by Tawna Fenske
“God, Gretchen.” I breathe the words against her throat, laying a path of kisses down her chest. Sinking to my knees, I worship her breasts, licking and sucking until she clutches my hair and cries out.
“Gabe.” Her knees wobble, and I grip her waist to keep her upright. “Let’s go inside. Please. I want to feel you.”
I don’t know if it’s the urgency in her voice or the way she says my name, but my heart curls into a contented ball. I get to my feet, conscious of the shakiness of my legs.
“I’ve never wanted anyone this much.” I squeeze her fingers, hoping she believes me. “Not ever.”
It’s the God’s honest truth. One day when the rest of my truths are laid out, I hope she still believes this one.
Her smile sends a burst of sunlight straight to my soul. “Same.” She catches my hand in hers and tugs. “Inside. Now.”
I don’t need to be asked again.
She ducks down to enter the cozy cave of blankets, and I follow behind, unable to keep my hands off her. Panties are the only scrap of clothing she has left, and I plan to remedy that soon.
Inside the fort is darker than it was before, the Christmas lights now just glass bulbs tipped with sunlight streaming through the window behind us. I leave the door flap open, needing to see her. To memorize every detail of her body.
Settling into the nest of blankets, she leans back on her elbows with blue eyes blazing. “I’ve never had sex in a blanket fort before.”
“Me, neither.” I kiss her, easing her back. “I mean, not with anyone besides myself.”
She laughs and wraps her arms around my back. “Perv.”
“I was a pre-teen boy,” I say as I kiss my way down the middle of her chest. “Privacy’s hard to find in a big family.”
“I’ll give you points for creativity.” With a couple quick tugs, she’s got my shirt off and goes to work on my pants. Sliding her hand into my boxer briefs, she grins and wraps her fingers snug around my shaft.
“Only the one penis.” She grins and licks her lips. “I’m relieved.”
I bust out laughing, drunk on the combination of lust and humor. There should be a law requiring more laughter in bed. It would make the world a better place. “Let me know if you want to weigh it.”
Her laugh becomes a gasp as I hook my thumbs in the waistband of her panties and drag them down her legs. She groans again as I kiss my way down her center, rolling until I slip between her thighs.
The instant my mouth finds her slick center, she cries out. “Gabe!” Fingers clutch my hair as she arches up against me. “Don’t stop.”
I didn’t plan on it. She’s so wet, so goddamn sweet. I could do this all night, worshiping her with my lips, my tongue, my fingers. I’ve wanted this from the first moment I saw her. Needed to feel her slick and warm around me, filling my senses the way she is now.
“Oh God.” Her walls clench around my fingers, surprising me with how fast she’s reached her peak. I ride the wave with her, licking and sucking until she goes slack in my hands.
Then I pull her to me and wait for her breathing to slow, for her heart to stop thudding against my chest.
“Later.” She presses her palms to my chest, breathless and grinning. “Snuggling can wait. I need you inside me now.”
My dick practically sits up and begs, but I manage to hold it together. “We can arrange that.”
“Thank God.”
Her bluntness, the nakedness of her desire—it’s an even bigger turn-on than her body. I fumble with my wallet, grateful I’ve got one condom tucked away. She helps roll it on, then pulls me between her thighs as I tip her onto her back.
I hesitate, holding myself at her opening with every ounce of self-control I possess as I look in her eyes to be sure she’s still with me.
“Yes,” she says, even though I didn’t ask out loud. “Please, Gabe.”
I ease in slowly, or at least I try to. She’s got her legs wrapped tight around me, drawing me into her warm center. I drive in deeper than I mean to, but her gasp is pure pleasure.
“Yes,” she says again, arching tight against me. “Yes.”
I struggle to keep control, to make this last. Her body surrounds me like we’re made to fit together. Like the puzzle piece I’ve searched for my whole life is finally slipping into place.
Her blue eyes are wide and locked on my face. I’ve never been one for eye contact during sex, and a ripple of panic moves through me. But Gretchen smiles, and my tension dissolves. I can’t look away. Can’t pull back from the overwhelming joy of being seen, being truly seen, by someone like her.
She doesn’t know you—
But she does know me. Maybe not the Gable Judson from the headlines. The Gable Judson who’s spent his life in the spotlight.
But maybe that was never the real me.
“Gabe.” She closes her eyes as I drive in deeper, hitting something that makes us both groan.
Her thighs grip me tighter, and I know she’s getting close. “Oh, yes.”
I can’t believe how good she feels, how perfect this moment is. The soft brush of quilts, the smell of woodsmoke, the pure, naked intimacy of being together like this.
There’s a roar in my head getting louder, and I fight it back. I need to make this last. I need to bring her there. I need—
“Oh, God, Gabe. Now.”
The roar slips through my lips, and we cry out together. I drive in deep as she spasms around me, body arching like a bow. I can’t tell where her screams end and mine begin, and I’m grateful we’re the only humans for miles.
It’s just us. Only us as we lose ourselves in each other’s arms and the ripples of pleasure go on and on and on.
I don’t know how long we lie breathless in the fort, tangled together in quilts and the world’s most amazing afterglow. I can’t stop kissing her temple, her ear, the pulse fluttering in her throat. I can’t stop breathing her in, marveling that salmon chowder and fallen trees and accidental gunpoint threats turned into the best sex of my life.
Gretchen slides an arm over my torso and angles herself up. She peers at me with a beam of sun spotlighting her eyes, hair spilling over my chest like silk.
“Tell me about being a set designer,” she says.
There’s a crashing sound in my ears, which might be reality clubbing me between the eyes. I draw in a slow breath. “What do you want to know?”
“I’m curious,” she says. “If it’s something you’ve done for a while and you’re looking to get out of, maybe it would help to know what you’ve liked and disliked about the job.”
This is my chance. I know I need to tell her. The words are on the tip of my tongue.
Actually, Gretchen…
“Set designers work with directors and producers and costume designers to come up with the sets used in film and TV.” The words are stiff and flattened by self-loathing. “There’s a lot of drawing up plans and building models, plus budgeting and visiting sites.”
I close my eyes, unable to bear looking at her.
It wasn’t technically a lie. She asked what a set designer does, and you told her.
That’s no excuse.
“What about the hands-on stuff?” she asks. “The grunt labor of actually building the set.”
“There’s some of that, too,” I tell her. “Especially on lower-budget productions.”
“And do you like that?”
“Working with my hands?” I slide mine up her body, one palm tracing her shoulder blades while the other circles the small of her back. “Yeah. I like it a lot.”
She laughs and traces a fingertip through my chest hair, playing an invisible game of connect the dots. “I imagine you watch a lot of TV and movies?”
“Yeah.” God, this feels good. Not just Gretchen’s skin, warm and smooth under my palms, but this moment. This pillow talk, the soft lull of conversation. It feels so…normal. So unlike my regular life.
I try to remember what we were talking about. Television? “Y
eah, I watch a lot. Movies and TV both.” Her breath fans warm across my chest, and I let my own breathing sync with hers. “It’s partly to keep up on the industry. Partly just for pleasure.”
“Pleasure, huh?” There’s a teasing note in her voice and her touch as she circles a fingertip around my nipple. “Hope you’re not feeling too deprived in that department.”
I laugh and pull her closer, crushing her breasts against my chest. “If I packed any more pleasure into my life right now, I would probably die from it.”
“Mmm, we wouldn’t want that.” She dots a kiss on my pec, then scatters a few more across my chest. “What are some of your favorite shows?”
I’m relaxing into her, savoring the feel of her body warm against mine. This conversation is probably fraught with landmines, but part of me doesn’t care. “Stranger Things,” I murmur, skimming a palm down her ribs. “It’s a TV show.”
“What’s it about?” She jerks in my arms, then sits up grinning. “Wait, no, don’t tell me.”
“What?”
She’s grinning, and there’s a lot of bouncing going on, so I miss part of what she’s saying as she digs through the blankets. “…can help you stave off the television withdrawals.”
When she pops back up, she’s got her blue and white snowflake socks in her hands and a mischievous glint in her eyes. With sex-tousled hair and bare breasts bathed in filtered sunlight, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
Beautiful and a little deranged. “What’s with the socks?” I ask.
“It’s show biz, baby.” Still grinning, she yanks one on each hand and jams a fist into the toe of each sock. Wriggling her fingers into position, she holds her hands up sock-puppet style.
“Hello there, Jim.” Her left hand mouths the words as Gretchen does the goofiest voice I’ve ever heard “Between the following two things, which is stranger?”
It’s the right hand’s turn, and Gretchen pitches her voice lower. “Oh, you mean like Stranger Things, Bob?”
“Exactly! That’s the show, Jim.”
I laugh and roll onto my back, loving this version way more than the one on Netflix.
“Which is stranger,” Gretchen repeats in her Bob voice. “Putting carrots in Jell-O salad, or people who wash down Doritos with Diet Coke?”
She maneuvers the Jim sock into a thoughtful pose, and I laugh again. “Definitely the carrots, Bob.”
“Good point, good point.” Gretchen wriggles the Bob puppet in apparent approval. “How about tube tops or the fact that there’s no such thing as B batteries?”
I fold my hands behind my head, enjoying the show. “I never thought of that,” I muse. “There’s A batteries and C and D—”
“Do you hear something, Bob?” Gretchen turns both sock puppets to face me. “That sounds like a heckler.”
Laughing, I pantomime zipping my lips shut.
The show goes on.
“Which is stranger?” Jim continues. “The fact that the US doesn’t use the metric system, or the fact that an Echo Dot imitates human flatulence when you say, ‘Alexa, make fart noises.’”
I crack up again, shaking my head. “That can’t be real.”
“It is real, Bob,” Gretchen says through puppet Jim. “You’d know that if you had a gross older brother.”
“True, true. Those are pretty strange as well.” Bob looks pensive, or as pensive as a sock can look. “What about breasts?”
“What about breasts, Bob?”
“Is it stranger that men can walk around shirtless, or that women can cover up everything but their nipples, and it’ll somehow be indecent?”
I roll to my side, enjoying the show too much to shut up. “That’s an excellent point,” I say. “Also, the puppeteer has the most beautiful breasts I’ve laid eyes on.”
Gretchen smiles but doesn’t break character. “Well, Jim—I’d say all of those things are pretty strange.”
Bob nods as Gretchen moves her arm, giving me another glimpse of those perfect breasts.
She holds the puppets out to the sides and grins. “And that concludes today’s episode of Stranger Things.”
I break into applause as she contorts both puppets into a courtly bow. “Nailed it,” I say, still clapping. “That’s exactly what Stranger Things is about.”
“Thank you.” Gretchen takes a bow of her own, golden hair skimming her breasts. “How about movies? Give me a big hit to work with.”
A knot forms in the center of my chest, but I push past it. My mother’s favorite movie is the first one that comes to mind, so that’s what I give her.
“A Star is Born is pretty cool,” I admit, tracing a fingertip over Gretchen’s bare knee. “The original from 1937 starred Janet Gaynor and Fredric March, but my favorite is the 1954 version with Judy Garland and James Mason.”
Gretchen lowers the sock puppets and quirks an eyebrow. “Not the one with Lady Gaga?”
“Whoa, look who knows movies after all!”
She shrugs. “I sometimes catch the headlines, so I knew about that one. Can’t say I have any idea what the movie’s about.” Grinning, she lifts the sock puppets again. “But Jim and Bob do.”
I laugh as she spurs the puppets back into action. “Tell me, Bob, how is it that stars come to be born?”
“Well, Jim,” she responds, making my heart melt with those adorable voices. “Stars are formed within clouds of dust and gas you’ll find scattered throughout most galaxies.”
She gives a low guffaw on behalf of Jim. “There’s an awful lot of gas in my galaxy, Bob.”
Gretchen rolls her eyes and leans close to whisper an aside. “Puppets—how crude.”
“So hard to manage,” I agree. “I do want to hear about the stars, though.”
“Right.” She lifts the socks again and slips back into puppet voices.
“We’re talking about molecular clouds, Jim. Stay with me here.”
“Right, right,” the second puppet says. “So how does that become a star?”
“I’m glad you asked, Jim, since I’ve never had use for that undergrad astronomy course until now.” Gretchen blows a lock of hair off her forehead. “Turbulence within those dust clouds form knots of matter with enough mass that the gas and dust collapse under their own gravitational attraction. When that happens, the material at the center heats up to form a star.”
“Mmm, I like it when things heat up,” she says on behalf of puppet Jim, then wiggles her brows at me. “Such a perv.”
“I think I like Jim,” I tell her. “But not as much as I like you.”
“Thank you.” She does another topless curtsey, lifting the puppets to do a bow of their own. “This ends tonight’s production. Stay tuned for more entertainment.”
“I like the sound of that.” I slip my arms around her waist and pull her down to me, kissing her on the mouth. “Thank you for that.”
“Don’t mention it.” She snuggles against me, one sock hand trailing over my bicep. “It’s the least I could do after you made me ice cream.”
“That was amazing.” Another kiss, this one between her breasts. “You’re amazing.”
She strips off the socks, laughing as she rolls onto her back. “You’re not so bad yourself.”
I’m still laughing as I kiss my way down her center, tongue circling her belly button.
But the way I’m feeling is no laughing matter. I’m falling for Gretchen.
And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
Chapter 8
Gretchen
The next forty-eight hours are a blur of snuggling and shoveling, sex and schoolwork. I’m grateful I had both a solar charger and a box of condoms in my glovebox, both of which needed to be thawed before use.
Though the power returns that first evening, we eat our meals by candlelight. We take turns keeping the fire going, watching through frosted windowpanes as the snow slows, then eventually stops falling.
On the morning of the third day, we wake to the sun blastin
g bright beams through the trees. I step out onto the porch, blowing on my hands as I survey the vast blanket of white in front of me, the ocean of blue above.
“Damn, that’s beautiful.” Gabe strolls onto the porch with two steaming mugs of coffee.
I look up and smile, accepting the mug he hands me. “It’s always so pretty after a storm like that.”
He grins and slips an arm around my waist. “I was talking about you.”
“Goofball.” I lift the mug to my lips. “Thanks for this.”
“No problem. Figured you needed dissertation fuel.”
“Actually, I’m thinking I’ll head out.”
“Out.” He cocks his head. “Out where?”
“To town.” I sweep a hand toward the road, which is still blocked by the fallen tree. “I’ve got my snowshoes, and the snow’s had time to set up. Shouldn’t take more than an hour, hour-and-a-half to make it to town and call for help.”
Gabe frowns. “That doesn’t sound safe.”
“It’s perfectly safe,” I insist. “I snowshoed competitively in high school and college. I know how to pace myself, and there’s no sign of more snow on the way.”
Gabe’s still frowning, one shoulder braced against the side of the cabin. “I’ll come with you.”
“That won’t work,” I remind him. “I’ve only got the one set of snowshoes. You’ll be post-holing up to your crotch if you try to go without.”
“I don’t like this. What about bears or cougars or…or Sasquatch?”
“I have a gun,” I point out. “And bear spray.”
“Bear spray?” He quirks an eyebrow. “I guess I’m grateful you picked the gun that first morning.”
Man, that seems like a lifetime ago. Crazy how much has happened since then. “I’ll be fine,” I tell him. “The next storm isn’t supposed to move in ‘til next week, so now’s our chance to get someone out here to help with the road and the tree.”
