Excavated

by Noelle Adams

  Despite his efforts, he couldn’t summon any skill at all. He was just as eager—almost clumsy in his driving need—as the night before. He couldn’t remember ever wanting someone so much.

  Lucy’s mood matched his, and she arched and wriggled beneath him, her warm, soft, little body pliant and responsive to all of his touches.

  Philip’s own body throbbed dangerously with arousal, and the throbbing just continued as he hurriedly rolled on a condom and slid himself inside her.

  She folded her legs up on either side of his hips, and he groaned as he sank in deeper.

  He tried to catch his breath, get himself under control. But he just couldn’t. He started thrusting immediately, fast and hard, and Lucy’s hips bucked up toward his wildly, as if she couldn’t hold them still either.

  Soon she was making little sobbing noises, clawing at his back and ass. And he was pounding into her harder than he meant to—harder than he should have.

  But she wanted it. She definitely wanted it. Her channel had tightened around his erection with delicious pressure, and he knew she was close to coming.

  “Harder,” she gasped, arching her neck, her blond hair tousled messily around her flushed face. “I need more, Philip!”

  He bit his lip, stifling the primitive grunts he’d been making. He was about to come—he could feel it tightening in his balls—but he didn’t want to come until she had.

  He intensified his rhythm even more, the bed squeaking wildly and the frame banging against the wall.

  One tiny part of his mind wondered if they could be heard outside the trailer.

  Lucy’s fingers gouged into the muscles of his ass as her whole body shuddered tightly. He could see now she was right on the verge, and then he could see the release transform her face as her orgasm finally broke.

  She choked out a hoarse cry as she rode out the pleasure with her hips, and the rhythmic contractions of her body around him snapped the last of Philip’s control.

  He let go. Of everything.

  He heard himself make a loud, hoarse exclamation as he jerked and shook against her, the sensations pulsing through him.

  When it was over, he could hardly hold himself up. He managed to take care of the condom before he collapsed, trying to roll to Lucy’s side rather than on top of her.

  She still hadn’t caught her breath, and her whole body was flushed. She clung to him needily, and he didn’t even mind.

  They lay together, panting and relaxing in sated languor, for a long time before they recovered.

  Philip was finally starting to feel more himself when a phone rang.

  “That’s mine.” With a groan, Lucy rolled out of bed and stumbled over to get her phone.

  Philip’s eyes crawled over her small, lush body, noting red marks where he’d gripped or nibbled her earlier.

  Lucy took the phone to bed and pulled a sheet up over her as she answered it.

  Philip listened shamelessly to the conversation. It was her ex, who was putting up the fuss about custody of Arthur.

  Lucy’s replies were clipped and cool, and she obviously tried to end the conversation as soon as possible.

  She talked for about five minutes before she hung up, and it was clear that had nothing had been accomplished in the conversation.

  She shook her head as she settled back beside him under the covers. “He wants a piece of the action.”

  “He sounds like an ass.”

  Lucy frowned. “He’s all right sometimes, but—yes—he can sometimes be an ass. All men are asses sometimes.”

  Now Philip frowned.

  “Are you saying you’re never an ass?” Lucy asked him with arched eyebrows.

  He could hardly claim that and speak the truth so he didn’t even answer. “I’m surprised, if that’s your philosophy, that you’ve been engaged so many times.”

  She shrugged. “I keep hoping.”

  He felt a sudden spark of something he hadn’t experienced in a long time. “It’s nice. That you’re still such a romantic—hoping for a destined soul mate.”

  She sucked in an outraged breath, as he knew she would, and tried to pull away from him. She couldn’t, since it was a very small bed and there was no room for distance. “I do not have foolish hopes for a perfect man. Just someone who’s a good match for me. Someone I can trust.”

  She peered at his face, and he must not have hid the twitching of his mouth enough. She gasped again and hit him on the chest. “You bastard. You were teasing me.”

  He laughed out loud and pulled her into a soft hug. “I somehow knew you would take being called a romantic as an insult.”

  She relaxed against him, stroking his belly—which he took as a sign that she’d forgiven him for the teasing.

  Then he heard himself asking, for no good reason, “What do you mean you want to find a man you can trust?”

  She lifted her head and looked down at him with a puzzled look. “It means exactly as it sounds.”

  “Is it that hard—to find a man you can trust?”

  She shrugged and flopped back down. After a few minutes, he realized she wasn’t going to answer.

  Finally, she said, her tone different, “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “You don’t seem to be much on trust either. How open are you to trust since you’ve had two wives that cheated on you?”

  He suddenly felt uncomfortable.

  She poked his side.

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But at least I gave it a try, which is more than you’ve done. I…tried. You can hardly blame me for deciding it wasn’t for me after all.”

  She snorted in what sounded like dry amusement.

  “What?” he demanded.

  “I was just thinking it’s ironic. You tease me about being a romantic when it’s obvious you’re one as well. You have such high dreams of romance that you’ve just given up on finding it. Maybe I’ve been engaged a ridiculous number of times, but at least I haven’t given up. I think that must mean that you’re even more of a romantic than I am.”

  His first instinct was defensive objection, but he bit back his automatic retort, since he could see her mouth wobbling in amusement.

  She wanted him to react in outrage, and he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

  Instead, he rolled her over onto her back and moved on top of her. His mouth hovered above hers, and he could see excitement kindle in her eyes.

  “Is this some sort of punishment for teasing you?” she asked, her voice a little breathless.

  “Definitely.”

  He kissed her hard, loving how she responded, how her body softened against his.

  Then, without warning, he felt an odd pang in his chest at the thought of Lucy’s words earlier. She’d posed it in an offhand way, but she’d been serious about not really trusting men.

  Maybe for good reason. Her father had walked out on her when she was a kid. One of her exes was, at the moment, trying to take her dog away.

  He hadn’t treated her right either. Not back then.

  Feeling the need to do something in response to the twisting in his chest, he started to move down her body—kissing and caressing her slowly, thoroughly, doing everything he could to please her. Her gasps turned to cries of pleasure, and she was soon practically writhing in eagerness as he mouthed his way down.

  He finally ended up at her groin, and he moved her thighs apart to make room for his head. She panted as she stared down at him with smoldering green eyes and shamelessly tried to push her arousal up toward his mouth.

  Just as carefully and thoroughly, he pleasured her with his fingers and mouth, and she was practically screaming when he finally brought her to climax. He kept stroking her, trying to extend it as long as he could.

  “Oh God,” she gasped at last, collapsing back on the little bed, her face even more flushed and her skin damp with perspiration. “Was that supposed to be punishment? Because I think you need to rethink your definitions. I’ll tease you
mercilessly if you keep doing that to me as punishment.”

  He couldn’t restrain a huff of amusement. “That wasn’t punishment. I was trying to be nice.”

  She reached down to stroke his face. “Well, you were very nice. I don’t think I’ve ever come so hard in my life.”

  The words thrilled him, as did her replete, exhausted, almost surprised delight in how he’d pleasured her. His emotional response worried him for a moment, until it was drowned out in the pulsing of his erection, which had hardened again over the last few minutes.

  She slid her hand down to wrap her fingers around him, and he heard himself make a breathless sound in response.

  She drew his head down into a kiss, which only fueled the urgency of his desire. Then Lucy finally leaned her forehead against his and murmured, “Just so you know. I can be nice too.”

  She pulled away and turned over so she was lying on her stomach. As he watched, she lifted her bottom up slightly and smiled at him over her shoulder.

  There was no way he could resist that invitation. He fumbled until he got a new condom on and then positioned himself behind her. As he slid inside her, his control was already stretched to the breaking point. He took her from behind until he felt her coming all around him, which mercifully didn’t take very long. She cried out with her release but stifled the sound with her face in the pillow.

  Then he just lost it, his climax rearing up hard and fast.

  Afterwards, he was almost embarrassed. He should have more control than this. He’d always been a good lover. A skilled lover. A controlled lover. Lucy would think he was like an adolescent, barely holding on long enough to please her.

  “Oh God,” she gasped, turning over from her position and nestling against him. “Oh, God, that was good.”

  He grunted, which was the only sound he felt capable of making.

  She pressed a kiss on his chest and continued, “I’ve always enjoyed sex, but it’s never been this good before.”

  He let out a hoarse breath of relief, gathering her toward him with one arm. He might be ridiculously uncontrolled with her, but at least she didn’t mind.

  “I’m wiped out,” she added, giving him a slightly odd look.

  He suddenly realized why she was looking at him that way. He'd lived alone for too long. He realized he hadn’t even told her. “Me too,” he murmured, kissing her hair. “It’s never been this good before for me either.

  ***

  Lucy woke up just a few hours later, when Philip was moving around in the bed.

  She huffed in surprise when she felt her body being moved and instinctively pushed back against whatever was trying to move her.

  “Sorry,” Philip mumbled, adjusting what was now recognizably his body. “You were lying on my arm.”

  “Oh.” Awake enough to focus now, she lifted her upper body so he could retrieve his arm. “Sorry. Not much room on this bed.”

  “That’s for sure.” He released a long sigh and stretched beside her. “Here. Why don’t you move onto this side of me instead to give my right arm a break?”

  Moving felt like it would take an awful lot of energy, but since she’d been sleeping on his arm before, she figured it was only kind to do as he suggested. So she climbed over his body and let him wrap his left arm around her so she could snuggle up next to him.

  The bed was so small that they had to be snuggling or they both had to lie flat and ramrod straight.

  “This bed was not intended for two,” she said, pressing a little kiss onto his chest, since it right there in front of her mouth.

  “I’m not sure it’s ever been used for two before.” His voice was warmer and softer than his normal tone—almost tender. She really liked the sound of it.

  “You mean you never had a little fling with a hot grad student?”

  “Hell, no.”

  She gave him another little kiss on the chest because he deserved it for saying that. For meaning it.

  She looked up at him when it felt like he was smiling. He was. “What’s that smile for?” she asked.

  “Nothing. It’s just a nice change to share the bed. Even this small a one.”

  She chuckled, feeling fond and affectionate and rather boneless. “When I was a kid, we lived in a one bedroom apartment, and my parents gave me and my sister the bedroom, so they shared a cot about this size in the living room. I have no idea how they did it for so long.

  He didn’t say anything in response, but he stroked her hair and followed the length of it down her back. Then he did it again. And again.

  She relaxed into the caress. “Of course, my dad was only halfway living with us most of the time, so I guess Mom usually had it to herself.”

  There was a pause as he stroked her hair once more before he asked, “How old were you when he left?”

  “Ten.” She cleared her throat, emotional—as she always was—when she really thought about her father. “I sometimes think I should have been relieved, since life really settled down more after he left. But I…” She cleared her throat again. “I wasn’t.”

  “Did you ever hear anything from him after he left?”

  “No. Nothing. He dropped off the face of the earth, as far as we could tell. When I was in high school, I did some research and found him. He’d hooked up with another woman and had an entirely different life. I couldn’t believe—I just couldn’t believe—we meant so little to him. But I guess we did. If I hadn’t learned my lesson before, I sure as hell learned it then.”

  “What lesson?” His body had tightened, and he’d lifted his head so he could clearly see her expression.

  She raised her face to meet his eyes, able to answer him in a way she hadn’t answered Dana, when she’d asked her the same question just a few days ago. “Don’t rely on someone like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “What are you talking about?” She frowned at Philip, even though he looked sleepy and scrumptious with mussed hair and no shirt. “He was a selfish bastard who didn’t care enough about me to stick around.”

  “I know that. He betrayed your trust—no question. It just sounded like you meant more than just him.”

  She had meant more than that, but there was no reason to open that particular can of words. Not with Philip, whom she’d never see again after a few more days. So she smiled at him and stroked her hand up and down his chest. “So now that you’ve had my true confessions, time for you to share yours.”

  “I have no true confessions to make.”

  “Yes, you do. You never told me what happened with your mom.”

  His body definitely tensed up at those words. “Nothing really happened.”

  “Well, something happened. You stopped working for her. You evidently never go visit her anymore. What happened?”

  He didn’t answer immediately. For a minute, she thought he wasn’t going to answer at all. Then he murmured thickly, “She couldn’t understand.”

  “That you wanted to do something else with your life?”

  “Yeah. She thought it was a betrayal, since we’d made all these plans with me as part of her political career. By that point, she’d been elected, so she didn’t need me as much. At least, I didn’t think she did. I thought she’d understand when I said I wanted to go to grad school, but…” He ran his hand down the length of her hair again.

  Her own hand had grown still on his chest, spanning the curve of his ribs. “She didn’t understand.”

  “No. It was the worst kind of betrayal, and she couldn’t forgive me for it.” He sighed so deeply she could feel it through his body. “Maybe it was.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” Lucy felt urgent and arched her spine to lift her head higher. “It wasn’t a betrayal. She should have cared enough about you to know you needed to do something else. It wasn’t your fault, Philip. You’d done more than most sons would have done to help her. You’d already sacrificed a lot more than most sons would have done. What the hell did she expect of you?”

  “She expecte
d me to stick with her, and I didn’t.”

  Their eyes met for a long moment, and she saw him, understood him, knew him.

  Then she said, “She betrayed you. You didn’t betray her.”

  “Either way, she was the last family I had.”

  She settled back down beside him and nestled against him, wrapping one arm around him in half hug. “Do you talk to her at all now?”

  “I call on her birthday every year. We exchange Christmas presents. I keep her updated on any new developments—marriages and such. She does the same for me. Maybe a lot of kids have similar relationships with their parents. Maybe it’s not such a big deal.”

  Despite his words, Lucy knew it felt like a big deal to Philip. Even now, his broken relationship with his mother had shaped him, as much as his two ex-wives.

  Women hurt him. That was what they did. No wonder he’d buried himself in his work.

  For some reason, it felt wrong to her. She didn’t want him to feel that. So she slid higher up his body until she could reach his lips with hers. She kissed him slowly, tenderly, her heart softening as she felt him respond.

  They kissed for a long time, not speaking any further. Then he rolled her over onto her back and sank inside her. They made love in slow, needy rhythm, and she clung to him with her arms, her legs, her lips, everything.

  Until finally the pressure of an orgasm broke inside her and she arched up, crying out softly with the pleasure. He came then too, shortly after her, and they fell back to sleep, still tangled in each other.

  When she woke up the next morning, that intimate interlude felt like it could have been a dream.

  Seven

  “Okay,” Lucy said, leaning back in her chair and looking at the page full of her scrawls. “I think it’s going to work.”

  She and Dana had just roughed out the bare bones of the episode to ensure they had enough footage to work with.

  “We’ve got everything we need,” she concluded, feeling a strange twisting of her gut that she tried studiously to ignore.

  Dana gave her a weird look. “Are you sure? We can probably use some more night scenes, just in case.”

  “Just in case what? Sawyer said we had more than enough.”