by M. Mabie
I offered the other side of her chest the same attention. She purred when I finally licked. Hummed when I circled her skin with my tongue. Exhaled with a heavy sigh, nearly a moan, when I finally sucked.
Glancing up, I found a slack face, her mouth open and eyes closed.
Yes, I’ll take care of you.
Her fingers found mine and like I’d prayed they would, she helped me loosen the knots on her hips.
She made the choice.
That’s right. Come to me.
With the fabric loose, her legs fell apart and she leaned farther back on her palms, hovering over the cushion behind her.
My pulse quickened. She gave me the flood of urgency I loved. I would stay calm though.
I didn’t expose her the first chance I got but left the untethered bottom part of her suit stay where it was. I’d make damn sure she felt everything. Experience all the pleasure she deserved. The world revolved around the precious body in my hands.
My eyes battled, wanting both to watch her face for clues and see the landscape as I explored her body. She was captivating, and I was lost to her unique details.
The softness of her tummy. She was a mother, and her body cataloged how life-changing it had been for her. There were faded stretch marks, like sets of parenthesis flanking her navel, proof of her femininity. They were hers and probably neglected, so I kissed them.
My fingers splayed, I caressed her neck and chest, and when I felt her heart thud underhand, between her breasts, I left them there.
The water cooled my body as I sank deeper, tasting new flavors of her and coveting the feel of her skin on my lips. She adjusted, and the thought of her bare ass scraping across the rough cement sprung me into action. I wrapped my arm around her back, lifted her off the ground, pulled the soft float underneath, and then set her back down.
Faith was malleable, pliant in my arms. Her blinking was slow, and she reclined more, slowly spreading her legs wider—for me.
Another choice had been made. An invitation.
I kissed her inner thigh, just above her knee, and her foot gently caressed my side.
Thank you, Foxtrot.
“Aaron, it’s been so long. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I didn’t mind; besides, her body language said otherwise. Her hips rocked toward me. Her foot stroked my ribs. Her hands reached for me.
My mouth ascended her left thigh.
“Aaron, what about you?” she panted.
What more did I need?
There’d been nights upon nights I’d thought of her, of this, and I’d survived just fine on that. I was finally with her and felt wealthier for each real second that passed.
My mouth was on a mission, and it headed to her center.
“This is what I want,” I requested, a breath away from the fabric covering her middle, and she jumped.
I paused and my eyes met hers.
“I’m ticklish there.”
What a fun secret.
In some ways, I wanted to torment her, but not like that. Some other time. What I wanted wasn’t a laughing matter.
I pressed my lips against the nylon suit and it was warm. Her fragrance filtered through me. Clean laundry, chlorine, and her. Through the fabric I immediately felt a deliciously swollen spot, a new place to call my home, and I kissed her there.
Enlisting my thumb, I caressed her from the outside of her bikini. She’d ask me in when she wanted me there, which wouldn’t take long if I was on the right track.
Arching her back, she pulled the last piece of her bathing suit away and sat perched before me naked.
I wanted inside her. My tongue. My fingers. My whole body.
She shivered, but it wasn’t likely that she was cold. She was anticipating me. Waiting for me. Fostering her need for me. And that made her tremble under my purposeful gaze.
“You’re beautiful.”
She watched me with hungry eyes. I licked my fingers, made them slick, and unhurriedly, ran them down the seam and up both sides of her.
“You’re better than my dreams.”
“You dream about me?” she whispered back, thick and wanton.
My mouth was headed for her center, but first, against precious skin that I’d never touched before, I answered, “Every goddamned night.”
She made an ah sound and bucked against my lips. I moaned, sampling her welcoming flesh and wetness. The Promised Land. She was the sweet taste of freedom I’d waited for over the long, lonely years.
The flat of my tongue spread her and lapped her arousal, quenching a carnal thirst I’d always had for her body. It was then I realized I’d underestimated my need to please. To fulfill her desires. To lay claim to her, and be everything she needed.
When my mouth was on her, my eyes fell shut from the excruciating deliciousness. Then, when I’d break away, they’d open to take in the sight of her glistening skin.
I tasted her until it grew dark outside. Two times she’d quickened and held back. I felt it, heard it in her whimper that she was trying to fight her pleasure.
The thought of prying eyes and ears, witnessing her like that urged me out of the pool. I gathered her limp body in my arms. As I carried her to my room, she kissed my mouth, still damp with her on my thankful lips.
I placed her on my bed and kissed my way down her stomach. She tried to halt my descent, and her hands clutched my shoulders.
“I’m just getting started.” My words landed on the breast I palmed. I sucked at her and continued down her shivering body, committed to drowning in her pleasure and drawing it from her for the first time with my mouth.
“What if I can’t?” she asked, but she opened herself to me.
“You will.”
“But usually...” Her words fell away as my fingers traced her entrance, slick and warm. Her muscles trembled around my tongue and hand. As slowly as I was capable, my index finger slipped inside her.
I’d never, in all my life, been that hard. My back arched, and I ground against the mattress losing a war with my need for her.
My hips flexed.
My patience wore thinner.
I throbbed.
I needed to be inside of her more than I needed the blood in my veins, but she’d let go first. There was no other way about it. She would come on my tongue, around my fingers, in my bed, and the first time she’d do it alone.
I had to please her selflessly, or otherwise I didn’t deserve her. She was all that had mattered to me for so fucking long, and I had to prove to her—and to myself—that I was man enough to put her first.
In all ways. Her safety. Her happiness. Her time. Her life. Her pleasure.
And if she wanted an orgasm, I wouldn’t fucking stop until she got it. The effect she had on me was powerful. It made me powerful.
It was likely I’d find a release, myself, in the process. I didn’t care. Who gave a fuck if I came? It would probably be in my wet trunks, which I hadn’t even bothered to take off yet, against the bed, with my face buried between her legs.
She was first. I’d do anything to help her get there.
Again, after some time, she trembled, gasped, and grew close. Closer. Hastened, and then tensed. She halted and the rhythm of her breathing paused. Her hands balled and her spine came off the bed, but she was holding on too tight. Fighting it. Keeping it from me.
“Faith, let it out.”
She panted. “It’s too much.”
I pulled my other hand from under her waist and laced our fingers together. “You can handle it.”
If she was overwhelmed then I’d charm it out of her slowly. I’d do whatever was necessary. For her, not me.
Finally she relaxed, like she was sinking into a cloud, gently.
“Just breathe.” I set another tempo, less intense. Tuning myself to what she needed. Reminding myself to really pay attention. Learn her. Have patience.
I began again. This time, when she got closer, when her reactions and movements became less voluntary, I
let her lead. She moaned, rubbed herself against my tongue, and rode my fingers.
I accepted that was what she liked, and then gladly gave it to her, without hesitation. In return, she climaxed with her hand in my hair, gently twisting her body in my sheets. Her orgasm made her wetter, tighter. She made the faintest, most delicate sounds, and I listened.
It was the most gratifying few moments.
When the rolling of her hips came to a stop, and the quaking inside her ended but for random squeezes of my finger, I withdrew from her and crawled up her side.
Faith turned in my arms and faced me, nuzzling my neck. Her leg climbed my hip, and I pulled her closer. She held my cheeks in her hands and locked her eyes on mine. Although it was dark in my room, I saw determination.
“I don’t want to stop,” she insisted. Then she kissed me, saying against my lips, “I don’t ever want you to stop.” She guided me on top of her and I rolled with her, holding my weight above her so she wasn’t crushed.
I needed to protect her, and that also meant not being another person who didn’t think about her well-being. Her life.
“Let me get a condom.”
“We’re both clean and I have an IUD. No condom. Please, just me and you. I’m sick of there being things between us.” Hungry for more—for me—her hand snuck between us and guided my erection where she wanted. She slid me through her wetness, three times, and then led me home.
“Foxtrot,” I groaned, entering her. Past all of our obstacles and over the hurdles.
I pushed.
She met me.
I ground.
She ground back.
I lost myself that night inside the woman I’d craved every day for as long as I could remember. I held back, and sometimes I couldn’t. But when my instincts got the better of me, and I gave her all I had, she took it and asked for more.
She writhed.
I swore.
We went up in flames.
Chapter Twenty-Two
FAITH
It was nearly nine o’clock when I opened my eyes. Dreamy and lucid, for a moment I wasn’t sure where I was. Then the smell of his sheets brought me to, and thoughts of the night before flashed through my mind.
The way he’d touched me. The words he’d said. How he looked above me.
I’d never have guessed, not in my wildest dreams, that sex could be like that. That there could be this connection, this bond. A partnership of wants and needs met with passion and desire.
I’d felt beautiful and special, and the fact that it had been with Aaron was ... well, I couldn’t even describe it. He wasn’t a stranger, and we hadn’t just met and hooked up. It was more.
I could also feel how my body wasn’t familiar with being worked over that way. I rolled to my side and my thighs were tender. My stomach muscles were too, but the aching was good. I felt alive.
I was alone in the room but not the house. Feet and paws thumped across the hardwood somewhere. I couldn’t wait to see him, and probably should have used his en-suite bathroom to check myself first, but instead I pulled a T-shirt I found at the end of the bed over myself and left the room.
The front door was wide open, and since I didn’t have any underwear or shorts on, I stood at the screen on the inside. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, just basketball shorts and an old pair of trainers. Seeing him shirtless so many times while he worked over the years had always felt like torture. Like God had been teasing me, rubbing my nose in a mistake I’d made by not holding out for what I really wanted. Life had been like an antique store where I was allowed to look but not touch.
Now, seeing him work like that only felt like a gift. My perspective was changing for the better with each passing day.
“Hi,” I said through the screen.
He was bent over, putting his back into moving a large square urn on the left side of his concrete stoop. Glancing behind himself, he grinned.
“Good morning.”
“What are you doing?” I wiped sleep from the corners of my eyes.
He gave the large urn another twist, lining up the base with the edge of the concrete. “Well yesterday, my lovely mother informed me that the porch didn’t look right without these planters on it.” He walked back under the porch but stood opposite the door. “I believe her exact words were: Son, the inside of this house is like its heart, and it’s beautiful. But the front porch is the face, and it looks like a divorcee who needs night cream.” He chuckled after quoting his mom, and then waved his hand. “I see her point. When I moved in I put all of the furniture and flowerpots in the garage so I could power wash and paint. Then I never got around to putting them back.”
His mom had been right. Although the home looked great, it didn’t have much personality in the front. Not like it did inside and out back. I’d missed the flowers she had in planters and the rockers that sat on both ends of the stone entranceway.
“She thinks if it’s ever going to sell, it needs to look more inviting.”
Why would he ever sell? Their family home was straight out of a Norman Rockwell postcard.
“Are you putting it on the market?” It would be so weird going past the Craftsman style house knowing a family other than the Goodmans were living in it.
“We’ve talked about it for years. That’s why I did all the work to it. The plan was to fix it up and sell it, or for me to fix it up and buy it from them.” He leaned closer and peeked through the screen at me in his shirt and his mouth curved on one side.
I gazed down at myself. “I found this on the bed.”
“I put it there for you. Want some coffee? When I rode over to the hardware store this morning, I swung by Willard’s and picked up some donuts.”
Donuts were not on my diet, but after the vigorous activity of the night before, I didn’t mind treating myself. I was starving.
“That sounds good.”
I stepped back as he pulled the handle on the door. “Smokie, you coming in?” he called down the porch to his left where the Dalmatian was napping in the morning sun. After waiting a second, Aaron said, “Guess not,” and came inside.
The shirt was long enough to hide my lady bits, but my legs were bare up to mid-thigh.
It was the morning after and kind of awkward, but even as disheveled and unkempt as I was sure I looked, I felt pretty when he placed a warm kiss on my neck as he passed me, headed to his kitchen.
I followed him there, noticing my tote bag was still sitting on a chair at the breakfast table where I’d put it the day before. While he brewed a fresh pot of coffee, I tiptoed to my things.
I hadn’t even looked at my phone since early afternoon the day before, so I dug it out of the inside pocket.
“Oh. My. God,” I exclaimed when I saw all the notifications.
“Everything okay?” He looked toward me, concern on his face.
I scrolled through over a hundred missed messages in my group chat, then tapped onto my texts, which were just as plentiful.
“Yeah, but you’d think the world was ending by how many messages I have.” Aside from the crazy thread that would take me forever to catch up on, each of my three closest friends had sent me texts. My mom sent me one that morning too, and that’s the one I opened.
Mom: Delaney was tired. We didn’t get on the road until 8:30. Lol I hope you had fun last night. I’ll message you when we’re on our way back. Love you.
Quickly, I replied.
Me: Best night in a long, long time. Love you too. Thanks for letting her stay. Don’t pump her full of sugar today. We’re going to bed early tonight.
Aaron brought our cups and the box of donuts to the table, and I took a seat on the bench that lined the back of the built-in nook.
“This smells like heaven.” It was funny when I hadn’t had donuts in a while, how strongly I could smell them. Even through the box.
“Do you want cream or sugar?”
At home, I had sugar-free Coffee-Mate in a variety of different flavors, but I wasn’t trying to b
e picky when I could just as easily drink it black. Plus, without those extra calories in my coffee, I could probably swing two donuts.
“Black is fine,” I answered. He moved my bag from the chair closest to me, setting it on the counter and then he sat beside me. It wasn’t a big thing, but I liked how he wanted to be as close as possible. I felt that way too.
He opened the box, and had it been filled with jewels and treasure, I would have reacted the same way. He’d handpicked a magnificent selection.
“I didn’t know what you liked, so I grabbed just about one of everything. Whatever we don’t eat, I’ll take to the station later. They’ll be gone in two minutes flat.”
He pushed the open box my way and let me have first pick as he reached across the rectangle table for napkins. I saw just the one. A chocolate Long John.
Come to Momma.
Straight from the box to my mouth, I sank my teeth into the sweet dough. It was a big bite too; all etiquette and modesty had flown out the big bay window behind me. With a mouthful, I took a sip of coffee to wash it down.
He chose a bear claw and ate two of its toes in one bite.
“Aaron, I think you’re spoiling me.”
He wiped his mouth and replied, “Good.”
“I could get used to this.”
“I hope you do.” He set the donut on a white napkin and lifted the WFD mug to his lips, but before he took a drink he added, “I could get used to waking up with you in my bed.”
Everything was so right, so perfect, but were we rushing things? Would we trip over our own feet and mess it up?
To quell the seedling of doubt that sprung to mind, I asked, “Do you think we’re moving too fast?”
My question didn’t seem to faze him, and he chomped two more toes off his breakfast.
“Nah,” he answered and finished chewing. “Doesn’t seem too fast for me, but I’ve thought about this for years. So I guess whatever pace you’re comfortable with is what I want. As long as it keeps going, I don’t care. How’s that donut?”
