by J. Daniels
“Well, then, what’s the verdict?” Her eyes slid to the box.
“I don’t know yet.” I turned away from her then and brought the box closer to my face. I squinted at the fine print.
“Can you even see that?” she asked, her voice wrapped around a chuckle.
“I’m trying to.” I laughed with her. “I don’t know why they make this shit so fucking small. Who isn’t checking for an expiration date?”
The mattress shifted. “Where are your glasses?”
“Downstairs. I took them off after I checked on your kids.”
While I paced the kitchen and stalled coming back upstairs, not knowing whether I should.
“Here. Let me see it.” Jenna was kneeling at my shoulder now, one hand reaching while the other pressed against my back, keeping her balanced. She slid her hand up my spine to my neck, gripping there gently as I passed her the box. Then she pushed her fingers up into my hair.
“Mm.” I groaned and dropped my head. My eyes slipped closed. “That feels good.”
She kept it up, feathering over my scalp, her nails scratching gently. “Oh my God,” she mumbled. Her hand froze.
“What?”
“Guess when these expired?”
I jerked my head around and glared at her. “You’re fucking kidding.”
Jenna laughed softly as she passed over the box. “I’d say see for yourself, but we both know you can’t.” She pressed a kiss to my cheek. “May.”
“May?”
“Yep.” She giggled. “It’s funny, right? I mean, it could be worse. June would’ve been like a giant ha ha, screw you.”
“That’s basically how this feels.”
I threw the box across the room. It hit the wall and busted apart, condoms splattering to the floor. Jenna cracked up at my back.
“Enjoying yourself?” I asked, standing from the bed, only to plant my knee on the mattress and climb back on. I crawled toward her.
She was on her side again, cheek on the pillow, giggling sweetly. Her dark hair fell over her beautiful breasts. “Well, there’s always things that don’t involve condoms.”
“Thank God for that.”
She smiled and rolled over.
I stretched out beside her, bracing my weight on my elbow and hip. I bent over her and we kissed.
Her warm arms wrapped around my neck, and her hot little tongue licked along mine. Fuck, her mouth is good. I sucked on her.
“Shorty,” I murmured, dragging my lips over her cheek. I watched her smile.
Her hand slid between us and wrapped around me, dragging a moan out of my throat.
Enough flirting, then.
I reached down and brushed my fingers between her legs, playing with the small patch of hair leading to her pussy before I dove in with my middle and fourth finger.
Her body gripped me. She was soaked and shaking.
I pressed my mouth against hers and moved my thumb over her clit.
Jenna shuddered and gasped against my tongue. “You’re…very good with that left hand.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Well, you throw with your right.”
“I’m ambidextrous.” I looked down between her legs, curled my fingers inside her and pressed in, pumping them.
“Ugnh.” She arched off the bed, breathless. “Good, that’s…so good. Holy shit.” She lifted her head and mouthed at my jaw while her hand frantically stroked me.
It was messy and methodless, jumping from firm to soft. Her hold tightening around my base, pulling to the tip, barely touching the head and then gripping me mid-shaft. I couldn’t predict her next move. It was unfuckingreal.
I closed my eyes and fought the urge to hump into her grip.
“Too bad I’m not good with my left,” she whispered against my cheek, kissing it. “Sorry.”
“Sorry? Are you kidding?” I watched her sink back onto the pillow. “If you keep it up, I’m going to come all over you.”
Her eyes widened. “Really?”
She was shocked. I got that. I just came minutes ago and here I was, confessing to getting off without any difficulty from a hand job.
But Jesus Christ, this hand job. This woman.
“Yeah.” I bent down, brushing my lips against hers. “But you first.”
I pumped my fingers fast into her pussy and rubbed her clit. She spread her knees wide and pulled her legs higher. Soon she was rocking against my palm. I rubbed her out while she rubbed me out, her hold on me tightening. Her body tightening.
“Nathan…Nathan.” She held my hand still and rode it as she came.
I leaned away to watch her. She was shameless in her pleasure, and she looked right fucking at me. It drove me mad.
My resolve broke. I moaned through tiny thrusts of my hips. I couldn’t hold back anymore. Not after that.
“Squeeze me harder,” I begged.
She gripped at me clumsily, her breaths leaving her in desperate little pants. When she rocked toward me to slip her other hand between us and fondle my balls, I groaned deep and shot, my head falling to her shoulder.
I stopped moving and let her stroke me out. I kept my hand between her legs. I told her she dripped all over it.
“I like it,” I said, kissing her hungrily.
I’d gone what, five minutes without her mouth? Ten? It felt like the first time. I’d nearly eaten her alive in the hallway.
“You’re not much better,” she said through a smile. Her cupped hand knocked against my ribs. “I need a towel.”
We slid out of bed and cleaned up in the master bath.
I noticed Jenna’s gaze lingering on the corner shower. It was new compared to everything else in the bathroom and didn’t perfectly match the other fixtures. And when Jenna looked at me, I knew I didn’t need to explain why that was.
She took my hand and led me into the bedroom.
Two orgasms down, my body fell heavy against the mattress. I pulled the sheet over us as Jenna curled against my side.
We stared at each other. I thought we might talk. I wanted to…
When fingers pushed through my hair, I closed my eyes and dozed.
* * *
I stirred awake, hand sweeping the mattress beside me, seeking her. I fisted the sheet.
“Jenna?” I called out. My eyes creaked open.
She stood beside the bed, dressing. She pulled her shorts up to her hips. Her top was already in place.
“Hey.” I pushed up to my elbows. “What are you doing? How long have I been asleep?” I peered over at the blurred numbers of the alarm clock. Fuck, my glasses. “What time is it?” I rubbed at my eyes.
“It’s almost one. I need to get going.”
I watched her round the bed. Her gaze barely lingered on me.
Is she in a rush to get out of here or something?
“Stop. Why are you leaving?” I sat up and swung my legs over the side, bunching the sheet in my lap. “And why are you acting like that? What’s wrong?”
Jenna stopped a foot away and blinked at me. She appeared almost sad. “How am I acting?”
“You’re barely looking at me.”
“I’m looking at you now.”
I cocked my head. “Okay…” I raked a hand down my face. We should’ve talked. Why the hell did I fall asleep? I gripped the edge of the bed on either side of me. “I didn’t ask you to leave, did I? You don’t have to go.”
“No, but…Nathan, my kids. Waking up here, me in your bed, it would confuse them. I shouldn’t stay.” Jenna kicked her sandals in front of her and slipped them on.
Well, she wasn’t wrong there. I understood why that might be an issue.
“I’m sorry. I would’ve said goodbye before I left. I was just trying to let you sleep. You…seemed tired. You were dreaming.” She gathered her hair off her neck like before at the party, securing it into a messy knot on top of her head.
“You were doing that thing with your fingers,” I explained. “It felt too good. I didn’t mean
to fall asleep.”
Jenna smiled, the lamp on the nightstand illuminating the side of her face. I reached out for her and caught her wrist, tugging her between my knees.
“Stay for another hour,” I pleaded. I wrapped my arms around her waist and kissed the underside of her jaw.
“I can’t. I’ll pass out if I stay.” She dropped her forehead to mine. Her fingers tickled my neck. “Thank you for inviting us to that party. Oliver and Olivia…they’ll never forget it. Neither will I, Nathan. It was amazing.”
“Yeah, I’m glad you guys got to go.” I tipped my head up and kissed her.
She moaned against my mouth, her body melting. “Okay, I really need to leave,” she said. She slid her nose along mine.
“Let me grab some shorts. I’ll walk you down.”
“No. Stay here.”
“Just give me a second.”
“Seriously, it’s okay.” Jenna pushed down on my shoulders when I tried to stand. “My kids might ask what we’ve been doing…why you’re shirtless. They’re nosy. Just stay here.”
“I can grab a shirt,” I argued.
She shook her head, smiling, and moved her fingers through my hair. “You look all sexed up and sleepy.” When I moaned at her touch, a soft little laugh escaped her. She bent to kiss my cheek. “I’ll lock up,” she whispered.
I rubbed at my face, watching her back away. “I like walking you out,” I grumbled.
“I know. And I like when you do.” She touched the knob. “No Marley tomorrow, right? You took off?”
“Yeah.” Marley. Fuck, I almost forgot. “Shit…” I scanned the room for my gym bag, then remembered Jenna carrying it inside for me. It was still by the door. “Wait a minute,” I said, digging through my nightstand. “I might need to go downstairs with you anyway. I don’t know how much I have in here.” My hands curled around wrinkled bills.
“Nathan…” Jenna’s voice was cautious.
“I can grab my wallet before you get them up. They won’t see me,” I explained, pulling out the cash and counting it. I had a little over two hundred dollars in there. “Never mind. We’re good.” I stuffed the extra cash away and then held out the rest for Jenna.
She stared at me, her eyes crinkling as she looked at the money. She began to fidget. “Yeah…I really wish you weren’t doing this right now,” she said, smoothing her hands around her neck. She huffed out a breath.
Doing this? Doing what?
I glanced at the cash. My stomach turned over. Oh shit.
“I’m sorry.” My arm fell to my thigh. “Fuck, I’m so sorry. This isn’t…I’m not paying you for what we did. You watched Marley today. That’s what this is for.” The bills crinkled in my hand.
Jesus Christ, this looked terrible.
“I know that. I know.” Jenna covered her face and shook her head. “But it still feels…God, can you just not pay me?” Her eyes were pleading when she looked at me.
“Jenna, you can’t watch Marley for free. I don’t feel right about that.” I smoothed out the bills on my thigh. Then I folded them in half, like that was actually going to help somehow. Good job. This isn’t shitty now at all. “You know what?” I tossed the cash on the nightstand. “Forget this happened. I’ll just pay you double the next time you’re here.”
Jenna looked down, remaining quiet, even though I could tell she wanted to argue this. Maybe she was thinking the same thing as me.
What if we do something the next time? Why wouldn’t we? I knew I’d want to.
“I’d rather you not pay me at all, Nathan,” she finally said.
I tried thinking about this, working it out another way in my head, even though I knew it wouldn’t change a damn thing.
In terms of Marley, Jenna did too much for me. I knew what all I was taking from her. She was always there for my daughter, and for me, no questions. Would I be using her if we took this any further? What am I giving her in return if we do this?
“I’m sorry, Jenna. I’d have to pay you,” I said.
“Yeah.” Her shoulders lifted in defeat. “I know.”
We stared at each other.
When her gaze fell away again, I pinched my eyes shut and rubbed at my face.
“There’s gotta be something,” I mumbled. This couldn’t be it. No fucking way was this over. We just got started.
“Nathan, when you were dreaming you…you were calling out for Sadie, and you were holding me, and—”
I stopped her with a look. She was acting different with me. “I can explain that.”
“You don’t have to.” Jenna shook her head, hands raised defensively as she crept closer. “I’m not mad about it. I understand—God, of course I do. I’m just, I’m wondering if maybe we should wait.”
“Because of that? Jenna, that dream—”
“Because of everything, Nathan.” She stopped a foot away. Her eyes drifted to the cash. “This entire night…This happened pretty fast, all things considered.” Jenna looked at me. “I don’t know, waiting a little more might not be so terrible. I’m only watching Marley through the summer—that’s two months. Barely that. We could wait and see if what we’re feeling is still there.” She gave me a tight smile.
Two more months. That wasn’t long, yet I knew how difficult a delay like that would be. I barely lasted three weeks with this woman. She was asking me for eight more?
Did the amount of patience needed for this even exist? I wasn’t so sure.
I exhaled heavily and raked my hand through my hair.
We had moved fast. She wasn’t wrong. Maybe I should’ve thought about this longer before I acted on it. I went from acknowledging my feelings to learning my condoms had expired. I hadn’t even considered how this could affect our working relationship. That complication aside, was I even ready for this with Jenna? For everything this could become?
Fuck. I couldn’t answer that.
“Yeah…I think you’re right,” I said. “It’s probably for the best that we wait.”
“Probably.”
When I smiled easily, she smiled back. “And, you know”—I gestured between us—“it won’t be weird. We’ll just go back to the way it was.”
“Okay, good.” Jenna’s stance relaxed. “I’d like that.” She retreated toward the door, smiling back at me when she reached it. “See ya.”
“Yeah, later.”
She slipped out into the hallway.
When the door latched shut, I collapsed onto the bed, my mind whirling.
Back to the way it was…heavy flirting and doing absolutely nothing beyond that.
I’d just agreed to two more months of torture.
Chapter Thirteen
JENNA
I didn’t hear from Nathan at all the next day.
Which wouldn’t have been strange—it was his day off—but lately he reached out to me in some way or another on the days I didn’t keep Marley for him. We’d text a little. Sometimes he’d call. Maybe we’d end up getting together with the kids…
Nathan never reached out on Saturday. I wondered if he was at least thinking about me, because I couldn’t stop thinking about him.
I remembered our night together. The wild hunger in his kiss. The way he gripped at my body. Our mutual grinding session and round two when we touched each other until we both came. It was difficult not thinking about it. I’d never experienced pleasure like that, not with anyone before. I kept replaying moments inside my head.
I thought about what happened after too. How quickly things got awkward and the agreement to put us on pause—that was also a memory I couldn’t shake.
Sunday when we got to his house, Oliver and Olivia went hard at Nathan the moment we walked in the door. They couldn’t stop talking about the Fourth and occupied all conversation while I got Marley set up with breakfast.
Nathan didn’t act out of the ordinary at all with them. He smiled at Olivia when she tugged playfully at his tie and reciprocated the little hug she gave him. And when Oliver showed off his f
ootball, as if he hadn’t seen it before, Nathan matched my son’s excitement over the signature.
Maybe I was worrying for nothing. They could’ve simply been busy yesterday. And it wasn’t a requirement for Nathan to check in. Why was I acting like he had to? I was reading too much into this. If anyone was making things weird, it was me.
When it was time for him to leave, Nathan walked over to the kitchen table and kissed Marley goodbye. The twins had moved into the family room.
“What did you end up doing yesterday?” I asked him, grabbing hold of Marley’s wrists so she wouldn’t touch Nathan with her sticky syrup fingers.
“Nothing,” he answered, straightening up. “We just hung around here.”
Huh. Okay, not busy.
“Yeah, us too.” I tucked my hair behind my ear. “I mean, we didn’t do anything either. Just hung around.”
He smiled at Marley, then slid his eyes to me, where I sat beside her. I waited for it—that warm, easy look we shared now, but it was as if we’d just met. There was nothing familiar in the way Nathan regarded me. He was being polite, nothing more.
He smoothed out his tie. “I gotta go. I’ll see you around seven.”
“Great.”
I put my focus on Marley and helped her fork another triangle of pancake as Nathan’s heavy footsteps took him out of the kitchen. The front door creaked open and closed.
I wasn’t reading too much into the way Nathan was acting with me. That wasn’t normal. Maybe things weren’t weird yet, but they were definitely different.
Great, indeed.
My morning with the kids played out typically. We stayed outside and ate chicken fingers and fries for lunch. Everyone was happy. Yet by nap time, I still felt off. When my phone beeped with an incoming text, I wondered if it was Nathan. Maybe our interaction from this morning was bothering him as much as it was bothering me and he wanted to reach out.
I palmed my phone and saw it was Travis texting me, and my initial reaction was surprise. Then I remembered our last conversation. I’d completely forgotten about our impending date.
Should we still go out? With everything that had happened with Nathan, I hesitated responding.
