by Lola Darling
At lunchtime, we wander into an outdoor farmers’ market, where we stock up on fresh-baked bread that smells so heavenly it’s all I can do not to eat it right out of our grocery bag. The cheesemonger lets us try slice after slice of cheeses, some I’ve never even heard of before. We argue about stinky versus soft cheeses, and the merits of each one, before we compromise on a melt-in-our-mouths Brie and some soft white French cheese that I can’t pronounce. At a nearby shop, we choose some jamon iberico, a Spanish marbled ham, to go with the cheeses, and then Jack picks out a basket of blueberries to go with it.
On our way out of the market, he grabs a bottle of wine too, which at least explains the wine opener I’ve been carrying in my purse.
Then, splitting our purchases between us, we hike out of town, through a row of trees and up a grassy hill, higher, higher, higher, until finally, when I pause to catch my breath and look behind us, I realize the whole village is spread at our feet like a painting, the tiny church spire the highest point above the stone-, brick-, and wood-walled buildings in the low valley.
A cow moos from a neighboring field. Jack leads me to the fence that separates us from the cow, which has a funny step cut into it—“So you can cross the field,” Jack explains, as if it’s perfectly normal to not only allow strangers to trespass here, but to cut steps into your own fence to make their trespassing easier.
Jack spreads out a blanket he brought from the car on the grass, and we kneel beside one another, working in silence for a while as we slice the bread and cheese, lay out the meat and the blueberries. He opens the wine bottle and produces a couple of wine glasses from what I mistakenly assumed was a bag full of work supplies, since it looks like a briefcase to me.
Before we dig in, he pours us each a small helping of the fragrant, fruity wine, and lifts his glass to me.
“To inspiration,” he says.
“To inspiring people,” I reply, tapping my glass against his. The heady wine is some of the most delicious, complex wine I’ve tasted. I only take a small sip, afraid it’ll go straight to my head if I have too much. Then I take one of the open-faced sandwiches we’ve assembled and dig in, the mingled tastes of the smooth cheese, the sharply-sweet ham, and the crunchy, soft-in-the-center bread making me moan in delight.
Jack grins. “Suddenly I’m jealous of our luncheon. I thought only I made you make that sound.”
I swallow the whole mouthful in order to stick my tongue out at him. “Don’t make me regret thinking so nicely of you all morning.”
He fakes a gasp, and pretends to fan himself in shock. “Excuse you; I’m always lovely.”
“Not usually this romantic, though.” I sweep my arm across the horizon, taking in everything from the deep blue, cloudless sky overhead to the green hills, the trees just starting to turn yellow and red and gold, and the town that matches them, nestled in between all the greenery. “I mean, what is this, a movie set?”
“It’s easy to romance Americans. You’ve never been introduced to the charms of English village life.”
“And I suppose you’re an expert, having grown up in an adorable little hamlet like this one?” I resist the urge to stick my tongue out once more.
To my surprise, he goes quiet at that. Not in a sullen way, just in a contemplative one. He studies the village again, a wistful look in his eye. “Not exactly. Me, I grew up in a crappy, dingy little suburb of Newcastle.”
I’ve never met anyone from that city, the northernmost in England that I know of. It explains why I never could place his accent, at least.
“But we left town every chance we had to visit places like this. We came to this one in particular a few times, in fact. So in a way, you could say I am accustomed to the charm, yes.”
I tuck my feet underneath me—I kicked my shoes off, and my toes are starting to get a little chilly up here. But I don’t want him to stop talking, so I try not to move much, in case that distracts him. Luckily, his eyes seem pretty focused—or rather, totally unfocused, as he gazes off into the distance. “What was it like?” I murmur. “Growing up there.”
“Good, I suppose. Mostly. It’s not like I have much to compare it to.” He cracks a small smirk. “My parents are lovely people. College sweethearts, dated all through uni, then had me, settled down in the town where they grew up, had my sister next. We live a five-minute drive from my grandparents, and my aunts and uncles all live within a ten-mile radius. Even my sister, when she left, only moved into downtown Newcastle with her boyfriend, which is about twenty minutes’ ride tops on the bus.”
“But you left,” I point out.
“Not until after uni. I . . . ” He trails off, shaking his head. For a moment I think he’s done talking. But he heaves a sigh and keeps going. “I was a little lost, for a while there. Jumped from job to job. Couldn’t decide what I wanted to do, where I wanted to live, none of it. My parents were pressuring me to buy a house, settle down, figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t want to stay there, but I didn’t know where I wanted to go, either, and since my whole family, all my friends were there, it just seemed a lot easier to hang around treading water instead of running away into the great unknown.”
I pick at a blade of grass beside it, toy with it while I watch him from the corner of my eye, like a shy animal I’m afraid to spook. “What happened then?” I finally venture.
“Took a poetry course at Newcastle. Realized I was good at it. Really good. My professor encouraged me to go for my masters. Mum disagreed in her unassuming sort of way, but Dad and I fought like hell about it—he told me I was already skint, so why make my life worse with student loans for a bullshit degree that’d never be worth anything. But I finally knew what I wanted. So I said screw him, moved as far as I could get in-country, down to London to go to Kings College, and I’ve not been back home since, save for holidays. Sometimes,” he amends with a grin.
Despite the smile, it’s clear that this is a sore spot from the twitch in his forehead, the tic in his angular jaw. I reach across the blanket and curl my hand around his, squeeze his fingers gently. “You’re brave for leaving.”
He squeezes back. “You’re sweet for saying so. But it was nothing. Not like I moved to a whole new country all on my lonesome.” He winks.
“You stood up to your parents, though. You knew what life you wanted to lead, regardless of the path they told you to follow.” I think about my mother, begging me to stay close for school. I think about the acceptance letter I received for Stanford, all the way out on the West Coast, a whole new half of the country to explore. I think about how I chickened out and tore that one up, told her I was rejected anyway, and accepted the place that Penn offered me.
Not that I dislike Penn, by any means. I love my school, and I’ve made a ton of friends there. Philly’s nice enough, too, with plenty of neighborhoods to explore. But sometimes I lie in my dorm at night, staring out the window, and I wonder what life on the other side of the country would’ve been like.
For a few minutes, we’re both quiet, eating our sandwiches and sipping the rest of our single glasses of wine in silence. Eventually, one of the cows in the field breaks the quiet with a long lowing sound, and we both break into laughter.
“Come on,” he says. “We’ve still got some riverbeds to explore.”
We pass the rest of the afternoon picking blackberries alongside one of the streams that trickles along the outskirts of town, and taking turns mashing them into one another’s cheeks on the pretenses of feeding them to each other. After a blackberry brawl that ends up with my whole face dyed purple, I take a break to strip down to my tank top and splash the juice off in the stream.
Of course, Jack takes this opportunity to shove me from behind, so hard I stumble into the (luckily only two-foot-deep) stream, screeching the whole way. Not one to let him get away with that so easily, I race back to the bank and grab his arm, dragging him in alongside me, both of us tripping over each other and kicking waves at one another’s faces until we’r
e both drenched from head to toe.
It’s cool enough that I’m shivering in my thin tank top, though he looks fine, still dressed in his thick woolen sweater, which aside from being a little damp, seems no worse for the wear. I slosh through a foot of water to reach his side, and tug at the hem. “This seems an unfair advantage.”
“Do you need my sweater?” he asks, pulling it over his head. To my disappointment, he’s still wearing a thin undershirt beneath. Though, on the bright side, it’s damp enough that it clings to his muscles, and where I hit him with a particularly big splash on his stomach, the white fabric is see-through, revealing his chiseled abs. They look even more perfectly formed in daylight than when I ran my hands over them the other night, on his darkened couch.
He’s still holding the sweater, extended toward me like an offering. I take it from him and toss it onto the far bank beside my own. “You won’t be needing that.” I grin.
He steps closer to me, closing the final gap between us. We stand face-to-face now, my head tilted back so I can stare up at him, as the steam eddies around our knees, the current gentle, the water just cold enough to make my nipples stand at attention, and goosebumps prickle my skin. His arms wrap around my waist so my stomach presses against his belt buckle.
. . . Oh. That’s not his belt buckle.
My grin widens. “You know,” I say, conversationally, “I never did get revenge for the confessional booth.”
His eyes go wide, before they dart around us, taking in what I’ve already noticed. A copse of autumn trees shields us from view of the only road nearby, a low footbridge that passes over the stream. We haven’t seen another hiker for almost an hour.
But there are still the houses behind the stream, their windows lined up at just the right angle to see us. If anyone happened to be looking outside at this hour of the day, which, come on, who would be at home moping at a window on a day like today?
“It’s broad daylight,” he hisses. “Anyone could walk past us right now.” But I’m already pushing him backwards, both hands on his chest. He stumbles out of the stream onto the bank, and I drop to my knees before him, my hands fumbling at the zipper on his jeans.
“This is a terrible idea, Harper,” he says, louder this time. But he doesn’t try to stop me as I draw open his fly and push his pants around his knees.
He’s rock hard already; I let my fingers drift over him, through the thin fabric of his boxers, toying with him while I catch his eyes and smile. Without warning, I yank his boxers down too, keeping my eyes on his.
“Christ,” he hisses.
Protests aside, he can’t help the spark that flares in his eyes, or the telltale part of his lips, anticipating what I’m about to do to him. I savor holding the power this time, as I dip my head to trace my tongue around the base of his cock, letting his shaft brush my cheek, tickling him with my hair.
I keep going like that until he’s nearly panting, his hands fisted in my hair, clenching when I lick all the way up his shaft to flick my tongue across his tip. God he tastes good. Like salt and musk.
Then I draw back, just enough to let him feel the cool fall air on the spot I’ve just tasted.
“Harper . . . ” His eyes have gone dark, feral.
I love making him do that. My smile widens. “Beg,” I say.
He scowls at me, but I am unmoved. This is payback for the confessional. For all the times he’s driven me completely wild.
He’s got more patience than I do, though. Or he’s more stubborn. Same thing. He clenches his jaw, and even though I can tell it’s driving him nuts, he doesn’t say anything, just watches me watching him. “All you have to do is ask nicely,” I say, letting my lips brush his shaft as I talk.
His throat constricts as he swallows hard. “Please,” he breathes out, like a surrender.
Good enough for me. I swallow him whole.
Jack
The moment she takes me into her mouth, I’m gone. Her tongue circles my cock, her warm hands cup my balls, squeeze them hard enough that I grunt. Without thinking, I fist my hand in her hair and thrust into her mouth. She swallows me without protest, so deep I can feel the back of her throat before she pulls away, almost completely releasing me, then sucks me deep into her mouth again.
We move like that, the burning heat of her mouth a sharp contrast to the freezing cold water still dripping down my chest and the sharp breeze picking up around us, until I can’t take it any longer. I groan her name through my teeth as I finish, and she keeps her lips tight around me, sucking every last ounce from me.
When she finally pulls back, I drop to my knees beside her. Looking at her like this, her cheeks flushed, hair mussed from where I couldn’t help gripping it, her eyes alight with pleasure, clearly savoring what she just did to me, I want to shove her into the grass and fuck her again right here. I pull her shirt up, ready to bend down and suck her nipple into my mouth. My cock already starts to twitch again, as the blood flows back into it.
But before either of us can move, we hear the sound of wheels crunching on gravel, loud and far too close.
Shit. One of the houses has a driveway alongside it. Down which a compact car is slowly meandering.
Harper dives for her sweater while I fumble with the clasp of my jeans, both of us barely managing to cover ourselves decently before we hear car doors slamming, and the voice of a man and woman arguing, just on the other side of the bush behind which we’re crouching.
Our gazes meet, which is a bad idea, as neither one of us is able to stop grinning. Soon we’re both shaking with silent laughter, which turns into loud, real laughter the moment we hear the house door slam.
We grab the rest of our things, and as we stride across the grass toward the town, my hand catches hers, intertwines her small, delicate fingers between my strong ones.
I can’t remember ever feeling quite like this. The buzz of happiness between my ears, the skip in my chest when she glances over her shoulder at me, winking, as we pass the house where we narrowly escaped detection.
What is she doing to me?
#
We settle into a booth at a quiet little Italian restaurant. She orders the carbonara, and I get spaghetti, though by halfway through the meal, we’ve traded so many bites we might as well have just shared both dinners.
Under the table, I brush my hand over her knees, tickle the inside of her thighs just enough to make her glare and kick me in the shins. Her look says, Stop it, but the way she squirms in her seat makes me think she doesn’t mind so very much.
“You still owe me, you know,” I tell her as she accepts a bite of meatball from the tines of my fork. I love the way her lips close around the metal. I can still feel them wrapped around my cock, taking every inch I gave her.
“Owe you what?” She lifts an eyebrow.
“You promised to read me one of your poems.”
Those beautiful blue eyes of hers narrow to slits. “You weren’t serious.”
“Oh, but I was. Come on, now’s as good a time as any.” I rap the table with one knuckle. “Let’s hear one.”
She’s silent for a long moment, clearly weighing her options.
“I promise I’ll make it worth your while,” I add with a grin, which seems to tip the scales in my favor.
She sighs, but she reaches into her bag for the notepad I spotted in there earlier today, all the same. “You have to promise not to judge me too harshly,” she says. “Or at least lie to me if you think it totally sucks.”
“I can promise no such thing. But I can’t imagine anything you write would turn out badly.”
I lean back in my seat, at just the right angle to press my leg against hers, and close my eyes to listen. She reads beautifully, the words flowing from her lips as easily as a conversation. Not everyone can read poetry, even if they write it well—and write it, she can. Her words, her phrasing, her cadence all have a unique flow to them, a pattern that’s at once lovely, arresting, and so very Harper.
She finis
hes the poem all too soon, and I keep my eyes shut for another moment, just letting the meaning sink in, savoring the experience.
When I open my eyes once more, she has hers closed, her mouth pressed into a thin, grim line. “Okay, out with it,” she says. “Get the criticism over with first.”
I laugh, softly, unable to help myself. That only makes her wince harder. “Harper.” I reach across the table to rest my hand on hers, and just the touch of her skin to mine feels like a flint striking fire. “You are incredibly talented.”
Those baby blues snap open, full of disbelief. “You’re just saying that to get into my pants.”
I snort. “Clearly I don’t need any such help to get inside your pants.” My hand flexes around hers, draws her arm across the table so I can trace my fingertips up the inside of her wrist. She shivers, which makes me smile. “But you don’t need my reassurance, either. You’re too good not to already know it.”
Her cheeks flush, for a very different reason than they did earlier today. I enjoy it just as much. “I guess I know I don’t suck,” she admits. “I’m still allowed to think you’re just saying it, though,” she adds, stubborn as ever.
“This is my job, Harper. I’ve read enough shitty poetry, and enough stellar work, in my time to know when someone has it and when they don’t. You’ve got it, in spades.” I trail my fingernail along her veins, just to make her shiver again. “Now, your assignment, Ms. Reed, is to not let all that talent go to waste. I expect you to write something new every week, even if I have to drag you kicking and screaming on inspirational trips every weekend.”
She laughs and rolls her eyes. “Easy for you to say. Inspiration doesn’t just happen when summoned.”
I tap the center of her palm, and her hand closes around mine to squeeze back. “It does if you give yourself permission to take your own writing every bit as seriously as you take your course work. You don’t fail to turn in an essay on time just because you weren’t inspired at the right moment. Do the same thing for your poetry, or you’re doing yourself a huge disservice.”
