by Serena Bell
That doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time. I want the word foreplay to take on a whole new meaning for her.
Once we’ve reached Il Capriccio, I help Elle out of the truck cab. She jumps down and slides her body the length of mine, setting me on fire. The impish look she gives me—meant to do that—doesn’t hurt, either.
At least she’s affected by the contact, too. As she rights herself, her nipples poke through the clingy material of her dress. I want to reach out and thumb one to even greater attention, but I remind myself of my mission here. Best first date ever.
Il Capriccio is in a turn-of-the-century farmhouse, rustic but elegant, with cream walls, dark trim, and dusky mood lighting. We’re escorted to a table for two lit with real candles, and I pull Elle’s chair out for her.
“Thank you,” she murmurs, sitting.
I sit across from her. The golden glow flickers across her cheekbones and settles in the yellow of her hair, creating high and low lights I wouldn’t have guessed were there.
“Do you know how long it’s been since anyone took me out for a candlelit dinner?” she asks.
“I rest my case. Trevor Thomas is the world’s biggest asshole. Shit. I just said that out loud.”
She giggles.
“And you’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
She goes quiet. We both sit there with that sentence, and all that it implies.
It’s like getting stuck in a riptide, the ocean pushing me forward and sucking me down and back. There’s grief and guilt and loss, and then there’s the simple truth of Elle, sitting in front of me, so stunning in the dim light of dancing flame I can’t take my eyes off her.
She ducks her chin, her eyes averted. “You don’t have to say that.”
What’s the thing about a riptide? If you struggle against it, if you try to resist it directly, you tire and drown. The trick is to swim sideways.
The way back to life isn’t a straight line.
I let the grief and the guilt finish washing over me, and then I reach out and take Elle’s small, cool hand in mine.
“You know me pretty well by now,” I say.
She nods. Her eyes are still and bright on my face, her expression wary. I want to wipe the wariness away.
“I don’t talk much.”
She nods again.
“And I sure as fuck don’t say shit I don’t mean.”
Chapter 32
Elle
We’re done with our main course and we’ve ordered dessert, a molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce. I’m somewhere near the bottom of my second glass of wine, and he’s been asking me about my writing, and somehow, I find myself telling him about the super-secret divorce book. He listens with typical Sawyer attentiveness, idly running his thumb along the edge of his wine goblet. My eyes follow his fingers, my body softening and heating in response to the caress. You know you’ve got it bad when a guy can get to you by rimming his glass.
“Hattie thinks I should try to get it published, but I don’t really think anyone would be interested.”
He tilts his head. “Why not?”
“It’s pretty hard to get something published. Really competitive. And there are, like, a million divorce self-help books, and there was the whole Eat Pray Love memoir/self-help thing, and now there are a million of those, too.”
“So?” he asks.
“So, I mean, I’m nothing new.”
“So why did Hattie say you should try to get it published?”
I shrug.
He narrows his eyes. “What did she say, Elle?”
He’s pretty scary when he’s stern. And hot.
“She said it made her laugh and that—I guess she thought it would make people feel less alone with the whole thing. Like I was kind of making fun of myself and the situation in a way that was really accessible.”
He raises his eyebrows.
I lift a shoulder. “She’s my best friend. She has to say nice stuff.”
He leans back slightly in his seat and says, “You know, way back when I was first starting to make furniture, I said stuff like that all the time. ‘Oh, yeah, he’s just complimenting it because he’s my dad; she’s just complimenting it because she’s my wife. There’s so much furniture out there, there’s so much repurposed wood furniture out there; what do I have to offer that’s anything new?’ Truth is, you can talk yourself out of anything. It’s not talking yourself out of the stuff that matters that’s the tough part. I think Hattie’s right.”
“Well,” I say. “Maybe so.”
I change the subject. I propose we do “favorites.”
So we do—favorite color, favorite food, favorite movie, pet peeve, that kind of thing. And of course, the longer that goes on, the dirtier it gets.
“Favorite sex position,” Sawyer murmurs.
The candlelight and the deep rumble of his voice are like warm water in my veins, and I luxuriate for a moment before I choose my answer. “I don’t know yet,” I murmur back. “Planning to find out this weekend.”
“In the past,” he coaxes.
I give it some thought. “Maybe this makes me boring, but I like missionary.”
“Not boring.” His gaze pins mine in a way that makes me vividly imagine exactly what it will feel like to have him braced over me, his face inches from mine, as he moves inside me. It’s hard to breathe, which brings another set of memories to the surface.
“What you did to me against the wall outside the bar? That was—” Blood suffuses my face at the memory. “That was probably the most turned on I’ve ever been.”
He sucks in a breath and nails me with another dark look. “Vertical’s good.” His gaze gets far away, and he squints briefly. “I think, like I said the other night, I’d also really like you riding me. You’ve got the sexiest bounce I’ve ever seen—” His eyes drop to indicate exactly what part of me bounces to his specifications—“and I would really enjoy lying back and watching.”
There’s something about Sawyer. Most men, if they said something like that, I’d think it was crass. Sawyer means it. He’s being honest, and it’s hot. And he’s watching me carefully for my reaction. Words, for him, are foreplay.
My breasts tighten in the spotlight of his regard, my nipples beading under the thin lace, front and center, and yes—his eyes darken, noticing.
His gaze lifts, meets mine, and I flush, hot all over.
He smirks, then leans back in his seat. He looks more relaxed than I’ve ever seen him.
Happy. He’s happy.
I’m happy.
I’m trying not to think too much about what he said earlier. That I was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. That he wouldn’t have said it if he hadn’t meant it.
But beautiful is just that. Just a surface thing. It doesn’t signify—
I grasp at the easiest way to get my mind back to the moment. “Favorite sexual fantasy.”
“Hmm.” His eyes are sleepy, like they were at that first night in the bar. Heavy-lidded. “Used to be fucking someone against a brick wall outside a bar…”
The pleasure he’s been coaxing to life in me spreads, like a good alcohol buzz, to my lips and to the folds of my sex, warm and tingly.
“Was that the first time you’d done that?”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Yeah. What, you think I do that kind of stuff all the time?”
I don’t know, Sawyer. There’s so much I feel like I don’t know, even after all the getting-to-know-you games. “You said you’d had a lot of sex.”
He winces. “Well, yeah, but most of the time back at someone’s apartment, or at my place if Jonah was with his grandparents. I never felt like it was so urgent it had to happen right that instant, like with you.”
That sings through my veins like a stro
ng drink. I guess until that moment I hadn’t been sure whether that night was out of the ordinary for him.
The waitress sets the molten chocolate cake down and lays a spoon in front of each of us. A generous scoop of vanilla ice cream is already beginning to melt over the dark surface of the soft cake. My mouth waters.
“Be nice,” the waitress teases as she backs away. “I’ve seen fistfights break out over the last bite of this stuff.”
The cake really is that good. “Oh, God,” I say, licking soft, warm chocolate off my spoon, the contrast between hot cake and cold ice cream lighting up my tongue.
Sawyer watches me hungrily, and it’s not the cake he’s got designs on. “It’s not going to be a fistfight that breaks out here. I’m going to spread you out on the table and lick this dessert off you. Or, better yet, I’m going to make you lick it off me.”
I squirm, pressing my thighs together. He’s making me so wet. “Gladly.”
“What about you? Favorite sexual fantasy?”
“Besides having someone lick molten chocolate cake off me in public?” I tease in a whisper.
“Mmm-hmm.” His hum is rough enough to rasp like sandpaper over my nipples and clit.
I tilt my head. “Sex in your truck.”
“In my truck.”
“Well, in a truck.”
“Have you ever dated anyone else who owned a truck?”
“No, but the fantasy predates you.”
“So I’m your fantasy guy come to life.” He smirks.
“Yup.”
We both reach for the last bite of chocolate cake, our spoons jangling. We joust for a moment, then he stands down.
“I’d rather watch you eat it, anyway,” he says, and does, his eyes darkening as I caress the spoon with lips and tongue.
Under the table, his foot presses against mine. It’s just shoe leather on shoe leather, but it might as well be bare skin on skin, that’s how deep the sensation travels in my body.
“Where would the truck be parked while we had sex in it?” he asks.
“Someplace dark and quiet. But not a garage, not a driveway. Someplace we could get caught.”
His pupils are so big and dark his irises are just a thin ring around them. He shifts in his seat, and I feel a thrill of triumph, knowing he wants desperately to adjust himself and can’t.
Instead, he raises his eyes to catch the waitress’s, and I giggle at the urgency in his voice as he asks for the check. He gives me a stern look, but I can’t help it; I giggle again.
Chapter 33
Sawyer
What kind of guy could ignore that kind of information? I mean, seriously.
There’s a lesser-known entrance to one of the wilderness areas in Revere Lake, one that backs up on the lake but isn’t typically used for recreation. The parking lot there holds only a car or two, and when you’re parked there, you’re not visible from the road.
We won’t get caught. It’s a weeknight, the truck is black, and this entrance isn’t used much. Which is a good thing. We have kids at home. Neither of us wants our kids to have to attend Revere Lake High School under the shameful banner of being the child of people caught doing the deed in a pickup truck at the edge of the Revere Lake Forest Area.
That said, we could get caught, and we both know it. The knowledge is like a hand cupped around my balls. And I can tell she’s hyperaware of it, too, because when I brush her long hair back from her face, she whimpers at the touch of fingertips on blond strands, telling me how primed she is for me.
I kiss her cheek—as smooth as satin—the whorls of her ear, the edge of her jaw, the long line of her throat, her collarbone, until my fingertips find the top edge of her dress, and oh my God her tits are so fucking soft…
“I could live here,” I say reverently, my lips and nose against the curve of her breast, and she laughs, then jerks away suddenly.
“What was that?” she asks, and I can feel her heart pick up.
I’d seen it, too, the flash of lights from a car on the road.
“What, worried someone will see?” I tease. I cup her head, draw her close to me, kiss her. Just the touch of mouth to mouth, then a slow, tentative exploration, my tongue seeking and finding ways to give her pleasure. Her lips nip mine, her hands tug on my shirt and hair. She jerks my shirt out of my waistband so she can slide her hands under it while I kiss her deeper, longer, fiercer. I want to know every sound she makes. I want her to make sounds she’s never made before.
The headlights pass, illuminating the interior of the truck just enough to show me the haze of desire in her eyes, then head off down the road.
“We could get caught,” she whispers.
“Mmm-hmm. We could.”
She shivers.
“You like that.”
“Yeah.”
Jesus. “C’mere,” I say, and she climbs over the central console, straddling me. She reaches between us, unbuckles my belt, fumbles with my zipper. I push her hands out of the way. She lifts up and gives me access, and I free myself. My dick juts up between us, and she wriggles close, rubbing herself on me. I can feel how wet she is, soaking through the thin lace of her panties.
“Condom,” she demands breathily.
“Foreplay,” I remind her.
“I want you. Now. Tonight.”
I almost lose it. I have to summon all of my willpower. It has been worn thin by weeks of teasing each other, but we’ve made it this far and have only a few more days to go. I want the chance to make love to her slowly, carefully, luxuriously, on a hotel bed, for as long and as many times as I want. I want to make sure she has no regrets and no reason to distrust things between us.
“I don’t have a condom.”
“I think I have one in my pur—”
I cut off her words with a deep kiss, reaching between us to tug her lacy panties to the side so I can ease my erection along the slick seam of her sex. My dick skates across her swollen clit.
“Ohhhhhhh.”
“Like that?”
“I’d like it better if—”
I kiss her again, thrusting my tongue into her mouth, and she moans, shifting her hips against my hardness. She’s so wet we can hear that juicy slide in the quiet cab.
“I can hear how wet you are. I can hear how much you want it.”
Her head falls back and she grinds herself against me again. Her clit’s so ripe I can feel it against me, distinct, and I’m suddenly right at the edge. It’s her, the sound and scent and feel of her, her moans and her enthusiasm and how much fun I’ve had tonight with her, and for a second I’m convinced I’m going to go over before she does, but then she grabs my arms and cries out, humping me almost violently, wracking her body against mine, calling my name, squeezing my thighs between hers, and biting my shoulder hard enough to hurt.
I think it’s the teeth that do me in, in the end. I have just enough presence of mind to drop my palm over the head of my dick so I don’t coat us both in semen, even though some primitive part of me wants to—
“I want to come all over you,” I say helplessly, as I manage not to stripe her.
“Another day,” she says breathlessly, still jerking against me, all out of rhythm now, her face wide open with surprised pleasure.
“Is there anything that shocks you?” I demand, coming down off the blissful wringing high.
She shakes her head.
I lean across her to the glove box, find the wipes I keep there, clean myself up.
She watches, eyes soft. “Sawyer,” she whispers.
“Mmm-hmm.”
“I feel empty inside.”
“Oh, Jesus, Elle.”
“Put your fingers in.”
What’s a guy supposed to do? I oblige, of course. She’s still coming, still pulsing. Her hand tangles with mine, her
fingers on her clit.
“God, Elle, you make me crazy.”
She makes herself come again while I work my fingers inside her, curling them against her g-spot, my other hand tucking into the edge of her dress and bra to tease her nipple.
When she’s done thrashing, she sighs and leans her head against my shoulder.
A wave of tenderness sweeps through me, and I gather her as tight as I can to me. She rests her cheek against my chest and her arms come tight around me. Neither of us says anything, but I think we’re both feeling it, the intensity of the connection and something else, a giddy hopefulness.
We stay there a few minutes, and then it takes a while to get us untangled and cleaned up. Her dress hasn’t escaped entirely unscathed. Which makes me perversely happy.
“Does that count?” I ask her, once we’re all tidy and tucked in and I’ve started the engine.
“As?”
“As sex in a truck?”
She laughs. “Yeah. Hey. You never told me what your favorite fantasy was now that you fucked someone against a wall.”
I love the word fucked in her mouth. I love the unfolding boldness of her.
I back out of our parking space, then turn to her, leaning close.
“Getting a girl off twice in a row,” I murmur against her cheek, and can feel her shake with laughter.
Chapter 34
Elle
I make Hattie and Capria come over and keep me company while I pack for the wedding. It’s one of those complicated-to-prep-for trips where I have to remember things like safety pins and double-sided fabric tape, and I know that between them, they won’t let me forget anything.
Plus, I need to talk to someone about what’s happening with Sawyer.
“Okay, so let me get this straight,” Hattie says. “The sex is amazing.”
I carefully lay the dusty-pink dress into my garment-bag suitcase, smoothing out wrinkles and neatly folding the sides over so it fits without making weird creases.
