Worth The Risk

by Carly Marie

Mark

  Holy. Shit. Those were the only two words I could think of when my eyes cracked open on Saturday morning. Light filtered into my room through the closed curtains. No. The room I was in was not my room. Fuck, where was I?

  When I’d originally opened my eyes, the splitting headache and spinning room had informed me I’d made less than stellar choices the night before. No matter how hard I tried to ignore the headache and focus on my surroundings, I couldn’t figure out where I was. Nothing felt familiar about the cozy room, which didn’t help my confusion. I might have only lived in my house for two weeks, but I knew my bedroom and I knew my bed. I definitely wasn’t in either.

  I pinched my eyes closed again and tried to piece together where I was. The sheets smelled fresh, and the bed was comfortable. I was no longer in the clothes I’d been wearing when I left the house but was now wearing comfortable pajama pants and a soft T-shirt. I buried my nose in the fabric of the shirt and inhaled. A crisp linen scent filled my nose, but I couldn’t place it. Definitely not my laundry detergent. It might not have been mine, but it smelled so good I wanted to bury my nose in the shirt and not take it off. That thought should have made me nervous, but instead it helped me focus on the events of the previous evening.

  After helping Jeff get his car back to the garage, we went out to dinner. I’d had a few beers as we chatted about our lives. I told him about my ex, and he told me about coming to adopt his children. I remembered enjoying the meal and the company. It had been one of the most laid-back meals I’d had with another adult in years.

  After we’d eaten, my memories became slightly fuzzy. There were snippets of laughter, and I had a feeling the laughter was mainly from me. I also remembered strong arms wrapping around me, murmuring something about getting me to bed.

  Finally, my brain caught up with me and my eyes shot open, causing me to wince at the brightness. I was in Jeff’s house. I’d been too drunk to go home when we’d stumbled back to his house. Wait, I didn’t remember Jeff being as drunk as me. Thankfully, I hadn’t been black-out drunk, just tipsy enough that the world was a little hazy… and I now had a hangover that would likely plague me for a number of hours but not level me for the day. My tolerance was lower than it had been when I was a teenager. Fuck. At least my stomach didn’t seem like it would revolt if I got out of bed.

  A flash of bright pink caught my eye and I turned over slowly to see what it was. A note was scrawled across the paper in blue pen, and I had to smile as I read it.

  Morning, Mark. Hope you’re doing okay. Bathroom’s to the right, fully stocked. Advil’s below this note.

  I pulled the paper away from my face slightly to see the small bottle of painkillers and a bottle of water, then continued to read.

  No need to rush this morning. Coffee will be in the kitchen when you’re ready.

  The house was blessedly quiet. I didn’t know if I was ready to stumble out of the guest room looking like something the cat dragged in around his kids. I remembered him mentioning they were both gone for the evening.

  I’d managed to fall asleep in a virtual stranger’s house after having too much to drink. What a mess.

  There was an attached bathroom I could see from my place on the bed, but dammit, the smell of both coffee and a hearty, greasy breakfast were wafting up the steps. I salivated as my nose detected bacon and potatoes, and my stomach rumbled. Some things never changed, including hangover remedies I thought I’d left behind in my twenties.

  I forced myself to sit up, wincing at the way the room briefly spun. I closed my eyes and groped blindly at the nightstand until I found the bottle of painkillers. I was able to open both the pills and the water without opening my eyes and downed three of the tablets and half the bottle of water before I tried to focus on anything. With the Advil in my system, I would be feeling better in thirty minutes or less. By the time it kicked in, I’d also have food in my belly. I encouraged myself to get out of bed with the reminder that within a half hour, I would be feeling more or less human.

  As I moved to get up, the smell of the shirt I was wearing wafted up again, and I let out a contented sigh. It would have been nice to shower after the night before, but the smell of food was too tempting. I decided to find food. I chose to ignore the small part of my brain telling me Jeff’s shirt felt too good to take off quite yet.

  It wasn’t difficult to find Jeff standing in his kitchen. “Morning.” My mouth tasted like I’d licked an ashtray, and despite drinking the water upstairs, my voice sounded like I’d eaten gravel from the driveway.

  Jeff looked over from his place at the stove and smiled. He’d had more to drink than I had, so why did he look so damn chipper while I looked, felt, and probably smelled like shit? “Morning.” He pushed a cup of coffee over to me, and I sighed as the first taste of black coffee hit my tongue. “How’s the head?”

  I groaned, only partially dramatically. “I’m too fucking old to have a hangover.”

  “With age comes wisdom. The wisdom to know our limits. The wisdom to know when we’ve surpassed them. And the wisdom to know that, while we may push the limits less, we’ll still push them, and they’ll still win.”

  He turned around to tend to the frying bacon. For the first time, I took a moment to look at the man I’d befriended the night before. He was lean, though toned. He’d been wearing layers the night before, so I hadn’t seen the definition in his shoulders and biceps or the corded muscle that ran down his forearms. Standing in his kitchen in pajamas with sleep-mussed hair, Jeff was attractive.

  It had been a long time since I’d looked twice at anyone, even longer since I’d noticed a man. My sex drive had basically died with my marriage. I’d thought about it over the years but had never given it serious consideration beyond thinking Nicole had been the only one for me. With her gone, I thought there would be no one else. But I’d also thought that maybe my sex drive would come back when I could focus more attention on a relationship with someone else and less on keeping my children alive. I’d known single parents to date and fall in love and also continue to work and do the after-school activities, but I was convinced I couldn’t be that person.

  I sat at the counter staring at him for way too long as he moved around the kitchen. Watching Jeff prepare breakfast was making me look at body parts I hadn’t given more than a passing glance to outside of my job since college. The soft swell of his ass in his sweatpants as he bumped a drawer shut with his hip. The dimples above his ass that appeared when he reached up to grab glasses out of the top of a cupboard.

  It took until he was plating the food on the stove for me to put a word to what I felt: attraction. The thought took me by surprise and I had to fight to keep my face neutral as he turned around.

  “Orange juice?” he questioned as he headed to the fridge, the side of his shirt caught on itself and exposing a patch of skin just above his hip.

  I forced my eyes away from where they’d fallen, trying to remember the question. Cups, fridge, drinks. Orange juice! “Yes, that would be great. Thanks.” I took another sip of my coffee and sighed. “This is the best breakfast I’ve had in years.”

  Jeff shot me a playful grin. “Don’t go complimenting it before you’ve actually tasted it. It could taste like shit.”

  “If it tastes half as good as it smells, it will be amazing. And it really will be the best breakfast I’ve had in years.” I didn’t normally eat breakfast, so it wasn’t a stretch. If I did, it was a bagel or a donut on my way to or from dropping off the kids at school. I’d been trying to make breakfasts for us the last few weeks, but they’d mostly ended up in the trash. No amount of ketchup or salt could save overcooked eggs and burnt potatoes.

  I’d never had natural muscle like Jeff. I’d spent most of my adult life with a little extra weight around the midsection, a cuddly pillow more than firm muscles. After Nicole left, I had started to see a therapist. The woman had recommended I find something that would allow me to clear my head. Art was more infuriating than relaxing.
Yoga and meditation had been enough to drive me up a wall. Biking and running along the roads made me nervous—I’d treated too many accident victims over the years to be comfortable with it. As a Hail Mary, I’d picked up a gym membership and had been pleasantly surprised to find I enjoyed going. I quickly discovered the added benefit of how well my clothes fit. After a year, even I could admit I looked, and felt, better than I had in my entire adult life. Running with the kids outside or at the park stopped being a struggle. Playing catch or soccer didn’t wind me. So I kept it up.

  Day after day, month after month, I continued my routine. The last two weeks had been the longest I’d gone in over five years without setting foot inside a gym. I rationalized it with all the walking I’d been doing to and from the clinic as well as doing plenty of lifting as I tried to unpack my house.

  In the end, my muscles were manufactured. Bought for fifty dollars a month and ninety minutes a day. Jeff’s muscles looked different than mine. His were natural. Earned from day after day, year after year of a hands-on job that kept him active.

  I’d seen mechanics work on cars before. They hefted tires and rims like they weighed next to nothing, and I’d seen forearms strain as heavy engines or parts were moved around. Jeff wasn’t necessarily trim—he carried a little weight in his midsection—but most forty-something-year-old men I knew did.

  As I watched him fill the orange juice glasses, the muscles that ran up and down his arms kept my attention laser focused on him. The way his biceps pulled at his shirt sleeves didn’t help much either.

  I’d been so entranced with his body, I’d startled when he slipped a plate of bacon, potatoes, and eggs in front of me. From the faint pink that stained his cheeks behind his light beard to the uneasy smile he flashed me, I knew I’d been caught staring. I fought to keep my composure and also think of an excuse for my gawking. “Sorry, I don’t think my brain is fully online this morning.”

  Jeff scratched at his beard but managed a more genuine smile. “I get it. You were pretty out of it last night.”

  It had been so long since I’d felt any sort of attraction toward anyone. But I knew what this infatuation with the man meant. My long dormant sex drive was waking up. But why now? What was it about Jeff that had it taking interest?

  I pulled my focus back to the plate of food in front of me, unwilling, or maybe unable, to sort out my feelings at the current time. Until I was alone and could figure out what was going on in my head, it would be easier to blame the alcohol, so that’s exactly what I did.

  I blamed the alcohol for the half-chub in my pants all the way through breakfast and while I found my clothes from the night before. I blamed the alcohol while I drove home and stripped off my clothes. I finally admitted to myself it wasn’t the alcohol when I stepped into the shower to find my dick hard and aching. Aching like it hadn’t in years. Even after my shower I found myself absently pressing at my cock, looking for some relief, while I got ready for the day.

  When my cock was still hard as I pulled on my briefs, I knew I couldn’t continue to ignore it. No matter how I maneuvered my cock, I felt pinched and uncomfortable. The simple act of moving it around to find a comfortable position had me gasping into the quiet room.

  I hadn’t felt the need to jack off in so long, I’d begun to think it was something that would never happen again. In the safety of my bedroom, in the comfort of the quiet house, the urge to take my cock in hand and let my fantasies run wild finally overruled any lingering doubts about why I was so horny or what had pushed me to that moment.

  My fist wrapped around my cock, not in an effort to move it out of the way but with the intention of finding relief. At first, I was happy to be able to enjoy the feeling of stroking myself for pleasure. It had been so long since this felt good that I spent minutes reacquainting myself with my dick. I made my way to the bed, spread my legs, and allowed my hand to snake down almost to my hole before working back up over my balls and toward my dick. A puddle of precum had already formed on my stomach and continued to leak steadily from my tip as I explored.

  There was no reason to hurry, no kids at home, no place to be, so I enjoyed my slow exploration. After a while, my thoughts began to shift from how good it felt to explore my dick and balls again to more specific images. In the distant past, those images had been fantasies. Usually a faceless woman, sometimes a generic man—sexual positions, maybe lips wrapped around me—but my head wasn’t filled with images I’d ever thought of during a jack-off session before. Well, not ones I’d thought of for the last twenty years at least. Images of strong muscles kept intruding on my thoughts. A large rough hand wrapping around my dick. As I let my imagination take the lead, the man with me was not a generic, faceless man—it was Jeff. Sleep-mussed hair, smooth skin, and a wicked smile on his face, Jeff was vivid enough in my mind that he could have been with me.

  I hadn’t been with a man in twenty years, so long that the memories had faded to not much more than a generic acknowledgement that it was part of my past. After all the time that had passed, what would it feel like to have a work-weathered hand pumping me?

  Not that I could count Dwayne’s hands as work weathered. He hadn’t done a day of manual labor in his life.

  What would it be like to have a man who knew exactly what it was like to have a cock in his hand work mine? What would firm muscles feel like resting over me? Or under me? What would it feel like to have something—a finger, a dildo, a cock—once again breach my entrance?

  I had a finger, an entirely free hand that had been simply massaging my balls while my other hand pumped my cock. Before I gave it much thought, my left hand snaked out and pressed gently at my hole. It was dry, too dry to slip more than the tip of my index finger in. It might not have been much, but the feeling lit up nerve endings I had forgotten about. Shockwaves rocked through my body and a moan echoed through my room. It was a good thing no one was home because that noise wouldn’t have gone unheard.

  In college, I’d bottomed a few times with my boyfriend, but it hadn’t been something I thought I would have missed. Actually, at the time, it had been downright uncomfortable. Dwayne didn’t enjoy topping and had never taken time to stretch me properly. When I’d played with toys, though… well, that was a different story. I’d loved stretching myself slowly, enjoying the slight burn that would turn into pleasure.

  I smiled at the memory. Jeff had taken care of me the night before. He’d made sure I was safe and comfortable. A man like him would know exactly how to stretch me so that it didn’t hurt. And when I allowed myself to think about Jeff’s fingers breaching my hole, I felt desperate and needy.

  Maybe it was time to invest in some toys. I removed my fingertip and brought my hand to my mouth, spitting on my hand and allowing it to return to my hole. With a little spit-lube, my finger slipped in to the second knuckle, and while it felt amazing, I knew it was all I could safely take at that point.

  Lube skyrocketed to the top of my shopping list.

  Just the pressure of my finger half in my ass had me writhing around on the bed moaning and sweat forming on my brow. My fist worked my cock faster, precum easing any biting friction I might have felt from going dry. My orgasm built steadily even though I was in no hurry to move it along, content to enjoy the feeling of my hand running over the sensitive skin, touching myself in a way I hadn’t in far too long. Unbidden, an image of Jeff lying over me, pushing his cock into me, invaded my thoughts. Jeff pressing into me, my ass straining to accommodate him. I begged for more. I didn’t know if I said the words out loud or just in my head, but they were there. And I came screaming his name into the empty house.

  When I finally came back to my senses, I was still in my bed. My fist and belly were coated in cooling cum, and Jeff’s name was still on the tip of my tongue.

  As I recovered, my phone buzzed on the pillow beside me. I grabbed it, expecting it to be my mom, but was surprised to see a text from an unfamiliar number.

  Hey, it’s Jeff. Sorry if this is to
o forward, I got your number from Carl. I was wondering if you’d want to go to dinner tonight at Rizzi’s around 6. It’s a little pizza joint on the other side of town.

  He’d asked Carl for my number? Was he asking me out on a date? My heart sped up. Before I could respond, another text came through.

  I thought we could bring our kids. Let Jenna meet your boys. Can’t hurt to have an extra babysitter around.

  Oh. Right. Babysitter.

  Yeah. That sounds great.

  I ignored the irrational disappointment I felt about him not asking me on a pizza date. We worked out details and I tossed my phone to the side. I had a lot to do, including taking a second shower, before I picked up my kids.

  CHAPTER 7

  Jeff

  After Mark left my house that morning, I stood around waiting for my kids to return. I couldn’t shake the intense orgasm I’d had in the shower the night before, and the one I’d had that morning after he’d left. I wanted, almost needed, to see him again. See him when he wasn’t drunk, when he hadn’t rescued me from Louie. His admission that he considered himself bisexual had popped into my head more than once since he left. He’d said something about not being attracted to anyone in recent years, but did that mean he had written off relationships forever?

  I’d finally decided I wouldn’t know unless I spent more time with him, but we hadn’t even exchanged numbers. Unless I waited until Monday and showed up at the clinic, there was little chance of me getting in touch with him. Showing up at his house would be creepy-stalkerish, so I dismissed that idea as soon as I had it. In a moment of either pure genius or epic stupidity, I texted Carl, asking for his number.

  The last thing I wanted to do was freak Mark out by asking him on a date, so I knew I needed an excuse. I wasn’t sick, the kids weren’t sick—I had no reasonable excuse to see him. Except I had a babysitter and Mark had two kids. Bingo. I’d sent the text in hopes I hadn’t overstepped, but when he’d agreed, I might have done a little happy dance in my kitchen.