by Cassie James
I work my hands between us so I can unceremoniously jerk my panties down my thighs. He chuckles as he pushes his board shorts down his thighs. When he pushes my dress up around my waist and lowers himself over me again… a needy sound escapes me.
“Brennan,” I whimper out his name. I’m wriggling against him, desperate for him to sooth the fire raging inside of me. I need him.
He answers by kissing me softly.
A soft gasp works its way from my throat when he buries his head in my neck at the same time that he pushes into me slowly. The friction of his body sliding into mine does something to me that I don’t fully understand. Like I’m floating outside of my body while watching the world’s largest Fourth of July fireworks display. My eyes roll as I throw my head back, soft moans bursting out of me in rapid succession as Brennan reaches between us to touch me intimately, prolonging the sensation for so long that I start to feel like I’m coming apart at the seams.
Brennan doesn’t stop touching me until my noisy breaths and blinding pleasure slowly subside. He stares down at me with a wide grin as I blink sleepily up at him.
“That was…” I trail off, too embarrassed to put into words just how good that felt.
For a second his smile falters and a strange look crosses his face. “Was that—” He shakes his head, cutting himself off. Whatever he was about to ask, he’s decided against it. I open my mouth to ask him to finish what he was going to say, but he takes the chance to capture my mouth under his once more.
My body feels so satiated that I’m absolutely positive that no more pleasure can be wrung from it. I couldn’t be more wrong. As Brennan settles into steady strokes, I find a different kind of pleasure coming over me. An emotional satisfaction as my chest feels like it’s expanding and reaching out to hold Brennan close. He tucks his head against my neck as he grunts, sounding every bit like it feels as good for him as it does for me. I keep meeting him thrust for thrust until he lets out a sharp groan, stilling moments later.
I hold my breath as I wait to see what he does next. I’m terrified he’ll tell me to go the way Jude did, but he puts me at ease when he rolls off of me and settles beside me instead. It doesn’t seem like he’s in any hurry for either of us to go.
There’s an easy silence between us, the only sounds in the air from the waves crashing on the beach. I hadn’t realized how much time had passed, but the night sky has descended over us now, stars flickering above us from light-years away.
“Thank you,” I tell Brennan quietly.
“You don’t have to thank me for sex, Pi.”
I raise up on one elbow and twist so I can look down into his eyes. “Please let me thank you. I had no idea anything could feel… that good.”
The same strange look from before returns to Brennan’s eyes. He reaches over and rests a hand on my thigh as if he’s just looking to be touching me in some way. “You mean the orgasm? Yeah, it’s supposed to feel good,” he jokes.
“The or—” I feel my eyes go wide. “Oh.” Oh is right. “I didn’t know that’s what that was,” I admit quietly.
Brennan shoots up to a sitting position, and I uneasily follow. He’s staring at me like he doesn’t recognize me, and it feels too similar to the way he looked at me the very first time he saw me. It makes me nervous.
“You didn’t get off when you had sex with Jude?” He sounds incredulous, though I’m not sure why. In my experience with porn, the men always get off but the women oftentimes don’t. The concept seems to horrify Brennan, though, so maybe I should stop relying on porn as my basis for sexual knowledge.
I shake my head no.
He groans and runs his free hand over his face, not looking at me for a long minute. When he does look at me again, he leans in for a quick kiss. He doesn’t seem to know what to say now, though he does look awfully proud of himself. I can see why he would, because damn I’ve never felt anything like that before. Seriously. Fireworks.
As Brennan sits peacefully beside me, I let my mind wander. Sex with Jude was good, truly, but now I know there was something fundamental missing. A whole other level of nirvana that maybe can only be achieved when there are real feelings involved. I glance fondly at Brennan. I know it’s silly, but as I look at him, it’s like I’m looking at the center of the universe. The one thing capable of holding me together when it would be all too easy to fall apart. I know Jude and Tyler diss him for being so gentle and dependable, but it’s those very traits that make me think it’s all too easy to fall in love with him.
“What are you thinking about?” Brennan interrupts my silent musings.
Smiling over at him, I decide I really do want to tell him what I’m thinking. Even if maybe it is a little soon to admit I think I might be falling for him. “I was just thinking about how when I had sex with Jude—”
“Seriously?” he cuts me off. He shakes his head, even as I try to start again. He’s the one that asked, so now why won’t he let me tell him what I’m thinking? Does he have suspicions about what I’m going to say? Does he not want to know how big my feelings for him are? Because if that’s the case, I sure as hell don’t want to make myself vulnerable by telling him anyway.
He avoids looking at me as he stands and surveys our disheveled surroundings. With a grimace, he suggests, “We should probably clean this up and get you home.”
A weird tension settles between us as we gather our stuff and start the never-ending trek up the stairs to the driveway. It’s much too dark for me to see his eyes as he drives me home, but the way that he turns music on that’s just a little too loud to talk over makes me think that maybe I made a mistake by admitting that was my first orgasm.
We sit in his Jeep in my driveway for an awkwardly long time before I reach out and turn the music down so I can tell him I had a good time. “Yeah. Me, too.” His words are clipped, and my chest aches when he only offers me a quick peck before I climb out and make the trek to the front door alone. It’s not a blatant brush off like the one I got from Jude, but something’s not quite right.
When I reach the door and turn to wave goodbye one last time, Brennan’s Jeep is already halfway down the drive.
18
Piper
Another week passes in a blur. It’s almost like I go back in time to the week before my date with Brennan, except this time there’s no sideways glances or discreet nods when we pass each other in the hallway. He won’t even make eye contact with me. I try sending him a few texts, but they go unanswered. I was foolish to think we’d shared something real. He got what he wanted and moved on—just like Jude.
By the time Saturday rolls around, the height of my entertainment has become laying in bed, staring at the ceiling in my room. My curtains are pulled closed, blocking out any vestiges of a bright, sunshiny day. I don’t want any reminder of the clear evening when Brennan drove me out to the beach, not even in something as simple as the sun and sky.
When I can’t stand to stare at nothing for a second longer, I turn over and bury my head in my pillow, falling into a fitful sleep. At some point, I think my phone rings, but I don’t bother looking at it. I’ll only be disappointed if I do.
Sometime later, a door slams open, jerking me awake. I push up to a sitting position as light suddenly floods the room. I groan, blinking rapidly against the sudden assault. Macie is standing in front of my window, light haloing her frame as she drops her hands to her hips. I groan and flop backwards.
“Go away, Mace. I’m trying to wallow in self-pity here.”
“No,” she says, her voice closer than it should be. I crack an eye to see her standing at the end of my bed with her arms crossed over her chest. She fixes me with a hard stare before continuing, “You’ve been weird all week, and you haven’t answered your phone all morning. Your mom said you’ve been locked up in here since you got home from school yesterday. What the hell is going on with you?”
“Ugh, nothing!”
I reach for my blankets, wanting more than anything to cover
my head and block out her voice and the annoying sunlight all in one go. My fingers grapple, but the blanket isn’t within reach. I glare as I roll my head in her direction only to find her standing with my blanket hanging limply in her grip.
“Piper,” her voice holds the dark edge of a warning, and I push myself into a sitting position with a truly overdramatic groan. “Did you sleep with Jude again?”
My mouth falls open, and the look she gives me clearly reads, “What?” She couldn’t be further from the mark if she was blindfolded and shooting in the opposite direction. “No?” and I’m not entirely sure why it comes out sounding like a question.
“Piper,” she warns.
I can’t force myself to look in her eyes when I say, “It was Brennan this time.”
“Brennan Brennan?” I grimace when I see the disbelief bleeding onto her face when I force myself to look up. I nod, the motion so small I almost hope she doesn’t even see it.
“Brennan Diaz-Baker?” She’s still going, as if she’s not quite she can grasp the concept. I nod again, and her mouth gapes. “When?”
“Last Saturday.”
“Last Saturday, you told me you had plans and let me believe it was with your parents, last Saturday? Piper!”
I grimace, knowing I’ve been shitty to my best friend once again. Macie looks more resigned than mad, though, as she climbs onto the end of the bed and stares at me. Her elbows fall to her knees, and she braces her face in her hands, her fingers tapping her cheeks as she waits for me to speak.
“He took me on a date first, Mace. I thought it was different.” I can hear the wistfulness in my own voice.
She doesn’t even bother to try to hide her eye roll. “Jude took you on a date, too,” she tries to remind me, but I shake my head.
“No, Jude showed up unannounced and dragged me along to dinner because he thought I couldn’t eat and that it would make me uncomfortable. That’s not the same thing.” Or at least, it didn’t feel like the same thing to me.
I take a deep breath and dive in, knowing I need to tell her the details now that she knows. “He asked me out after we studied at his house. And he…” My voice cracks and I swallow hard as I try to get the rest out. “He put a lot of thought into the date, actually. It was very sweet. He took me to the beach at the Alton’s place, he brought me food that he knew I liked, and he was ready to just hang out around a fire and watch the stars. Mace, I’m the one that initiated the sex.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“How was it?” she asks, a small smile ghosting over her lips. Lucky for me, Macie isn’t one to hold a grudge.
My cheeks flush as she giggles and leans forward to shove my shoulder teasingly. I let out a long breath in a whoosh as I try to come up with the right words to explain to her what the moment meant to me. “It was good, like inexplicably good. He was sweet and never pushed me further than I wanted to go. It was so, so different from sex with—” my voice falters as I finish, “with Jude.”
Macie winces. “You probably shouldn’t compare the two, Piper. Sex is different with different people, that’s normal. Especially when one of those people is Jude The Asshole Alton. But it’s not exactly polite to talk about that kind of thing. Guys are really sensitive about that shit.”
“Oh.” I frown. I didn’t realize something like that would be considered a faux pas. That’s definitely the kind of thing porn doesn’t teach you.
She looks at me hard for a long moment. “Piper.” She sits up straighter. “You and Brennan didn’t talk about Jude while you were… on your date, did you?”
“Only about the fact that Jude didn’t give me an orgasm.” Something niggles at the back of my brain until I remember. “Oh, and I started to try to explain to him how after I had sex with Jude I didn’t have the same feelings I was feeling for him, but he interrupted me as soon as I said Jude’s name.”
Macie buries her head in her hands for a moment, then looks up with tears streaming over her cheeks. I’m just about to ask what’s wrong when she starts cackling—those are amused tears, not sad ones, I realize. She struggles to catch her breath so she can tell me, “God, that’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard. I mean, that was a huge mistake on your part, but damn I wish I’d been there to see Brennan’s face. Not only did you bring Jude up immediately after sex, but you also basically insulted the walking sex god himself by spilling that he didn’t even make sure you got off.” She shakes her head, another amused chortle escaping her. “Poor Brennan’s probably feeling a million different ways about that right now.”
I never considered it that way—obviously. Maybe I need to apologize to him. Based on what Macie’s saying, bringing up Jude after sex was probably a lot of the reason Brennan suddenly got weird when it was time to take me home.
“Okay, I’m giving you five minutes to get your butt out of bed and get ready.” Macie stands. “And then we’re going to Santa Monica.”
“Huh?” I’m not sure what Santa Monica has to do with anything.
She grabs me by the arms and drags me up out of the bed, giving me a healthy shove in the direction of the closet. “Wear something comfy. We’re going people watching.”
“What? Why?”
“Relationships are complex, Piper. The emotions and the way people act, those things aren’t exactly predictable, but you can learn to look for cues. So, I hope you’re ready to go slumming it with the tourists—because we’re not leaving the pier until you get it.”
“What about them?” Macie points toward a younger couple a few hundred feet away. His arm is around her waist, with his hand tucked into the back pocket of her jeans. She’s chatting happily away on the phone, her eyes moving from side to side as they walk. He smiles down at her, and she offers him a grin in return before she returns her eyes to browsing.
“They’re very obviously in love.”
I’m confident with my answer until she laughs and reaches for the bag of cotton candy hanging limply in my hands. “Holy shit, Piper. I didn’t actually expect you to be this bad at this. Look again.”
My eyes sweep back toward the couple. His grip on her waist tightens, and he pulls her just a little closer as they pass a rowdy crowd of stumbling college-aged guys. How could Macie not see how sweet it was for him to make sure one of those douches doesn’t drunkenly bowl his girlfriend over?
“Macie, they’re clearly in a relationship.”
“Okay,” she concedes as she shakes her head. She pops her fingers in her mouth to lick away the remnant of the cotton candy before she says, “I want to make sure you see what I see.”
“Okay, sure.”
“You’re not wrong that they’re in a relationship, but they’re not in love.” I open my mouth to protest, but she holds her finger up and shushes me. “Listen for a second, Piper. He has his arm wrapped around her with his hand in her pocket, he pulls her close. They’re comfortable together. There’s nothing in the way he carries himself to suggest that he’s one of those douchey assholes who thinks he’s entitled to a woman’s body on the first date. So you get a check for being able to tell they’re in a relationship.”
“However, and this is the big one... If she hasn’t cheated on him in the past, he’s afraid that she’s going to now. He pulls her closer anytime they pass another guy that’s close to their age and looks like him. Do you see the way she pulls herself just a little away from him every few minutes as she talks on the phone? She’s definitely breaking up with him soon.”
I’m at a loss. Now that Macie has pointed it out to me, it seems so disgustingly obvious that the couple is on the outs. How could I have not seen it?
“Oh,” is all I manage to mutter before she’s pointing to a pair of middle-aged men leaning out over the pier and indicating toward the boats in the distance.
“Friends enjoying a day boat-watching on the pier?”
“For fuck’s sake, Piper.” She lowers her head in her hands and shakes it in apparent disbelief. “Look aga
in!” she commands, and I turn my gaze back toward the men, looking for whatever I missed the first time around.
The blonde man leans toward the brunette, whispering something to him as he points at yet another boat in the distance. I see the subtle shift this time, though. The way their shoulders touch as they look into the distance together. The secret sort of smiles they pass back and forth as their pinkies interlock between their relaxed bodies.
“They’re in a relationship…” I trail off as I watch the brunette lean toward the blonde and press a kiss at the corner of his mouth.
“How long?”
“Hard to tell,” I say, but I cut Macie off before she can chastise me. “My gut reaction tells me it’s a new relationship, but the longer I look at them, the further off the mark I think I might be.”
“And why’s that?”
“It’s in their body language. They shift closer together every time one of them says something to the other. The level of comfort they show with one another is pretty obvious, too. Look at the way they have their pinkies hooked together. I think there would still be some stiffness to their interactions if they were still in the beginning stages of the relationship.”
“Oh my god, Piper, I think you might have just passed Professor Macie’s Relationships 101 course!” She says it with a mock gasp.
I roll my eyes at her shenanigans but bump shoulders with her as I reach for the bag of cotton candy. I don’t need the food, but there’s something about the sticky, sweet way it sticks to my tongue that I really like. My eyes wander over the crowd as we sit in a companionable silence, picking out first dates, new relationships, solid loves, and relationships in a downward spiral as I go. The hours spent under the sun with the wind tangling my hair seem to be well worth the trouble. I’m finally starting to see the subtle nuances of relationships—and that settles something deep inside of me.
“So, based on what you’ve seen here today, what can you tell me about what’s going on between you, Jude, and Brennan.”