by Emerson Rose
She smells exquisite, like lavender and vanilla. I turn my face into her hair and breathe deeply, taking her in, absorbing her, molding against her body. She is sheer perfection with her soft, round hip under the bend of my elbow and her toned legs tangled with mine. I sigh and settle in, relaxing against her for a long night of listening to my mother’s old clock tick in the dark.
I try unsuccessfully to block out the anxiety building in my chest. That damn chair does not belong there. I want to move it—no, I need to move it—but I’m anchored in this bed with Violet.
Two hours later, the house is quiet, which is usually soothing to me, but right now, I wish there were a television or radio on somewhere in the house. I could use some mindless late night comedy or an infomercial to distract me from that fucking chair. It’s now a fucking chair after laying here for two hours. At first it was the chair, then the damn chair, but now it’s graduated to a full-fledged fucking chair.
I may get rid of that chair after tonight. No I wont. It completes the room. I drape my shirt over the back of it when I’m getting ready for work. I sit in it when I tie my shoes. But more importantly, the space where it sits would be empty without it.
I don’t know why I can’t just throw a fucking piece of furniture away when I decide I don’t like it or when it’s not needed anymore. I’ve never been able to get rid of things. I’m not a hoarder—quite the opposite. I prefer things simple and streamlined, less is more and that sort of thing.
I think of everything other than this gorgeous woman in my arms and the chair. I think about the horror of public restrooms, The Brady Bunch, broccoli, sweaty locker rooms. It’s four in the morning. In two hours, I’m waking this beauty up for a morning workout that I am hoping does not only last for one morning. In two hours, I am going to slide my numb arm out from under this pillow and get out of this bed and put that fucking chair that’s been tormenting me for hours back into its spot. In two hours, I’m going to slide my hard, throbbing cock between her thighs and worship Violet until she never wants to leave this bed again. Two hours. I’ve got this.
I open my eyes and stare at the ceiling, and a warm slice of sunlight streams across the center of my bed. I blink and turn my head to my right and find an empty space. This isn’t unusual. I sleep alone and I live alone. Something isn’t right this morning, though. Something’s off. The smell of lavender permeates the sheets, and the chair that is supposed to be next to my bed is crookedly positioned, facing the open door of my bedroom.
Violet. Fuck, I fell asleep. Just two hours left on my watch, and I fucking dropped the ball. I jump out of bed and storm through the door. The compulsion to fix the fucking chair’s position almost sucks me in, but my concern for Violet’s safety is more powerful.
“Violet,” I call down the hall that leads to another bedroom and a bathroom. I’m frozen listening for her reply and trying to decide if I should go downstairs first or check these rooms. The doors are closed. That’s a good sign. I decide on the stairs, taking them two at a time when she doesn’t answer.
I call out again. “Violet.”
Nothing.
I’m thinking about the square footage of my house when I remember that Violet was naked when she went to sleep last night. My house isn’t that big, three thousand one hundred and twenty-five square feet, to be exact. I’ll find her. I’m sure of it.
I cross the living room, scanning left and right, searching for her. Nothing. Picking up speed, I tear through the kitchen and down the hall to the garage. Please, God, don’t let her have found the keys. The doorknob cracks the plaster when I open the door with enormous force. I smash my hand against the wall inside the garage and turn on the light. I circle the vehicle, bare feet slapping against the custom coated concrete flooring, looking in every window, checking every door. All are locked and the seats are empty.
“Violet!” I yell this time, my cool Marine confidence wavering ever so slightly. And then I hear her. “Major?” her soft voice comes from inside the house. When I step inside, I see her down the hall. She’s standing with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders on the other side of the kitchen island. She’s disheveled and confused. I close the distance between us in five long strides and wrap my arms around her, squeezing her tight.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t think. I figured since I wasn’t at home I might not . . .”
“Shush, there’s nothing to apologize for. I should be apologizing to you. I told you I’d keep you safe and I fell asleep on the job.”
I stroke her long, tangled hair down her back and kiss the top of her head. Why does everything with this woman feel so natural and familiar? I don’t cuddle, I don’t soothe and calm, and I never bring women into my house or my bed. She’s enchanted me with some sort of witchery—a spell, a curse, maybe?
She’s shivering in my arms. “Where were you?” I ask.
She moves her face from my chest to look up at me with bloodshot eyes.
“Right here,” she says, pointing to the floor on the other side of the island. I ran right past her on my way to the garage.
“You weren’t exaggerating about the sleepwalking, were you?”
She shakes her head and nuzzles back into my chest. I scoop her up and carry her back upstairs to bed to warm her up.
When I’ve got her back in bed, I remove the throw blanket from her body and cover her with the thick navy blue comforter. She keeps ahold of my hand when I start to move away. “I’ll be right back,” I say. She reluctantly releases my hand and tucks it under the covers with the rest of her body.
I move my chair back to its spot, adjusting it twice before I’m satisfied that it’s perfectly positioned.
I feel her eyes on me, trying to figure me out, assessing, judging. But I’m used to people messing with me for being anal. I like things a certain way, that’s all. That’s it, no big deal.
I return to the bed on her side, and while she watches me closely, I drop my briefs and lift the comforter to slide in close to her. I’m rock hard—have been all night. Her eyes are wide with surprise as she scoots over to make room for me. When I’m settled, she wraps herself around me like a koala bear, arms around my neck, one leg hooked over my hip, pressing her wet core against my cock. Fuck, she feels good . . . too good, fucking fabulously good. I could slide right in with no effort. She’s right there, ripe and wet for the taking. Just one small tilt of my hips, and I could push balls deep into the sexiest woman I’ve known in years—six years, to be exact.
“Are you warm?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says softly.
“Are you ready for a one-morning stand?”
“That’s what I was thinking of calling this last night too,” she says, surprised.
“Great minds—” I start to say.
“Think alike,” she finishes for me.
“So, are you ready?”
“You tell me,” she says, arching her back and pressing her wet pussy against the tip of my cock. We rock together, eyes locked, my cock sliding between her folds and against her clit until she’s on fire. I claim her mouth and slide my tongue between her lips, exploring, tangling it with hers. She digs her heel into the small of my back, arching and moaning, begging me with her body and her little fuck me gasps between kisses to take her now.
I roll onto my back, never breaking the kiss, taking her with me. She’s flush against my body when I reach out to the night table and blindly search for the handle on the drawer. I find it and slide it open a crack to reach inside for a condom. I put the box in there last night when she was talking to her mother. She was so busy explaining herself to her mother, she didn’t even notice.
When I’ve got the foil package in my hand, I untangle my other hand from her hair and open it over her back. The second I have the wrapper off, I flip her onto her back. She screeches and lifts one corner of her mouth in the most seductive smile when I rise over her to slide the condom over my thick shaft. She sucks her plump bottom lip into her mouth and holds it between
her teeth, sliding her hands up and down the tops of my thighs that are straddling her curvaceous hips.
“Major?” she says. I like how she says Major, like it’s my name and not my rank.
“Hmm?” I say, raising one eyebrow and sliding a long finger along her soaking wet slit. Her eyes flutter shut, and a feathery gasp escapes her lips.
I’m not letting up. I continue to drag my finger in a figure eight around her clit and down into her pussy. Her nails dig into my thighs and her back arches off the mattress. She hasn’t tried to ask her question again. I’m betting it exploded into a million pieces in her mind when I touched her. Still stroking her, I lean down on one elbow to tease her stiff nipple with the tip of my tongue. I circle and suck and flick before moving to show the other breast the same attention.
Her hands that were stroking my thighs earlier, the same ones that dug her fingernails into my flesh, have abandoned my skin to grip the sheets of the bed.
“Please, Major, please,” she says, and I can’t help but make her speak in that soft, whimpering voice again.
“Please what, Violet? Tell me what you want.”
Her eyes float open, and she stops writhing on my hand.
“I want you inside of me, fucking me, Major. I can’t wait anymore.”
Fuck, those dirty words coming out of that sweet mouth is such a turn on.
It only takes a miniscule movement on both our parts and I’m sinking into her, slowly, inch by inch, until I’m deep inside her. Her legs are wrapped around my waist like a vise, and her heels are digging into my ass, but I can’t move.
“Be still,” I tell her, running one hand along her silky soft thigh. She obeys, staring at me with her sleepy dark bedroom eyes. I’m glad we waited until morning. This is a sight I would have missed in the dark, and that would have been a crime. Her lips are parted and her breath is coming in short pants. Her flat belly sinks in whenever I find a new place on her body to explore. Her flushed cheeks and the fine sheen of perspiration on her forehead . . . she is perfection.
I hook my hand behind her knee and slide her leg up, pushing deeper into her and moan, “Fuck, you feel so good. How do you want it, baby? Slow and deep, or fast and hard?”
She mouths the word both, and I smirk. I like this greedy beauty more and more every minute. I slide out to the tip and hover before plunging back in slowly. Over and over, I circle my hips until she throws her arms over her head and grips the pillow, pulling it around her face on both sides.
“Fast and hard now, please, Major,” she pants, and I release her knee and place my hands on either side of her head and drive into her hard, just the way she asked for it. She releases the pillow and slides her hands around to my ass, urging me on, pushing me, begging me to bring her to climax.
I hate to have this end, but I want to make her feel good—better than good. I want to rock her fucking world. Our sweat-covered bodies slap together at a hungry pace. She begins to arch her back and tense. She’s close. So am I, but I’m holding on to watch her come.
“I . . . oh God,” she yells, and I watch as her eyes squeeze shut and her mouth falls open. Every muscle in her body simultaneously contracts around me while I continue to glide in and out, giving her every last second of pleasure possible. When I’m positive she’s satisfied, when she begins to feel limp underneath me, I power forward and release with a roar.
I collapse to the side, pulling her with me, staying connected, and we lay tangled in each other’s arms, catching our breath.
“You’re amazing,” I say, brushing clumps of damp hair off her face, tucking it behind her ear.
“Next time, I’m yelling oorah when I come, Marine. You’re pretty damn spectacular yourself.”
“So this isn’t a one-morning-stand anymore?” I ask, crossing my fingers and toes, willing her to say no.
“Hell no, we can’t just do that once,” she says enthusiastically, and my insides brighten for the first time in six long years.
“I agree wholeheartedly. That is definitely something worth repeating.”
“And repeating and repeating and repeating . . .” she says, smiling.
I kiss her on her forehead and then her nose and then once more softly on her lips. I don’t cuddle or kiss post coital, and my heart never skips a beat in my chest when a woman smiles at me. Violet has me breaking all of my rules, and I am a man who likes his rules.
“What time is it?” I ask. She lifts up her head a couple of inches off the pillow and squints at the clock on the table behind me.
“Eight thirty I think. Why do you have such an old clock anyway?”
“It was my adoptive mother’s. She had a thing about time, so I took it from her when I left home. Violet?”
“Yeah?”
“Your eyes are red. Do you wear contacts?”
She groans. “Yes, damn it, they hurt. I keep leaving them in. Now I’ll have to wear my glasses to the bridal shower.”
I push back the covers and slide out of her, still semi-hard. She makes a faint sound of disapproval in her throat when I leave her in the bed alone. But when I return with a bottle of saline solution and a new contact lens case, she is appreciative.
“You wear contacts too?” she asks.
“No, I used to. I had Lasik, but I had a new bottle of saline, and I always used new contact cases when I got a new pair.”
She sits up in bed, and I open one side of the cases and fill it with saline as she removes a contact. She slips it into the fluid and we repeat the process for the other eye.
“Better?” I ask.
“Well, my eyes feel better, but now I can’t see shit.”
I chuckle. “I think you’ve seen plenty for a one-morning stand.”
She wilts, and I realize my screw up.
“Until next time, of course.”
“I think we should have a next time one more time before you take me back to the hotel.”
“Hmm, so a two-morning stand?”
“Yes, precisely.”
“I suggest we continue in the shower so we will be ready to go when we’re done.”
“Excellent time management, Major Steele,” she says, playfully referring to my noisy ticking clock. I actually hate that fucking clock and what it represents, but I’m not telling Violet stories about my mother. I’d rather concentrate on taking her into the shower and bending her over to give her a second proper Good Morning.
“Ready to yell oorah?”
“Oorah, Marine,” she says, and I scoop her up and carry her to the shower where she did in fact yell Oorah . . . more than once.
8
Boring showers and pregnant dates
Violet
Belle blushes bright red when she lifts the lid off the gift my mother gave her. God only knows what’s in that box. I’m so glad I chose not to go in on something with her. Belle’s ultra-conservative mother is hosting the shower today. She’s a stuffy, formal woman. She looks like a vintage Barbie doll in a 1950s pencil skirt and button-up jacket with a peplum—minus the big tits. It’s a ridiculous outfit on this eighty-five-degree day. I told Mom to save the risqué gifts for the bachelorette party, but she loves to stir up shit.
“I think I’ll save this one for later,” Belle says quickly, replacing the lid on the box. Her mother lifts one eyebrow at my mom but looks at the tag on the gift and clucks her tongue anyway before she removes it from Belle’s lap.
Mom has developed a bit of a wild, carefree reputation since my father died, and we all come from the same community. Belle’s mother, Marjorie, turns her nose up and twists in her chair to slide the box way in the back under the table behind her. She has been painstakingly logging each gift into a wedding book as they are being opened, but Mother’s is getting the shaft. There will be no entry that says barely there, red see-through negligee set from Lilly Washington on her gift list.
I’ll be sure to snatch it up and take it if they conveniently leave it there after the shower. I’m no prude, and I know my mother.
It’s probably something kinky or over the top sexy. No sense in letting it go to waste. I’ll bet Major and I could find some trouble to get into together with a gift like that.
Major. Memories of last night and this morning have been replaying over and over in my mind ever since he dropped me off at the hotel. Flashes of his strong, weathered tan hands on my brown skin, his full lips on my breasts, the way his face exploded with pure bliss when he—
“Violet, Violet.”
“Oh, sorry.” Mom pats me on the leg when Belle calls out my name to thank me for my gift.
“Thank you. This is so awesome. I love it,” Belle says, holding up the Facebook photo album I made using all of the photos of her and Mattie posted during their relationship.
“I’m glad you like it. It’s a little different from the ones available online. I had them add a few special touches. Just one of the perks of working for Facebook, ya know?”
“Thank You, Mattie will love it too.” She hugs the album to her chest and hands it to her mother, who I’m sure has no idea what Facebook is. But she doesn’t scoot it under the table with Mom’s gift, so I take that as a compliment.
All of Belle’s friends start to buzz about what’s in the next package, and my mind wanders back to this morning again.
