by Ranae Rose
He didn’t say anything, but she read the signs of what would come next in his touch – the way he withdrew his hands from her hair but placed them just as purposefully against her shoulders – and in the way he looked at her.
His gaze was so intense it felt like he was looking deep into her, divining secrets that made her heart beat faster just to think about. Did he know how badly she wanted him, how she’d made so many excuses to see him over the past six months, how thoughts and fantasies of him had lingered in her consciousness for days after each time she’d left Hot Ink?
Maybe he did, and maybe he’d felt the same way about her, because as he eased her down onto the bed and laid his body flush against hers, he sighed like he’d just gotten something he’d waited an eternity for.
She made a similar sound, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her hands to his back as he settled between her thighs.
He fit perfectly there, and she fought a tremor of anticipation as the head of his dick nudged the still-damp lips of her pussy. For half a second, they were still that way, with his hardness hot at the threshold of her ready body. And then he flexed his hips, pushing past her slick skin and into her aching core.
She’d dreamed of feeling him inside her, and the tight bands of muscle that embraced him now had been contracting in anticipation ever since he’d first laid hands on her. But the reality of feeling her body yielding to the broad shaft of his cock shattered her fantasizes and stole her breath. He slid deeper and deeper, going all the way on the first stroke. The unrelenting pressure of the head of his dick so far inside her ached in a way that permeated her entire body, not just the core of her, where he was.
For a few moments, she was still as pleasure made her dizzy. Breathing in a deep lungful of his scent, she dared to rock her hips, urging him to continue.
He pulled back slowly, retreating some but remaining firmly inside her, and rocked deep again as he bowed his head, pressing his mouth against hers.
She arched against the mattress as the softness of his lips and scrape of his short facial hair teased her into borderline-madness. When she let him in, he let his tongue delve into the far depths of her mouth.
Letting her fingers curl, she dug her nails into his back and clung to him as coherent thought faded away and some primal, happy part of her took over. Faint bolts of warning arced through her belly and she welcomed them, focusing on the promise of ecstasy they carried.
Each time Jed rocked into her, he hit a place deep inside her, and his body rubbed against her ultra-sensitive clit. Between the physical stimulation and the mental high created by his embrace, his scent and the sound of the bed groaning beneath them, she was amazingly, breathlessly sure that she’d reach climax.
They were still kissing when the first tell-tale ripple rolled through her, causing her pussy to seize up around his dick. She gasped and he groaned at the same time, causing their mouths to slip apart. She hardly had time to miss the pressure of his mouth against hers; her second orgasm pulled her in like a riptide, and it was all she could do to ride out the wave, unable to spare a thought for anything else.
He thrust harder into her, sighing her name as the contractions intensified.
Coming with his mouth against her clit had been amazing; climaxing with him inside her was a million times better. The rock-hard presence of his cock gave her pussy something to tighten around, something to embrace as her body reciprocated pressure for pressure and pleasure for pleasure. As she continued to gasp, his breath rushed against her face and rippled through her hair, hot and ragged.
After a few breathless moments at her peak, she crashed back down into the reality of still being in his arms and still experiencing pleasure, though she was suddenly exhausted. Her breathing slowed a little and hitched as he continued to rock into her with steady but increasingly fast strokes. Everything inside her seemed to melt as he breathed her name again, punctuating it with a hard thrust that sent echoes of her recent orgasm through her body, making her arch beneath him.
The aftershocks of her climax continued as he came, driving himself into her with unmistakable purpose. His pleasure was her pleasure, too; feeling him lose himself wasn’t the same sort of bliss as a climax of her own, but it rivaled that sort of satisfaction.
They stayed together for a few moments after he stilled, locked in the position in which he’d stolen her breath so many times that she’d lost count. When he withdrew, he settled beside her and cupped her face in one hand, gently turning her head until their gazes locked.
His eyes were intense, maybe even curious, almost as if he was searching for something in hers. Maybe he found whatever he’d been looking for, or maybe not – he didn’t say, just wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.
Quiet moments passed by, warmed by the heat of their bare bodies. Karen let herself sink into the feeling of intense satisfaction that lingered inside her, her gaze sweeping idly over Jed’s perfect body. Even after what they’d just done, the sight of him naked still made her spine tingle. She traced swirling lines of ink with her gaze, and one pattern – one word – in particular captured her attention.
Alice, the scrolling, loopy script that had been inked up his right side read. It was a simple tattoo, pretty and perplexing. Who was Alice? She wondered for a few brief moments before dismissing the thought.
There was a story behind every tattoo – Jed had told her that once – and the story behind a woman’s name obviously wasn’t one she was going to request as she lay naked in his arms. Instead, she brushed a fingertip lightly over the first word of the phrase that curved around his left ribcage, from front to back. “This is Latin, right?”
He nodded.
“What does it say?”
He swept a stray lock of hair out of her eyes, letting his fingers linger behind her ear. “Sic transit gloria mundi. Thus passes the glory of the world.”
CHAPTER 5
The whisper of Karen’s bare feet against the hallway carpet might as well have been gunfire. It captured Jed’s attention that effectively, reminding him that he wasn’t alone. He was so used to having the apartment to himself that any foreign sound rushed through the rooms and bounced off the walls, echoing inside his head.
“Morning,” he said, pulling an electric skillet out of the cupboard beside the fridge. He’d been up for maybe five minutes – long enough to pull on a pair of jeans and brush his teeth. She’d been sound asleep when he’d left her curled in his bed, tangled in the sheets.
“Morning.” She swept through the living area and into the kitchen, her thighs bare beneath the hem of one of his t-shirts.
“Thought I’d make breakfast.” He glanced at her over his shoulder as he reached blindly into a cupboard and pulled out a box of baking mix. He didn’t need sight to find it – no one but him touched anything in the kitchen; he always knew where everything was. “You like pancakes?”
“Love them.” She approached the table with a little twirl, faltering slightly on the slick tile and steadying herself with a hand on the back of one chair. “Need any help cooking?” she asked, half laughing.
“Morning person, are we?” he asked, taking in the bright shine of her green eyes and the straightness of her spine as she stood poised beside the table, her hair cascading over her shoulders in rumpled auburn waves. He teased, but she looked more alive than anyone else he’d ever seen less than a minute out of bed.
She awoke something in him, too – namely, his cock, which stiffened a little at the sight of his t-shirt clinging to her breasts and her mile-long legs bared beneath.
“I like mornings.” She let her hand slip from the chair and approached the counter, where he stood. “It’s the most peaceful part of the day, if you ask me. Not tired peaceful, though – exciting peaceful. When I get up, a part of me sort of feels like anything could happen.”
“Wish I could say the same.” Exciting wasn’t exactly how he’d describe his feelings while brushing his teeth, shuffling around the normally
quiet kitchen and finding something to eat while blinking the grit and heaviness of sleep out of his eyes.
“Want me to put some water on for tea?”
Her words went through him cold and fast, like a mouthful of ice water. Gripping the box of baking mix in one hand and a bowl in the other, he turned to see her holding the red teapot aloft, her slender fingers curled around the handle as she eyed him and then the nearby faucet.
“Actually, I drink coffee.” He set the bowl down on the counter, and the sound seemed absurdly loud.
“Oh.” She lowered the teapot back onto the rear left stove burner, the one he never used.
“I’ll put some coffee on. Do you drink it?”
“Yeah. I just saw the teapot and figured you didn’t.”
“It was my wife’s.” He poured too much baking mix into the bowl, then turned away to fetch eggs anyway, leaning into the fridge as the chill crept over his skin. He knew damn well that Karen probably didn’t know about Alice, and that sticking his head in the refrigerator was an idiotic thing to do. Still, he didn’t want to watch her face transform when he dropped the bomb on her.
“I didn’t know you were ever married.” Already, her voice was a little softer than before.
“For ten years. Lost Alice five years ago.”
“Oh, Jed.” The whisper-soft noise of her feet against tile rang in his ears again, strangely loud. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
She was so close now that he felt the heat radiating from her body. Straightening, he stood and closed the fridge, a carton of eggs cradled in one arm. “It was cancer.”
“No one ever mentioned it. I—”
“It’s all right.” A pang of guilt struck him deep in his chest as he met her eyes. They were so wide, still shining, but not with her early-bird cheerfulness. “I just didn’t want to keep it a secret. Everyone else knows.” Most or all of Hot Ink’s staff, anyway. Maybe not Mina, who’d only been working in the shop for a few months, but the rest… James and Tyler had known Alice, and the others had been there long enough to hear the stories.
“I feel terrible for bringing it up.”
“Don’t. If I couldn’t bear thinking about her, I’d have put the teapot away. You’re fine.”
“Okay.” She didn’t say anything else about it, but she stayed close by his side and helped him make the pancakes even though it was so easy that two people complicated the process more than simplified. He didn’t mind the closeness, the rubbing of elbows and the soft whip of her t-shirt hem against his thigh. But he minded the way her sunniness had disappeared, replaced by a more somber version of the Karen who’d twirled up to the table just minutes ago.
As they ate the pancakes and sipped coffee together, she blushed a little when she told him how much she’d enjoyed the night before. Her words and the way she looked up at him from beneath her lashes were enough to make him fully hard beneath the table. Still, he didn’t dare take her in his arms and loose himself in loving her again, because the sunlight that filtered through the nearest window illuminated the way she checked her smiles, the way she glanced at him every now and then as if searching his face for something that worried her.
He should never have brought her back to his apartment. Five years had passed since Alice’s death, but the place was still a museum of his grief; the kitchen alone held so many of her things, from the teapot to the little drawer full of decorative towels to the old tins of loose leaf tea that lurked in the back of a cupboard. He didn’t use any of them, but he didn’t get rid of them, either – how could he?
Karen was brighter and warmer than the sunlight that backlit her, lending her hair a fiery sheen. It had been wrong of him to bring her to a place where she felt the need to suppress herself and whatever happiness she possessed, and it was wrong of him to keep her there. When she said that she had a Sunday afternoon portrait session she needed to prepare for, he did his best to ignore the stabbing feeling of longing the idea of her departure filled him with.
As he waited at the table while she dressed in the bedroom, being alone in the kitchen didn’t feel as natural as it usually did.
When she paused at the door and pressed her mouth gently against his, he fell back into the trap of passion, completely and selfishly. For a few moments, he kissed her deeply, until he thought his lips might bruise. His cock was hard, aching like the rest of him, and her body was so soft and hot against him that he had to remind himself why he couldn’t just keep her there, pressed against the doorframe, forever. Mentally cataloguing all of Alice’s kitchen items, he pictured Karen as she’d looked when she’d apologized for offering to make tea.
“Are you closing the shop tonight?” she asked when he finally ended the kiss and pulled back.
“Yeah. I’m opening too, in about two hours. That leaves plenty of time for me to give you a ride home.”
“Thanks.”
His feelings of guilt hadn’t faded by the time he pulled up in front of her apartment building. There, he clutched the wheel as he remembered his first impulsive, selfish mistake – kissing her instead of letting her walk inside untouched. He made the same mistake again, stroking his tongue along the seam of her mouth and inside, where it entwined with hers, before she opened the passenger side door.
“You mind if I give you a call tonight, after I close up?” he asked, knowing he couldn’t not say anything.
She smiled, and her genuine expression wrenched something deep inside him painfully. “I’ll talk to you then.”
He watched her climb the stairs and disappear into her apartment. Alone again, he pulled away from the curb and tried to figure out what he’d say to her that night, how he could possibly convey the truth – which was that he had nothing to offer her – in a way that she’d believe.
* * * * *
Karen sank into her desk chair and breathed a sigh of contentment. It was so nice to shoot reasonable, poseable human beings. Much better than hyperactive greyhounds. Her client – a highschool girl – and her mother had just left the studio, and there wasn’t a trace of pee or silver hair anywhere. Popping the SD card out of her camera, Karen prepared to spend an hour or two going through the images from the senior portrait session, choosing the best and beginning editing work.
She’d barely tagged three especially good images when her phone vibrated against the surface of the desk.
Her heart gave a little leap as she reached for it, her mind awash with memories of Jed’s touch, Jed’s heat, Jed’s voice… Hot Ink wasn’t due to close for a couple hours, but she couldn’t help but wonder whether he might be calling her early during a break. Who cared that she’d seen him just that morning? Remembering their time together was like a natural high, and she couldn’t wait to see him again, to do it all over again.
It wasn’t Jed. A potent little bolt of disappointment shot through her as she eyed the unfamiliar number. 212 – what area code was that? Not a Pittsburgh one.
“Hello?” She answered the call, still half-lost in thoughts of Jed.
“May I speak with Karen Landry?”
“That’s me.” She drummed her fingertips against her desktop, eyeing two very similar shots. The girl’s smile was a little wider in one, but they both flattered her.
“This is Emma Day-Rogers. I’m calling on behalf of Marc St. Pierre Bridal.”
Karen’s heart leapt into her throat and she immediately stopped drumming her fingers on the desk, gripping the edge instead as her pulse pounded in her ears. “Yes?”
“We’re pleased to inform you that your entry in our Elegant Bride Photography Contest has passed the final round of judging and has been chosen as the winner.”
Somehow, Karen resisted the urges to scream into the phone and / or pass out on the spot. Gripping the phone hard, she managed some kind of response and spent the next fifteen minutes jotting down all the details Emma gave her, asking questions here and there and confirming that yes, she was able to travel during the set dates. By the time the conversation was
over, she felt like she was floating on a cloud, high above the skyline.
Mina was at work, so Karen dialed Hot Ink’s number, spinning in her desk chair as she waited for her to pick up.
The sound of her best-friend’s voice sent her excitement spiking to new levels. “Mina! Guess what?”
“What?” She lowered her voice to a half-whisper. “Did you finally get together with Jed this weekend?”
Karen took a deep breath as memories of doing exactly that hit her again. “Yes, but that’s not what I’m calling about.”
“Okay, what’s so exciting that you’re skipping telling me about your date with Jed?”
“You know those photos you let me take of you in your wedding gown for that contest?”
“Yeah.”
“I won! I won the contest, Mina. I get to go to New York in a couple weeks to shoot a spread for Marc St. Pierre’s winter bridal catalogue!” It was the first time she’d said it out loud, and she found herself half-shouting despite her best efforts to contain her enthusiasm.
“Karen, that’s amazing! Congratulations.”
Karen forced herself to exhale slowly. “Thanks again for posing for those photos. This is going to be amazing for my portfolio. I mean, Marc St. Pierre! What a tear sheet!”
“I bet this will open all kinds of doors for you, Karen. I can’t wait to see the photos.”
“I can’t wait to take them. I’m so excited I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t edit images right now – I can’t even sit still.”
“I’m working tonight because I was just getting home from the fieldtrip this morning, but I’ll be off work in a couple hours when the shop closes. Let’s meet for a drink to celebrate. It’ll be just the two of us – Eric went home an hour ago, so he’ll be there for Jess if she needs anything.”
“That sounds great. Ruby’s?”
