by Tasha Jones
She moved her body against mine, pushing up against me with her legs open over mine, rubbing her most intimate parts against me. I twitched and ached under the sheets, craving her. As if I’d told her that she pulled herself onto me. Her body was on mine now, her breasts pushing into my chest, nothing between my skin and hers. It was smooth and supple, her breasts were firm and full, a good handful on each side and all natural.
She rubbed herself onto my cock, and I could feel how wet she was. She lubricated me with her body, teasing me, driving me wild. Every time I thought she was going to finally lower herself down onto me and give me a release she pulled up again, stroking me again. I moaned and complained into her mouth. I let my hands go where they wanted to, and they explored her body, her breasts, her ass, her legs and back for another round.
And finally, when I was sure I couldn’t take it anymore, she positioned me at her entrance, and she lowered herself down on me, burying me in her core.
Her walls contracted around me, and then stretched and yielded, adjusting to my size. She was silky, hot and slick. She started moving up and down, lifting herself up so I slid out almost all the way before she sat back down on me. I was afraid I was going to lose it right there.
But then she got down to business. She rocked her hips forward and back, rather than up and down, moving me inside of her, but grinding her clit against my pubic bone at the same time. Her hands were on my chest, she leaned on me, holding herself up. Her knees came to almost under my arms, and I ran my hands up and down her thighs.
She tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and moaned with abandon.
It was sexy as hell. She never used to be this confident about herself before. She’d always been beautiful, but she’d never known it. I wondered uneasily who had given her this confidence, but I pushed it away. I didn’t have to compare myself to invisible men in her past, because she wasn’t with them now. She was with me. Never did she make one move to cover up. She didn’t look shy. She rode me, and she took every moment of exhilaration and made it her own.
She built up something fierce inside me, and I was afraid, not for the first time since we started, that I would lose my load before we really got into it. But I controlled myself.
Tamika pushed up all the way so she straddled me. She changed her rhythm, rocking her hips in a circular motion. She trailed her hands up her own body, fingers spread across her skin. She moved upwards, feeling her own body, and finally her hands were on her breasts. She massaged them, letting me watch, while she drove me insane with her hips gyrating in a rhythm that picked up pace. With her fingers she pinched her nipples and rolled them.
Her breathing became erratic, interrupted by involuntary gasps. Her clit was still grinding against my pubic bone, and I could feel her insides contract around me. She became tighter, smaller, and at the same time I was growing in size, building up to release in her.
She pushed herself over the edge, gasping and crying out, and collapsing on my chest. Shudders travelled across her body in waves that matched the pulsing of her vaginal walls contracting.
I wrapped my arms around her back where she lay over me in a ball, and bucked my hips. I was the one that created the friction now, and she was limp on me, making small whimpering sounds.
I felt like I was going to explode, hot and throbbing, waiting for a release. I was on the edge, teetering over the abyss. Tamika moaned in my ear, taking my earlobe in her mouth and sucking on it softly.
That was what sent me over the edge. I released and exploded inside of her, letting out and groaning. She was so tight around me there was hardly space. My body had taken over, pumping until there was nothing left inside of me.
Finally I went limp, and slid out of her. She stayed like that on top of me, curled up in a ball with her legs on either side of my hips, and I held her. In that moment she was all mine, and I prayed that moment would last forever.
Chapter 7 - Tamika
When I woke up again, Noah had his hands wrapped around my body like he was never going to let me go again. I peeled his arms off and slid from underneath the covers so he wouldn’t wake up. I doubted he would – he was passed out.
My legs were stiff when I walked to the bathroom, and my hips were on fire. I smiled and closed the door behind me. I showered and shrugged back into last night’s clothes because I had nothing else with me. I sat down on the edge of the bath and counted on my fingers, trying to remember when my last period ended. If my calculations were correct I should have been in it by now, but I wasn’t.
A late period wasn’t a problem when I wasn’t involved with any men, but lately things had been completely out of control with Noah arriving at my hotel room and I was panicky as a rule. The sight of my menstrual cycle always brought relief with it, no matter how many months I’d gone without sleeping with someone.
It was something that happened when you got pregnant by accident. The stress of not having my period had eaten me alive back then, and the answer had been the baby. Now I was about ready to break into a cold fever.
I shook my head. This wouldn’t happen again, it couldn’t. Fate wasn’t that cruel. It would come, it had to.
When I was finished I walked around the ranch house, looking around. Last night when Noah had brought me here I’d thought he’d been joking, that we were like teenagers again, sneaking into someone’s house.
Until he’d told me the house was his. He was the owner of the ranch. I had to admit that was something I never expected of him. When I’d left he was barely getting by. I expected him to spiral down into a bottomless pit. That was how things had worked for his family.
The house was beautiful and it had a lot of potential. Someone had really put a lot of time and effort into the design and decoration of the place, but I knew it had been the people who’d lived here before Noah. It wasn’t that he didn’t have the ability to make a place home, it was just that he was too scared to. The only thing Noah had ever been attached to had been me. He’d learned that he would lose almost everything in his life at one point or another. I swallowed away the guilt that in the end he’d lost me too. It hadn’t been my fault, I told myself. After all, if he’d wanted a family with me I would have stayed. I would have given him my world despite the fact that his was falling apart around him and I’d have had to build a new one for him.
I walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, looking for something to eat. I thought maybe I’d make breakfast for when he woke up.
His fridge was empty, with only a few things like a head of lettuce, leftover meat that I didn’t think was good anymore, a tub of gravy and some butter and milk. It wasn’t exactly what I would call food. The bread bin was empty, too. I opened the cabinets one by one. The one above the fridge had a whole stack of beef jerky and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels. I didn’t think Noah wanted to drink in his life ever again. Not after his dad. Not since I’d gotten pregnant that first time. But there seemed to be more and more I just didn’t know about him.
My stomach turned and I felt hollow. The only time, I told myself. I wasn’t pregnant now. My cycle was just confused. There was no way I was pregnant again.
I hoped to God that was true. I know it was too early to tell, but after what I went through growing up I couldn't shake the worry.
I closed the cabinet again and found a nearly-empty box of cereal in the last cupboard. I rinsed a bowl in the sink and poured cereal. The wooden table in the middle of the kitchen was rich and polished, looking like it belonged in a fancy dining room instead. I sat down.
I was almost done eating when Noah walked in. His hair was a mess and he wore boxer shorts. I looked at his body. He had definitely filled out since I’d last seen him – the muscle and solid shape of his frame now marking the difference between a boy and a man. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand and sat down. He grinned at me.
“I see you found the cereal.”
“You didn’t have much else in your cupboards,” I answered, not returnin
g his smile and his face fell a little. I took another bite to give my mouth something to do. I never knew what to do when I was in his presence. Unless we were getting it on, I felt shy and awkward. It was difficult for me just to return smiles and pleasantries like everything was fine between us. Because the truth was I didn’t know if it was fine at all.
“I don’t often make an effort with food,” he said. “I have other things to do.” He waved his hand around us.
“The ranch was a bit of a surprise,” I admitted.
He looked at me, confused, and then it looked like the light came and on and he remembered what I was talking about. Was I the only one that remembered every single word he spoke to me every time?
“I didn’t know if you’d believe me. I didn’t really amount to much before you left and I didn’t want you to think I was a liar.”
“So you lied to me so that I wouldn’t think you were a liar?” I asked, raising my eyebrows and leaning back in my chair. He opened his mouth to try and explain, obviously couldn’t, and closed it again, giving me a sheepish grin.
“Nothing really makes sense with you around,” he said softly, and I wasn’t sure if should take it as a compliment or an insult.
“There’s so much I don’t know about you anymore,” I said. “I feel like you’re a stranger. It’s weird because when I look at you, I swear you look so much like the Noah I used to know I have to remind myself time has passed at all.”
He put his hands face down on the table. “Well, what do you want to know? There’s always time to get to know each other again, you know. You’re not exactly the way you were, either.”
I shrugged. “Well, now I know the ranch is yours, that makes a big difference. I bet it’s a lot of work. And a lot of money.”
“I’m doing better than I used to,” he admitted. He looked down at his hands, a lot of things remaining unsaid. I wondered what was stopping him, what went on in his head. It was like there was a screen between us now, a sieve that only let through half the information I’d been able to so readily get from him in the past.
“You spend time with kids too, apparently, which is the exact opposite of what I expected.” I knew I was putting my foot in it, but I couldn’t help myself. It was still a sore topic.
“That’s not really fair,” he said, sounding like he was trying not to be defensive. “I never said I didn’t want anything to do with kids.”
“Just my kid, then? You didn’t exactly jump at the idea of having one.”
“Having one… why are you making it about that again? That’s a whole subject by itself. I don’t mind getting into it, but I don’t really want to fight. Not now.”
“Well, maybe we should talk about it,” I said, looking at the empty cereal bowl in front of me.
“I really don’t want to..."
“My period may be late,” I interrupted him. I hadn’t meant to talk to him about it, not until I was sure. But he was going on about how he didn’t want to talk about it and it reminded me of how he hadn’t wanted anything to do with me the first time. And I didn’t know if I could do it again. I wanted to know now, once and for all, if he was going to get rid of me again the moment things were inconvenient for him.
When I looked up at him, his face had gone black. His eyes were horrorstruck.
“You don’t mean…”
“I don’t know yet. It’s a little soon to tell, but I thought you should know.”
He looked around the kitchen like it would offer him some kind of answer to whatever question he had inside of him.
“Is it mine?” he asked.
“Who else’s would it be?’ I asked. I bit down hard, forcing myself not to get offended. It could be a misunderstanding. He had better hope to god it was a misunderstanding.
“Well, I don’t know… what about Aaron? Or someone back in Lafayette? I don’t know what your life is like...”
I narrowed my eyes at him and slowly let the offense loose. It trickled through the barrier faster and faster until it flooded me.
“Are you suggesting that I sleep around?”
“I’m just saying I don’t know anything about you anymore,” he said, holding his hands up, palms forward. “I didn’t mean..."
“No, of course you didn’t,” I interrupted him again. “The only thing you were thinking about was that this should be someone else’s problem. You don’t care if it's yours or not. You just don’t want to deal with the fact that you’re avoiding your responsibilities as a father. Again.”
He stood up so fast his chair fell backwards. His hands were clenched in fists and he had a white circle around his mouth. “You don’t even know if you’re really pregnant. You just said that! All of this might be for nothing. I’m not going to sit here, in my own house, being told that I don’t have what it takes to be the best man I can be.”
A shrill ring cut through the ice in the atmosphere. Noah looked down like he didn’t know what was happening. His cellphone danced around on the counter behind him, the shrill ring surrounding us. He finally put two and two together and walked to the phone, picking it up.
I wanted to say something about his manners, answering a phone in the middle of a conversation, but he’d already pressed the talk button and had the phone against his ear before I got a chance to say anything.
“What?” he barked into the phone. A moment of silence. “Oh, Vanessa,” he said, his tone of voice changing. Something inside me steeled.
“No, I thought it was my manager. You know… Yes… I’m sorry. No, I’m…” He looked straight at me. “No, I’m not busy.”
I stood up and walked out of the room. Behind me he finished off his conversation and hung up. I was already by the front door when he came after me.
“Tamika...“
“Don’t, Noah.” I said, not letting him finish. He had nothing he could say to me that would make anything better. He’d broken it before. He was doing it again. “I was wrong. Nothing about you has changed.” I turned around, facing him square on. “And you know what? Even if I am pregnant, at the end of the day you don’t have what it takes to be a good father. You’re just as bad as your old man, you know that?”
The hurt on his face was so extreme I felt guilty right away, but the words were out there now. I would man up and mean them. I turned on my heel and stormed out the house. I remembered I hadn’t come there in the truck, I’d driven with Noah. Without missing a beat I walked down the long driveway that led to the ranch entrance. I pulled out my cellphone and dialed Aaron’s number.
“Where the hell are you?” Aaron asked. “You’re not answering your phone, I’ve been calling all morning.”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and looked at the screen. There were ten missed calls.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Larry is here. At the hotel. He arrived this morning early.”
My body went cold.
“Can you come get me?”
I explained where I was, and after whistling through his teeth he told me he’d be there in ten minutes. I hung up and took a deep breath, blowing it out again. I looked over my shoulder back at the ranch house. I didn’t know what it was that I expected, but it was quiet and lifeless. Noah wasn’t running after me begging me to stay. He wasn’t offering to drive me home. He wasn’t apologizing. He was inside, probably getting ready to see Vanessa, the woman who didn’t want children.
No wonder he was happy with her.
I stood at the end of Noah’s driveway for ten minutes. The road was empty, with no passing cars at all. A silver Mercedes came into view, sliding around the old road, looking out of place. I kept an eye out for the yellow truck, but then the Mercedes pulled up in front of me.
The tinted window rolled down, and Larry scowled at me.
“Get in,” he said before I could say anything. Aaron sat next to him in the passenger seat, looking at me apologetically. His face was a masterpiece, with two black circles around his eyes and a thick plastic band ta
ped down over his nose. His bottom lip was split and swollen, and he had a purple bruise the size of my hand across the left side of his jaw. With a pang of guilt I realized I’d just ditched him after the fight, and he’d had to sort out his nose all by himself.
I opened the back door and slid onto the rich leather seats. The car smelled new and expensive, and the door shut with an expensive clunk. Larry pulled off with a quiet purr, and did a U-turn, half onto the grass on the side of the road, and drove back down the road they’d come.
“Your nose…” I started, looking at Aaron more closely. He looked like death warmed up.
“Vanessa helped me find the emergency room, thank you,” he said. His voice was cold and slightly nasal. I didn’t know why I hadn’t noticed that over the phone.
“What the hell is going on here?” Larry barked, shutting us both up. I hadn’t expected him to wait until we got back to the hotel. “I send two of my best employees down here to take care of some sensitive business and you both disappear off the radar completely. I couldn’t get a hold of either of you. When I come down here the one has a busted nose and the other’s nowhere to be found.”
“With all due respect,” Aaron started. “I’m not an employee.”
“You’re not,” Larry snapped, “but she is.” He jabbed a thumb at me over his shoulder. “And if she wants to stay that way she’s got to pull up her socks and prove to me that she’s still an asset to my company.”
“This hasn’t been an easy job, Larry,” I said, making sure to keep my voice calm. “We’ve had a bit of trouble with the ranch office, it’s been a terrible mess and if we want to find a will..."
“You don’t have to worry about that anymore, Davis,” Larry interrupted me. “We found a will. Vanessa Bloom is named as the executor. Your job here is done.” He snorted. “A bit of trouble. I can just see what a picture the two of you are.”
