The Best Thing

by Zapata, Mariana

  When Jonah’s mouth switched over to my other breast, sucking that one too into his warm, warm mouth, I wiggled and arched my back more. His hands tugged my shirt up to my waist, and Jonah scooted down the bed. When his finger hooked into the stretchy material of my underwear and tugged it aside, I only had a second to hold my breath before his tongue was there. Down there. Dipping in before those lips pursed over my clit and sucked that too.

  My hands clutched the pillow under my head as he tucked his tongue inside of me again, replaced by one slow-sliding finger and then another. They scissored as I held my breath and my thighs jumped around his ears. Jonah moaned low and hoarse as he pushed in and out, flexing and moving his big fingers inside of me over and over again until I could hear how wet I was, his mouth opening and closing, nibbling and sucking. He licked one lip and then the other before tracing his tongue over the sensitive skin of my inner thighs before going back… until he stopped. The flat of his tongue gave me another swipe down my lips before he dipped both fingers into his mouth. His smile was huge.

  I sat up enough to grab at the band of his underwear and tug the material down so that his long, thick mass bounced out, tipping up to slap at his lower stomach. I settled my eyes on the tip weeping clear, nearly white tears. Wrapping my hand halfway down the length of it, I gave his dick a soft squeeze, his precum warm and sticky under my palm. “I forgot how pretty this big thing is,” I told him a second before I leaned forward and gave the head a lick that had Jonah jerking his hips back with a smile and a shake of his head.

  “One more of that and it’ll be over in no time,” he whispered before ducking down and giving me another kiss that distracted me enough so that I didn’t know where he was until his hips were between my legs again and the head of him was nudging against my clit. “I don’t have a condom.”

  I raised my hips, letting his head slide over my clit and back down while I said, “I’m on birth control, and I’m not ovulating.” I dragged my tongue over the column of his neck, giving the tendon there its own suck.

  Jonah didn’t wait. His hand went in between us, and the next thing I knew, that big plum of his head was pushing through, in and in and in, and….

  I groaned at the sting of his size in me after so fucking long and the pure fucking pleasure of having him in me, his upper body over mine… his mouth taking my own as he pushed slowly to the hilt with a grunt.

  You could say the last thing I was expecting was the husky, gravelly laugh that bubbled out of Jonah’s mouth when he was seated deeply in me, filling me up like nobody and nothing else ever could or would.

  I sucked in a breath as the movement of his laugh made him twitch inside of me, and even then, I started laughing too. “What the hell are you laughing over?”

  Jonah looked down at me, pain in his eyes, and groaned before saying, taking his time with each word, “I’m sorry, love.” His throat bobbed, and he took my mouth again, pulling out about halfway before thrusting back inside just as slow. “This isn’t going to last long, and I think it’s funny how short this is going to be. I’m sorry.”

  I smiled just as he pulled a few inches out before shoving back, hard, forcing me to suck in a breath as the base of his dick hit my clit. “It doesn’t matter,” I whispered into his ear before taking the lobe between my lips for a second. “I’m real good at making myself come.”

  He groaned as I slipped my hand between us, fingers brushing the wet root of his cock before I set the flats of my fingers right above where they were most needed and started a slow circle.

  I watched as he pulled half of his dick out and then pounded it back in like it had never retreated in the first place. The sound wet and so fucking hot as he pulled a quarter out and then pushed it back. Jonah was slow and intense as he took my mouth, filling me up with that thick, thick length that was already throbbing. With my free hand, I grabbed his ass again, holding one cheek as his hips rolled and pushed and pulled, taking their time, making it intense as I rubbed at my clit slowly.

  “You feel amazing. I missed you so much,” he whispered before taking my mouth for another deep kiss. “I love you.”

  I wrapped my legs around his hips and moved my hand faster and faster. I had to tear my lips away from his when I came, burying my mouth against his neck as I pulsed around him, inner thighs shaking, wrapping my arms around his shoulders to hold him against me while I caught my breath. It was while I did that, that his forearms slipped under my shoulders and he did the same, holding me so close, his mouth against the column of my throat, dick throbbing and twitching as he impaled me with every inch, hugging me to him like he feared there was really somewhere else I would rather be while he shuddered through his orgasm.

  He lay over me panting, my legs still around his waist but loose, my arms still over his shoulders. I swept my hand up and down the column of his damp spine. Jonah kissed my jaw and neck as his palm stroked my thigh from hip to knee and back up.

  After a long time of him softening in me, kissing as much of my chest as he could as he tugged at the collar of my shirt, I couldn’t help but smile at him after he brushed his nose against mine some more.

  “We don’t have to do this every night,” I told him, kissing his chin. “But we can if you want to.”

  His white teeth flashed. “If you’re going to insist….”

  I laughed, and he kissed me, his mouth hovering over my ear.

  “Lenny?”

  “Hmm?” I pecked his neck.

  His breathing turned heavy. “I wasn’t going to ask you to come with me.”

  That had me dropping my head against the pillow and blinking up at him.

  His thumb moved over my eyebrow before his mouth descended and his lips brushed my temple, and he whispered, “Because of your life here. Because I don’t want to take you away from here. But….” Those lips trailed over my forehead, pausing right there in the middle. “But I want you to come with me. You and Mo. I want us to be together. I want my family with me.”

  He… he wanted me to go with him? Us go with him?

  “I don’t want to be without you.”

  I lost every single one of my words.

  “I don’t need an answer now, or any time soon. I don’t deserve an answer to begin with… but I’m leaving soon. And I have you to thank for it. You were right. If I can keep playing, I should. I want to. I missed it so much while I was out, but now… I’ll have to miss you and Mo if I do. But I’ve been thinking… even if you don’t come… I’ll come back as soon as I can. My contract could be for a year, after that, I could… I could retire. Come here, possibly. Or you could go with me to see home. You and Grandpa Gus and Peter. I’ve saved most of my income. I could build us a house big enough for all of us. I just want you with me, Len. And if I have to wait a year or two or three, I’ll do it, but I would always rather have you now than not.”

  I hadn’t even….

  Go with him? Mo and me?

  I wanted to ask him if he was serious, but this was Jonah. Of course he was serious.

  Go with him?

  Go with him?

  His mouth trailed over my forehead, dry and warm, until his nose was there too, and he was nuzzling me. Then both of his hands were there, under my shoulders, holding them tight. “I don’t make up for everything you would leave behind, but I would try my best, Lenny. I would try my best every day if you’d consider it.”

  * * *

  And that was what I did. Every chance I had. Even if it felt like a lead weight that had been dropped on top of my soul.

  We did other things too.

  I loved brushing my teeth with him beside me in the mornings. I loved seeing him greet Mo first thing, with cuddles and kisses and his lovely voice singing Māori lullabies into her ear. I loved his sleepy face and the way he smelled and how unafraid and open he was to touching me all the damn time. A hand on my hip. An arm over my shoulders. A chin against my head. Fingers threading through my own every chance they had.

  If I hadn�
��t already been in love with him, it would have been over for me in those following weeks.

  Regardless of what he was training, he would come and get on a bike with me any time I got on and we’d race.

  If I was weight training, he’d come and spot me.

  If I was working in the MMA building, he would sit and watch me like he had nothing better to do. When I’d do something he thought was impressive, he would clap, and later on tell me how amazing he thought it was. Then he’d ask me to do it to him to know.

  My heart grew and grew with every day with him. And grew even more every night that we were together with Mo. Like a big family.

  At night when it was just the two of us holed up in my room like horny teenagers… baby Jesus would have been traumatized. We might have even had an addiction problem. I sucked him off when my period hit, and he’d shoved my shirt up high to suck on my nipples and rub at my clit over my underwear at the end of my period. But mostly, it was the way I woke up with his arm thrown around my waist most mornings that was the best. Or waking up with my face in between his shoulder blades, my toes touching his calves.

  And then when the day came that his agent called with news that he’d been signed and would have to leave….

  That was the worst day I’d had in a long time.

  Chapter 21

  Subject: Email me back

  Lenny DeMaio:

  Wed 4/8/2019 1:29 p.m.

  to Jonah Collins

  I hate you. I really do.

  My heart was heavy as fuck, and there was no use denying it or trying to hide it.

  I was moping. Big fucking time. Massive fucking time.

  So far, I’d been fortunate enough to never lose anyone really close to me, but I had a feeling that my body was going through the closest thing to grief it had ever known.

  And Jonah hadn’t even left yet.

  It had been three days since the call had come through confirming that he had been picked up by a team. That he’d signed another massive deal with more than a handful of zeroes behind it. That he had to leave.

  Two years. That’s how long his deal was for. Two years with the Kobe Chargers.

  The bittersweet smile on his face while he’d held the phone to his ear as he’d laid in bed beside me, bare-chested with Mo sprawled over him with her bottle, had been awesome and painful.

  Awesome because he was going to keep doing something that he loved doing. Something that he was meant to do. But… painful because of what it meant.

  I’d still slapped a smile on my face and kept it there. I’d hugged the shit out of him and kept on hugging the shit out of him since. I’d booked his plane ticket for him. I had even downloaded the app that may or may not work once he got to Japan so that he could see Mo at daycare through the cameras.

  One week was all the team had been willing to give Jonah to arrive since they had already started practicing for the upcoming season.

  One week didn’t give me enough time to leave with him. If I was going to.

  The fact was: we could go visit him no problem. I knew that. He had already eyed his game calendar and circled off clots of days, times that he could squeeze a quick trip to visit, days when he’d be home for longer than three or four days so we could fly over for a visit. Bye weeks when we could meet up somewhere.

  I’ll take any time I can see you both, Jonah had told me when we’d sat beside each other in the kitchen with his calendar. An hour. Three. A day. Whatever you can do, I’ll take.

  Whatever I could do he would take.

  Two days later, that comment still pounded away at my head. And my heart.

  My entire fucking body.

  I hadn’t said a word to Jonah about how much my chest hurt every time I looked at him—which was half the day because he’d been picking up Mo from Grandpa and bringing her to Maio House in the afternoons, where they would hang out with me in my office. Half of my family. Half of my heart.

  And a fourth of it was leaving me in four days.

  This man I fucking loved the shit out of.

  He was going.

  And he’d asked me to go with him. To fly halfway across the world, away from half of the people I loved with all of my heart, away from my job, my life. And be with him there. In Kobe.

  I had no idea what the hell I should do. Leave everything behind or… not. It wasn’t just me I was deciding for. I had a ten-month-old life relying on me to do what was best for her.

  I was in the middle of trying not to think about what was going to happen—and how I was being a selfish asshole and didn’t want it to happen—when the knock on my office door came. I called out “Come in” to whoever was on the other side as I minimized the screen I’d been reading, a thousand and a half thoughts going through my head that had nothing to do with Maio House or any of the guys and women in it.

  The size of the shadow warned me it was Jonah, and my stupid-ass heart squeezed itself tight at his big smiling head as he came in holding Mo, his fucking mini-me from the color of her hair to her skin and eyes, in one brawny-ass arm. “Busy?” he asked, circling around and coming to stand beside my chair before he dipped his head and brushed that mouth over mine before giving me a peck on each cheek that had me smiling.

  I grabbed Mo’s foot and pretended I was about to eat it, my other hand wrapping around the back of Jonah’s knee, giving it squeeze. “Nah,” I answered him once Mo had squealed and told me all about her day. I met my favorite eye color in the world and smiled up at him, even though I was pretty sure he could see right through me and what I’d just been in the middle of doing.

  He didn’t disappoint me.

  His index finger grazed my eyebrow as he stood right there, towering over me with our girl cradled in the crook of his arm, and asked, “What’s that sweet face for?”

  How the hell was I supposed to go so long without seeing him? Could I do it? Yeah. But I didn’t want to.

  I really didn’t want to. That was a fact, and it was always going to be, my gut said. What the hell was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to choose between the loves of my life?

  “Honestly, I was thinking about how much I’m going to miss you, and how I don’t want to only see you…” I had to think about it for a second. “Eight times over the next eight months.” I’d already memorized the dates he’d circled.

  That smile of his didn’t go anywhere, and his fingertip brushed over my cheekbone again as he hoisted Mo up a little higher. “We’ll make it work. It won’t be forever,” he told me with that sweet-ass expression on his face that said he totally believed every word coming out of his mouth.

  “I know.” I blinked, soaking in what he wasn’t saying. What he wasn’t asking. And I hated feeling so vulnerable, hated not just being straight-up happy he was leaving, but… at least there was something for me to be sad over. I didn’t want him to be sad. I didn’t want him to lose something that meant so much to him again. Of course, I would rather him have this dream of his for a few years longer, even if it came at a cost to me. Of course, I would. After what had happened with his Achilles, I knew it was wishful thinking that he would get to choose when his career ended, but any more time he could get would and could be all I wished for him.

  But…

  I still couldn’t help but ask the one question that had been bouncing around in my head since that call about the Kobe Chargers had come in. “Do you not want us to go with you anymore?”

  That handsome face fell so instantly, I felt bad, but before I could say anything, Jonah dropped to his knees after moving Mo to his other arm so that they were both looking at me. “Yeh,” he answered immediately, his gaze bouncing from one of my eyes to the other. “You thought I changed my mind?”

  “You haven’t brought it up since you got the call,” I explained, lifting a hand to tap at a freckle right over the bridge of his nose as something uncomfortable slid into my chest. He’d mentioned us tagging along with him almost daily in the weeks before his offer.

  Bu
t not since.

  Mo slapped a little hand over her dad’s cheek then, and he smiled at her before dipping his head to give her a kiss that ended up on her mouth. When he turned his attention back to me, his eyes were brighter than I had ever seen, but his lips were flat, not in a mad or sad expression but more… resigned, I guessed. “I will always want you to be with me, do you understand? I know this isn’t a decision you can make in a day or a week or a month, Lenny. I know what you have here, but that doesn’t mean I’ve lost hope that one day you’ll make that decision,” he said, gazing right into my fucking eyes. That same index finger as before made a loop around the shell of my ear, his gaze bright.

  “Time and distance… that’s nothing for us, is it? Whatever time we have together, I will cherish every minute of.” That finger dragged over my cheekbone, and his expression went to the next level with the understanding and patience reflected in it. “My body is leaving, but the rest of me will be wherever you and Mo are, Lenny. I’d hoped I’d made that clear.”

  Oh, this son of a bitch and his fucking words.

  I pressed my lips together, soaking up every single one of his sentences and saving them for later. Later when I would need them. Later when he wasn’t around to say them in person and remind me that he felt the same way I did.

  Later when I was going to miss the fucking shit out of him.

  I loved him, and I wasn’t going to make him feel bad about this. I wasn’t. Not ever.

  Sometimes you had to do the right thing for the right person, even if it hurt.

  “I can’t leave just like that, Jonah,” I told him, not meaning to whisper the words out, but that’s how they arrived into the world. Weak. Sad. “I want to be with you. I’m going to miss you, but you’re leaving in four fucking days, and—”

  He placed a hand on my thigh and squeezed it. “I know.”

  “I’d have to find someone else to manage this place. Train them. And there’s Grandpa Gus and Peter too. I love them too, and I can’t just leave them like that either. Mo and I are all they have, and they were all I’ve ever had for most of my life,” I whispered to him, my eyes burning just a little but more than enough because they weren’t used to it. “But I’m going to miss you so fucking much, and I don’t know what to do.”