Impressions of You (The Impressions Series Book 1)

by Christopher Harlan

  “Yeah, I got that vibe from him.”

  “The only women who have ever been here besides our mother and our sister have been strays that he’s brought home from whatever bar or club he’s been to.” I’m listening to Wesley speak about his brother, but I’m also just listening to Wesley speak. He’s finally opening up about a topic without me having to drag it out of him, and a personal one at that. But I guess it doesn’t get more personal than what he told me last night.

  “So,” I say to lighten the mood, “you really like me, huh? At least that’s what Kane seems to think.” I smile and nuzzle up in his neck, looking up into his eyes. He wraps his big arm around me.

  “Well I think we’ve established that Kane’s an idiot,” he says, teasing me. “But that doesn’t make him wrong. Some things are so obvious even the greatest of idiots can see them.” I should stop messing with him, he obviously more than likes me, because I know he isn’t one to bring random girls into his childhood home and then sleep with them. But I like messing with Wesley; I like seeing how he’s going to navigate the quirks in my personality. My quirks can be an inadvertent test of a guy’s patience, and so far he’s doing well.

  “Aww.” I say, letting him know he said the right thing, even though I know he isn’t trying to. He leans in and kisses me, and I let go of the sheets I’m still clutching to my shoulders. Being naked with him feels natural, the only state I should be in; and I’m ready for him to take me at a moment’s notice. I want him again, even after what just happened, and I’m nothing short of soaking through his sheets at the thought of another go. But he withdraws, standing up and walking to his closet to get dressed. His ass is rock hard, and provides the perfect viewing material as he leaves me on the bed, wet and wanting him.

  “Apparently I need pants for this conversation with my brother,” he says, fingering through the neatly pressed and folded pants hung in front of him. “But make no mistake, Mia, the pants that I’m putting on in order to have this uncomfortable discussion with Kane will end up crumpled, in a messy heap on this floor later because I’m not done exploring every inch of your delicious body.” With those words still ringing in my ears I can feel the throbbing between my thighs; I’m so wet, and I need this man here and now. But I’ll have to wait. He dresses quickly and walks towards his bedroom door, but before letting him leave I stop him in his tracks. I want him so bad. What a day it’s been so far, and it isn’t even noon yet!

  THE WHOLE ROOM smells like sex, and I need to take a quick shower. It can wait, though. The smell of him is all over me, and I don’t want it to ever go away. A few minutes later Wesley walks back in the room much calmer than when he left. “Wesley, did you kill Kane? It’s okay, you can tell me.” I joke. I’m smiling but I’m curious how everything got resolved when just a few minutes ago Wesley looked a man about to detonate. “Will I need to step over a large body lying on the living room floor on my way out later?”

  “No, of course not,” he says. “I moved the body so it wouldn’t be in your way, what kind of question is that?” He smiles. “No we just talked. Brother stuff. We’re good, Kane and I, sometimes I just need to remind him about boundaries—he’s too impulsive for his own good.”

  “Do you two generally get along?” I’m genuinely curious. My sister, Jenna, and I have a good relationship now, but my parents could tell some horror stories about our epic battles over just about everything when we were younger. It seems like there’s tension between Wesley and Kane, but I’ve learned that you can never understand the totality of a sibling relationship from a single moment, especially one like that. If someone had only seen my interactions with Jenna when she tried to borrow my favorite red dress senior year, they would have thought we were mortal enemies. I was guessing the same was true for the Marsden brothers.

  “When we were kids, even before Annabelle’s abduction, we were at each other’s throats day and night. Well, let’s just say that he was at my throat and I put him in his place. He’s always been more aggressive and extroverted than me, but I’m sure you could tell that already.” I nod. It’s so interesting how different siblings can really be, it’s like the whole nature vs. nurture argument, and I knew firsthand how two human beings who were raised in the same home could still be so very different from one another.

  “You? Introverted? Nah,” I joke, but he knows I’m serious. Wesley could walk into just about any room and have women swarm him like ants on a fallen lollipop, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t had many girlfriends in his life. He’s too caught up in his own thoughts to even realize half the things going on around him. Kane seems like the exact opposite, like the type of guy who’d want every woman in the room to know that he had money, and would buy lavish gifts for all of his girlfriends in a show of his own status.

  “I know, hard to believe, right? I’m so outgoing normally. I love attention.” We both start laughing, and for the first time since I’ve known Wesley I feel happy in an uncomplicated way. I’ve always found him sexy, and the feeling of his touch shoots electricity through my entire body, but there has always been this guarded side to him. But right now, after all the events of last night, I feel calm and open to him.

  “Can I ask you something personal?” I should probably stop prefacing all of my questions to him; I’m probably scaring the hell out of him every time I open my mouth.

  “When have you ever asked me a non-personal question? I can’t think of a single time.” He’s right about that one. I’ve mostly skipped the small talk part of our relationship. I’ve never been a fan of that anyhow; my path to information has always been very direct, and the way I see it, better to be up front and put our cards on the table early in the relationship than find things out later on. A lot of people are uncomfortable with directness, especially from a woman, but to me it’s the only way that I know how to interact.

  “Fair enough,” I agree, getting ready for what follows. “How many girlfriends have you had?” He doesn’t seem uncomfortable with the question at all.

  “Like, ever?” he asks. I nod. “Define ‘girlfriend.’”

  “Like a girl you’re dating, not talking to—something serious, like the kind of girl you’ll cook fancy dinners for.”

  “I’ve never cooked for any woman except you, Mia. And I definitely haven’t had any woman in here except for you.” He’s telling the truth. We’re about the same age but I’ve had too many boyfriends in my years, more than I should have, really. “There have been women, of course.” His words hit me in the gut for some reason. They shouldn’t, I know, it’s unreasonable to be irritated at the idea of him with other women, but I can’t help it. The crazy in my brain won’t let me picture him with anyone else without a tightness twisting in the pit of my stomach, and the irrational jealousy taking over all my thoughts.

  Even though he had gone out of his way to distinguish me from whoever the other women were, all I could hear were his last words, and I felt an intense jealously at the image of him touching or kissing another woman. “But,” he continued, “nothing like this. Nothing like you, not even close.” His final words are comforting, and snap me out of my momentary craziness. He put his hand on my cheek and turned my face towards his. “Mia, there are always others, right? The odds of you and I finding each other at this age with no exes would be unheard of.” His calm tone soothes me. He was right; I had a list of ex-boyfriends so long that all together could play a fully manned football game with alternates to spare. He hadn’t even asked about my “others,” and if he does I plan on being completely honest with him.

  But it wasn’t just a numbers game with me; I realized that I was possessive of Wesley, as he had been possessive of me in his own way. The first time he laid eyes on me I felt . . . claimed, like he knew instinctually, without a word between us, that I was to be his. It was one of the things that drew me to him at the bar that night. That, and how unbelievably sexy he was, even just sitting on a stool ordering coffee. It was the thought of that look—that int
ense, possessive stare, being used on anyone but me that drove me crazy inside.

  “But, you have to remember something,” he continued, “There are reasons that the other women are the other women. Whatever title we give them: ‘others,’ ‘exes,’ whatever. We’re speaking about them in the past tense for good reason; their time with us becomes nothing but a story that we tell the person in our present, and that’s you, Mia.” His words were sweet.

  “But there’s something you’re not considering,” I counter. I can tell that he’s used to me challenging him at this point, because it doesn’t change his mood or expression one bit. When he said there were reasons that our exes were our exes he was absolutely correct, and moments like this were one of them. Quite a few of my “others” didn’t care for a challenging woman. If you ask most men they’ll tell you otherwise, especially in this day and age. Not many guys are open about expecting obedience, or wanting a woman who’ll just look pretty but not have much to say, but those guys are still alive and well. It’s only in moments like this that I can tell for certain if my personality is appreciated or not, when I can throw his comforting words back at him and make him defend their flaws without him getting angry, or thinking I’m ungrateful.

  “Okay. Well everything you say about me also applied to those other women at one point, right? All of those women were at one point part of your present, weren’t they?”

  “They were, yes,” he concedes.

  “So, then, how can I be sure that in three months, or a year, you won’t be cuddled up in this very bed with another woman, telling her all about Mia, the blond teacher that you used to date?”

  “I’ve always been confident in myself, even when I was a kid. Not confident in how I look, or in my status, but confident in terms of my own beliefs. I was raised to be the heir to everything my father built, so he raised me to be certain of what I wanted in life and how to achieve it,” he explains. “With every other woman, and there weren’t many, I never once thought of any of them as the one—the woman that I was meant to be with. Maybe it’s messed up to say this, but I knew with each and every one of them that it wouldn’t last. That must sound really cold of me.”

  “No, not at all,” I tell him. “I know you’re not cold. If I told you my opinions of some of my exes you’d have stronger words to describe me than ‘cold.’”

  “When they all left, I was never too sad, and I never felt that my life was incomplete or missing something without them.” He stops and looks deeply into my eyes. “But with you, Mia, even the momentary thought of you not being with me makes me want to collapse. What we have is meant to be it for me.” When he finishes I’m tearing, and I try to look away so he won’t see, but I should know by now that there’s no hiding from Wesley Marsden, especially lying here in his arms.

  I’m still not used to the level of sincerity in everything he says. He’s so confident, like he said, and not in the way Kane seemed confident. Not cocky and sure of himself. It was a deep and sacred trust in himself, an incredible self-belief and knowledge that on certain things, he just wasn’t wrong. I envied his confidence. My style of decision making involves asking for everyone else’s opinion, getting confused, making some type of choice, then a constant questioning of my own decision-making process. That was basically how I lived my life, always questioning if I had done the right thing, or if a better choice could have been made in a situation. But not Wesley; at least not when it came to me. With me he was as certain as he ever was, and he meant what he said about not imagining his life without me. I was beginning to feel the same way, even if I didn’t say it to him.

  His openness makes me feel close to him, and I’m elated at how happy he is with our relationship. We get back into bed, and I rest my head on his chest. I begin moving down a little to run my tongue playfully over his nipple. I hear him whisper, “Mia.” The sound of my name from his lips sounds like a warning and I reach down underneath the covers, where I can see the protrusion of his already rock-hard cock, waiting for me. I begin to run my hand up and down his length and he calls my name out again, “Mia.” I know what he wants, and I know how good I can make him feel.

  The muscles in his body tense up; I slip my head under the sheets and crawl my way lower, my kisses marking a straight line down every inch of his chest on the way. He knows what’s about to happen, and his body is rigid in anticipation, his toes curled tensely at the foot of his bed. I move my head slowly down his right leg, letting my hair tickle the well-defined muscles of his thigh and calf. My mouth hovers just above his skin. I move across his body, careful to miss the thick hardness that’s begging for my attention, and then I move to his other leg, tracing my way back up his body. I peek my head out of the covers so that he can look at me; I want to see the pleading in his eyes; I want him to ask me for what I know he wants.

  We lock eyes, and I can see him fighting to maintain control. He can’t hide it from me; I can see the things he doesn’t want me to see. He won’t give in, but inside he’s begging me, pleading with everything he is for me to move my mouth back down where he awaits its warm embrace. I stare into his eyes as we battle for control. He’s stiff and completely still, the only motion the throbbing of his cock that I know he can’t control. I move my entire body up, but just a little bit, so that the softness of my breasts rest on both sides of his cock; my nipples hard and pressing into him. I know he worships my body, and my breasts I’ve learned are his weakness. I press my weight downward and reach my hand between my breasts, and stroke him firmly and slowly, moving him against the hardness of my nipples. I can feel him break, and I know that I have him. “Mia,” he calls out again, and I tighten my grip and slow my stroke.

  “Yes, Wesley?” I ask playfully. “What is it?” I can see he doesn’t want to beg, he’s a proud man and used to a carefully crafted control over his life. But I have him where he can’t escape, where he doesn’t want to escape, and the control is mine entirely. I have this big, strong man’s mind and body held in my embrace, and I want to make him scream in pleasure, but only once he knows that I’m in control. “Mia, pl—” He stops himself, it’s hard for him to be vulnerable here, but his desire for my body is deeper than the strength of his pride, and I ask him one last time.

  “What do you want me to do for you, Wesley?”

  “Mia, please. Please. I need you now!”

  It’s all I need to hear. With those words spoken I quickly disappear back under the sheets; the tease is over, and now it’s time to worship him the way he worships me. I waste no time grabbing his shaft and surrounding the head of his cock with the wetness of my hungry mouth. I feel him reach down and entangle his fingers in my hair; his grip is frenzied, almost desperate, and it spurns me on as I guide him in and out of my mouth. It doesn’t take long at all, I’ve teased him and sucked him right to the edge. I hear him warn me, “Mia, I’m close.” He tries to pull away but it only encourages me to keep going. I hollow my cheeks and suck him all the way to the back of my throat. He shouts out my name and I feel his cock pulse as warm, salty cum shoots down my throat. Spurt after spurt I swallow it down. Nothing has ever tasted so good. We’re both so exhausted that we fall asleep in each other’s arms, our hearts beating fast and in tune.

  We wake up a few hours later, only this time I woke up to a beautiful room with only the two of us, instead of his creepy younger brother standing over us. The clock on Wesley’s nightstand reads 2:00 p.m.! The day was flying away but I didn’t care; I couldn’t think of a better way to spend the afternoon. Thank God I remembered to call in sick to work last night before everything; otherwise the haze of hot sex would have taken over my ability to remember anything. I felt guilty when I called into work, like I was abandoning my kids for the second day in a row. I knew in my heart that they’d be fine with whatever sub the school could find, along with my TA’s, but still I felt terrible.

  Special needs teachers are a different breed, and those of us who work with populations like I work with are an even rarer
group—we’re like the Seal Team 6 of teachers; specialists who take the call of duty to do the sort of things most people getting their degrees in education could never even imagine doing. And like those brave men, we don’t do it for glory, or praise, and we sure as hell didn’t do it for money. We worked day in and day out with those precious kids because we loved it, and felt a responsibility to our students that was just, well, different. So almost two days away from my kids for what were, in the grand scheme of things, purely selfless reasons, left me feeling like a bad teacher. I’d make it up to them tomorrow, I promised myself.

  Regardless of the intense fantasy of the past day, which included what was easily the best sex I’d ever had in my life, I had to get home. I wanted to stay next to Wesley in that bed forever, but reality was starting to set in, and I realized that I hadn’t done anything that I normally do, including my nightly ritual of talking to my friends. I knew that when I finally freed my phone from the prison I’d kept it in for the last twenty-four hours in my bag that it would be blown up with messages from any or all of my little squad. My noisy rustling through my bag woke Wesley up, and even just waking up he looks like a Greek god.

  As he woke I stared at him a little more, taking in as much of this moment as I possibly could. Despite Wesley’s assurances that I was basically the woman of his dreams, there was still so much of him—and of us—that remained a mystery to me. For starters, regardless of what happened after, there was a lot about Annabelle’s abduction and its effects on the family that I had questions about. The biggest and most obvious one was about Annabelle herself. I knew that she was alive but that was all I knew.

  According to the newspaper article, the whole thing happened seventeen years ago, this would make Annabelle an adult today. What happened to her after she got back home? Where was she, and who took care of her? That was only the start of the questions I had, but I was so caught up in the whole story that I never addressed any of them. All of this seemed obvious in hindsight, but at the time I didn’t think to ask, and now I don’t know when it’s an appropriate time to bring something like that up. Hey, Wesley, remember that little sister who got abducted when you were little—you know, the crime that basically broke your family apart? Yeah, so where’s Annabelle now, ’cause I had a few follow-up questions I wanted to ask. That wasn’t going to happen. Things between us had become our own weird kind of normal, and I wasn’t about to screw everything up by being nosy.