by Serena Bell
And I realize:
I’m not at all unhappy to let her win this game, except that it means the night’s over and Jonah and I have to go back to our side of the fence.
Chapter 21
Elle
“You can’t go,” Madden informs Sawyer and Jonah. “We haven’t had ice cream.”
Thank God for small boys and their ironclad memory for dessert, because I don’t want this evening to be over.
Playing Catan with Sawyer is six thousand times more fun than playing with Trevor ever was. Trevor is a grudging game player, fussy and nervous, and doesn’t have a competitive bone in his body.
Sawyer plays Catan exactly perfectly—like it matters more than anything and couldn’t matter less. I’m not sure how to explain it, but anyone who loves games knows what I’m talking about. In order for them to be fun, you have to invest yourself fully and you also have to not take yourself too seriously.
Maybe that’s true of other things, too, like sex and relationships and life itself, and that’s why I find it to be such an attractive trait.
Not that anything other than sex is on the table here.
“No, we can’t go before ice cream,” Sawyer says, and his eyes catch mine, and he’s smiling. Really smiling, not just the tipped-up cautious Sawyer smile that I am used to, and I swear, it almost breaks me. I want to tell him, You absolutely cannot smile like that in my presence if you want me to be able to do this sex thing with you without crossing the line and falling for you and all the things that neither of us wants to have happen.
I serve up four generous bowls of ice cream (the boys think it’s Christmas in June), and we sit back down at the dining room table and eat in near-silent ice-cream bliss.
“Do you pick the cookie dough out, or eat everything together?” I poll them.
“All together,” Sawyer says, digging in with a gusto that reminds me, pleasurably, of how he does certain other things.
“I pick the cookie dough out and eat that first, then the ice cream,” Jonah says.
“Me, too,” Madden says.
I take a dainty spoonful of all-vanilla. “I eat the ice cream first and leave the cookie dough for last.”
They all look at me like I’m crazy.
I shrug. “I like to have something to look forward to.”
“Do you have something you’re looking forward to right now?” Sawyer asks, so innocently that for a split second I don’t make the connection that he’s messing with me. Then I catch the look on his face and feel that glorious tugging sensation in my lower belly right down to my core.
I can’t really answer his question, because it’s not fair for me to say in front of Madden how much I’m looking forward to his dad’s wedding that he’s not invited to, or to getting to sightsee in Portland while I’m there, so instead I say, “I do, actually,” and match Sawyer’s dark-eyed look with my own.
I’m rewarded with a faint bloom of color across his cheekbones. I wonder where else blood is moving, and that thought brings a sweep of heat down my body. For reasons that I can’t completely explain, I put on a bra-and-panty set from my purchase today before Sawyer and Jonah came over. I wasn’t actually thinking there would be an opportunity to show it off, so I guess in a way it was just for me. Just so I’d know. And indeed, I’m hyperconscious of the thin strip of lace barely covering my swollen lips.
“Anyone want more ice cream?”
“I’ll take another small spoonful,” Sawyer says.
“Me, too!” two other voices chime in.
“Give me your bowls. I’ll get it.”
I take the bowls into the kitchen, drag the ice cream out of the freezer, and pull out my phone.
I’m wearing some of my new purchases. Unfortunately, the panties have suffered a little bit of a—setback. They’re such a thin scrap to begin with, not much absorption potential…
I can hear Sawyer’s phone buzz in the next room. I scoop ice cream and wait patiently.
You are evil, woman.
You were the one who started the “foreplay.”
“Mom! Can Jonah sleep over?”
I carry the ice-cream bowls back into the dining room. Sawyer’s eye catches mine. This is a parental moment, not the other kind, but I still register the buzz of intentional eye contact, and I smile involuntarily at him. He smiles back and shrugs, as if to say, Okay with me.
“Sure,” I say.
We finish up our ice cream, and it’s nine thirty now, well past the boys’ weekend bedtime, so we need to move the party along. “Boys, pj’s and teeth.”
The boys rush off. Jonah won’t need to get sleepover stuff from his house, because his things have gradually migrated over here. I have a pair of his pajamas that go through the wash with Madden’s, and his toothbrush and toothpaste live in our bathroom drawer.
“I’ll help you clean up,” Sawyer says.
We’d pushed all the Catan bits into the middle of the table to eat ice cream, but now he leans across the table and begins bagging up all the little wooden pieces. I work on collecting the cards. “It’s a really good game,” he says. “I’m not a game guy, but I actually liked this one. I haven’t played a board game since—”
He goes suddenly silent.
Right.
“—since Lucy died,” he finishes—because we both knew that was what he was going to say; there’s no use pretending it wasn’t. He shoots me an apologetic look.
“It’s okay,” I say, meaning it. Or at least really wanting to mean it. There’s a sore spot in my chest, because Sawyer’s so great, and it must have been lovely to be Lucy, to be the woman he talked about like the sun rose and set wherever she was. “You gotta be able to talk about her, right? And look at me, I’m the one blathering about my divorce when I’m trying to hook up with a stranger in a bar. Look,” I say. “You have been more than clear about what you want out of this, where you stand, all that, and I’m a big girl. So—let’s just be who we are, shall we? Battered and maybe in need of some TLC, and by no means ready to shake off the past and march undaunted into the future. It doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.”
He stares at me for a long moment, and I can’t figure out what he’s thinking. Then he says, “Are you sure?”
“ ’Course I’m sure.”
“You’re a good sport.”
“Why, thanks,” I say, and his praise is nice but I feel a flutter of regret, like seller’s remorse. Though I don’t know exactly what it is I think I’ve given up. Nothing I ever had to begin with.
We finish dumping the pieces into the sturdy Catan box, and I pull the cover back on. He rises from the table and shifts his weight from one foot to the other. I’m sure he’s about to tell me he has to go, has to get back to the house for whatever reason, but instead he sits down suddenly and says, “Hey. How about a rematch?”
Chapter 22
Sawyer
I’m merciless. And she loves it.
I’m talking about the board game, folks—eyes up here.
I beat her ten victory points to eight. We’re so involved in wiping each other across the land of Catan that we forget to check on the boys, but when we finish playing and go downstairs, we discover them sound asleep on their side-by-side sleeping bags.
I bend down, smooth Jonah’s hair, and kiss the top of his head. Beside me, I feel Elle crouch, whispering I love you to Madden, kissing his cheek. When she stands, our eyes snag across the sea of nylon, artificial down, and small boy, and we share a smile. It is a smile that says this single-parenting thing is really hard and totally worth it.
I follow her upstairs. Really, it’s just another excuse to watch her muscles and the other awesomeness that is Elle move under that stretchy fabric. Apparently I am a weak man, because as she reaches the top step, I reach out and touch. Just a quick swipe of my hand over th
e sweet curve of her ass, but my badly behaved fingers squeeze.
We reach the top step just then; she steps into the kitchen and turns to face me, and my hand, which seems unwilling to let go of its handful of flesh, tugs her tight up against me.
She makes a sound, a gasp, a moan, I don’t know—I just know it goes straight to my dick, which is already ragingly hard at the feel of her through briefs and jeans and the absurdly thin fabric of those wretched pants. I yank her closer (as if there’s such a thing) and my mouth finds hers fiercely, aggressively—I would be worried I was hurting her except she’s whimpering and clutching at me and whispering my name.
She kicks the downstairs door closed and I push her up against it—vertical seems to be our jam—and we kiss and kiss, tongues grappling and teasing, hands roving.
I grab her tank top and pull it up because if I don’t get my mouth on her nipples in the next three seconds—
I don’t know. There is no end to that sentence. It’s an imperative.
She is wearing a white bra that barely covers her nipples and is trimmed with a thin rim of lace. I want to dive in, but I want to savor what I see more. The lush abundance—her breasts are gorgeously full for such a petite woman—the pale pink nipples, the dusky pink disks that frame them. I nuzzle a curve, lick her areola, circle in and find her nipple so tight against my tongue that both of us gasp. I tease her, matching my tongue on this side with my fingers on the other, and she arches her back and pushes into my face, all that smooth flesh right there for the tasting.
I slide my hand down the flat of her stomach to the waistband of her yoga pants, breach the elastic and linger there, teasing my fingertips across the soft flesh of her lower belly.
She tips her pelvis up toward my fingers, asking for more, which makes my dick surge forward in anticipation.
“Foreplay,” I remind her, but really I’m reminding myself. We’re not going to have sex tonight, no matter how much I want to.
That doesn’t mean we can’t do lots of other things.
Running the risk that interrupting the flow here means she’ll come to her senses and kick me out, I say, “Can we—should we? Go upstairs? Is there a lock on your door?”
She hesitates.
“No sex,” I say, as my body tries to argue exactly the opposite. But this is what separates men from beasts—we get to overrule our dicks. “Not till the wedding.”
She bursts out laughing, and it takes me a moment to hear what I’ve said.
“Trevor’s wedding,” I clarify, grinning. “No sex till then, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make you feel good. I want to make you feel real good.”
“I can get behind that,” she says with a groan, tugging her bra up and shirt down. “Jesus, Sawyer, I really thought you were going to get me off without even touching my clit.”
My turn to groan. “Can you say that whole sentence again?” I’m exceptionally glad to note that her propensity to say whatever comes into her head applies to sex, too. I may not talk much myself, but dirty-wise I am a guy who appreciates talk, the more the merrier.
Instead she grabs my hand and leads me up the stairs. I realize that her house’s layout is a mirror image of mine just as she turns into a bedroom and flips on a light.
The decor is dark—mostly forest green and cream, a green rug, thick drapes, and a quilt with overlapping fern patterns. I hate it immediately.
“It was Trevor’s taste.” She bites her lip and gives me a chagrined look, like the one I gave her after I inadvertently blurted out that I hadn’t played a board game since Lucy died. I think both of us would like to forget for a while about the other two people in the room and just enjoy each other. So I decide that’s what’s going to happen. I pick her up and, tickling her, deposit her on the bed and throw myself down next to her, and then, before either of us can think, I kiss her.
Kissing her lying down is a whole new level of insane. I climb over her and settle my weight on my elbows; she spreads her legs and invites me to tuck my hips—including my voracious denim-clad erection—between. God, it’s good, the pressure, the heat of her, the squeeze of her thighs around my legs, the sound she makes when I wiggle, barely enough to count as movement, against her.
“That feels so good,” she whispers, wiggling back.
I slow us down so we can both worship the way it feels to kiss like this—the nibble of her mouth at my lips, the stroke of her tongue against mine, the heat and wetness, the sucking and releasing and giving and taking, the sounds in my chest and in the back of her throat. I could do this all night, but I don’t think she’d let me. Because mixed into the sweetness and the softness, the tug and slip and slick, I feel her teeth and fingernails and another wiggle, this one clearly of frustration, against me.
I turn onto my side and slide my hand up her tank top. I spread my fingers across the expanse of soft skin, I tug at the half-cups of her bra, I tweak those nipples until she says, “Fuck you, Sawyer, you’re a pussy-tease.”
Yes. I knew she’d be like this the first night we fucked, even though I don’t think she said a word while I was inside her. Still, somehow I knew she would be rude and dirty and excellent in exactly this way.
So obligingly, I slide my hand into her pants, part her lips, with their soft curls, slick her wetness all over her, but especially around her clit, circling.
“You gotta tell me, baby,” I say. “I’ll give you choices, but you gotta tell me.”
She whimpers.
I make the smallest circles I can, teasing the innermost bud.
“Mmm-hmm,” she hums.
I widen the circle a little, letting the hood and inner lips cover her so it’s not so intense.
“Yes!” she cries.
My hand slides lower on a sweet slick of her wetness, my fingers finding her wet heat, probing, entering, thrusting.
“God, Sawyer, yes.”
“Which?”
“All—of—the—above—”
“I should have known.”
I stop for just long enough to push her shirt up and her bra down, giving me access to her breasts, to her beaded nipples; I take one in my mouth and send my hand back down her pants. I fuck her with my fingers until she’s fucking back, and then, with my thumb, I make big gentle circles, spiraling in tighter and tighter until all I have to do is tap her bare clit—
And then I get what I’ve been working for, a low, muddy murmur of: “Sawyer please, Sawyer, yes, please, oh my God, oh my God, just like that, Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer, Sawyer, SawYER!”
Chapter 23
Elle
“Can I help you with that?”
I’ve roused myself from my post-orgasmic stupor. I’ve been lying in a blissful daze beside Sawyer, not moving, not thinking, but a moment ago my blurred brain registered the slow crawl of his hand back and forth over the bulge in his jeans.
“You must be dying,” I say, reaching for the button of his fly.
“Nah,” he says gallantly.
“Seriously, Sawyer, I am all for everyone getting off, you know?”
“I won’t fight you,” he says, releasing a frustrated exhalation, and making me laugh.
He helps me with the button and zipper of his jeans—no mean feat with his erection fighting back at us. I finally free him from his jeans and briefs and hold him in my hand, hot, hard, and incredibly satisfying. When we fucked in the alley outside the bar, I didn’t get to see him or touch him with my hand, so this feels all new. I love the velvet softness of the skin, taut and smooth over the swollen head. Penises are the best, and this is quite possibly the best of all penises.
“Why thank you,” Sawyer says, the first hint that I’ve spoken aloud. That happens to me from time to time; I think something is in my head and it turns out I’ve said it aloud. Usually it’s not quite as dirty as this, though.
“I don’t have a huge basis for comparison,” I say, sliding down the bed so I can lick a teardrop of pre-cum off him. And then I pop the whole head into my mouth, because, hey, I’m here, and, best of all penises.
He groans his approval and I feel the throb of blood under my tongue, which only eggs me on. I pull back and start again so I can lick him thoroughly and systematically, and so I can tease him, first the slit, then circles around it, then the whole head, then, pop, in my mouth again, sliding him against the softness of my cheek. I work my mouth down him bit by bit, licking him, licking my lips, getting us both wet and lubed up, making room for him deeper and deeper until I feel him against the back of my throat and hum in welcome.
“Jesus, Elle,” he says. “You look like such a little blond angel and you are so unbelievably badass.”
It’s funny, though (I think, not pausing in lavishing affection on the best of all penises), but I’m not. I never have been, anyway. Sawyer has brought out a side of me I didn’t know I had. Or maybe I suspected, briefly, at the beginning of things with Trevor, but then Trevor made it clear in a variety of kind, subtle ways that he wasn’t much for my dirty streak, so it went underground, and I didn’t think I missed it. I didn’t think it mattered.
My natural naughtiness is incredibly happy to be on display again.
I bob my head up and down, angling myself so I can take more of him, letting him thrust a little against my throat before I nudge his hips to let him know how much I can take—and he’s good; he backs off right away, so we get into this rhythm of him pushing and me pushing back. He’s talking now, quietly, telling me how good it feels, how good I am, how hot I am, and he reaches down to find both my nipples and tweaks them gently, which somehow makes me able to take more.
“Elle, if you don’t want me to come in your mouth—” he says, but I shake my head and tug his hips toward me and circle him, hard, fierce, with my tongue, drawing a pattern like an infinity symbol up the shaft and around the velvet curve of the head, and he trembles all over with the effort of holding himself back and comes, shaking, rigid, murmuring my name.
