by Snow, Nicole
I don’t think either of us cares.
* * *
It takes everything in me not to look as smug as the cat that got the cream when, as we leave for her Grandma's place, I can see her visibly trying to hide her limp.
Yeah, no.
Sky's stiff lockstep walk ain’t gonna fool no one.
We’re greeted at the door by Grandma Eva and a jumping, overly excited German Shepherd, barking and wiggling all over me till I let him sniff me and scratch his scruff and find out his name is Eber. He’s sweet, licking my hand before nearly tackling Skylar to the ground. She laughs and buries her face in his fur.
“Someone missed me,” she says.
“We all missed you,” Grandma Eva retorts, shooting us both sly looks. Skylar winces dutifully.
I grin. Grandma Eva’s got her grandmotherly guilt trip down pat.
“Sorry,” she says, and urges the dog down as we both step inside fully and close the door. “We lost track of time.”
“I bet you did,” Monika calls from the cozy dining room. We follow her grandma through the house to the open kitchen and dining area, where Monika’s busy making inroads into a loaf of soft, moist brown bread that smells like bananas.
Skylar sniffs, wrinkling her nose.
“Banana bread?” She shoots Grandma Eva a weird look. “You never make banana bread.”
“And I never will, vile concoction that it is,” Eva says, turning her nose up. “Jim made that. He’s worried about Monika not eating, so he thought he could tempt her. The man knows her sweet tooth all too well.”
“Welp, it’s working,” Monika mumbles around a mouthful. “God, can that man bake.”
“And he brought flowers, too!” Eva gestures to an arrangement of tiger lilies on the table, beaming almost proudly. “I wouldn’t know what we’d do without that man around to lift our spirits.”
I frown, tilting my head. “Jim?”
Skylar starts to answer, opening her mouth, but Eva beats her to it, almost gushing. “He’s our neighbor. He’s the most darling man. Shame he's moving soon,” she says quietly.
Skylar drops into a chair next to Monika and steals a slice of the rapidly vanishing banana bread. “And he bakes for us. All the time. It’s always something new, though his apple turnovers are the best. Better than any bakery.”
“He took it up when his daughter died, you know,” Eva says, clucking her tongue sadly. “I think that’s why he cares for us so much. He knows what it’s like to lose someone. She had a heart defect, poor thing. Worse, his marriage just didn’t survive the loss. His wife left, and it’s only him, baking for comfort and looking after us. It’s almost inspiring, the way he perseveres in the face of hardship. Always a smile for anyone, no matter how much pain he’s in. Why, if he was just a few years older...”
“Grandma!” Monika laughs and points her fork at Eva. “Back off, cougar. If he was a few years younger, he’d be mine.”
Eva gives her a half-disgusted, half-amused look. “I am in no way a cougar, young lady.” She tosses her hair. “I like the term 'lynx' better. Much prettier, graceful beasts. And you could learn to mind your elders.”
I can’t help but laugh. The Szabo women are something else.
It’s hard not to be fond of them. Feels like second nature settling into brunch at Eva’s house, and I even find a place helping out in the kitchen.
They treat me like I belong, and I get to see the side of Sky that warms and opens up around her family, laughing, teasing, and comfortable. The only thing missing is the coo and call of a happy baby.
That, plus the subtle secret wish that Skylar wouldn’t tense almost guiltily every time we brush each other in passing or I catch her hand for a little squeeze.
I’m in the living room laying out dishes while Grandma Eva folds linen napkins when that canny old woman drops the bomb on me, though. She glances over, smiling slyly, and says, “So have you been shopping in San Francisco much?”
I glance up, putting another plate down from the stack. “Huh? Nah, haven’t really had time. I know where to get groceries and where to change a flat tire, and that’s about it.”
“Pity.” She clucks her tongue. “Seems as though you should be getting around to the jeweler’s shops soon. I could recommend a few for a nice young man.”
Jeweler's shops? What in the –
I blink blankly – but when it hits, it hits.
Like a goddamn brick to the face.
Even if Sky’s still calling me her friend, even if they don’t know the real reason I’m tailing Skylar like her shadow, we’re not exactly subtle. The looks, the touches, all of it.
Grandma Eva’s convinced we’re really a thing, something real that has more of a future than a few wild nights tearing up the sheets.
And the second Skylar catches the faintest whiff of it, I have a feeling she’s gonna put me out on my ass.
* * *
I can’t be rough tonight.
Not when Grandma Eva filled my head with all these tender thoughts.
Not when she made me think about futures I hadn’t even considered as real possibilities before.
Not when she put ideas in my head.
Skylar and I don’t talk about these things. We know to keep it simple. We kiss, we grapple, we fuck, we sleep, and any time we could spend asking each other what this really is gets spent instead with her wrapped around me.
Her tight little bod chases all thoughts beyond the present from my brain when all I can think about is how hot she is inside and that slick, wet clap of my cock slamming against her inner walls.
I want to ask her.
Right here, right now, as I tumble her onto the bed, as I ease her clothes away from her body one piece at a time, revealing every soft, smooth inch of skin I’ve caressed and bitten and tasted again and again. With every brush of my lips over her throat, her shoulders, the soft valley between her tits, the delicate traceries of her ribs, the smooth swell of her stomach, the quiver of her inner thighs...
Fuck me. It all screams forever. I just didn't know how to frame forever into terms my perma-bachelor ass could process till now.
And now, it's all I can damn well think about.
I want to ask Sky if she can be mine. Permanently.
It's hard to find words when there's something on the line that makes me feel like a bashful high school kid again, going in for his first French kiss.
So I only ask her again and again in sweltering silence. I ask her as I worship her body with my mouth, tease the cups of her bra away with my teeth, define the patterns of her tender, pink nipples with my tongue. I taste her like I’m gonna brand her flavor on my tongue.
Her skin is the salt of the sea, and even that taste is the blue I want to remember: bright sky and ocean waves, salt tang and quintessentially Sky with her ice-blue eyes dilated and smoky and dark as she writhes underneath me, melting, whispering my name.
“Gabe.”
Her fingers are in my hair and my heart pounds like mad, because it’s not just her gravity pulling me in. It's not just the sharp riptide current of needing her that took me under till I’m drowning.
It’s her.
It’s her reaching for me, wanting, drawing me close. An unspoken answer to my unspoken question hanging in every move she makes, and I'd be lying to myself if I said it was crystal clear but goddammit let me lie for just one more night.
Let me lie.
When I slide down her body and find her pussy already wet, I seal my mouth over her panties and suck the cloth gently past my lips, drinking in another taste of her and making her gasp, keening, digging her heels into my back.
I taunt her through the fabric, wetting it with every push of my tongue against her heat, teasing her with friction only to nudge it aside and give her what she begs for.
I want to be inside her so fucking bad. It’s teasing us both to mimic what we want with the slow searching caresses of my tongue, parting her open and delving deep inside.
> I’m drunk on her. Drugged on the scent flooding my nostrils, rising from the wetness slicking her skin, my lips, my cheeks.
Completely intoxicated on the heady sound of her cries. Hooked on a moment I don’t want to let go of, when I know if I take that leap we’ll go plummeting together, and we can only fall for so long and so hard before we crash and it’s over and my lie is gone.
Then we'll be left with nothing but the reminder this ain’t a bed I belong in for more than a few nights.
There’s something almost fragile about her, as I grip her hips and hold her writhing body still enough that I can press the head of my cock against her warmth. Or maybe that’s what I want to see, when I know how hard she tries to hide the woman under the soldier.
But when she's like this, it's all soft femininity and giving sweetness and pure gorgeous passion, and I want to believe I’m the only one who gets to see her like this. I’m the only one who gets to hear “Gabe, Gabe” on her lips as she curls her fingers against the back of my neck and bites her nails in and draws me down to kiss her while I roll my hips forward to sink inside.
I'm the only one who'll have her sweet cunt again as we’re joined mouth to mouth and body to body, and her heat draws me deep, so deep, fuck to fuck and soul to soul deep.
I take it slow, even though my body howls at me to just rut.
She makes me an animal, desperate for her, but I want this to last and I hold myself back with everything in me. But that’s just as much torture, when drawing out every second stretches every hot rush of friction and tight contraction around my cock; draws out every moment in the bliss on her face, quiet and transfixed.
Draws out damned near everything each time I slip into her welcoming wet fire and find home in that perfect spot where her body locks to mine. If this is Hell, call me a sinner.
‘Cause I’m losing myself in her burn.
I know when it’s coming, too. Not just with how her body tightens, but because I know her. I know her more than she wants me to, and when she’s close she shuts her eyes tight like she’s in pain and turns her face away as if she can hide, as if she can keep it a secret that someone else is making her lose control.
Fuck, darlin', come.
“Come for me, Sky,” I whisper into the darkness, the same thing I've heard in my own head like a steady chant for the last minute.
Struggling to breathe, my cock so fucking hard it’s killing me and her body tense and stroking around me in a way that’s fit to drive me out of my goddamn mind, I brace myself over her, lean down, capture her sweat-misted jaw gently in my fingers, turn her toward me.
“Don’t hide,” I say, barely able to find my cracking, heavy voice. “Don’t hide from me. Just come. Let me have it all.”
Her eyes swell. She clutches at me, fingers on my back, arching, lifting her hips. I taste her mouth one last time, all the sugar and brimstone and the breathlessness of her cries.
Then she crushes down on me, her body a trembling tripwire, a wonderful clenching slickness taking me in deeper still and teaching me exactly how pain becomes pleasure when she crashes down all around me.
I manage to whisper “Sky,” gathering her close against me, before I’m gone.
It’s like a knife-thrust of pleasure through my body as I come, this vicious thing as sharp-edged as the feelings this woman brings out in me.
I come for Skylar Szabo with the same raw need, the same heat, the same roar she gives when she comes for me.
13
Don't Walk Away (Skylar)
It's been weeks with the same hot, electric routine.
But Gabe is getting way too comfortable in my bed, and I’m getting way too comfortable with having him there.
It’s irritating the hell out of me and grating on my guilty conscience.
This is why I don’t do attachments.
If I don’t get attached, I don’t have to care that apparently my little revenge prank strained Gabe and Landon’s relationship. Or recognize how it’s going to get even worse once Landon finds out that now we really are sleeping together.
He’ll see it as all Gabe’s fault, and then it’ll be my fault if they lose a friendship that matters so much to them.
Complication number one. Only ninety-nine more I can't remember when his mouth is on me, or he's savaging my body in ways no one ever has, or I let myself feel safer than ever before in an embrace bigger and better than Hercules.
Today, at the office, it’s all I can think about.
On the surface I’m scoping out floor plans for a new concert venue for superstar singer Milah Holly, scrolling through PDF after PDF and biting at my thumbnail while I think. The dilemma simmers on my mental back burner while I try to turn over what I should do, if I should say anything, or if I should just leave it alone and mind my own business.
But Landon and I are alone in the office, everyone else out on small short-term contract gigs while he drums up the business and I work on the logistics, and I feel like I’m in that Edgar Allan Poe story where it’s not a tell-tale heart driving me crazy, but the click of his fingers on the keyboard seeming to demand that I do something.
I sigh, shoulders slumping, then lean forward, thudding my forehead against the edge of the desk before spinning in my chair. “Boss.”
He doesn’t look up, completely absorbed in his laptop.
“Hey. Boss.”
Landon starts, then looks up, blinking owlishly before running a hand through his hair. “Huh? Sorry, Pixie. What’s up?”
“Can we talk?”
A worried furrow creases his brow. “Yeah. What’s going on?”
“I, um...it’s actually about Gabe.”
That furrow becomes a canyon. His eyes darken. “Why? What'd he do now?”
“Nothing!” I almost shout it, then square my shoulders.
God. I need to stay calm. Be as calm about this as I am about everything else, not acting like a nervous schoolgirl. “That’s just the thing, Landon. He didn’t do anything wrong. When I was screwing around before, what I was implying...” I bite my lip. “The sex never happened. I was just mad and wanted to get back at him. I hated being on his leash. Honestly, he was a total gentleman and I was the brat, and I know I made you doubt your friend. I’m sorry.”
Landon stares, sizing me up for a hard ten seconds.
At last, he blinks, before his expression clears into confusion, then something like relief. I hope.
“Well, damn.”
I wince. “Ugh. Okay, go ahead and let me have it, boss. It was shitty of me, wasn’t it?”
“Nah. I mean, maybe. But look, you’re upset and not quite thinking straight, and I just shoved Gabe on you. I get it, Pixie. If you’re not used to him, he’s a bit much – but he’s also able to take anything you throw at him, even when you’re a hot, prickly mess.” He smiles faintly, boyish features shining under the hardened man I look up to. “I appreciate the apology, Sky. Really. Hell, I probably owe Gabe one, too. I shouldn’t have doubted him like that and went off. Still getting back to normal after all the shit that went down with Dallas, I guess.”
“Right. You're right.” I look down at my knees, physically bracing for what's next. “But there’s something else.”
“Yeah? What’s that?”
“What I said didn’t happen before? Well, it's happening now.”
It takes another brutal three second pause for it to sink in. Then my boss' eyes are daggers.
“Skylar.”
I wince, hunching my shoulders. It’s like telling my big brother I lost my virginity, and I’m regretting starting this conversation – but it’s out there now, and I’ve got to finish it.
“I’m not exactly telling you this for fun,” I mutter, hoping to head off a lecture. Or something worse. “I just want to be transparent about conflicts of interest since I work for you and technically Gabe works for me and you. Whatever’s going on with me and Gabe, I’m not going to let it affect either of our jobs or our personal lives. And i
n case we’re not clear on his guilt, I started things. Not him. I wanted it, too.”
Landon exhales heavily. “Shit. Well, I guess that’s good to know.”
He pauses, drawing another heavy sigh. His exhale is like a timer where I count all the ways I can die.
“It’s your life, Sky. If it's like you say, and it's not affecting anybody's job, then it's none of my damn business. I’m trusting you not to fuck it up. Just don’t break each other too bad, okay?”
I don’t know how to answer.
Because really, truly, I already know I’m going to break Gabe in the worst ways, when he looks at me with those sweet puppy eyes and kisses me like we could actually be something when I don’t even know if I have the capacity underneath the hard, hateful shell I’ve built over myself.
But I’m saved from answering when Landon’s phone rings on his desk, that distinctive melodious ringtone the whole company has learned belongs to Kenna, and I can’t help but smile at the dopey look of eager happiness that completely transforms the boss' face.
“Sorry,” he says, already swiveling back to his desk. “Gotta take this.”
“Sure,” I answer, but he’s not even hearing me.
And I wonder what it’s like, to be that in love.
So deeply, innocently in love that everyone can see the happiness on your face.
Instead of nothing but misery.
Sunbeam, huh?
Never thought I'd accept the ridiculous nickname, but it doesn't piss me off anymore.
Still, I’m no sunbeam.
I’m a fireball.
Radiating heat, full of hatred and anger. One day, I'm afraid it'll burn every beautiful, kind thing Gabe has given me.
One day, I'm afraid it will burn me down.
* * *
I don’t want to be alone after work, but my head’s too full of melancholy to go back to Gabe when he’s probably waiting at my house. And he’ll take one look at me and sniff out that something’s wrong. Then he’ll be all gentle and understanding, making me want to spill everything to him when right now, the turmoil inside me is about him.
