Crosstown Crush

by Cara McKenna

  “Do you get teased by the other contractors for that accent?”

  “Sometimes. I had this one guy who was always calling me ‘Rodeo.’ I tried to tell him I’ve never been on a horse in my life, but he wasn’t hearing it…” He trailed off, looking thoughtful.

  She nudged him with her elbow. “What?”

  “How were your parents, when you hooked up with Mike? Are they traditional about stuff, like wanting you to marry a guy from the same background?”

  She shrugged. “I think my mom was, but she never came out and said it. My dad couldn’t care less. He’s really into the American melting-pot concept, not traditional at all. The only thing I know we did that disappointed them was not having kids.”

  “That’s officially off the table, huh?”

  Sam nodded. “We’ve always been ambivalent. And, I mean, we’ve had little moments where one of us is suddenly intrigued by the idea, but we’ve had way more moments where we’re positive it’s not for us. And parenthood isn’t a decision I want to go into half-assed, you know?”

  “Sure.”

  “What about you?”

  “I dunno. I want to say yeah, I’d like kids someday. But I’d have to get married, and at the moment that’s really not high on my priority list.”

  “You’ve got time.”

  He made a face. “I’m thirty-six. Gimme four years to meet and fall in love with the right woman, and I’m already looking at forty-year-old dadhood.”

  “Forty’s nothing these days. Especially for the guy. Now me – if I changed my mind tomorrow, my eggs are already on the fifty-percent-off day-old shelf, halfway to the Dumpster.”

  Bern laughed and winced at once. “Harsh.”

  “It’s true!” She leaned forward to top off her glass. “I’d get all those weird looks from people, like, Gray hair and pregnant? And my mom would be sending me links to articles about every terrifying older-mother birth defect there is. But you – you’d just get teased by people, like, Uh-oh, Bern, looks like your bachelor days are over!” She poked him in the arm. “In fact, you’d probably get thrown a party to celebrate your virility or something. All while my ovaries are being serenaded with a funeral dirge. You hit forty and you get put out to stud. I hit forty and I’m off to the glue factory.”

  He shook his head, smiling. “You’re fucking insane.”

  Sam sank back in her seat, vindicated. “It’s all true. Don’t bother trying to deny it.”

  “Drink your wine, crazy lady.”

  She took a big sip, realizing the heavier feelings had lifted enough that she could register the alcohol’s warm tingle. She hadn’t taken any of the movie in, and when machine-gun fire flared, Bern lowered the volume.

  He said quietly, “It’s nice to see you smiling again.”

  Sam nodded. “When you get news like that, it’s hard to remember there’s other ways to feel, aside from just… agonized.”

  “You need to talk more?”

  “No. Thank you. I feel sort of numb about it just now, like I’ve used all my sadness up for the night. I’m sure I’ll be a wreck again tomorrow, but for now, I think I can just sit with it. Let it sink in, in the back of my head, while I let other stuff distract me.”

  “Good plan.” Bern regarded her for a long moment, gaze slipping from her eyes to her shoulder. His hand came up to touch her hair, giving one curl a soft tug and watching it spring back. “I like your hair like that.”

  “Tell me you like it the other way, too, because it’s embarrassing how long it takes to get it to look that good.”

  He smiled, the gesture etching little lines under his eyes. “I do. But it’s neat to see what it looks like, left to its own devices… You know when you’ve been dating someone for two or three months, and you’re getting pretty comfortable with each other, but you still make a decent effort every time you have a date?”

  She nodded.

  “Then suddenly they get the flu or something, and you get to see what they’re like at their worst. Looking like hell, and no charm at all, all needy and everything?”

  “And?”

  He grinned. “I love that. I love the first glimpse I get of a girlfriend when she’s just a wreck.”

  Sam laughed. “You’re sick.”

  “No, really. I dated this one girl for a few months, and she was great, but I never saw her without full makeup on. We fall asleep, she’s wearing makeup. By the time I see her the next morning, she’s redone it for the day. I mean, I don’t really care what a woman wants to do to her face, but it was starting to feel weird. Then she got mono, and it was kind of awesome.”

  “You’re horrible!”

  “No, I’m telling you. She was way too pooped to do anything – which sucked, of course, except I was just, like, fascinated to look at her with no makeup on. She had all these little freckles I’d never seen, and her eyelashes looked so… delicate. It felt like I was reading her diary or something.”

  “Well, okay, that’s sort of sweet.” Yet something sour squirmed in Sam’s middle – jealousy. It didn’t warrant feeding, of course. She was married, and Bern was her lover, nothing more. Why the hell should she care if he still harbored fond feelings for some ex-girlfriend? If anything, it should commend him. “Why did you guys break up?”

  “Oh God, I can’t remember. This must have been ten years ago.”

  Yet he still remembered her naked eyelashes. Jesus, would you listen to yourself? Whatever. This entire crazy affair had Sam feeling as mixed-up as a teenager. It stood to reason she’d revert to a younger woman’s irrational emotions now and then. Perspective was the key. Be psycho, but with self-awareness.

  Bern smiled, leaning in, eyes darting.

  “What?”

  “I’m just looking at you.”

  “At my delicate eyelashes?” She batted them.

  “Yeah. And everything else. Did you used to have a pierced nose?”

  Sam blushed, touching the spot. “Yeah. In grad school. I could never quite carry it off. And the spot’s never quite faded.” She scrutinized him right back. “You’ve got little wrinkles here,” she said, tracing the lines at either corner of his lips. “But they’re way deeper on this side. From that shit-eating Southern grin you wear when you’re about to get away with something.”

  He showed her that grin now, the one that gave him a single dimple.

  “And you have two perfectly white eyebrow hairs,” she added, stroking them with her thumb.

  “I don’t doubt it.” His voice was soft and low, nearly lost to the drone of the TV. Sam watched his lips form every single letter, something shifting between them, unmistakably.

  She read the truth in his stare, and felt it echoed in her own. I want you.

  In a blink, in a breath. A wanting that had been there always, beneath the surface, and now the harder feelings of the evening had melted away to let it break through. And it did, like a sleeping creature coming to life, spreading its wings, hungry and ready to hunt.

  That force rose inside her. As though by magnetism, her hand came up to cup his jaw. She didn’t kiss him; not yet. She brushed her thumb over his thick stubble, studying the contrast of white and silver and darkest brown. His blue eyes looked dark as well, and they watched, wary but hot. Her curious touch moved to his mouth, thumb tracing his bottom lip, then the top, finally, boldly, running along the seam between them. They parted and she could feel his breath – hot. He smelled of wine. It didn’t seem right that he should ever taste of anything else.

  “What on earth are we doing?” she asked, holding his face.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Sam swallowed, scared and excited. “I don’t —”

  “Just tell me what you need me to be,” he whispered, “and I’ll be that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  T

  ell me what you need me to be. I’ll be that.

  Sam swallo
wed, hazy all over. Of course he would. That’s what he’d done all along – been who they wanted. The lover Sam could break her marriage vows with; the rival and the intruder to realize Mike’s fantasies.

  So what did she need right now? To feel good. To escape the pain and heartache for a little while, and be sheltered by the heat and size of this man’s body. By his desire and her own. Only it wasn’t right, not like this.

  But one thing can make it right.

  “I can’t kiss you unless we record it,” she whispered, gaze jumping between Bern’s eyes and mouth. “It wouldn’t feel right if he couldn’t watch.”

  Bern nodded. He had to know, as she did, that this wouldn’t end with just a kiss. She gave his lip a final stroke then got up. As she crossed to the corner to grab the laptop, she registered her clothes again. Drawstring pants and an old tee – if Bern wanted to see the real Sam, he sure was getting what he was after. No dress, no makeup, mismatched underwear, and puffy eyes. Yet he seemed to like her. Before things had grown heated, he’d seemed to want to be here, as a friend as much as a lover. Seemed to want her, still, even when things weren’t all fun and games.

  The movie went silent and she turned to find Bern setting the remote back on the coffee table. She propped the laptop open beside it, aimed it at the couch, and hit RECORD. She joined Bern back on the cushions and whispered too quietly for the computer to pick up, “Just pretend it’s a hidden camera again.”

  “Sure.”

  Good. Because the alternative was to make this a show, and Sam didn’t have a performance in her tonight. Moreover, she didn’t want to share Bern’s attention with the camera – she wanted his eye contact all to herself. And knowing Mike would get just as hot over a “secret” tape as he would over a cocky, show-offy one, she trusted it wasn’t a selfish need.

  She touched Bern’s face as their mouths met, and everything bubbling inside her came to a head. Desire eclipsed sadness as his tongue stroked hers, and a deep breath became a groan in his throat. Her fingertips rasped against his stubble. He’d shaved that morning, but she’d bet his five-o’clock shadow routinely asserted itself by half past ten. She liked that about him. She’d dated mostly clean-cut, academic guys before Mike, and had since realized she liked her men blue-collar and a touch rough – rough around the edges and a bit rough between the sheets, too. She’d thought those more pedigreed guys had been her type – intellectual overthinkers like herself, guys with expensive shoes and strong opinions about restaurants. New York men with advanced degrees and the soft hands to match. It had taken one chance meeting in a dive bar with a Pittsburgh cop to change her tune forever.

  She’d been in town that weekend for a friend’s engagement party, and her flight home had been canceled due to some mechanical issue. She’d gone back to the hotel for the night, ended up at the bar across the road, and ultimately wound up taking Mike back to her room. Ten months later, she moved in with him.

  And five years later, here she was, feeling a very similar persuasion of lust-wonder, exploring an electrician.

  I just need a fireman and a mechanic, and I’ll have the set.

  Bern’s hand was strong and broad, fingers splayed possessively along her jaw. His other arm lay along the back of the couch, idly toying with a lock of her hair. The heat between them had crowded out the sadness, filled in all the isolation she’d been adrift in before he’d arrived. A temporary respite, but she’d take what she could get, for as long as it might last. She stroked his chest through his shirt, picturing the bare skin she’d come to know well these past couple of months.

  He was wearing a work shirt, and she freed a button, then another, each and every one. She slid her hand inside to feel the heat of him through his tee, the thump of his heart. Her kisses wavered as his hand closed around hers and moved it down – over his hard belly, then pressing it to his even harder erection. She squeezed him through his jeans, earning a low moan and stealing control, if only for a breath.

  “I want you,” he said. “So bad.”

  “Do you?” Hungry for proof to underline those words, she undid his fly and exposed him.

  “You see how bad?” he whispered.

  Sam nodded, swallowed, spoke too quietly for the computer’s microphone to possibly hear. “I never thought I’d ever be with another man, after I married him. And not like this.” She stroked his bare cock, wondering if he even knew what she meant. It was undeniably different now, without the condoms. Not the sensations, just… She wasn’t even sure. The way it blurred the few lines left among the three of them. If Mike wasn’t to be the only man who got to have her, she’d have assumed he’d at least be the only one who got to come in her, like that. And if Bern got that, too, and this sex felt so intimate and personal… What was still Mike’s?

  Our love. Our home, our day-to-day life, my family. Those were a lot. Those were huge, but she couldn’t help but feel that this was wrong somehow, even with the camera running.

  In her gut, and in her heart, it was just the two of them.

  It’ll be his, too, when he watches the video. But did she really believe that, or merely want to, for the sake of permission?

  “What do you need tonight?” Bern asked, his hips shifting, pushing his cock into her strokes.

  “Just to feel good.” Emotions rose and tightened her throat. Just to not feel bad, for a little while. Take me there. Too much to say aloud without risking tears. Mike didn’t need a video of Bern rocking his sobbing, hysterical wife on their couch. That was an intimacy too far, even set against all the carnal things they’d done together.

  “Here,” Bern said. The next moment he was on the floor, kneeling before her, coaxing her legs over. She let him slide her pants and underwear off in one slow, gentle motion. His attention was on her skin as he stroked her calves and thighs. There was reverence in his eyes, and his gaze was as soft as she’d ever seen it. She wondered for a brief, dangerous second, what kind of a boyfriend this man would make. He’d so embodied the brash role they’d written for him, it hadn’t occurred to her he could be this tender.

  That same scratchy stubble she’d caressed was on her thigh now, a sharp tease to contrast the soft lips trailing kisses up her leg. When he tugged at her hips, she scooted closer, opening up for him. Her fingers tangled in his overgrown hair, and she led his mouth right where she needed it.

  A soft lap, another. Deeper, deeper, until he was giving her those hungry strokes she’d been fantasizing about since their very first night in bed together. He gave head like it was a feast. Like it was for him. Mike gave head like he was treating Sam, and he knew exactly what she liked. But there was an undeniable thrill to being consumed, to feeling like this act was something she was giving a man, and not the other way around.

  She fisted his hair gently. “Feels good, baby. I like how deep you get.”

  He met her gaze. “I’ll show you deep.”

  “I bet you will.”

  “Not till I make you come.” Bern went back to work.

  She loved how he looked from this angle. His eyes were shut, lashes dark and long, brow drawn in concentration or excitement. She studied the streaks at his temples, more silver than gray, she decided. Studied his fingers, and the soft dents they made in her thighs, and his nails… Tidy nails, clean for a man who spent his workdays on building sites.

  Words dropped from her subconscious, brightening the space between them. “You’re so sexy.” He gave her more, his nose glancing her clit as he tasted her with long, filthy sweeps of his tongue. Her words had spurred him, but they scared her. Not the words themselves – she was supposed to be objectifying him. No, it was the way she’d spoken them. With more awe than lust. She needed to make this dirty, and fast.

  “I need your cock, baby.”

  “Do you, then?” He showed no signs of stopping.

  “Please. It’s all I can think about.”

  He slipped a hand between her legs, two thick fingers sliding deep as his mouth moved to her clit. She gas
ped from the penetration, and all at once her fretful fib was true – she needed his cock, now. Needed his excitement driving into hers in the rawest, darkest ways, erasing everything outside of the sex.

  “You’re wet,” he murmured, fingers pumping. “Wet enough?”

  “Yeah. I’m ready.”

  “Want you as wet as I can get you, first. Wanna earn this.”

  “You have. Just… please. You. Now.”

  He quit teasing. Had he heard in her voice how badly she needed him? Needed his body inside hers, but simpler things as well. His face. His words. The weight and heat of him above her, and the blissful, relentless motion of his hips as he rocked them both into oblivion.

  When he stood, Sam lay back. He shed his work shirt, peeled away his tee, pushed his open jeans down his thighs. He stripped naked for her, then joined her on the couch, lowering that thrilling, beautiful body to hers. He held himself up on one arm and angled his cock between her legs, easing in halfway, backing off, edging deeper. He made a wondrous sound, a sigh mixed with a moan, and framed her chest with his forearms, settling in.