say it was yes yes yes, Mom.” Flora flipped her long dyed-black hair and rolled her eyes.
Molly stared at her own reflection. Her cap of loose curls was going wild and yesterday’s mascara was a shadow under her lower lashes. The light yellow nightgown she wore had only thin straps at the shoulders, so there was nothing to cover the mark on her neck. This was bad. Her cheeks bloomed bright at the thought of her kids seeing it, especially since she had no idea how it got there. She needed a shower and some time to think. She tried to say something, cleared her throat, and tried again.
“Okay, Jamie, you’ve got practice this afternoon, right? Can you go in a little early and take Flora to Petland?”
