by Carly Keene
“Rehab.” I smile at her blissed-out cherry jam expression. “Duh, right?”
“I kept telling you to talk to the counselor,” she says, defensive.
“I know. But I think I had to hit bottom first, really know how bad off I was. Drinking to make the pain go away. And losing you . . . well, pushing you away, that made me hit my low faster.”
Now she’s looking down, nodding. She bites her lip. When she speaks, her voice is soft and tentative. “So it wasn’t somebody you were sleeping with?”
“I kissed her at Kembe’s party and never saw her again.” I swear. I cross my heart—and hope to live. “I loved you. I hated letting you down. I hated feeling like I didn’t deserve you anymore, and that you just felt sorry for me.”
“I did feel sorry for you,” she says, and eats more toast. “I just thought that we were in it together, and you would find something else to do as a career and be just fine even if you did miss football.”
“You were right. About all those things. It just took me a couple of years to be able to see it.” I reach across the table to take her hand. “And I’m so sorry I hurt you. I’m so sorry. Will you forgive me? Can we start over?”
SEVEN
Deena
“Can we start over?” Troy asks, and my heart, already full, overflows.
“No,” I say, and stand up. His face contracts in pain, and he swallows hard. But I’m not done explaining. “I don’t think we can start over, like there’s nothing between us. I loved you for too long to forget how good we were together.” I take a deep breath. “I think I understand now. Because—you know, like you said it hurt so badly when people told you to get past your injury and move on with your life? I can’t just put it behind me that you deliberately let me think you were cheating on me. I have to acknowledge how much it hurt, and then say that was the past. I have to do that first before I can move on.” I reach for his hand and pull him out of his chair. I slide my arms around his waist, loving the feel of him close to me. “I’m so sorry I made it harder for you. I wish you could have told me how you were feeling.”
“I do too,” he whispers, his voice scratchy. His arms gather me in, and we stand together, giving each other strength. “I wish we never lost those years.”
“We’re just going to have to speed things up so we don’t miss anything else,” I say. It’s so clear to me now. I reach up to kiss his chin. “Let’s start that now. Everything that happened before is over. Now we’re going in a new direction. We’re going to trust each other.”
“Yes.” He leans down to kiss me, and then his hands find my bare bottom under his shirt. “This doesn’t feel like a new direction, Dee. I don’t know if I want to go in a new direction.”
“Not in bed,” I say primly, nestling my hips closer to his.
“What about out of bed?”
“Why wouldn’t we be in bed?” I tease. “Bed is comfortable.”
“Yes, but the bed is so far away.” His voice has gone all deep and sexy, and he picks me up with his hands under my butt. “The countertop is right here.”
I catch my breath. “So it is.”
Troy sets me on the kitchen counter. I give half a thought to the cleaning that will have to take place later, and then I put it out of my head and reach to push his sleep pants down. His erect member springs out, already eager to be touched. I touch it. I take it on both hands and stroke the length of it over and over as Troy kisses my neck, kicking the pants off his ankles.
“Spread your legs, baby,” he says into my ear, nipping my earlobe. “And let’s take this off.” He strips the shirt up over my head, making my breasts bounce.
I make room between my thighs, and he steps between them, lifting my breasts to his mouth. He teases my nipples with fingers and tongue, while I stroke his shaft. I’m so wet that I can feel moisture dripping from me, and the stimulation to my nipples only makes me want him more every single second. I let my head fall back, and I let go of my control again.
I guide his hard cock right to my center, stroking him against my wet folds, over my clit. It makes us both moan. “I need you now,” Troy growls against my nipple.
“Not yet,” I pant, rocking my hips to keep him from entering me. “Not yet. Soon.”
“How soon?”
“Not yet,” I repeat, letting my excitement grow with every stroke of his cockhead over my clit. “Not . . . yet . . . Oh god, now.”
“Now,” he echoes, pulling my butt closer to the edge of the counter and thrusting himself deep inside me in one motion. The sensation is incredible, his firmness rubbing insistently over my G-spot, and I cry out.
“Don’t stop, don’t stop, please don’t stop yet,” I beg, rocking my groin against his in desperation. “You feel so good, so good, don’t stop!”
“Come for me, Dee, baby,” he mutters against my neck. “Come on. That’s a good girl, get that O. Come for me.”
I do. I tighten my vagina around him as we thrust together, and then the pressure explodes into pleasure and I’m screaming with the release.
“Fuck, Deena, I can’t hold it any longer,” Troy moans, and I feel his own climax inside me.
I hold on to him. “Don’t let me go,” I say. “Never again.”
“Never again. We’re set in stone. Never let you go.”
EIGHT
Troy
“Stay,” I say to her as I help her to her feet. She wobbles, legs rubbery after the incredible fucking we’ve just done in the kitchen, and laughs out of joy as she leans against me.
“I have to work tonight,” she says. “And I need fresh clothes before I go in.”
“Me too. But stay as long as you can?”
She nods. Reaches up to kiss me. “Why do I feel so happy? You know I like everything all laid out orderly. Nothing about this is proper.”
I kiss her back. “Maybe that’s why: it’s crazy, but you’re in control.”
“I’m not in control!” she protests, and I laugh.
“You are too! I’m never going to let you go, so you can do what you want and it’ll be okay. And I trust you to keep loving me.”
She blinks, holding on to me. “You do?”
“I do.”
It’s like watching the sun come up, seeing the certainty grow in her eyes.
“I trust you too,” she says.
“Good. Let’s go back to bed.” I walk her toward the bedroom again.
“I thought we were being spontaneous and having sex other places.”
“Oh, we’re definitely gonna do it in every room in this apartment.” I grin at her. “But we’ve both worked a twelve-hour shift, and we’ve already done it twice, and I figure we’re due for some rest and relaxation. So yes, this time in the bed again.”
She reaches up and runs her hands through my hair. “I think your hair is really sexy, you know.”
“Not too out of control for you?”
“Stop teasing me.” But she smiles. “Yeah, it’s out of control. I just can’t help how I feel.”
“How you feel . . .” I say, running my hands over her full breasts, her narrow waist, her voluptuous hips, “is damn sexy to me. You feel like a woman I want to kiss every inch of.” And I toss her onto the bed.
She laughs, and I’m full of joy at the sound of it. She opens her arms to me.
In for a penny, in for a pound. “Want to move in?” I ask.
“Move in together with you, yes.” She tilts her head and gives me a dubious look. “This apartment, maybe not. You haven’t seen my house yet.”
“You have a house? Where is it?”
“Carytown.”
“Ooh, Car-ytown. Snob much?”
She pokes me in the stomach. “Carytown’s nice! Don’t make fun of it.”
“Well, at least now I know why you’re driving a junker that’s fifteen years old.”
She shrugs. “The Camry runs, I’ve pretty much paid off my student loans, and I have a mortgage on a fixer-upper that my brother Jeff is rehabb
ing for me on weekends. It’s a trade-off.”
“All right, I’ll move into your house. I can sublet this place.”
“Soon?”
“Soon. Now lie back and prepare to be adored, woman.”
“Don’t I get a chance to kiss you all over too?”
“Sure. Although I really only care about you kissing this part.” I pat my groin, then reach to pull the elastic out of her hair. It’s already mostly fallen down, but now her glorious hair is cascading down over her shoulders and we’re all loose and wild and free, laughing together.
She gets on her knees and goes straight for my dick. It grows and hardens in her grip, while she rolls my balls in her hand, and I take deep breaths and enjoy the pull of her hot mouth. She looks up at me from under her long lashes, lips stretched around my eight inches, and I can’t help getting even harder at the sight. “Don’t you dare make me come too fast,” I insist, gathering her hair in my fist. “I have to be inside you again.”
“What’s ‘too fast’?” she says, around my cock, and goes back to sucking and stroking.
I groan. “That’s too fast. Stop for a minute and let me take care of you.”
“Uhn-uh,” she says, mouth full, and strokes faster.
“Fuck. Deena. Seriously, stop.” I pull on the ponytail in my hand—not hard, just enough to let her know I mean business. She lets my cock go with a pop, and grins at me. “On your stomach, woman.”
“On my stomach?” she protests, but I flip her onto her belly, shoving a pillow under her hips so her pretty pink pussy, with its blonde bush trimmed down to barely-there proportions, is open to be plundered from behind.
I plunder it. With my tongue, my fingers, my lips, my whole mouth, even rubbing at her clit with my nose and smelling her sweet musky feminine smell. She’s moaning, and dripping with arousal, by the time I get on my knees behind her and press my cockhead into that beautiful creamy-wet cunt. I rock into her, just at the opening, and rub her clit with my fingers until she’s writhing, shoving her hips back at me and begging me to fuck her. And then I do that. I shove my cock all the way in, all the way up to her cervix, bearing down toward the front wall where her G-spot is. The way her cunt walls grip me and the way her ass looks, tilted up for my pleasure, I have to count under my breath to keep from spurting my jizz right away. She has to come first—but I hope it’s soon.
I grab her hips and pump faster, and it’s not long before her back arches and she screams out her climax, her pussy squeezing me in rhythmic bursts. I let go of my own control, and my hardness explodes inside her, filling her with my seed.
I am never letting this woman go.
I collapse onto my bed again, and pull her into my side. We hold on to each other for long moments, and then I remember. I jump off the bed and open the top drawer of the nightstand. “Should be in here. It was the last time I saw it . . .”
I kneel beside the bed and hand her the dusty ring box holding the engagement ring she gave back to me eight years ago. “I know it’s too soon to ask. I still have to prove myself to you, and it may take time to do that. It’s okay, I can wait. I just want you to know that I kept it for you, and I hope to give it back to you someda—”
“Yes,” she says, opening the box.
I’m stunned. “Yes? Already?”
“Yes,” she says, and pulls me back onto the bed for another kiss.
EPILOGUE
Deena
Three years later
I reach up to adjust the lapel of my gorgeous husband’s jacket. Even with me in these heels, he’s got four inches on me, but in his dark suit he looks even taller. And sexier than ever.
“You look amazing,” he says, and tucks a lock of my hair behind my ear. “That dress is like . . . moonlight.”
“I love this dress,” I say, smoothing the silvery blue lace. I will have to be careful not to lean too far forward at dinner, because the low v-neck of my wrap dress displays my breasts to a generous degree. I may not be able to wear it much longer, though, so I’m taking the opportunity.
“Are you ever going to tell me what we’re celebrating this evening?” he asks, putting his cufflinks in.
“I’ll tell you at dinner!” I exclaim, and shove his shoulder playfully.
He shoves back, pushing me backwards onto the bed and settling between my legs. He runs his warm hands up my thighs, under the skirt. “Stop!” I order him. He shouldn’t discover my surprise before dinner—but it’s already too late. His clever fingers have pulled my skirt completely up and found the pearl thong I’m wearing underneath it.
“What the hell is this? This can’t be underwear,” he says, and tugs my skirt up. “Holy fucking hell, that is sexy, baby.” Before I can stop him, he’s touching my pussy lips, feeling how wet I already am under the cool pearl beads. “We’ve got time,” he says, breathless. His cock is tenting his suit pants, and a moan of need escapes my mouth.
“No, we don’t!”
“We have time for an appetizer!” he contradicts me, and bends to lick my thrilled ladybits.
I moan again, trying to regain control. “Stop. Please.”
“You don’t mean that,” he says against my clit, and goes back to gently sucking at it. I squirm on the bed, trying to get away from him. But I already know there’s no getting away from a man his size, and I also know I don’t really want to. He touches my wet cunt all along the strand of pearls, making me writhe. When he slides two fingers into my vagina and massages my g-spot while his fingers rub at my clit, I lose control entirely, crying out when I gush my pleasure.
“Won’t take me long,” he says, stepping back and wiping his face before unzipping his pants.
“Troy, we really can’t! Not now, or we’ll be late for dinner.”
“Screw dinner,” he says, and kisses me. Very thoroughly. I love the taste of myself on his tongue.
“No, sir,” I say, and roll away to sit up. “I had to practically beg to get these reservations at Chez Trang. We’re not going to miss it. Sooner we get there, sooner we finish eating, sooner we can come home and go to bed.”
Troy sighs and shakes his hair back. It’s considerably longer now, and whereas once I would have thought long hair inappropriate on a man, I’ve changed my mind. He looked great as a young clean-cut athlete, but with that mane of chestnut-brown hair cascading down to his shoulders, he’s sexy as all hell. I almost moan, just looking at him. His green eyes are sensual and amused. “Sure you don’t want to just get headbanging sex and pizza delivered?”
I take a deep breath and shake off the knee-weakening effect of my husband up close. “Nope. We can do that anytime. It’s our anniversary and we’re going to the French-Thai fusion place.”
“We could have waited for the weekend to celebrate,” Troy says, getting up and adjusting himself in his pants.
I swallow, thinking of the feel of his solid length in my hand, the silken texture of him. “I wanted to go out tonight.”
“Stubborn.” He laughs. “You got some serious JBF hair there, Deena.”
“What?” I demand, and get off the bed, alarmed. It took me a while to do my hair.
“I mean, you do look just the slightest bit tousled, Dr. McLean.”
I roll my eyes and go to the mirror to see. I do look postcoital: my lipstick is long gone, my cheeks are red, and some of my hair is coming down from my neat updo. I tweak a few tendrils, then I decide my hair will just be disco-sexy, sort of like Jennifer Lawrence’s hair in “American Hustle.”
I’m only slightly disappointed when Troy behaves himself in the car.
Chez Trang is gorgeous with white lilies and bamboo, silk wall hangings, gilded candlesticks. We eat spring rolls with mustard sauce as an appetizer. Troy orders steak au poivre et gingembre, and I go for the tamarind lamb.
The meal is excellent.
“So,” he says, cutting into the last third of his steak, “what is it that we’re celebrating, besides our anniversary?”
I smile. “That isn’t
enough?”
He pauses with a bite of steak on his fork, giving me a heavy-lidded look that makes me press my thighs together and squirm. “Us together, that’s always enough to celebrate.” His voice is low, and my nipples perk up. I squirm again in my chair, feeling the moisture flow. “I can’t wait to go home and have you for dessert.” It’s all I can do to keep from losing control and moaning out loud, and he can tell. “Deena,” he whispers across the table, “just looking at you, you’re making me so hard. Thinking of those fucking pearls . . . Damn it, I can’t wait to be in you.”
This time I shudder, and I squirm again so that my panties rub me in exactly the right way, letting out a little gasp. “I want you too. I want you so bad.”
“So how about you just tell me what’s going on? Tell me about the cool thing you did at work, and then let’s finish up here and go fuck each other’s brains out.”
I go lust-blind for a second, and have to shake it off. I take a deep breath. “Well, you are looking at an official orthopedic surgeon.” I do a pretend curtsy.
He laughs the way you do when someone you love has good news. “I always knew you’d do it! Congratulations, babe.”
I take another deep breath. “But. I might have to take some time off work next year.”
He blinks and leans toward me. “Why? You’ve worked so hard for this.”
I shrug. “They usually let you have maternity leave.”
He blinks again. “Mater—” Then his whole face relaxes into a smile of complete joy. “We’re having a baby?”
I nod, and the happy tears come out of nowhere, down my cheeks. Thank heavens for waterproof mascara. “I’m right at three months. I wanted to be sure before I told you.”
He lunges across the table to kiss me, fork forgotten on the pristine cloth, and then we forget where we are for a few moments, lost in each other. When we come up for air, I hold his face between my hands. “I love you so much. I can’t wait to have our baby in my arms.”
