by M. R. Joseph
Harlow is now standing beside me and gives me a look that tells me I did good.
After a while and some more questioning, I show them my gun and my badge. Most of the girls in the class, well, all of them really, take pictures of me with them with their phones like little paparazzi.
Harlow tells the class to thank me for coming in today. I tell them thanks for having me and give them a wave.
“Boys and girls, I’m going to walk Officer Cruz out and I’ll be right back. Take out your Intro to English Lit books and continue on chapter ten.”
We exit her classroom and she walks me down the hall, the only noise I hear are the sounds of her sexy heels hitting the floor. I’m suddenly pulled into some kind of dark alcove, and before I know it, Harlow’s hands are in my hair, hat tossed off, of course, and her lips are on me. Her tongue searching mine. No other woman with a lip between their teeth can make me burn throughout my body like she can. I’m lost in my own erotic bliss. I’m addicted to her.
She releases me and smiles.
“I missed you like crazy, Officer. You did really well in there.”
I trace her bottom lip with my thumb.
“Well they gave me a run for my money.”
“I think the girls have crushes on you.”
She pouts, and I know she’s kidding.
“Maybe… but I only have eyes for you.”
She sighs and touches my chest.
“I’m halfway through the day, so are you going to go straight to my house?”
“Yep, got my key. You know where to find me.”
She gets a devilish look in her eyes.
“It better be in my bed with nothing on except a full view of those hip stars.”
I laugh. She calls me insatiable.
“You got that right. Promise you’ll wear those sexy teacher glasses for me the whole time I’m worshiping your body?”
“I’m pretty sure you can bet on that.”
She gives me a swift kiss, and I walk back down towards the office. I spot the two secretaries who come out into the lobby to say goodbye. A little too urgently I might add.
“Bye, Officer Cruz. Thank you so much for coming,” one of them says to me.
I tip my hat. “Thank you ladies, the pleasure was all mine.” And the blushing continues.
I get back to Harlow’s house. She’s done a great job of making this place her own. The last time I was here she didn’t have any pictures hanging or trinkets or doilies or whatever chicks have lying around. Now when I walk around I see photographs of her and her family, and her and her girlfriends, but my heart stills when I see a long table leading to her upstairs lined with pictures of her and me. One from earlier in the summer and one with us fishing. There is one on the boardwalk when we all decided to act like kids and ride all the roller coasters. But the one that gets to me, that steals my breath, that makes my heart pang loudly, is the selfie we took of ourselves in her car on the way to her parents when I met them for the first time. Her eyes, big and blue and bright. Under them so much pain that I want to take away. I want to rescue her from it all. Make it so she never has to feel pain again. I look at us. Her and I.
Us.
There’s an us, and I don’t ever want there not to be an us. Then there’s the thing that’s been staring me in the face for the past few months, it’s been gnawing at me like a toothache. The one thing that I swore I’d never do… Well, I did it.
I’ve fallen in love with her.
Damn, it.
I’m so fucking screwed.
“Honey, I’m home,” I hear Harlow say in a singsong tune as I’m preparing to knock her socks off with my culinary expertise.
Not really, it’s tacos, but she’s a simple woman, easy to please. She walks into the kitchen and drops her bag suddenly at her feet, clearly surprised at what she sees.
“Um, where are your clothes?” She asks, placing her hands on her hips and using her authoritative teacher voice.
I continue to stir the meat in the pan, and I turn to her and address her over my shoulder.
“What do you mean? I have clothes on?”
She saunters up behind me placing her hands on my abdomen and placing a trail of kisses along my back.
“Not really, dear. An apron does not qualify as clothing. It’s more of a cover up.” She snakes her hands to cup my ass, and I lean my head back against her. I shut the pilot light on the stove burner off. I can’t concentrate when her hands are on me.
“Why’d you stop cooking? I’m starving.”
I turn to face her and kiss the tip of her nose.
“I’m hungry too, but I’m pretty sure dinner can wait.”
I attack her lips, just like she did in her school. When my lips touch hers, I feel like I never want them to come apart from hers again. Now that I know I’m in love with her this kiss is different. The way I even touch her feels different. I can’t explain it, I’m not good at the words like she is. I just know it’s different.
It really doesn’t take long before she is kneeling before me, and I know she wants to do something to me she hasn’t done yet. When the first lick happens, I’m out of my mind already. She takes the head of my dick in her mouth, licking it like a lollipop. I’ve never pressured her to give me head before, I just didn’t care if or when it happened, but now that I’m in her mouth… Well, let’s just say I didn’t know what I was missing. She’s phenomenal at this, taking me in, then pulling me out. She licks the edges of my length, and I weave my hands into her hair, holding her head as she bobs forward, then pulls back. It’s not that this isn’t hot, because it is, but something about this moment is more intimate than the sex we have. This is just another thing that she surprises me with, that she was willing to do this for me even though I never asked for it. I like her spontaneity, the way she’s aggressive, but yet her mouth is graceful and loving. This woman could bring a grown man to his knees with her tongue and soft lips. I feel high. I literally feel like I’m floating above my body, looking down on the way she sucks me, makes love to me with her hot mouth. It’s fucking insane. I don’t want to come this way. I just want to be with her, be inside her.
“Baby, please, it feels so good but I need to have you, and I don’t want to come this way. I want to be inside you when I come.”
Shit. That just shocked me. I can’t believe I would even say such a thing.
She looks up at me, still on her knees. Her long lashes and baby blues looking in shock.
“You…you sure you want that? You’re ok with it?”
I suddenly feel nervous, so I place my hands under her armpits and raise her up to me, and I gently place her on the breakfast bar that’s behind her.
“No, no please don’t freak out sweetie. I just thought, well… I… I, um, I.” I stutter ‘cause I want to tell her I love her first. I want to scream it on top of a mountain, and I know I sound like a pussy, but this is momentous. Me, I mean me, I love someone. I love Harlow. This is the most special day of my life. I never thought it was possible, that I could love anyone but myself. I mean I love Antonio and Bella and Matteo, but this is being in love. Shit people do every day, but not me, and here I am. I’m in fucking love.
“What is it you wanted to say to me, babe?” She strokes my face, searches my eyes and tries to communicate with me with only a look. I want to say it, and I go to, but my fear holds me back. So I chicken out like an asshole.
“Nothing baby. I just thought about it, but if you’re not comfortable, it’s ok.”
She smiles and keeps touching my face, drawing an invisible line with her finger across my stubble.
“I don’t care, Cruz. I can’t get pregnant, and I feel so close to you and trust you, that I think it’s fine.” She continues to talk as I carefully, and methodically slide my hands up the sides of her legs, searching for the seam of her panties to bring them down. She keeps her sexy glasses on, which I asked her to do.
I go back to giving her soft kisses, slipping my tongue in
and out of her mouth, and blazing a trail along the outline of her lower lip.
“Babe, I’ll do whatever you want me to do. I just want to make you happy.” Her panties dangle from one of her ankles, and she keeps her fuck me hot heels on.
“You being here with me, like this, makes me happy. I didn’t think I would ever be this happy again.”
I ease my cock into her, because my want and need to take her and always have her as mine consumes me. She hisses when I push into her. Her nails dig into my shoulder as I stand and control myself as I step into the bliss I call Harlow.
I love the way her arms wrap around me, holding me, as though she couldn’t get any closer, even if she tried. If I could crawl into her and stay there where I’m bathed in her warmth, then that’s where I’d live, with her, inside. Inside her heart, inside her soul.
The sound of our bodies slapping together, her tongue licking my neck and ear, and the faint sounds she makes when she’s about to come, is my undoing. My need to satisfy her, to pleasure her, is all I want. Fuck me and my pleasure, for once. Just the thoughts of what I can do to her is enough pleasure for me. I feel how responsive Harlow is to me, how her wetness surrounds me, and I don’t hold back anymore. I come in her body, and all sense of reality is gone. With the exception of loving her being my actual reality. The reason for me to exist. The heat between us bounces off into the room, giving the air the scent of sex, lust and love.
I love her.
I love her.
I fucking love her.
We sit on the floor, exhausted, and we pant. I take her hand and kiss it gently, looking at her hurts so good. Her cheeks are pink, and her complexion is dewy. Her hair, well that ponytail she wore is now halfway down with tendrils all over the place. She looks like she’s just been through a war, and I like it. She snuggles down into my chest and holds on to my waist with her arm. She places her ear over where my heart is and I hear her hum.
“Why are you humming, babe?”
“Because sometimes I feel the need to remind myself that you are real, that this is real, and I hum to the beat of your heart. I do it all the time, you just don’t know it.” I kiss the top of her head and stroke that beautiful hair of hers, wondering how this person floated into my life and how I let her.
“It’s not a dream. This is happening. You and me.”
I suddenly feel wetness on my chest, and I think she’s crying. I sit up a bit more and adjust my body to look at her.
She is crying.
I wipe away her tears. My chest feels like it’s caving in just from the look on her face.
“What’s wrong, Turnip? Talk to me.”
Her sobs come out in spurts, and her breathing is hitched.
“I… I don’t know how we can keep on doing this. I miss you so much when you’re not here. I… I thought the skyping and the phone calls were going to make it all ok, but I know I can’t stand being away from you. I’m sorry if I’m acting like a baby, but I’m always honest with you and I want you to know how I’ve been feeling.” She swipes at her eyes and looks down, linking her fingers nervously together.
“I want more, Cruz.”
She has more. She has me. Every part of me and it kills me to see her like this and to know that there’s nothing we can do about it right now. I have to try to make it seem better and put my best effort forward in making sure that being apart isn’t a permanent thing.
“Turnip, right now, honestly this is how it has to be. It’s not ideal. We both know that, but how about we wait till after next summer. You’ll be back in Sandy Cove at Willow’s and I’ll be at Porter’s. In the meantime how would you like it if while I’m here in Princeton, I submit an application to their police department, and if it happens now, then I’ll move? I’ll quit Sandy Cove’s force and start over here, and if not, at least they have my name and application, and hopefully something in the next nine months opens up.”
Before I know it, she’s on top of me kissing me from the top of my head to my cheeks, my eyes, my ears, my neck. Little kisses and screams of joy fill my ears.
I laugh. “I guess you like that idea, huh, Turnip.”
She wraps her hands around my neck and sits on my lap. Her smile is so bright and beaming I have to squint.
“That sounds like the most perfect idea I have ever heard.” She stares at me. I take in the lines of her face, the curvature of it, the freckles that drive me insane, and the look in her eyes… That damn loving look in her eyes can make me beg, make me forget all the bad in my life. When she pulls my lips to her and kisses me, I hear the sound of my internal bell ringing that we’re about to go for round two.
I’ll do whatever I have to do to make her happy. I’ll leave Sandy Cove. I’ll leave a good job and get another just to be with her. It’s a relief that she feels the same way I do. I’d move to the ends of the earth to be with her. I love her that much.
***
CHAPTER 15
Auld Lang Syne
Harlow~
Cruz did what he promised. He submitted an application to the Princeton police department and two other precincts in two neighboring towns. I’m going to pray with all I that have he will get hired sooner than later.
I still can’t believe I cried to him the way I did, but the truth is I can’t stand it. I hate being this far from him. I never felt this way, not even with Chad. I was used to him coming and going, but with Cruz that’s something I’ll never get used to. The warmth his body gives, the light he gives my heart, the pleasure he gives my body, mind, and soul. If I were a betting woman, I’d toss all the chips down on the table and say that last month in my kitchen, he was going to tell me he loved me. I saw it in his eyes. I felt it with every fiber of my being. I know that I’m in love with him, but for Cruz, that’s a newfound emotion and an envelope I’m not going to push. Just feeling it in my heart is enough… For now.
I hear the sounds he makes when he sleeps. Soft breathing, stilling my heart when he turns over to wrap an arm around me, pulling me closer to him when he realizes I’m too far away from him in this bed. I want to see this every day of my life. I want to wake up with him beside me, touch him, revel in this bliss. I know I’m young and twenty-four is knocking on my door, but I see myself with him for the rest of my life. It’s not that farfetched. My parents were married by the time they were twenty-four and Greta was on her way. Against my grandmother’s wishes, but she’s a different story.
Thanksgiving came and went. We did the normal feed the homeless at a shelter, then had dinner at my parents. Grandmother wanted us to go to the club for dinner, but my parents do not believe in making people work on a holiday and missing dinner with their family. Cruz worked, but spent the morning with Bella, Tony and the baby, so I’m glad he got to see them. He mentioned his parents were on a cruise for the holiday.
Odd.
Who leaves their first grandchild on his first holiday? I didn’t question it because I didn’t want to upset Cruz if he already was upset about it.
The Christmas season has always been my favorite. The hustle and bustle of it. I love the lights, the music, the people pushing each other around in the malls. It’s magical. This year, it’s a little different. I have Cruz in my life, but he won’t be here for Christmas. He’s working. That low man on the totem pole thing again. It stinks. I won’t see him again till a few days before Greta’s wedding.
The kids in this school are crazy around the holidays. I guess they need a break as much as the teachers do, so they are getting a bit antsy, which in turn… So am I. Grading finals for this semester is exhausting. I’m looking forward to saying bye to Grayson Elders for a whole ten days.
Willow breezes into my classroom after a brief little knock.
“Hey. You up for some drinks after here at The Barn? My treat.”
She plops down in one of the desks across from me and kicks her heels off.
I tap my red pen on my desk.
“You better stick those back on. My next class will
be here any minute and aren’t you supposed to be at lunch?”
She lets out a breath making her straight blonde bangs fly up off her forehead.
“I suppose but I really need to get out tonight. C’mon. What do you say?”
Her whiny tone makes me roll my eyes. I know she’s going to keep at me about this no matter what, but I still try.
“Wills, I haven’t bought a present yet. I still have to go pick up my shoes for Greta’s wedding, and I have not had a chance to get a Christmas tree or even hang a wreath on my door. The rest of my neighbors are all decorated outside with lights and those silly blowup Santas and my house looks like Scrooge lives there.”
She crinkles up her nose.
“Oh for the love of Pete! Why would you want one of those smelly things in your new place anyway. They’re messy and sticky, and… Well messy. Let’s just go get a few beers. I will go with you this weekend to get a tree and we can go shopping too.”
See, the woman will badger me and give me every reason in the book why or why not I should do something. I could go for a few cold ones though.
“Pleeaaseee, Harlow…” Again with the whining.
I put down the red pen, even though I have to finish these grades by the end of the day. I shake my head at Willow as she clasps her hands together, pleading with me to go to damn happy hour.
“You’re not going to give up are you?”
“Nope.”
“I figured as much.”
I stack my papers and rise out of my chair.
“Will you leave now if I say yes?”
She pops up from her seat, a huge smile plastered on her face.
“Abso-fuckin-lutely.”
I point at the door as she sticks her shoes back on.
“Fine. I’ll meet you at your car at four p.m. Now get out and go eat the mystery meat in the cafeteria.”
She practically skips out the door after blowing me a kiss.
