Do Over

by Serena Bell

  “How many strokes do you think it will take me?” I ask her, all casual-like. I push my briefs and jeans a little lower so I can cup my balls and drag my hand back up the whole length. I make that single stroke take a good, long time, and then I play around the head a little while her mouth goes slack.

  “One,” I say, a quick, hard thrust into my hand and withdrawal.

  It’s not the tightness of my fist or the slickness of the pre-cum or the tease of the count that’s killing me. It’s the expression on her face. She looks like she’s in pain, and it goes straight to my dick.

  “Two.”

  She sways a little on her feet, leaning toward me.

  “God, Maddie,” I say. I have to stop with the strokes and squeeze the base. I was planning to tease her as long as it took, but I think I might be losing at my own game. As if to prove the point, my dick throbs, eking more pleasure out of the squeeze of my fist. It feels so good that for a moment I think I’m going to lose control, just like that, the two of us in this stupid standoff, me with my hand clenched around the base of my dick, not even moving. I can feel the heat high in my chest and face, and if she can’t tell from that how close I am, I’m sure she can see how tight every muscle in my body is at my effort to stay in control of this encounter.

  Then she drops to her knees at my feet and we both let out a simultaneous gust of breath. Her mouth caps my fist, surrounding the head of my dick with wet heat.

  I swear colorfully. It’s like she just turned the volume up to ten, and I’d thought it was already there.

  Then she lets go, tips her head back, and smirks at me. “How’s this for a game? I see how fast I can make you come, and you see how long you can hold out.”

  I squeeze against the rush of blood and pleasure, managing not to give myself away with any other sound or reaction. I’ve got this. I’ve totally got this.

  Because I pride myself on this very thing. I will never come in a woman’s mouth unless I know she wants me to. And blow jobs, although they’re one of my favorite ways to pass a quiet evening, don’t tend to make me come that easily. I don’t know if it’s that I need more depth, or more friction, or to be free from the threat of teeth, or just to feel more welcome (I’m big, as Maddie noted, and not every woman loves that; I’ve called off quite a few blow jobs midway through because the giver didn’t look like she wanted that much of me in her face, and it’s no fun to be an unwelcome presence).

  So whatever, I figure I’m in my element now. Maddie’ll suck and lick to her heart’s content, and when she cries uncle, I’ll win the game and finish us both missionary style.

  She licks around the head a few times, curling her tongue in a way that makes it feel like she has two. Okay, so the girl has hops, I’ll give her that. Then she flattens her tongue along the bottom of my dick, so when she moves up and down on me, there’s a whole lot of extra heat and sensation, and suddenly I’m not at all sure I’ve got this.

  Now she’s doing both at that same time. How is that even possible? And I’m deep in her mouth, so deep I pull back a little because I’m worried about hurting her or choking her, but when I pull away she grabs my ass. And tugs me closer. My dick feels huge, flush with blood, flooded with sensation from root to tip, and the tide’s rising at the bottom of my spine, in the depths of my gut—

  “Maddie, I—”

  But I’m coming so hard I can’t stop it and I can’t pull away from her and besides, she’s got both hands on me now and I feel her swallow, like she’s swallowing me, as I’m spurting into her mouth.

  “I—didn’t—mean—”

  I have to put out a hand to brace myself against the wall, because my legs are about to collapse.

  She lets me slide from between her swollen red lips and grins up at me. And laughs at my expression.

  Chapter 22

  “Those smell like ass,” Clark tells Henry, who’s eating hard-boiled eggs on the retaining wall.

  “Maybe like your ass,” Henry says. “I wipe.”

  “Boys,” I chastise, grade-school-teacher style.

  It’s Wednesday, a mile-high hump in the middle of another butt-ugly week at work. Except that my mind is a hundred miles away most of the time, in bed with Maddie, blown away by her skill and enthusiasm and the heat of her skin.

  “Guess what I’ve got on my desk at home,” Clark says. He doesn’t wait for us to guess, but crows, “Championship tickets!”

  Henry pumps a fist. “Phoenix, here we come!

  In the silence that follows, both of them turn to look at me. It’s like facing a panel of judges.

  “Don’t even say it,” Clark warns.

  “I don’t know,” I admit quietly.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?” Henry demands.

  “Maddie hasn’t found a place to live yet.”

  “And that’s your problem, how?”

  “It’s a really tough market. She’s been looking and looking, but if she’s still looking, she might need me to watch Gabe—”

  Clark makes a sound of the utmost disgust.

  “Your mother can watch Gabe,” Henry says. “Your sister can watch Gabe. This is March Madness. This is Phoenix. This is what matters in life. We may never get a chance like this again.”

  “Balls,” says Clark. “Meet vise.”

  “Can it, Clark,” I say, before I can think better of it.

  Suddenly they are both staring at me again. Only this time it’s more like a firing squad than a panel of judges. There are deep wrinkles in Henry’s forehead as he says, “You. Are. Not. Fucking. Her.”

  It’s one of those moments where time slows down so I know exactly how painfully long I hesitate in the space where I should be denying it.

  “No. No, no, no,” Henry says. “Jack, come on. You know better. This goes beyond shitting where you’re eating. This is like—um—”

  “I believe the phrase you’re looking for is ‘ejaculating where you’ve already conceived a child,’ ” Clark offers, prim as a middle-school sex-ed teacher.

  None of us laugh. Because, let’s face it, they have a point. What I’m doing is…messy.

  “We made a pact,” I say. “It’s just while she’s at my place.”

  Clark squints. “Then what’s the incentive for her to move out? She has a place to live, free child care, Jack the Magic Penis…”

  Although I think I might be getting the better end of the deal, at least if the blow job she gave me Sunday night was any indication. Which, well, it was. Because it just gets sexier and sexier each time as we relearn each other.

  Clark waves a hand in front of my eyes. “Yoo-hoo. Jack. You know where this leads. You’re twenty-seven. You don’t want this. You want to sow your wild oats and hit the road to head to Phoenix and—when was the last time you came out with us?”

  “O’Hannihans. Last weekend.”

  “Weekend before last,” Henry corrects.

  “Come on. That’s not that big a deal.”

  Clark waves his hands. “The point is, there are only two possible outcomes here. And they both suck. Outcome one: She never moves out. This becomes your life. Saying no to fun. Staying home with the kid. Missing once-in-a-lifetime road-trip opportunities. Outcome two: You tell her she’s gotta leave so you can have your life back. And suddenly she’s all, But I thought this meant something to you.”

  “No,” I say. “No, that’s not going to happen. We were really honest with each other. Neither of us wants that.”

  Although I don’t mention what I said to her Sunday night right before the epic blow job. About how she was welcome to stay as long as she needed to. Somehow I don’t think that’ll help my case with these guys. And it doesn’t negate the fact that in the end, both Maddie and I know this is a short-term proposition.

  “That’s what she says,” Clark says. “But like I said, what’s not to like about her current setup?”

  “Me,” I say.

  I get those four suspicious eyes on me again. I guess I should
be flattered that my friends think I’m such a sex machine that they can’t imagine a woman walking away from sex with me willingly.

  “She knows me, and she knows how it is with me. She knows I’ll hurt her in the end, and she’s smart enough not to want that.”

  “I don’t think it’s about smart,” Clark says. “It’s about how women get about sex. They can’t help it. It’s in their hormones. She’ll say she’s fine with the situation, but then when you kick her out, she’ll act like it’s a crime against humanity.”

  “Not Maddie,” I say definitively.

  Clark raises his eyebrows.

  Henry, who’s been quiet through most of this, shifts suddenly and sets his lunch bag down. “What about you?” he asks.

  “What about me?”

  “What if you’re the one who doesn’t want to walk away?”

  Clark makes a sharp scoffing noise, but then, once again, two sets of eyes are trained on my face.

  “Not gonna happen,” I say. Because as good as things are between Maddie and me now, as much as I love climbing into her bed at night and being with someone who can match me and challenge me in every possible way sexually, I’m not the guy she wants to come home to. And that works fine for me, because I never wanted to be that guy, either.

  Almost never, a quiet voice says in my head.

  Shut up, I say back.

  Clark’s gotten distracted again by making plans for Phoenix, but I can tell Henry’s not listening as Clark spins out lists of what we need to pack in the car, how we’re going to party when we’re down there, and who’s going to control the music. He’s still looking at me, with an expression on his face I just can’t read.

  Chapter 23

  “Where are you going?” Maddie asks, her eyebrows drawn together in confusion. It’s Saturday morning, one week after our thunderstorm sex, and I am stuffing things into my backpack—water bottles, goldfish crackers (there are all kinds of things in my kitchen cabinets that were not there two weeks ago)—and she is standing next to me, looking at me like I’m stark raving mad.

  “The aquarium,” I say.

  Her eyes get huge. “The aquarium?”

  “With Gabe,” I clarify. “So you can look at apartments if you need to.”

  “But—”

  She appears to be at a loss for words, and I start to get pissed, because, what, is she going to be surprised every freaking time I do something for him? But then she says, “But I’m taking him to the aquarium.”

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “He asked me. This morning at breakfast.”

  “He asked me. Last night at bedtime.”

  “That—sneaky little—Gabe!”

  He patters into the kitchen, still in his pajamas.

  “Gabe, who’s going to the aquarium today?” Maddie demands.

  “I am!” he says, grinning ferociously.

  “And who’s going to the aquarium with you?”

  “Mommy!” he says.

  Maddie looks triumphant. I dig in for a battle, because he asked me first. But Gabe’s grin grows and he says, “And Daddy! Both.”

  Son of a bitch. He’s scheming.

  Maddie’s eyes meet mine. I see something there that makes me feel weirdly hopeful: confusion.

  That makes two of us.

  Of course, what Gabe doesn’t know is that any scheming he can possibly do to get both his parents in the same room is nothing compared to what’s been going on every night this week between Maddie and me. As soon as the kid is conked out, one of us jumps the other, and each episode is more epic than the last. It’s like we’re both trying to squeeze as many orgasms out of this situation as we possibly can before our time is up.

  Not that Maddie’s been looking terribly hard this week. After she didn’t get a call back from the Ballard apartment landlord, she said she needed a few days to regroup. A few days turned into a few more days and about twenty more orgasms…

  Neither of us has had much sleep this week.

  But all those nighttime shenanigans are not the same thing as a two-parent outing with the kiddo. That feels…

  It feels like something a family does.

  Which should be impossibly weird, right? But I think I’m…I think I’m kind of okay with it.

  Or maybe I’m just cruising to spend a day with her in that outfit: skin-tight jeans, nearly-knee-high low-heeled boots, and a black sweater that keeps slipping off one shoulder or the other to reveal a lacy black tank top underneath. I wonder how low that sweater could slip on that side? I bet if I told her she looked amazingly sexy, she’d say, “This old thing? It’s just a sweater and jeans.” Because that’s how women are. They have no idea.

  She’s biting her lower lip, looking from me to Gabe.

  “So you want to go?” she asks. “I mean, you actively want to?”

  I get it. She’s surprised I’d want to spend a free Saturday this way. And—I guess now that I think about it, it is a little surprising. A couple of weeks ago, I wouldn’t have volunteered. I’d want to hang around, watching whatever games were on TV…

  It occurs to me that I don’t even know the schedule for this weekend’s first-round March Madness games. When was the last time I didn’t know the sports schedule? Or have money riding on a bracket?

  The truth is, the idea of sitting around this weekend, watching college basketball—it doesn’t appeal to me as much as it would have a couple of weeks ago. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m not turning in my man card and returning my big-screen TV. But breaking up a weekend of leisure with a couple of hours watching Gabe’s eyes get huge as saucers in front of a tank full of otters or seals…

  “I want to go,” I say. “Like actually. Want. To. Go. So you can go apartment hunting or whatever you want, or you can come with us.”

  I toss that off like it ain’t no thang, but the truth: I want her to come with us. And not just because she looks hot as fuck in that outfit and I’m still hoping that at any moment she’ll have a wardrobe malfunction and I’ll get to see what her tits look like under that lacy top. But because I don’t just want to watch Gabe watch fish.

  I want to watch Maddie watch Gabe watch fish.

  I am so, so screwed.

  Chapter 24

  Gabe loves the aquarium.

  We visit the touch tanks first, and I boost him up so he can stroke his chubby little fingers through the anemones’ tendrils and watch them close like pupils in bright sun. He runs his fingertips over the nubbly surface of the sea stars and draws back in delighted alarm when a wave swamps the tank.

  Jack stands a little ways back, and when I look over at him, he’s watching Gabe with unmasked affection, and something in my own chest contracts, hard and dangerous.

  I’m not sure who I’m afraid for, Gabe or me or Jack.

  After the tanks, we wander into the dark tunnel of the coral reefs, with their brightly lit windows. Gabe raises his arms over his head for a pick-me-up, and Jack lifts him up and points out the various creatures semi-camouflaged in the reef.

  “Look,” Jack says, pointing with Gabe’s finger. “It’s Dory.”

  We get treated to Gabe’s recounting of the plot of Finding Dory. Well, a mostly coherent version. There is a lot of stuff about the Hank the Septopus, and not all of it makes sense.

  We wander through shorebirds, where Jack explains to Gabe that the funny-looking black and white and orange birds are puffins.

  “There are puffins on my cereal,” Gabe says.

  “Yep,” Jack says.

  “Why?”

  “Well, maybe because the cereal is puffy, and so they called it that, Puffins, and then they thought it would be cute to put a picture of a puffin on the box.”

  “Why?”

  Jack slides me an alarmed look. I shrug.

  “I guess they needed to put something on the box to make it fun to look at so people would want to buy it,” Jack hazards.

  “Why?”

  I am struck by giggle
s. We’ve been in the “why” phase for a while now, but this is the first time I’ve heard Gabe treat Jack to a full-on encounter.

  Jack narrows his eyes at me, a death look, and I try to rein in the giggles but give myself the hiccups instead. “You deserve that,” he says in an undertone. To Gabe he says, “Because they need to sell the Puffins so they can make money.”

  “Why?”

  Jack is starting to look panicked. “Because they’re a business and that’s the point of business. Making money.”

  To both of our surprise and amusement, Gabe doesn’t ask “why” again.

  “You think he understood that explanation?” Jack asks me, as Gabe runs ahead up the ramp toward the next exhibit.

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “So why’d he let me off the hook?”

  “I think he sensed that you were in over your head.”

  He rolls his eyes and shoves me playfully. I shove him back. I barely rock him from his feet, and the lack of give is so satisfying I want to do it again. My hands want explore more of that bicep muscle I just wrapped my fingers around, to follow the individual bands around his arm, into his shoulder, down to his sculpted chest. I let him walk a little ahead of me so I can get my mind off the subject of Jack’s anatomy—this is a family show after all—but walking behind Jack turns out to be a terrible way to get my mind off the way he’s put together, so I run to catch up to Gabe instead.

  Gabe is enraptured by the underwater dome, the fish surrounding us 360 degrees, overhead and on all sides. He runs and darts and puts his hands on the glass like all the other toddlers. Jack and I stand a little way back, letting him move freely through the room, because there’s really no trouble for him to get into except stepping on other people’s feet, and everyone else in the room is either a kid or a parent, so I’m not too worried.

  “I’m glad we did this,” Jack says.

  “You don’t wish you were watching the game?” I tease.