by Ann, Natalie
Mac knew their bedtime ritual. Brush Zoe’s teeth, comb her hair, add in a chat with her dolls and a quick bedtime story, sometimes two. Then Beth would tuck her in nice and snug, along with her dolls of course, and give them all a kiss goodnight. Tonight Zoe decided she would rather Mac put her to bed.
“What?” he asked her when he saw Beth’s crestfallen face. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.”
“You sure? You look upset. Tell me if I did something wrong; otherwise I won’t know.” He was racking his brain, but for the life of him he didn’t know what he did.
“It’s nothing,” she said, shaking her head. But he gently grasped her chin and forced her eyes to his. Finally she conceded. “It’s just that’s the first time I didn’t tuck Zoe in, and she didn’t even seem to care,” she said, looking dejected, tears forming in her eyes.
Mac was elated and made the mistake of grinning over her confession. He probably shouldn’t have, because he was sure she really was upset, but part of him was thrilled over the fact that Zoe was so comfortable with him. Now he had to work on Beth. Especially with the scowl she was sending his way.
“Hey, it’s new to her. After all, I bought her a new doll tonight. She probably wanted me to tuck her in with it. Nothing more,” he added, hoping that would help.
The scowl vanished from her face. “It’s silly, I know. But it’s always been the two of us.”
“It doesn’t always have to be that way,” he hedged. Leaning in, he kissed her, not giving her a chance to respond to his statement. He didn’t want to hear what she might say. Tentatively at first, she returned his kiss, then deeper yet when he glided his tongue into her mouth, tasting her. She shivered ever so slightly, so he pulled her closer.
Minutes later, she broke away, attempting to catch her breath. “Wow, you’re good at that.”
“Not sure what to say to that. I don’t think there’s a good answer, to be honest. So I’ll say thanks.”
She stood up and started to rub her hands up and down the tops her thighs, a sure sign of nervousness. “I should check on Zoe.”
He watched her walk out of the room in her baggy athletic shorts and a T-shirt. Zoe had gotten a little carried away during her bath and splashed water all over the bathroom, soaking Beth in the process. The end result was a change into clothes she normally wore while cleaning the house.
Beth returned less than a minute later. “Out like a light,” she said, smiling now. “I love watching as my baby girl sleeps. There is something so perfect about a sleeping child, like for that moment in time, all is right in the world.”
The smile disappeared after she seated herself on the couch next to Mac again, then she started looking around the room absentmindedly. “Want to watch TV?”
“No, I want to kiss you again,” he replied bluntly. He didn’t give her a chance to dispute. Instead leaning over, he placed his lips against hers.
Her hands resting on his shoulders was all he encouragement he needed to let his palm wander up her side, outside of her shirt, feeling her softness through the cotton. When a soft purr escaped her lips, he moved his hand over her breast, her nipple pebbling under his touch.
He moved his hand back down to her waist, under her shirt and back up again needing to feel her skin. Continuing to taste each other, their tongues dancing together, his hand slid further up, cupping her outside of her bra when she arched into the curve of his palm. Turning his hand over, he ran his knuckles across her tightened skin, heard the deep pants in her throat while a fire raged through his own body.
At last, slipping inside her bra, he touched all of her, playing with her delicately aroused skin. Her body jerked at the touch, causing him to still for a second, unsure of the reason. A moment later he continued on and touched her again, only this time her to body began to arch a little bit more, then quiver against him, coming alive.
Leaning over her, half-lying on top of her, his hand moved to the other breast giving it equal attention. Again her body jerked and twitched, along with some low moans in her throat, the deepening of her breath, then a few sudden gasps. If he didn’t know better, he would think she was ready to come. Only that didn’t seem possible, he was barely touching her.
Except the deeper the kiss went, the more her labored breathing intensified, the more her body seemed to tense. Testing, he slid his other hand up her thigh, between her legs, and under the bottom of her shorts. She gripped his shoulders tightly, her nails digging into his skin.
He leaned back slightly, looked at her face—lightly flushed—saw her eyes closed and her chest rising and falling with each gasp. She shivered again when he moved over her neck with his lips, running his tongue over to her collarbone, gently sucking, then easing off and moving near her ear.
The further his hand moved up her leg, the closer he came to the heat of her, the more tremors her body seemed to have. With his lips by her ear, he whispered, “Relax,” running his finger outside of her panties, stunned by the heat and wetness soaking through. “Just let go,” he said, applying enough pressure where he knew she craved it.
That was all it took—she exploded under him, her hips rocketing off the couch, pushing further into his touch, the spasms taking over her body. He held her there until the last shudder left her body, placing soft kisses on her neck and cheek.
He was so aroused right now he thought he was going to burst and embarrass both of them. The only thing stopping him was the thought that he didn’t want their first time to be on her couch, not with Zoe sleeping in the other room.
Beth seemed to slowly become aware of what happened, almost immediately she groaned and buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God,” she said, a red hue creeping her up her neck and across her face. “I can’t believe I did that. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I’m so sorry.”
He laughed. At least it relieved some of the tension he was feeling. “What are you apologizing for? I’m not sorry, that’s for sure.”
“I didn’t mean to do that. I can’t imagine what you must think of me,” she stated though her hands, trying to hide the heat flooding her face.
“I think it was pretty hot if you want to know the truth, tells me I turn you on. That’s the best compliment ever,” he explained.
She finally turned, pulled her hands away from her face, and looked at his big Cheshire grin. “Really?”
Shocked, he replied, “You have to ask that?”
“Well, yeah,” she said confused.
“Honestly, Beth,” he said, taking her hand in his, attempting to tease her. “I’m glad, and with any luck you’ll relax around me a bit more. It seems to me maybe it’s been a while since you’ve had an orgasm.” At least he hoped, maybe he didn’t want to know.
“Yeah, something like that,” she mumbled, looking away, obviously embarrassed again.
He took her chin in his hand and turned her eyes toward his. “Now what? You can tell me anything,” he said softly.
“Nothing.” She tried looking away from him, but he wouldn’t be deterred, and only tightened the grip on her chin. Not enough that she couldn’t move her head, but enough to get his point across.
“How long has it been? Why are you so embarrassed?” He was truly curious now.
She blushed, but didn’t answer.
No, it couldn’t be what he thought, what popped into his mind. He had heard of women before who couldn’t or never had orgasms. It hadn’t been the case with any woman he’d ever been with. “Are you telling me this is the first orgasm you’ve ever had?” he asked, trying to hide any disbelief. He didn’t want her to be any more embarrassed than she was.
She nodded her head.
Wow, he thought, not able to fight the possessiveness that overcame him. “Not even by yourself? Ever?” he asked again, dropping his hand from her chin.
This time she shook her head.
He hugged her close, hoping to ease her discomfort. He wasn’t embarrassed at all. If possible, he was even more
aroused. But that also meant he wouldn’t be getting anywhere else tonight. It was obvious she was skittish.
He was trying to figure it out in his mind. She was drop dead gorgeous. Men had to have been fighting for her all her life, yet not one of them had ever been able to please her. Her next statement stopped his thoughts dead in their track.
“I don’t really have a lot of experience.”
He didn’t know how to approach it at this point. What if she asked about his past experience? He would be honest, definitely, but he didn’t want to turn her off either. He had never been a one-night-stand type of person, but he’d had plenty of relationships over the years. Some short, other’s long, nothing extremely serious, though.
“Do you want to tell me? You don’t have to. It’s totally up to you. We can have this conversation about our history if you want. If you need to know, I’m okay with it,” he explained. “I’m clean. I’ve always had protected sex.”
The whole conversation seemed to embarrass her even more. Her face grew redder and she moved away from him, back to rubbing her hands on her thighs and averting her eyes from his. “I don’t need to know yours. I know you would have been responsible. But I want you to know mine. I don’t want you to think something that might not be true,” she said shyly.
The relief he felt at not having to share his own past was short-lived, because now suddenly, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to know hers either. The thought of her with other men was an uneasy feeling he never experienced before. Obviously she had been with other men, she had a child.
He reached over and held her hands in his, trying to calm her. “I haven’t been with anyone since the beginning of my pregnancy,” she said, and then blurted out. “And no one else before that.”
He continued to look at her. No questions coming forth, he wanted her to talk at her own pace, say only what she felt comfortable with, with no pressure from him.
“I’ve only been with one person, Zoe’s father. It was only for a few months, and only a handful of times.”
“How is that possible? I mean I know how it’s possible, but how is it possible that someone as beautiful as you, as terrific as you, has had so little experience?”
Bad Childhood
Having only had sex a total of five times, she definitely didn’t have a lot of experience.
She wasn’t about to explain to him how her first sexual experience had been in a cheap hotel. Or how Derek had said his roommates were home, and because she lived in a dorm, it was the only way they could have privacy. She never pushed the issues about meeting Derek’s roommates but wished she had. She had been too naive to see the signs, too in love with the idea of someone caring about her.
Her shoulders drooped as she tried to decide how much to tell Mac, whether to bare her soul or not. She really liked him. A lot. And she didn’t want to scare him away. But wouldn’t it be worse if he found out about her past after the fact? Or thought she hid it from him. Maybe it was best to come clean now and let him decide if he wanted to continue any type of relationship with her or not.
She inhaled deeply, trying to figure out where to start. “I don’t know. I can only guess the reason since I don’t know what goes through a guy’s mind.”
“Well, I’m a guy. I know what is going through my mind right now, and I’m astonished to say the least. But if you really don’t want to talk about it, you don’t have to.”
She was so uncomfortable right now, laced with a mixture of underlying sadness and distress. “No, I probably should. I don’t want any secrets. I mean it’s not bad. I’m not a criminal or anything like that. But its best you know about my background if you were interested in getting involved. Not saying you are, just saying...” She trailed off, not knowing what else to say and afraid she already put her foot in her mouth.
“Beth, yes, I am involved. I have been since the minute I ran to Zoe on the playground. From the minute I watched you hold it together and put your trust in a complete stranger, regardless of how terrified I knew you felt.”
He picked her hand up in his and waited to speak until she looked him in the eye. “I want to know if you want to tell me. But if you don’t, that is OK, too. Nothing you tell me will change how I feel about you.”
She believed him. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like she had ever had any men in her life that she could actually believe in, but she believed Mac. So she told him.
“I had a pretty bad childhood. I guess that is the simplest way to say it. Of course, I’m sure a lot of people say the same thing, but they really don’t know what it’s like. I grew up a little over an hour from here, in a small one-stoplight town. There is no way to sugar coat it: we were poor, living in an old metal trailer and hoping the electricity didn’t get shut off again this month because it was the middle of the winter. And it was cold. Or hoping I could run a fan because the inside of the trailer felt like an oven in the summer. Eating cereal for several meals in a row, or crackers and spray cheese, whatever was cheap and was easy for a kid to make alone.”
She cringed at the thought of those memories, but pushed on. “I was alone most of the time. My mother was a hairdresser; she did work. But in our poor area there wasn’t a lot of money to be made, which is why I finally relocated out of the area. My father— when he worked—had odd jobs: the night shift in a warehouse, mowing lawns, shoveling snow, whatever he needed to do to buy his next six pack of beer and carton of cigarettes.”
She saw him sit back and get comfortable, letting her continue at her own pace. “It’s a hard life when you’re poor, when everyone around you has more, and you’re the kid on the outside looking in. When you’re washing your hair in the sink because the faucet wasn’t working in the tub and you didn’t want to go to school dirty. Because if you did—and it happened when I was younger—you got picked on.”
She cleared her throat. It was burning now, the memories physically hurting her. “Can you give me a second? I need a drink.”
“Take your time,” he told her as she walked out of the room.
She came back with a bottle of water in her hand, took a few sips, and continued. “It wasn’t just me that was dirty when I was younger. We lived in filth; no one cleaned. My father, when he wasn’t working, sat on the couch drinking and smoking, and the smell of smoke overwhelmed the tiny two-bedroom trailer. My mother refused to clean up after him, and no one really paid too much attention to me. I was shy, withdrawn, scared half of the time because of the amount fighting they did.”
She could still visualize it in her mind. Her father screaming at her mother to bring him a beer, then her mother screaming back to get his lazy butt up. Finally, her father in a fit of temper would the throw empty beer cans through the kitchen attempting to hit her mother with one—until she finally brought him another.
“Anyway, I sat in my room a lot talking to my dolls and myself. I didn’t have any friends. No one wanted to be friends with the tall gawky girl that came to school in dirty clothes smelling of smoke, whose father was drunk and mother was never around. I thought everyone lived like that until I was around eight.”
She smiled grimly. “I was invited to someone’s house after school one day. They didn’t have much more money than we did and they lived in the same trailer park. But when I walked in it smelled nice, like lemons. It was clean, really clean. And though we only had hamburgers for dinner, it was a meal. Not a handful of gold fish crackers and a can of soda.”
She looked at him, saw what he was struggling to hide on his face, and didn’t want to go on. She forced a smile and tried to tease, even though the situation was anything but funny to her. “I feel like I’ve said enough, that you are ready to bolt out the door.”
“No. No, I’m not going to bolt. Not now, maybe never.” He pulled her close, settling her against his side, his arm around her shoulder, her head on his chest. “Go on. I want to know, I want you to tell me.”
But she couldn’t, so she changed the subject a bit. “My father thoug
ht I was stupid because I never talked much. They didn’t start me in school until I was six, because to him any child that stayed in her room all the time and cringed when she heard loud voices, or talked to dolls, must have something wrong with her. Add to the fact I wasn’t a very attractive. I was a homely child.”
He snorted. “I find that hard to believe.”
“It’s true. I would show you a picture, but I doubt any were ever taken other than classroom pictures in school. I was rather thin, not that I was starved, but you can only eat so much of the type of food I was fed. School lunches, which were free for me, were the only real meals I ever had. My hair was often in a messy ponytail. Even though my mom was a hairdresser, she never bothered with me. My clothes were all too big or too small. All hand-me-downs from other families who felt bad for the girl whose parents didn’t care if she existed.”
He ran his hand up and down her arm, trying to soothe her. She took comfort in his action. No one had ever tried to soothe her before. “Aside from the clothes, my skin was really bad, probably because I only used cheap soap when someone actually bothered to give me a bath, or told me to bathe. All that aside, my eyes were opened going to my friend’s house that day. I went home later that night and cleaned my room. I don’t know what made me do it, but I wanted it to look like my friend’s. Not that it ever would. I only had a few toys, mismatched sheets and a pillow with no pillowcase. But I wanted it to be neat, and when it was, it felt good. So I slowly started cleaning the rest of the house, or trying to at least, even if it was only with water and dish soap. That was still better than nothing.”
Mortification, that he struggled and failed to hide, now clearly showed on his face, mixed with underlining pity. The last thing she wanted was pity from anyone, least of all him. “I can see you doing that, taking charge, and making a change,” he said placing a kiss on the forehead.
“Really?” she asked, pleased with the comment. “Anyway, back to your original question, I didn’t date in high school because no one really talked to me, for all the reasons I listed. Then in college I was too busy working every hour I could to earn money. I wanted so badly to break away from my miserable childhood. By the time I was twenty and away from home, I was so out of my element. I was stupid and naïve and fell for the first guy to pay attention to me. I learned my lesson, though. It was a hard one to learn, but Zoe has to come first now.” She let out a big breath. “So that’s the shortened version of my story, I guess.”
