by Caisey Quinn
“Home sweet home,” I say, changing the subject as we enter the modern yet modestly decorated condo. “I’m not here a lot but it came furnished so it’s comfortable enough.”
“I like it,” Corin states matter-of-factly. “Cozy but not cramped. It’s bigger than it looks from outside.”
A white leather sectional sits in the middle of the room across from the giant flat screen. I set Corin’s bag down beside it and offer her something to drink before grabbing a beer.
“Water is fine.”
I wish I had something stronger, something to take the edge off from this unexpected blessing that still feels like a figment of my imagination.
“So you were saying…something about you being wrong?”
Corin smirks at me. “You really love that, don’t you?”
I nod. “I do. I really do.”
“There’s a first time for everything you know,” she says while opening her water. She leans on the counter, watching me from a distance. I lower myself onto the edge of the couch and wait.
“I haven’t had a ton of sleep in the past few days so this might not be the most articulate conversation. It’s been a long few days but I needed to see you because…”
I lower my beer and place it on the glass end table. “Because…”
Corin seems to consider her next move carefully. She places her water on the counter and takes a few steps closer. “Because I was stupid before. When you left. I was stupid and hurt about the Fallon thing the night of the auction and I put my walls back up. I didn’t want you to go but I understand now why you had to. This is huge—what you have here, your career. Your future.”
I don’t know which part to address first. “First of all, you aren’t now nor have you ever been stupid.”
She sighs. “Trust me, I have been. I thought intimacy was what put me in the position to get hurt. But even without us sleeping together, being without you, leaving things the way we did, it hurts.”
The admission takes a lot out of her and she sits, remaining several feet from me on the couch, which is probably a good thing because I’m aching to touch her.
“I never wanted to hurt you.”
She nods. “I know. But when you love someone, that’s the tradeoff. They get the power to hurt you.”
She loves me?
I feel like someone just smacked me in the face with a sack full of bricks.
Corin loves me? Is that why she’s here?
I swallow the words threatening to erupt out of my throat. “I guess I didn’t realize that you felt that—”
“It’s fine,” Corin cuts me off and puts her hands up. “I know you don’t feel like that about me and honestly, I didn’t realize how I actually felt until the moment you walked away from me at the airport.”
“Lower the walls, Red. Put your armor away for five fucking seconds. I never said I didn’t feel that way.”
Corin sinks her teeth into her lush lower lip before speaking again. “That’s not how our goodbye should’ve gone. Not the night before and not that morning.”
“Oh yeah?” I move closer to her on the couch. “And how should it have gone, sweetheart?”
I have a feeling she didn’t come all this way for a goodbye re-do. At least I sure as hell hope she didn’t. Corin’s tongue sneaks out to moisten her lips briefly. I want to taste her so bad I can hardly keep still.
“For starters, I should’ve been honest with you about how I felt. I should’ve accepted the damn card and told you that I’d come see you every chance I got.” I open my mouth to respond, but she isn’t finished. “I should’ve told you that I was afraid of getting hurt, of getting distracted and veering off course, but that I’ve decided I’d rather risk it than live the rest of my life regretting not going for what I wanted.”
I haven’t been breathing the entire time she’s been talking. I rectify that and move a few inches closer to her. “And what is it that you want? Just so I’m clear.”
“You, Skylar. I want you.”
My heart is pounding so loud I can barely hear Skylar’s response to my declaration.
“I want you too, Red. Always have,” he mumbles before his mouth crashes into mine.
It’s like we’re two caged animals who’ve been waiting for a chance to pounce on the other and we’ve finally been set free. His grip on my waist is firm enough to dent my flesh but not enough to hurt. His attack on my mouth is launched so suddenly it startles a gasp from my throat.
There’s a deliberate gentleness at first, as if he’s familiarizing himself with my tongue and my lips, but once I wrap my arms around him, digging my fingers into his hair and deepening the kiss, there’s nothing exploratory about it anymore. Just want and need and insatiable hunger.
His tongue thrusts into my mouth in a deep, languid stroke and I recognize it from the way he licked my pussy on my kitchen table in New York. I want him like that again, worshipping my body the way he did and I tell him so. It’s what’s fueled my fantasies all summer long.
“Tell me everything you want, sweetheart. It’s yours.”
“You, Skylar. All of you. Every way I can have you.” I was exhausted before but now my heart is pounding like a runaway hummingbird in my chest pulsing adrenaline through my veins at warp speed. I climb on top, straddling him in our never-ending battle for control. His erection grinds into me.
“Feel that hard cock,” he growls against my ear. “He wants me to rush this, but I won’t. I’m going to savor every fucking inch of you, sweetheart.”
He thrusts upward against my most sensitive part, pressing the seam of my jeans against my clit and making me moan.
A lightning bolt of pleasure electrifies my entire spine.
“I need…” I can’t even speak due to my animalistic panting. “Skin,” I finally get out.
“Yes ma’am. Skin I can do.” He complies by removing my shirt then his.
“These are so goddamn perfect I fucking dream about them.” He lifts my breasts from my black bra cup and palms them before sucking each nipple into his mouth. I moan, arching my back and leaning back to give him better access.
I can’t get close enough, can’t get enough contact to relieve the pulsating need between my thighs. I unhook my bra and fling it across the room.
I thought sleeping with him would feel like giving in, like I’d succumbed to being a foregone conclusion. But it doesn’t feel like that at all. I’d been with so many before. None of it mattered. None of it felt like this, like him. Like home
He buries his face in my neck and devours it with open-mouthed kisses that send shivers tingling over my entire body.
I pull my hips back, then slide down over his still sheathed erection slowly.
“Are you teasing me, sexy girl?”
I bite his bottom lip gently. “Not teasing,” I breathe against his mouth. “Needing.”
Skylar stands abruptly, lifting me and carrying me down a hallway to his bedroom without breaking contact between our mouths. We’re almost to the bed when he presses my back to the wall and lowers my feet gently to the ground.
“Pants,” he mumbles against my lips. “Off. Now.”
I obey his command, leaving myself completely exposed with the exception of black lace panties I wore for him. I can see our reflection in a full-length mirror behind him. His back muscles battle for position while he removes his own pants.
Skylar drops to his knees and I’m torn between watching him and watching the reflection of him going down on me in the mirror.
“You like to watch, dirty girl?”
I glance down and smile sheepishly. He caught me. “I like to watch you.”
His hand snakes up curls around the cotton center of my panties before he pulls them down my legs. His masculine fingers wrench my legs further apart and he kisses me gently at the apex of my thighs.
Us together, the reflection of it is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. Not dirty or demeaning like the sex I’ve known before.
I
t’s beautiful. He’s beautiful and he makes me feel clean again, cleansed of the soul-staining bruises from my past, because he knows about each and every one of them and yet he only sees me, the me I feel like I’ve finally become.
His tongue strokes my clit and my head falls back until it thumps the wall. I’m trembling above his expert mouth as he works me into a frenzy with each touch. I bite my lip to keep from screaming out, but when he thrusts two fingers inside of me, I can’t hold it in anymore.
“Let go, baby. Let go and give it to me.”
I’m writhing on his face, something I would’ve never imagined I could handle. His teeth scrape my sensitive flesh and suddenly he stands and lifts me once more. A few steps and I’m lowered on to his bed.
“Get in the middle. Spread your legs for me, Corin. I want to see every inch.”
I scramble quickly to the middle.
“This,” he says, nodding at me while removing his pants and boxer briefs, “this is what I’ve dreamt of pretty much every moment since we met.” His eyes are glinting with desire while he strokes himself. I can’t tear my gaze away from the erotic Adonis before me. “If at any time you want to stop, promise you’ll tell me.”
I nod. “I don’t want to stop. I want you. I want this.”
“You’re shaking, sweetheart.” Skylar clasps my hands with his as he lowers himself on top of me. He places gentle kisses on every centimeter of my skin within his reach. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”
“I know. I trust you.”
Something that looks like pain flickers across his face but it’s gone quickly. “Shit. Condom,” he bites out before leaning over and removing one from his nightstand.
I wait as patiently as I can while he tears the foil and sheaths his rigid length.
His mouth lowers to my breasts once more, flicking and teasing each nipple before sucking them hard into his warm welcoming mouth. I groan, lifting my hips in desperate need for contact. My non-verbal plea works.
“Wait. I need to tell you something first.”
I gape at him. Is he serious right now?
“Corin Connelly, I didn’t meet you in time to be your first.” He caresses my body with his free hand. “But I am damn sure going to be your last.”
I lift my neck up and kiss him as deeply as I can. There aren’t words for how his declaration makes me feel.
Inch by slow torturous inch, Skylar sinks himself into me. My body clenches around him in panic before I adjust to the intrusion. He fills and stretches me until I’m wet enough that he can glide smoothly in and out.
I jerk my head forward until our mouths meet again. Our tongues mimic the motion of our sex, his tongue plunging inside of me in time with his cock, me matching him stroke for stroke.
We’re still kissing when I start to come. I grip his back hard, digging my fingers in for traction as I race frantically toward an explosive finish. He bites down on my lower lip and I convulse all around him from the inside out.
Skylar is close enough to his own release that I feel the tip of him jerking inside my walls as I’m coming down. His hands take each of my legs and push them upward until he is buried so deep inside me I can barely breathe.
“Fucking hell, you are so damn perfect. Fucking perfection,” he cries out as he pours himself into me.
His hands stroke my legs from thigh to ankle once he’s completely drained. His lips graze the tips of my toes and down the soles of my feet. It tickles and I smile at him.
“Totally worth the eighteen hour flight,” I tell him. “Best goodbye ever.”
Skylar’s answering smile doesn’t quite reach his eyes and I’m hoping he’s just tired. I wink to let him know I’m joking about the goodbye part.
“I’m glad, Red. It would kill me to disappoint you.”
“Not even possible,” I tell him, sitting up for once more kiss.
The next morning Corin gets me off with her mouth in my shower.
I have my favorite meal for breakfast. Her.
We order in for lunch and end up sixty-nining before we’ve even finished eating.
By the time dinner rolls around, we have fucked, sucked, and drained every inch of pleasure from one another.
“I feel bad you came all this way and you haven’t even seen much of Rio.”
Corin collapses on my chest. “I didn’t come here to see Rio, Sky. I think you know that.”
“Thank God for that.” I twirl a strand of her hair through my fingers. “I am taking you out to dinner though, dammit. I wish you didn’t have to leave tomorrow.”
She sighs, heaving her bare breasts against me. “Me too. But I can come back on fall break. Then you’ll be home for Christmas. There’s always FaceTime and phone sex. We’ll manage.”
I chuckle lightly. “Guess I should think God for modern technology while I’m at it.”
Corin leans up to look me in the eye. “Would you believe I even miss playing Mortal Combat with you?”
I nod, taking one of her hands and kissing it gently. “I told you you’d miss me. Probably should’ve placed another bet on it.”
She shakes her head. “No more bets, Sky.”
“One more,” I say, sliding her slender fingers between mine. “I bet we don’t make it until fall break. One of us will end up on a plane. Because I can tell you right now, I can’t wait two more months for more of you.”
Corin’s answering smile makes my heart thud harder in my chest. “So we wager on which of us breaks first?”
“Me, Red. It will be me.” I have a long weekend next month. I’m going to surprise her right back.
Every other month or so is going to be hard, but I know from experience, nothing would be harder than trying to live without her.
I’ve never been particularly religious, but there is one thing I pray for.
That I never have to again.
“Last night was seriously amazing,” Corin tells me at the airport.
Despite the fact that it’s barely six a.m. local time, her eyes are bright and gleaming.
“You’re welcome,” I say, gently squeezing her ass.
She laughs and shakes her head. “Well that was amazing too, soccer boy. But that’s not what I was referring to.”
The night before I’d taken her to a colorful restaurant on the water where she gorged herself on every local dish we could order. We met up with a few guys from the team and went dancing. Most had girlfriends or wives that they brought along. Corin was electric. Lit up by the natural glow of the exotic atmosphere and basking in the after effects of the orgasm I’d given her on the way to the club, she was the most beautiful I’d ever seen her.
I was enjoying myself, happy to watch her enjoying herself, until Sebastian nodded to where she was dancing with some of the other girls. “Guess it didn’t work out with the model, huh? Beautiful women just come out of the woodwork for you or what?”
My inner Landen O’Brien emerged and I nearly hulked out on the poor guy.
“Don’t ever mention that night again, Stevens. I’m serious as fuck.”
He’d looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Dude, I was shitfaced. I barely remember that night. I’m just jealous that smoking hot women seem to swoon at your feet everywhere we go. If you’re looking for a wingman, I volunteer as tribute. That’s all I’m saying.”
He’d ambled off without another word but my mood darkened.
That night. Damn that night. Damn my inability to see beyond the short term.
My entire life I watched my mom try to drink away a mistake she’d made when she was too young to know better. She grew up with nothing, but she was beautiful, so when my dad decided to add her to his collection of pretty things, she ended up married at nineteen. Pregnant with Katie at twenty, and then me two years later.
And now? She’s stuck with a cold heartless businessman with plenty of money and no ability to show emotion for anything that doesn’t contribute to his bank account balance.
I swore I would never allow
myself to make a choice that would ruin everything I’ve worked for. For all my fucking around in high school, I never did anything that would’ve warranted more than a misdemeanor or that would’ve hurt my chances to get a soccer scholarship.
But that night, that one night with Fallon, hangs over me like a death sentence.
After Sebastian had brought up she who shall not be mentioned, Corin had spun into me and pulled me onto the dance floor, forcing me to forget everything but the feel of her in my arms for the rest of the evening.
But now, as we stand at the security entrance where I have to let her go, I vow I will never let that night touch her. I won’t let a damn thing take that shine from her eyes.
“I loved this weekend. I was nervous, coming here. But I’m so glad I did.” Corin sucks her cheek in the way she does when she’s trying not to bite her lip.
“I’m glad you loved it.” I kiss her gently on the lips. “And I almost forgot.” I remove a small box from my back pocket.
“If that’s a credit card, Skylar Martin, I swear I’ll—”
“It’s not,” I interrupt with a laugh. “It’s something to say what I haven’t get gotten to.”
“Which is?” Corin opens the box and her mouth drops open. “When did you have time to get this?”
“Recently,” is all I tell her. The truth was I’d gotten it before I left and I’d planned to give it to her on my last night in California before the evening had gone to hell in a hand basket.
The silver and diamond encrusted bracelet has one stone hanging delicately from its braided band. The crimson jewel is almost identical to the color of her hair. On the inside is a small inscription. I love you, Red.
Her eyes shine with the promise of tears. “I love you too, soccer boy. So much.”
She lifts on her tiptoes but I do her one better and lift her off the ground. We kiss until the world around us disappears.
“I’m glad you came,” I mumble against her lips.
“Boy did I,” she teases, using my own little innuendo game against me.
