by Thea Devine
I couldn’t wait to get him in my bed. I crawled over him, with my mouth, my tongue, my hands, up and down his body and between his legs. I wanted to eat him up every way you could think of. I wanted to imprint him with my touch, my tongue and my sex forever.
My body was so ripe and moist, I thought I would burst. I felt myself dissolving all over him; I couldn’t get enough of him; I wanted to take him deep inside me forever and keep him safe.
It was only when we lay body against body, and I couldn’t tell if what I felt was my bare skin or his, that I understood the appeal of waiting so long for this moment. And then when he lifted himself over me so I could protect him, and he mounted me and thrust his penis deep inside my body, I felt such a connection I nearly cried.
The knife edge of a too-long-suppressed need fueled our first ferocious joining, blotting out everything. The surroundings, the past, the future were all subsumed in the heat and fury of his pummeling thrusts and my voluptuous response to him.
We made love for hours. I think there was a point at which we stopped and rested, even though I couldn’t bear not to feel his penis inside me.
“More.” It didn’t matter who said it, who wanted it. It was enough just to be joined, gently rocking, lightly kissing, erotically touching and feeling the heat and texture of his body. And the power.
Especially the power. It got to me, deep in a primitive place where it was all about the heat, the mating.
And he made me feel safe, and I didn’t expect that, either.
“I told you,” he murmured, as he stroked my hair.
“I knew,” I whispered. But I couldn’t have known how much I would love having intercourse with him. I wanted to stay in our tight little bubble where we would be naked, coupled and wallowing in sex forever.
That was my Garden of Eden. And love was a tricky word, not to be spoken lightly in the daze and haze of such incandescent pleasure.
“Come home with me tonight.”
A reality bite. “I don’t think I should.”
He looked at his watch. “Hell. It’s nearly three, and Paula could be rolling in any moment.”
Paula. I hadn’t given one thought to her. My focus was solely on Jed and how much not a surprise it was how perfectly we fit, how we meshed and matched. How much I wanted him. Now, again. And again, after that.
Forget what’s-her-name. Why had I put everything on hold because of her?
I sat up and he levered himself to his knees to kiss me again. He was raring to go and I grasped his penis and kissed him, mutely begging for him to take me again.
“Come with me.”
I was desperate to say, Stay with me. The pull-tug was awful. I wanted so much more of him, to explore the new beginning of us…and more than anything, to make up for lost time with him that could never be done over.
It was always about time, most urgently it was almost time for Paula to return, who would be unnecessarily devastated if she found us together.
I wanted to mount him again and damn the consequences, but he knew he had to leave. In between hot, arousing kisses, he dressed as I watched, and I reveled in the fact that that beautiful male body, that ferocious penis, those erotic kisses were all mine.
And nothing more needed to be said.
Except it was time to say something to Paula.
7
THE GUY DIET was so over.
“Did you hear me?” I demanded of Paula, who was in bed, moaning, groaning and heaving, not necessarily in that order. “The Guy Diet is over.”
Paula gave me a blurry look. “I don’t care. Where were you when I needed you?”
“Being rational. That’s why I’m done.”
Paula sat up suddenly. “I thought you were done last night. Something happened after I left the bar.”
God, she had radar even in the throes of a hangover.
“Yeah, I came home.”
She had gotten home around 4:00 a.m., slept for about an hour, and I’d been ministering to her hangover since then.
“Why?”
“Summer’s almost over.”
It wasn’t. It felt like it because I was in heat and I so wished I had gone back with Jed. I could be naked, on my back cradling his body instead of making up more lies to pacify Paula.
Why did I even say anything? Where was last night’s resolve?
“You’ve got that right,” she muttered. “Why do I do this to myself?”
“Yeah, why do you?” I asked rhetorically. “You’re a masochist. You want a relationship, yet you sabotage every possible chance of one because you want guarantees, you want perfection. So how’s that working for you this morning after?”
“Ooof—nasty this morning. Maybe something happened last night that was bad, so you’re snappy today.”
Something happened? Everything happened. You have no idea how much I didn’t want to be in that apartment with Paula and how much I wanted to be in bed with Jed.
“Okay, shower time.”
She fell back on the pillows. “I’ll call in.”
“Don’t. Please don’t. Because then I’ll worry myself to death about you all day.”
“I love that you care.”
Maybe that was my huge flaw, that I did care, that on some level I loved Paula like a sister—and she treated me like a sister, sometimes, telling me things I shouldn’t know and letting me see her at her worst.
“I care enough so I don’t want you to get fired.”
“I want a job like yours, you know, writing. About marketing or men or both or none, or something.”
Definitely still one sheet to the wind.
I pushed her into the shower and turned it on.
“You can’t fool me,” she shouted over the roar of the water. “Something happened yesterday.”
Well, she did it, whether she meant to or not—I felt the guilt.
And you know what made it worse? I realized I had no excuse to go out overnight. That meant no nights with Jed. Not yet.
Why should I care about Paula’s feelings at this point? I should do what felt good, right? I should be with Jed.
Well, lying even more to Paula wouldn’t feel too good, especially about Jed, and particularly at the outset of wherever last night would lead. So I couldn’t have gone home with him last night, or tonight—or any night until I dealt with Paula.
Okay, for one minute I thought about extreme measures. After all, it was my sex life, not hers. Jed wasn’t her property. I wasn’t her conscience or her soul. In this shark pond of competition for guys, I should view it as every woman for herself.
So I guess this was where the “maybe I owe her” part got to me. Or maybe I thought she thought I owed her. For the grab-and-go gig. After all, if she hadn’t been dating Jed, I never would have met him or opened my mouth or—had over-the-moon sex with him last night.
This was nuts. The Guy Diet had thrown everything out of kilter. Everything that should be right felt wrong, and everything that was wrong just got magnified into a bigger problem.
Which could be easily solved if we—I—could find Paula a guy. A nice guy with no flaws, no quirks and lots of money.
Easy. Now I was off The Guy Diet, I could troll the bike paths and the outer reaches of the park. I could talk to guys and take cards and make introductions, we could go to the beach on Saturday and ogle the bodies.
Oh God, I was tired just planning it. What was I thinking?
I had to get real: I’d gotten no sleep last night and I wished it had been because I’d gone home with Jed and he’d made love to me until I was delirious.
The only solution was to get her a guy. I didn’t know how. I didn’t know who. One thing for sure, he had to be as slick and as corporate as she was, had to look good with money to spend and could drink her under the table.
Piece of cake.
Wasn’t it true that if you projected yourself a certain way, like a magnet, things would come to you? Like money. Jobs. Friends. Guys.
“Tell
Paula,” Jed said when I spoke to him later.
“It’s not that simple. She’s already suspicious of my giving up the diet—if I tell her about you, she might go off the deep end.”
“Forget her deep end. What about your deep end?”
“You can dive in anytime.”
“What time?”
“You name it—time and place.”
“I’ll see you at six, here.”
“And while you’re at it, think of someone for Paula.”
“Not going to happen, Lo.”
“You’re not helping.”
“You’d help more if you’d just tell her.”
“Not until I find someone for her.”
“You’ll find someone for yourself sooner.”
“Nonsense.”
“Test it out. Don’t say I didn’t tell you.”
Well, he obviously didn’t want to put himself out. Fine. I would find that perfect someone, someone just like Paula, starting from point zero, even with my available antenna atrophied due to The Guy Diet.
“We’re going out tonight,” I told Paula, “and you’re going to get your act together. No drinking, no picking up and leaving with random guys. You’re going to behave yourself and maybe you’ll attract the kind of guy that sticks to relationships.”
“You’re dreaming. There’s no such thing.”
“And you have to stop the negative thinking.”
“Something happened. You’ve gone 180 degrees around from where you were even last week.”
I ignored that. “We start tonight. I’ll pick you up at nine.”
“Why so late? What are you up to?”
If only she knew.
“Not every hour of every minute of my day is your business.”
“I knew it—something happened. I bet you had sex. I bet you cheated on that dumb diet and that’s why you’re done with it.”
Now I had to get out of the apartment. “Nine o’clock,” I said firmly before I bolted out the door.
Phew. Now I had to factor in time with Jed—minimum, something hot and hard for lunch. And then max him out for two hours after work.
God, I made him sound like a credit card. I didn’t want things to go that way—grabbing snatches of Jed in between trolling with Paula.
That made it so not perfect.
I might just as well be back on The Guy Diet.
I called Jed immediately. “Can we meet for lunch?”
“Come to my place.”
“I don’t mean that kind of lunch.”
“I do.”
“I can’t. I have to go back on the diet if I’m going to survive the hunt for the perfect man. So we need to talk about…”
“Just get over here,” Jed said, emphatically disconnecting.
Well, that tore it. Why were Paula’s problems getting in the way of sex with Jed? I couldn’t get out of the building fast enough to grab a cab, which in Manhattan at lunchtime required major battle strategies even to get to Central Park West where Jed owned a big old-fashioned apartment overlooking the park in a prewar co-op.
He was at the door as I emerged from the elevator, and I felt my breath catch. I hesitated a step before I continued down the short hallway.
“We have to talk,” I said.
“No, we don’t. We have to kiss. We definitely have to kiss. Anything else can’t be that important.”
Funny. “I know where kissing leads,” I said severely. “And…”
“I like how you think,” Jed said, backing me against the door after he closed it. “Kissing first, details later.”
“O-okay…” I couldn’t say much more than that because he settled his mouth very precisely on mine and that was the end of any coherent thought.
“We have about a half hour,” he whispered at one point. “Do you really want to waste time on anything else?”
Anything other that getting his penis immediately between my legs seemed superfluous.
“I…” Close quote, close quarters, don’t think, just feel, let him feel every inch of your body as he strips off your clothes and you tear off his and take him in hand, take him in your mouth, devour him every which way you can think of, then protect him so he can mount you and hold you naked, hard and tight against the door, and he fills you with his lust and his desire—and what more is there in life than the rhythm of his thrusting, the length and feel of his penis and the exquisite unfurling of your orgasm when he spews hard into his own. The first of many.
“Don’t move…” His lips barely moved against mine a long while later.
I couldn’t. More kisses, dizzying kisses. No more of this. Had to talk, had to get back, had to have more kisses, more sex, more of him, more wasn’t even enough.
“Jed.”
“I know. I ambushed you.”
“I just have to…”
“God, I hate just have tos.” He eased away from my body and immediately I felt bereft.
I bent to pick up my clothes. “You’re going to hate the rest, then.”
“Does there have to be a ‘rest’? Because I can guess what ‘the rest’ is about.”
“You tell me, then.”
He gave me a flashing look that had a trace of humor. “No sleeping together until Paula is hooked up.”
I tried to recover as I slipped into my clothes. “Well. That doesn’t mean no sex. It just means no overnights.” I heard what I was saying and I thought, this is nuts. He’s going to think I’m nuts, and this will be over before it even gets a toehold.
Okay, moral choice—sex with Jed for however long it lasts—or lose a dear friend, for however long it takes her to forgive me.
God, moral choices are so hard.
At least he wasn’t watching all my anxiety play out on my face, because he’d gone into the bathroom.
I stared at myself in a nearby mirror. What did I see? I was nearly naked, my hair in disarray, my body, my face all soft with sex and satiety. What I didn’t see was the tension that always surfaced when I was feeling out a new lover. What was unspoken was my loyalty to Paula.
You are crazy. Give this up for Paula?
He came back into the hallway dressed in jeans and a tee. “Okay, my worker bee, back to the hive. Do what you have to do. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No kidding. Doorman will get you a cab.”
“Jed?”
“Really.”
I didn’t believe him. I decided to test him. “I’m taking her out tonight. Dinner at Tresco’s.”
“Nice. You can tell her about me and live happily ever after.”
“But you’re not an ‘ever’ kind of guy, are you?” I murmured, under my breath. I thought.
He gave me an enigmatic smile. “Whyever would you think that?”
I actually didn’t know what to think. Who cared about work when I could have been in bed all afternoon with him?
I needed to focus on my sex life. My love life. Only, I didn’t yet see how I could.
8
I FINALLY WENT HOME at eight-thirty so I could shower. Paula was there waiting for me.
“You are acting so weird,” she said.
“You’re acting like a hormone-clogged teenager,” I retorted, feeling great irritation I’d given up my overnight for a night out with Paula.
Forget the shower—I decided to just freshen up because I didn’t want to wash away the scent of Jed. I wanted to remember it, every last second of what we did and how he felt inside me and how much I wanted him inside me right now.
“You still haven’t confessed that you had sex.”
“Okay, I had sex.”
“I knew it.” Triumph supreme. Paula’s rut radar never failed.
I ignored that. “Are you ready?”
“Ready to hear juicy details,” she countered.
I bribed her. “At the restaurant. While we have dinner, I’ll tell you everything.”
Did I mean that? I didn’t know. We took a cab upto
wn where new-wave restaurants were starting to make incursions and draw clientele.
Tresco’s occupied the duplex of a brownstone near the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.
We opted for the rear parlor where there were fewer patrons and a cozy atmosphere of intimacy.
“So here we are,” Paula said, setting her wineglass on the table. “I don’t have a hangover, I’m on my best behavior and I’m being nice.”
“I’ll be on my best behavior, too,” I said, “but I have to say some things before we get into my rehabilitated sex life.”
Paula stiffened. “What kind of things?”
“Things you don’t want to hear.”
“God, I knew it. Ever since you invented this Guy Diet nonsense, you’ve been like a sanctimonious crusader for truth in dating. What don’t I want to know that I already know?”
“You can tell me,” I said.
Paula’s lips tightened. “You’re going to say I have to stop my wild and wicked ways.”
“Pretty much.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Because…?”
“Because why should I? I’m not looking for a relationship or marriage…”
I gave her a skeptical look.
“Or marriage,” she repeated emphatically as a waiter approached with menus. “I’m looking for good times, a few good sex partners and making lots of money at what I do.”
“Okay. So what was the thing with Jed all about?”
Paula shrugged as she scanned the menu. “He’s a Costigan, he’s social, he’s rich, he’s nice.”
“You were hoping,” I interpolated. “You were more than hoping.”
“Well, there was no hope.” Paula looked at up at me, her gaze skewering. “He broke it off because of you.”
My heart stopped, my hands started shaking. That couldn’t be true; that was Paula needing an excuse for why things ended between them, and a place to vent her disappointment and rage.
I could barely look at her. “That can’t be so.”
“So. He didn’t put it quite that way. He didn’t say that the instant he saw you that day—that time we had dinner together when you played up your faster, cheaper, better cooking? He didn’t say ‘I took one look at Lo and my insides just melted.’ Maybe two weeks later, he said words to the effect of, ‘I met someone and I need to get to know her and I can’t do that to you or with you.’ You were the reason, Lo, and it just about killed me.”
