They were already late.
“I brought you a shirt.”
“A shirt?” His hands slipped from her waist to the top of her butt and then down until he was cupping her hips in his hands, squeezing her in his palms. Rough, he was rough, and that sizzle under her skin spread all over her body. Her hands and feet tingled, pleasure a ripple through her entire body.
The blanket fell off of them.
“Billy,” she sighed. “We really need to go.”
His fingers were just under the hem of her dress, cupping the backs of her thighs until she felt his fingertips against the lace edge of her underwear. Her body clenched inside: hot and ready.
“We do need to go,” he agreed, his finger teasing his way closer to her core, to where she ached for him. “You’re nervous, aren’t you?” he asked, while she tried not to bend her knees and shift her hips, bringing him in full contact. “Baby?”
“Yes.” She tilted her head back, letting him kiss her neck. “I’m nervous.”
“You know what’s good for when you’re nervous?”
She laughed and put her hand on the towel, sliding past the knot to the length of his erection. “Let me guess,” she said.
He arched into her, pressing her hand between them, and the laughter died in her throat. Her hand squeezed him and his fingers slipped under the edge of her underwear, carefully following the furrow between her legs.
“I need this.” His finger slid inside of her. She gasped, standing on her tiptoes, excited by the invasion. “I need you.”
She blinked open her eyes, meeting his chocolate brown gaze. It wasn’t just dirty talk, what he was saying. He was nervous and he needed her. He needed something physical to take off the edge. And Billy with an edge was unpredictable and he knew that and wanted the night to go as well as she did.
Oh babe, she thought, as in love with him as ever.
So she threw off her heavy coat and hitched herself up onto the battered top of the desk, her legs spread so he could see the black panties she wore under her purple dress.
“Take off the towel,” she murmured, leaning back, so her breasts stood out.
The green towel fell off his body onto a heap at his feet, revealing his erection.
“Lift your dress,” he whispered, and slowly, looking at him through lowered eyelashes, she hitched her dress higher up her thighs.
“Touch yourself.”
“Billy—”
“I want to watch you.”
She slid a finger over her underwear, across the dampening silk. And then back again to the top of her slit, where it felt the best.
“You, too,” she murmured, watching the length of his erection grow. “Touch yourself.” Immediately he palmed himself, his fist sliding slowly up and down. She timed the movement of her finger with the movement of his hand.
“I love you,” he said, his voice bursting out of him, rough and gravelly and hot, like the words were things he couldn’t control. “Whatever happens tonight.”
Her finger stopped and her heart caught up with her body. She launched herself off the desk and into his arms, feeling the strength and warmth of him right down to her soul.
His arms across her back were steel bands, holding her tight to him. She couldn’t imagine what would convince him to let her go. What could possibly turn his heart against her. It would take a force of nature. Her parents not accepting their marriage wouldn’t even put a dent in what he felt for her.
Can you say the same?
She let his faith wash away everything she was scared about—her doubts about their youth, about how she would get lost in the tidal wave of his career taking off. She let it all go. And then it was just them.
Their kiss was endless. Perfect. He walked her back to the bed, laying her down gently, his hands pushing her hair from her face, as if he couldn’t see enough of her. She touched his back, his arms, and the muscles under his skin that flexed and danced, because she couldn’t touch enough of him.
Her hips arched against his, her pubic bone pressing against his erection, and he groaned, breaking the kiss, burying his face in her neck. She felt his lips there, his teeth and tongue, and pulled away.
“Don’t you dare give me a hickey.”
He braced himself against the bed, leaning back to look at her. “You think I’m crazy?”
“I think you love giving me hickeys.”
His half smile, diabolical with that scar, was so sweet in her eyes. So exciting and comforting and all things Billy. “I do, don’t I?”
Her fingers traced his features, his eyebrows and cheekbones. The delicate flutter of his thick eyelashes, the only thing delicate about him. His lips and chin, the smooth skin of his cheek.
“I love you,” she said.
He slipped his hands under her dress, pulling down her silk panties, and then he was there between her legs, hard and heavy, his hand gripping his erection, directing it into the heat and wet of her. Slowly, he eased in, making her gasp, her eyes sting. He was big, and she was ready, but sometimes it didn’t matter. Sometimes the beauty of his body in hers made her want to cry for them. Cry because they got to have this.
“You okay?” he asked, his thumbs gathering the moisture in the corner of her eyes.
“So good, Billy,” she sighed and pressed against him, taking more of him, taking all of him.
Their eyes locked as he slowly pushed into her and slowly retreated. Time stopped. The dinner, the heavy weight of their expectations about this night, it all vanished.
She braced her heels against the mattress, getting as much leverage as she could against his much bigger body. He curled his hands around the railings of his old headboard as he pushed into her.
It was hard, biting back the sounds, the screams that wanted to tear out of her throat, but she managed to tip her head back silently, breathing through the pleasure as he slowly thrust into her and then away. Slow but hard.
“More,” she gasped.
He dropped his forehead against hers, and picked up the pace. The speed and intensity. All things exciting. The delicious slow curl was abandoned for something harder and she wrapped her hands around Billy’s neck and held on, while he drove them back across the bed.
“Come on,” he breathed and she knew he was close, and she was in danger of being left behind, so she reached down, slipping a hand between their bodies and eased one finger to the bundle of nerves between her legs. He leaned back, watching her.
“Feel good?”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes and gave herself over to the building pleasure. Let it spin and coil in her and through her until she shook with it. Until she was lifted right out of herself, into the night. Across the universe.
Two more hard thrusts and he was with her, his teeth against her neck, groaning her name. His skin was damp under her fingertips. He hung over her for a moment, gathering himself, and she let her hands skate over his body. Petting him and comforting herself.
“Do I need another shower?” he asked, pushing himself away from her. He grabbed his towel from the floor and helped clean her up. She was on the pill and both of them loved not using condoms, but it was messy.
“No,” she said, wiping between her legs. “We don’t have time, Billy.”
“I’m glad we took the time for that.” He kissed her forehead, his whole body loose, his smile quick.
“Me, too,” she said, pulling him down for a quick hard kiss on the mouth. the scar a hard knot against her lips. “But get dressed.” She swatted his butt and he jumped away from her.
“We should have some kind of game plan, don’t you think?” she asked, broaching the subject for about the tenth time.
He sighed and stepped into his underwear. “Why?” he asked. “It’s not like we need them to do something. We’re just telling them what we’re doing.”
“I need them to be okay with us getting married, Billy.”
“Yeah, I know. But a game plan isn’t going to make that happen, babe. They
’ll either be okay with it, or they won’t.”
“I want you to talk to my dad,” she said, finally putting it out there.
“What do you mean talk to him?” He pulled on a pair of khaki pants and turned to her while fastening them.
She didn’t say anything, because it seemed so old-fashioned and strange. But Billy knew her inside and out and he dropped his arms. “You’re kidding.”
“I’m not.”
“You want me to ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage? Really? Your dad?”
She nodded. He started to groan, but she stood and grabbed her own underwear from the floor.
“You know he’s not going to like it.”
“I know, and this might … pave the way. Babe. We need to try.”
“You mean I need to try.”
“Billy,” she sighed, disappointed that he went there so fast. Put out and sullen, he sounded like his sisters when he acted this way.
“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s important to you?” he asked.
“Very.”
“Then I’ll do it.”
She threw her arms around his neck, knocking him slightly off balance. Billy was learning how to compromise. It wasn’t always the prettiest thing, but he was trying.
“Did Janice give you a hard time when you came in?”
“Nothing more than usual.”
“I can’t wait to get out of this house. A place that’s just ours.”
“Two days,” she said, and all the nerves and worries came rushing right back.
“Hey, you know what else we need?”
“Billy, not again.”
“No, you pervert.” He reached behind himself and pulled open the top drawer of the desk, without looking away from her. He kept it hidden in his fist. “I got you a present.”
“Really?”
He pulled his hand away. “I was going to give it to you tomorrow, but I thought you might want to wear it tonight.”
Suddenly she knew what it was and for a moment, stark and strange, she didn’t want him to open his hand. She wanted this moment to fold itself up and go away.
“I don’t … I don’t know if this is the kind of thing you wanted. But I thought … I thought it was really pretty. Reminded me of you.”
He opened his fist and in his palm was a gold ring with a small diamond surrounded by pearls. It was exactly what she thought it was, the physical proof of what they were doing, and surprisingly, at the sight of it the fear vanished as fast as it had come, and she gasped with pleasure. With surprise. That had to be a good sign, right? She was delighted by the ring.
“I love you,” he said, slipping it onto her finger.
“It’s beautiful, Billy,” she said. It fit like it was made for her. And it caught the lamplight and sparkled so beautifully.
“Not bad,” he said and kissed her. Kissed the ring. He picked her coat up off the desk and helped her put it on then led her out of his room, into the chill of the house.
When he wasn’t looking, she slipped the ring off and put it into her pocket.
Chapter 2
Maddy was still nervous. Billy he could feel it throbbing off of her. Her fingernails were practically gone. And he wasn’t exactly thrilled about this whole dinner plan with her parents, but he was doing it to make her happy and hopefully to get her to stop chewing her nails until they bled.
Night came early to Pittsburgh in the winter. And the neighborhood looked its best this time of year. Christmas lights brightened the poorest of the houses. Snow covered the worst of the sidewalks.
They kicked their way through the middle of the street, through piles of freshly fallen snow. White flakes still tumbled from the sky, covering Maddy’s pretty curls, melting on her cheeks. He liked her any season, but Christmas and her birthday were always a good stretch of time for them.
The air smelled like baking and pot roast, which made his stomach roar.
Maddy’s mom was going to make something fancy. Fancy and weird. There was a good chance it would be gross. She was like that; looking through cookbooks to find something no one in the world really wanted to eat.
Maddy, he thought, when he started to get grossed out thinking about what kind of dinner Maddy’s mom was going to make. Doing this for my girl.
Two of the Lester kids and another boy ran by, dragging sleds. “Hey, Billy!” they shouted, their sleds banging into their legs as they came up behind Billy and Maddy. Billy turned to face them and took Maddy’s suddenly tense hand, curling it over his arm. There was a rumor that the oldest Lester kid had graduated from bashing car windows with a bat to mugging people with a knife. “You rich now or what?”
“No guys, not rich.”
“You look rich.”
“Thanks.” He laughed and the kids laughed, too. The tension in Maddy’s arm relaxed.
“When we gonna see you on TV and shit?”
“Not sure, hopefully next season.”
“Cool.”
“See you around,” Billy said and turned to continue walking toward Maddy’s place.
“Hey, lady,” the oldest Lester kid yelled and Maddy turned to look over her shoulder at him. “Call me when you wanna see what a real man can do.” He grabbed his crotch.
“Go back home to your mom,” she yelled, and kept walking. A smile on her face.
“It will be good to get out of this neighborhood, won’t it?” Billy asked, watching her carefully. They’d been so obsessed with the draft lately that she had stopped talking about what she wanted to do. And he didn’t know if that was good or bad. He could take care of her; it’s not like she had to work or go to school, but she wasn’t the kind of girl who wanted to be taken care of.
“Yes. It will,” she sighed.
“I’m in Rochester again until they call me up.”
“I like Rochester,” she said. She’d worked hard to finish her credits early. She was done with high school except for graduation. Another thing she would tell her parents tonight.
“I rented that apartment I told you about. In the house.”
“You did?”
“Yeah. I mean, we need a place and there are plenty of schools and stuff for you in Rochester. You know. College.”
“I can’t really enroll there. What if you get called up?”
“You can transfer, right?”
“Yeah,” she stroked his arm. He could tell she was overwhelmed by all of it. “Good point, I guess. Let’s not worry about it right now, Billy.” She slipped her hand from his elbow to his palm, twining their fingers through their gloves. “Let’s just worry about tonight.”
They stopped in front of Maddy’s house. It was the same kind of cookie-cutter special he grew up in. Two stories, a fenced-in yard. A cement porch. But Maddy’s mom had put up window shutters. They had bars on the windows but they didn’t look bad, like some of the barred windows in the neighborhood, not with the curtains and crap she had put up to hide them.
In the spring the front walk was decorated with flowers, in the summer a vegetable garden grew in a small patch by the door, and now, in the winter, blinking white lights surrounded all the windows. A white and red star shone down from the chimney and Santa himself waved from the front door.
“Looks good,” he joked.
“She loves Christmas.”
He and Maddy stood there side by side, just watching the house. He could feel how torn she was. How sure and unsure she felt at the very same time.
How do I fix it? he wondered. How do I make her believe in us when we seem so crazy?
Well, first he was going to ask her dad for permission to marry her. Ridiculous. But if it made her feel better, he would do it.
“Let’s go,” he said, tugging her into action.
“Billy,” she didn’t move. “If they don’t approve—”
“We’re still doing it,” he interrupted, with enough conviction for both of them. He wasn’t totally sure how she would have finished that sentence on her own. He didn’t want
to hear it. “I love you. You love me. We need each other. Yeah, it’s weird that we’re so young, but that doesn’t matter.”
“You’re right.” She smiled, beamed really, the Christmas lights blinking in her eyes. It was the first true smile he’d seen from her in a few days, but somehow it still didn’t feel real. “You’re totally right.”
Maddy led him up the steps and opened the front door. In the foyer they stripped off their stuff. Coats and boots. Her gloves. His hat. Maddy put on the slippers her mom always left by the door. Billy ignored them.
The front room was empty, just as it always was. All the vacuum lines in the carpet lined up perfectly, and the Christmas knickknack crap on the shelves looked like it had just been dusted. The couches no one ever sat on appeared new, but the Baumgartens had probably owned them for twenty years.
The room was for special occasions, but Maddy said there was never anything special enough to get the front room dirty.
“Mom! Dad?”
There was a thunk and a clank from the kitchen and Maddy’s mom suddenly emerged. Maddy had gotten her mom’s dark curly hair and big eyes, her ready smile and her way with people.
But Joanne was about a foot shorter and weighed close to three hundred pounds; she wore housecoats a lot and dresses without waists. Tonight it was a red and green one; she even had a sprig of holly in her hair.
Maddy obsessed over her body because she didn’t want to look like her mom and nothing that Billy could say to her seemed to convince her that it wouldn’t happen. Maddy was strong and athletic.
It was one of those things that he chalked up to her being a girl and him being a guy—sometimes they just didn’t look at things the same way. And frankly, he’d still love her if she weighed a million pounds. He’d worry about her, but he’d love her.
“Hey, Mrs. Baumgarten,” he said, sliding past Maddy to give Joanne a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She always seemed to like that stuff. She liked him. It was comforting to think that Joanne was going to welcome him into their family with open arms. He was the son she had always wanted and all that stuff. It would in fact be awesome if he could just ask her for Maddy’s hand in marriage.
All I Want for Christmas Is You (Short Story) Page 2
