by Paige North
Then I wrap my hand around his thick shaft, admiring the pink, veined flesh. I hold it in my palm, feeling it grow and spark to life. Ever so slowly, I drag my tongue from the base to the mushroom tip.
“God, Katie, I love your mouth on my cock,” he murmurs, his voice shaky and hoarse.
He puts his hand at the base of my neck and I feel his knees buckle and turn to jelly when I bring the tip to my lips. He tastes of salt and heat and soap, delicious. I open my mouth, pull his body closer to mine and take him totally in my mouth. His whole body shudders. He lets out a groan as I suck deeper, until I feel him almost at the back of my throat. I back away, then slide onto him once more.
He reaches is hand behind my head, pulling the tie out of my ponytail, and runs his hands through my hair. “Fuck.”
I set into a rhythm, backing away to his tip, then descending upon him, taking him whole, almost to the point of gagging. He groans and starts to get into my rhythm, one hand on the back of my head, the other clenching the side of the counter. I glance upward to see his face, but he has it tilted back. All I can see is his Adam’s apple bulging and trembling along with my motions. His fingers against my scalp, he is pulling and pushing on my head gently, encouraging me, and as he lets out a low moan, I know I am doing something right.
His hips tremble slightly as my hand reaches down to cup his balls. They’re tight, swollen. I massage them tenderly, loving the way he feels in my throat as I pump him in and out of my mouth. Loving that I can help him this way, take away all the tension at the end of a long day. This is everything.
“I’m gonna come,” he growls.
And he does. I keep my mouth on him as he spasms, feeling the salty-sweet liquid bursting into my mouth. I swallow all of it hungrily.
“Holy shit,” he murmurs, a satisfied smile on his face as he drags me up to him. “Katy. Did.”
He kisses me again, then hoists me up so that my backside is on the kitchen counter. I wrap my legs around him, feeling more, wanting more of him.
“Now it’s my turn. When you come,” he murmurs, “I want you to scream as loud as you want, okay?”
Soon, he’s thrust his wet cock inside my pussy, which is soaked from how turned on I am.
Even after all the sex we’ve been having—and it’s a lot—I haven’t tired of this feeling. It’s even more exciting now that I know we’re real, we’re in love, and it’s not going anywhere.
I feel hot and turned on and taken care of all at once, as his cock slides in and out of me, our hips joined as he fucks me hard and fast, making me come with a scream as I pull him into me and my clit pulsates with orgasmic relief.
I scream as loud as I want to, for the first time ever—knowing he’s mine and this place is ours.
It’s a good thing we don’t have neighbors or else I’m sure they’d think someone was being murdered here.
Afterwards, we lay out our clothes on the clean floor and lie on them, naked, eating cold pizza together by candlelight. It’s romantic.
“Oh! I forgot something,” I tell him, rushing off to get something from the refrigerator. When I return, I’m holding a tiny chocolate cupcake that I got from the supermarket while he was working. I have a candle in it. I start to sing happy birthday, and he’s grinning at me like I’m insane.
“You know my birthday is tomorrow.”
I shrug. “I couldn’t wait.”
He blows out the candle and I feed him the icing on my fingers. He licks it off and we share it. “This is a damn near perfect almost-birthday,” he says.
“The pizza and cupcake?” I ask innocently.
“Everything. The pizza. The place. Your tight little ass on full display for me, and not having to worry someone’ll come in and catch us. I could get used to this,” he says.
I nod, smiling. It’s only been a day, but I have gotten used to it. Too used to it. It feels as if I’m putting on blinders, though, ignoring something huge and troubling, just because it’s easier to do than face it.
“But . . .” he says, reading my mind. “It’s your dad, right?”
He’s right. I haven’t spoken to my father since that day. He’s called my cell a thousand times, but I’ve ignored him. I haven’t even gone to the house to see my mom, because dealing with all of it just brings back too much pain.
I’ve been living in this dream world with Dax, pretending that fucked up part of my life doesn’t exist. The truth is, I miss my mom like crazy, and hell, I even miss my dad. I used to call them every week when I was in Boston, just to check in. Now, she’s moving away and I haven’t been there for her the way I need to be. I nod.
“I wanted to cut him off. But I don’t think I can.”
He rubs an absent circle on my knee with the pad of his thumb. “I should probably tell you. I went to see them today.”
I stare at him, aghast, heart pounding. “Wait, what? Why?”
“I knew you said you weren’t ready, but your mom is leaving for Florida in a week. I wanted to tell them you were okay. And I wanted to talk to your dad.”
“Ohhhkay,” I ask, thoroughly confused. “They didn’t chase you out with pitchforks?”
“No. They were nice. We had tea. And a chat.”
I blink again and again to make sure I’m not dreaming. This is definitely Twilight Zone stuff. I can just see my parents and Dax, gathered around the kitchen table, sipping tea from her special dainty china, chatting.
Actually, no, I can’t see that.
“It went good,” he says, nodding. “We talked about the old times. Like in English class, when I set his Shakespeare collection on fire with my cigarette. Your dad offered up that flowered sofa in the living room for our place. No one bought it at the yard sale.”
“Okay. Awesome,” I say, still not believing what I’m hearing. My dad and Dax, just shooting the shit? My dad giving him a couch as what . . . a peace offering? “So, are they okay?”
He nods. “They miss you, and even with the divorce and all that mess, they don’t hate each other so much as you might expect, Katie. So I invited them to the house this weekend. We’re having a barbeque,” he explains.
“Oh,” I murmur. I’m still having a hard time processing this information. I jolt upright. “Wait. What?”
“You know. Burgers and dogs. Your mom’s bringing her potato salad.”
There’s another thing I really can’t picture. My mom is all scones and pretty tea sets. She won’t hang out in the Harding backyard, where they have an old Studebaker on blocks and I’m pretty sure Vincent’s growing weed. Suddenly I’m a bundle of nerves. “Is his girlfriend going to be there?”
He shakes his head. “Nah, he’s not that stupid, for god’s sake. But it won’t be just us. My friends. My cousins. I invited all of them.”
That doesn’t do much to calm my mood. “But . . . why? I mean, we have so much going on right now. A party is just another thing to worry about. And you and I . . . ”
He runs a hand along my bare back, smoothing the tension there and sending fireworks exploding up and down my spine. “It’ll be good,” he assures me. “I’m gonna announce the new Harding Automotive Works in style. Figure if I do that, we can beg ‘em all for help when we need it. And we’re gonna need it.”
I nod slowly, imagining my parents at the Harding’s home. Talk about sore thumbs. “Oh, my god, Dax. Your family? And mine? Oh, my god. It’ll be a disaster.”
He nods, conceding. “It could be. But there’s a bright side. If it turns into World War Three we can always escape back here,” he says, reaching forward and grabbing me by the waist with his hot hands. I crawl forward, sitting in his lap, straddling him. He lays a kiss on my breast and drawls, “This ain’t so bad, is it?”
No. Hell no. If this is what I get to escape to, then I can’t complain at all.
Chapter 16
By the weekend, things have begun to take shape in the apartment. We’ve managed to clean the entire place and move in all the furniture from Dax’s bedroom at home, plus a bu
nch of yard sale finds.
The place almost looks like a home.
Saturday morning, I go shopping and show up at his family home with all the fixings for the barbeque. When I pull up into their gravel driveway, I’m surprised to a canopy set up on the side of the house with half a dozen folding tables spread out on the newly mown grass. It looks like someone has actually gone through the effort of weeding the overgrown flowerbeds outside. For a few seconds, I wonder if I’m in the right house.
Then I step outside and start lugging grocery bags out of my trunk. When I take a step toward the front door, Wobble steps out from nowhere, making me jump again. I swear, the kid is the black ghost of death. “Hey,” he says.
I wonder if he’s going to make a complaint about something I did wrong again, but he just reaches into the back of the VW, grabs a couple bags, and heads toward the front door. Then, he actually holds the screen door open for me.
I stare after him, as Dax comes down the stairs and plants a kiss on my forehead. He’s wearing another tight t-shirt and loose cargo shorts. “You look hot,” he says.
I stop gaping after Vincent and look down at my short, flowered sundress and flip flops. It’s pleasantly middle-ground between dressed-up and laid-back, since I figure that’s where I need to tread today.
“Thanks. Um. Did you talk to Vincent and tell him to play nice or something?” I ask him, twirling my hair up into a loose knot at the base of my neck.
He shrugs innocently. “Why, is he?” He doesn’t wait for me to answer. In a beat, he’s out the door, grabbing the rest of the groceries.
I’m shocked that there really isn’t much to do. The inside of the house is relatively clean, and all the windows are open, letting a nice breeze blow through. There are coolers set out with enough Yuengling to drown a small elephant and even a Quoits pit set up. All I have to do is get the sides ready, and now that I’m slightly more familiar with the kitchen, it isn’t so hard. Even so, by the time people start to arrive, my stomach is tied up in knots.
Dax introduces me to a bunch of family members, and though I can’t remember all the names, they’re all friendly. Some of his formerly scary high school friends show up, too; Abel, a large, red-headed guy with a ridiculously loud laugh, and Win, a skinny guy with long dreadlocks.
I recognize them because though they’ve filled out, they still have the same tattoos and piercings and fuck-you look on their faces.
Their girlfriends are wearing too much makeup and too little clothing, and one of the girls has her purple hair up to bare a long tattoo of vines that starts at the back of her neck and snakes over her shoulder, down over to her bare midriff, all the way down her leg, stopping at her toe.
I approach them, swallowing, and they give me more than a once-over. They look me over three, four times, obviously wondering what the hell Dax sees in me. Finally, Abel extends his hand. “Hey,” he says gruffly. Then he punches Dax. “So this is your little lady, huh?”
I smile stiffly, wondering why that makes me feel like I’m a hundred years old.
“Where’d you find her?” Win asks, which is the million-dollar question.
Dax laughs and looks at me. “I won her in a lucky round of poker,” he deadpans, and then gives his friend a shove. “I told you. She went to high school with us, dumbass.”
They all regard me, eyes narrowed, as if I’m an alien from the planet Nerd. It’s obvious they never saw me at Friesville High, especially since I was one to hang out in classrooms, instead of detention and behind the dumpsters.
Dax mimes smoking a joint and mumbles, “Don’t mind them. They were all kind of wasted those four years.”
“Hell yeah,” Abel says, laughing his big, belly-shaking laugh. Dax brings them beers and I sit down with them at a table. Abel leans over to me and says, “What the hell are you feeding that boy? I’ve never seen him so whipped.”
I grin. He’s actually nice. They both are, because I’m instantly at ease. I end up having a great conversation with this group of people that I once thought would tear my arms off if I so much as looked at them the wrong way.
Abel keeps making jokes about Dax and how he could probably fix a blown motor with a button and a little bit of dental floss. Win and his girlfriend, the one with the long tattoo, ping Doritos at unsuspecting people at other tables. They’re loud and raucous and irreverent and . . . I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in all my life.
And then my parents show up.
My mother always has this thing about being fashionably late, so I expected her to be forty-five minutes behind. But Dax’s family and friends don’t give a shit about social etiquette, so my parents end up being the last ones to arrive. When the Jeep pulls up, the party is in full swing. People are starting to do shots and there’s the definite scent of weed wafting from Vincent’s bedroom window. I see my father and mother approaching up the driveway, my mom wearing pearls and clutching her Tupperware dish of potato salad, my dad in his loafers, both of them looking like they’d rather be anywhere else, and I have the urge to slink away.
I can’t do this.
I jump from the table I’m sitting at with Dax’s friends and as I pass the bar where his uncle Ryan is doling out shots, grab a plastic cup of Fireball and down it. It burns my throat as I hurry to the edge of his property, taking deep breaths to calm myself.
I feel a presence behind me, and don’t have to look. I know it’s Dax before he even puts his warm hand on my bare shoulder. “Is this a good time to escape?” I ask him, managing a strangled laugh from deep within my throat.
“Katydid,” he says, his low drawl soothing me. “If your mom is willing to be here with him, you can do it, too.”
I know he’s right. But that doesn’t keep my feet from feeling like they’re encased in cinderblocks. I manage to turn around and see my parents sliding onto a bench at a picnic table, across from Mr. Harding, who has promised his son twice that he’d go easy on the sauce today. Even so, he has two empty beer bottles in front of him. I swallow.
Talk about people who are total one-eighties from each other.
This is never going to work.
Dax takes my hand and guides me back toward the crowd. As I approach, I hear my father laughing at something Mr. Harding said. And not just polite laughter, a real, big, loud, belly laugh. His body is still shaking as I approach. It’s then I remember that my dad and Dax’s dad went to high school together. I’d assumed from what Mr. Harding said that they were on opposite sides of the social circle, like Dax and me, so foreign to each other that they’d barely recognize each other. But then my father exclaims, “I miss those days. That was a good time.”
Wait. My father and Dax’s father actually had good times together?
My father suddenly looks up at me, and his laughter dies in his throat. “Hi, sweetheart,” he says, and I can almost taste the remorse hanging in the air between us.
“Hi.” I look at my mom and say, woodenly, “I’m glad you guys could come.”
“Of course, sweetheart,” my mother says, making room for me on the bench next to her. “We couldn’t miss this.”
I manage a smile, though I’m not sure what she means. Like they really care about Dax’s announcement that he’s opening a new business. Maybe they are finally accepting it; that Dax and I are together and anything he chooses to do will impact their daughter. Dax shakes hands with my father and it’s all very cordial and friendly, even if it is still so surreal.
For the next few hours, Dax grills burgers and dogs. My father downs a few beers with Mr. Harding, talking about the old times. Turns out, they were friends in high school, and hung out in the same group. From what I piece together, they even dated a few of the same girls.
My mother and I talk about how Aunt Ellie’s house down in Florida and how it has a swimming pool right on the ocean, plus another guest room, if I ever want to stay with them. I keep sneaking looks at Dax, who looks utterly edible, manning the grill, making the most delicious burg
ers I’ve ever tasted. Vincent and I team up against Tom and Eric for a game of quoits and beat them handily. A lot of trash talk ensues.
Nothing explodes. The world doesn’t end. The biggest scene gets caused when a few people get a little shitfaced. My parents included. I get a little shitfaced, too. It doesn’t really matter, though, because everyone is having fun.
And perhaps most surprising of all—even I’m having fun.
The sun begins to set. More drinks flow. The music gets louder. Dax had strung up strands of tiny white lights on the porch, and they sparkle overhead like stars. Soon people are dancing on the lawn.
Dax lifts me to my feet and then I’m swaying against his body, his strong arms around me, warding off the late August chill. The only way this could be more perfect would be if we were alone, making love . . .
I feel a pang of longing deep within my abdomen as he suddenly whispers, “Katie” into my ear.
“Mmm?” I close my eyes and press my cheek against his broad chest, content.
“I need to tell you something.”
“I’m listening,” I murmur, even though what I’m really listening to—what’s my world right now—is the beat of his heart. So steady, so strong, so fierce, so like Dax.
“I lied to you.”
I break out of whatever trance I was in and look up, searching out his eyes in the bare light. Always calm, always in control Dax is gone, and now, he looks a little worried. More than a little, actually. He’s fidgeting. Since when did Dax ever fidget? “What? About what?”
He kisses me absently on the side of the head, then sits me down in a lawn chair. Kneeling in front of me, he says, “We can talk about this later. I have to make the announcement.”
I stare at him, feeling every hair on my body pricking up. That content feeling of two seconds ago has been completely eaten away by unease. “No. Wait. Don’t leave me hanging like this. What do you mean, you lied to me?”
He puts a finger to his lips, signaling me to be quiet, then starts to shout, “Everyone, I have an announcement!” Meanwhile, all I can think of is the thousands of lies that he could possibly have told me. Maybe he lied when he told me he loved being with me. Maybe he lied when he came inside me and told me that was his favorite place on earth. Every lie I can think of only means the end of the world for me. Looking over at my father, whose lie is still sending shockwaves through my system, I’m not sure if I can handle another one.
