Love Bound

by Rebecca Ryan

  I grab her forearms and pull her to me as she plants her feet and rises halfway again. And again, over and over, she rises partway, clenches, releases, until she moves to my very tip, teasing my cock with her sex, and then she grips tightly and slides down all the way to my core.

  I'm lost.

  I have to let go of her. I raise my arms over the back of the sofa and grip the wooden frame. I feel spread open, the only way to get a breath is to gasp, and then I come, arching up with her still on me, me still in her. And then she, too, releases in waves. We move to the same beat, my cock throbbing, her vagina clenching. Every muscle in my body is instantly hard as my hips carry us through, wave after wave, until it’s over.

  Letting go of the sofa, I clutch Claire's shoulders, as if she's my lifeline. She's soft and supple, and I want to cradle her while I'm still inside her.

  She shudders, sagging against me—her hair in my face, her breasts on my chest, her feet drawing up. She eases off a little too quickly, rolling to my left, and I gasp again as I slide out of her, my cock tender.

  After I roll the condom off, she curls next to me. Her small weight seems to fit against me just right. I put an arm around her and pull the throw over us. My heart hammers in my chest, not just from sex or pain. It's trying to regain its rhythm after desolation. I feel a hot lump forming in the back of my throat.

  What the fuck is wrong with me?

  She shifts a little, looking up into my face. Her, "I don’t ever come like this, I'm sorry," arrives muffled.

  I swallow hard, waiting for my heart to stop roiling in my chest. "What? Don't apologize."

  I can tell she's holding her breath. There's a shaky release, and then she holds it again.

  I look down at her. "Hey. Are you crying?" I tilt her face up and her eyes are bright blue, a tear slides down one cheek.

  "I feel like when I come, I'm gross," she confesses.

  Now, my head is clearing.

  Who the hell has she dated?

  "You are so sexy, Claire. I mean look at you."

  "I can't," she says.

  "Why?"

  "I've never had it happen so fast, and so . . . I don't know. Like that."

  "Like what?" I ask.

  "Like that. Like my body was doing its own thing. I was out of control. "

  I roll her into my arms and kiss the top of her head, her cheek on my chest. Then I ask a potentially insulting question. "Oh, Claire, your body is perfect. Is this your first orgasm with a guy?"

  Her "No," comes very quietly. I feel her move closer to me and I rub her back. "The first time was last night."

  Last night.

  What the hell?

  "Hey, listen. You're sexy and beautiful and you should appreciate your body. When you respond, you are so damn hot," I tell her.

  After struggling to sit up, she offers further explanation. "I mean, I've had orgasms, but only when masturbating."

  "Well, you've dated some real losers, then," I tell her, and her silence makes me backpedal. "That wasn't fair. Maybe they were great guys, but they didn’t know what they were doing."

  She slips an arm between me and the sofa and then rests her head on my chest. "I can hear your heartbeat," she says.

  "Proof I'm alive."

  Now she sits up and stares at me, her hand stroking my cheek. "No, you were right the first time. They were losers." She pauses for a moment. "Devon says I'm a control freak."

  "Sounds like you've had to be. Your parents died, then Chloe's gone, you run The Inn, go to vet school. You've had to be responsible for everyone and everything." I nuzzle her hair. "Only a control freak could handle all that."

  "She says it’s why I don't date and why I can’t keep a man."

  I sit up a little straighter. "First, this is not the nineteen fifties. You don’t ‘keep a man.’"

  "Oh, I didn’t mean that. God, don’t ever tell Devon, she'd kill me. What I mean is, that she says I don’t enjoy sex as much as I could because I have to control what's going on in the bedroom."

  I start to rub her arm and pull the blanket up higher over her shoulder. "You don’t strike me as a dominatrix."

  "But I fantasize about that stuff," she admits.

  I shift on the sofa.

  "Finn?"

  "Yes."

  "What are you thinking?"

  She doesn't have a mom, and her sisters have a code of honor I don’t quite understand yet.

  How does she not know this stuff?

  I keep my answer short and to the point. "Fantasy is different. You can fantasize about anything and anyone you want. It’s okay to be turned on by all that stuff and even do it, if you don’t hurt anyone. And—"

  "And—"

  I've slept with women like Claire, who like to run the show, but I've never slept with someone I could tell was scared and having control compensate for fear. "It’s okay for you to want that control. But one day," I lean closer and whisper in her ear, "I'd love to see you out of your comfort zone."

  She shivers slightly but pulls the blanket off.

  That astringent rush stiffens my cock almost immediately.

  Again.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Claire

  I'd love to see you out of your comfort zone.

  His warm breath in my hair makes me shiver as my sex floods with heat. But still, I don’t think I can do that; I can't be out of my comfort zone. I don’t even know what it would feel like. I so know what I want right now, though.

  I have never, ever, in my life told any man what I just told Finn. In the past, I've been so embarrassed, so conflicted, so not-out-of-control that I haven’t been able to admit Devon and Laurel might be right, and that I needed to learn how to be vulnerable.

  But now it doesn't matter. Finn's right here on the sofa, looking at me, and his breath is coming faster, his heart pounding. I can feel it flounder beneath my hands. He's getting excited again and I know somewhere under that blanket is a massive cock. He knows my kinky truth, and he doesn’t care. Just knowing I can do what I need to do is enough for now.

  He lifts my head from his chest and kisses me deeply, softly, his breath filling my mouth, my chest. It’s as if he's breathing for the two of us. I feel his hand slide down my back and cup a cheek, and he checks to see how wet I am. But this time will be just for him, I decide. I don’t want to be that out of control again.

  Letting the kiss go, I whisper, "Let me do this for you."

  He searches my face, but I can’t look at him. Taking the lead doesn’t mean I'm suddenly comfortable with the role, especially now that I've fessed up. I take each of his arms and drape them on top of the sofa so he's spread eagle, and those muscles in his chest flinch and spasm.

  "I love seeing you like this," I say softly. "Don’t move. Just hang in there."

  He slides his hands under the slats in the back and grips the sofa frame. His biceps quiver. Sweat beads on his upper lip.

  There's also a sheen of sweat on his brown skin and I bend down to lick each nipple. Though he gasps for air, he doesn't let go, and his arms are tense, every muscle cut, as he grips the frame. His chest heaves and the spasm runs through his torso, knitting his abs into a wave of sinew.

  "Thank you so much, Finn," I whisper.

  His breathing is erratic, sexy, and he tips his head back again.

  I gush, watching the V where his collarbones come together, deepening with each breath. That V is one of my favorite parts of a man. Of him. He is more beautiful than anyone I've ever seen. And he's letting me see him like this, open, his body turned over to me. I take my hands and touch his chest, trying to trace the insertions of muscle with a fingernail and he gasps as if drowning. Flattening my hands, I rub and kiss him all over—his throat, his chest, his stomach, his arms.

  He smells of us, and skin, and sweat, and he's so far gone I'm not sure he can see me. Still, he doesn’t let go of that sofa. He's doing this for me and though I'm so wet I'm leaking, I want this to be about him. When I touch his cock,
it quivers in my hand and begins a beat in time with his heart.

  Leaning forward, I watch as the pink tips of my nipples lightly slide down his chest, and as they pucker and grow hard, I moan, his name escaping like a sigh. "Finn."

  His eyes are closed, his body so taut, and the pulse in his neck throbs.

  I dip down, still gripping his penis in my hand, and feel his balls high and tight as I put his cock in my mouth and taste him.

  Still, he doesn't let go.

  Neither do I.

  ***

  The way he holds me afterward is so tender, so loving, I’m afraid to even speak, afraid I'll ruin it. He’s the one to rise and lead me to the shower where he has me step into the bathtub, and then he uses the wand to rinse me off and pat me dry. He cleans himself up while I get dressed. I was so raw that the water stung, but in a delicious sort of way.

  The phone call I make to Laurel is not one I could have predicted even three days ago. Finn has returned to The Inn to clean up after the patch job that morning. I usually have dinner at Laurel and Cory's on Sunday but that was shot this weekend due to the weather and Finn's fall. Laurel suggested Monday, and Devon was amenable. It sounded perfect, but now I want them to set another place at the table.

  Laurel picks up on the fifth ring.

  "So, what can I bring?" I ask her.

  "Two bottles of wine and can you make crab dip?" Laurel sounds tired.

  I worry about her and Cory. She works so hard with him, and though he has come far, it’s often a one step forward, two steps back kind of thing.

  "Sure. Does Taylor's have any crab left today?" I ask.

  "I dunno. Cory, Mommy is on the phone right now. I will do that when the big hand gets to three." She pauses and I hear rustling as she shifts the phone to the other ear. "Sorry."

  "You may want me to bring more. I have a favor to ask."

  She gets so excited when I tell her, that for a moment I think maybe I should cancel. It was like when I wore makeup home for the first time from vet school. Everyone had to comment.

  "Okay," she finally says, all breathy, clearly ready to tell Devon the second we get off the phone.

  Our little grapevine is short but leafy. The only one not wired for instant gossip gratification is Travis. Unlike his middle sisters, he waits, processes, and then acts. He and I are very similar that way. I wouldn't hear from him for another hour.

  I pick up on the first ring.

  Travis gets right to the point. "And this is the guy who wanted to sue you for the land?" He doesn’t sound thrilled. "The one from Thanksgiving?"

  "Yeah," I say, cupping my hand over the landline receiver. "It hasn’t been that long ago. Two weeks."

  "You know his wife was killed." Travis's voice, deep and resonate, reminds me he’s a man now. My little brother, yes, but grown up.

  "Were you cyberstalking him?” I ask.

  "I did what normal people do. I looked him up on the net. It’s not pretty."

  I can see Finn next door, throwing bits of roofing material in the dumpster he rented last month. I cross my arms. "She was murdered."

  "Yeah, and he and his partner, a Nic Silvano, tried to pin it on some guy."

  "So? I know. I met Nic. They didn’t have enough evidence."

  "She was found at the bottom of their pool and the story is that she tripped and got caught in the hose line. She was pregnant. Nearly full term, Claire."

  I swallow hard before saying, "I saw a picture of her."

  I can almost hear the gears moving in his head. How to be concerned, but not nosey. Loving, but not smothering. Protective, but not an asshole.

  "He's gotta be messed up. You can’t go through something like that and be whole. Just be careful," is all he says before hanging up.

  Travis is all about never, ever getting hurt. Again, we're very similar that way.

  ***

  Finn and I walk down to the docks, out on the pilings to Taylor's, a small wholesale fishery that deals almost exclusively with lobster, crab, and now scallops. Echo Bay is one of the first places to be approved to test out the Japanese method of growing scallops first used in the nineteen thirties. First, there's the collection of wild spat and then a grow-out in “lantern nets," tiered mesh cylinders that hang in the water off a longline. Then the fishermen drill a small hole in the hinge or “ear” of a scallop and attach the scallop to rope lines in the water. The scallops grow to market size in a year or two. "Ear hanging" has been catching on, but nobody knows if it’ll produce a viable product.

  What I'm interested in is crab. Sweet Maine crab mixed with mashed avocado, lemon juice, salt and pepper, and a scoop of sour cream is heaven. Just add tortilla strips.

  While I'm looking in the refrigerated display fish case, thrilled to see two containers of crab left, Finn walks to the end of the enclosed part of the pier and chats with one of the seasonal workers—a young kid with a sweatshirt on that’s inside out. In the winter like this, Taylor's almost never carries more than four containers of crab a day.

  "I'm grabbing crab," I call out, after pressing an intercom button by the cash register.

  The speaker crackles and then a raspy voice answers back. "Come on out to Nellie."

  After grabbing the crab, I move past Finn and the kid, then push out the back door and walk down the pier. It's the biggest one in Echo Bay. Most boaters use it to tank up with petrol using the pump at the very end.

  'Lil Nellie II is lashed to a piling and Billy James, in his mid-seventies and still out at sea five days a week, is swabbing the deck. The Nellie II is so clean you could eat off the deck.

  I dig out seven dollars and hand it to him.

  "I only need six of those." Billy blinks, his eyes watering from cold or salt or just old age.

  "Seven's my lucky number."

  Scowling, he takes my fistful of ones and shoves them into a pocket. "Uncle Sam don't need to know about this transaction."

  I laugh. He’s said this ever since I was a little girl. The pier vibrates with footsteps and Finn comes up from behind. Billy doesn’t know what to make of this, with the Boston guy who tried to muscle his way onto my property, standing here.

  "Billy, this is Finn," I say.

  "Oh, we’ve met," says Finn, grinning.

  "Ay, we 'ave," Billy says in his best pirate voice.

  Finn stands so close to me I swear I can feel heat radiating from his torso.

  Be bold, be bold.

  I slip an arm around his waist and hang on to the back of his coat.

  "We met, 'cause this boy hauled Nellie in and helped me lash her tight last week," Billy adds.

  He's no boy, I want to say.

  "You're just rescuing ships right and left?" I smile.

  When Billy ducks down to grab a rope that's knotted, Finn kisses me, swiftly, his mouth hot and warm on my lips. Then it's over. I cover my lips with a hand. They burn.

  Sally comes out and waves to Billy and, scowling, he climbs out of the boat. I reach to steady him, but Finn stops me with a slight shake of the head. When Billy disappears inside, Finn turns to walk back down the pier, but I put a hand on his chest to stop him. He looks into my eyes, really looks, and at once, I’m lost. Averting my gaze to the oversized yacht, I start to say something about apples and oranges, but he wraps his arms around me and holds me close.

  "Don't say a word," he says, and my mouth opens slightly. He leans in and punctuates his words with his mouth on mine, breathing the message while kissing me, like some form of CPR. "Don't . . . say . . . a word."

  My legs go weak. They feel heavy and he must feel me sag slightly. He sort of holds me with one arm, while tenderly stroking my face with the other, then slips his hand behind my neck. His tongue is so gentle, so sweet, and he kisses me. Then, as quickly as he started, he stops, tears his face from mine, and pulls me in close.

  Billy is loping down the pier again with his peculiar gait and the wood shakes a bit with his weight. He's holding a brown, square cardboard box that wou
ld fit a medium pizza. "That yacht out there wants a cherry pie," he says, mumbling as he goes by, and handing me the box so he can untie the dinghy. "All high and mighty," is another phrase I catch as he snatches the box out of my hands again and jumps in the boat.

  Chloe and Devon used to do the same thing when they were kids—deliver lunches, dinners, groceries to the large boats anchored in the bay. I laugh and look up into Finn's face as I lean over to give the little dinghy a push.

  But he's not smiling. Instead, his face looks worried.

  The little apartment set back on the hill is the upstairs of a wood art gallery run by a guy who flies in from California every May and leaves early September. The downstairs of the adapted Cape is a studio/gallery and the upstairs, accessible only from the outside, is a three-bedroom apartment. Devon was supposed to crash here until she got her own place, but she's been slow to move on finding a job since she arrived back from Montana in September. Well, to be truthful, she's been slow to saying "yes" to the job at the fire station. She still hasn't committed.

  My sisters can be a handful at times. It’s why I never wanted to have kids right away. I had the very dubious privilege of being a parent of teenagers when I had just arrived at twenty.

  And Devon, she could push buttons like nobody else. When Mom and Dad were killed, she decided the chances of her dying as well were so stratospheric she could do anything. She used to say she had a license to kill (wait for it) herself, and would then do the most outrageous things. She couldn't hang glide out at the Notch. No, she base jumped before it was really a thing, with a parachute given to her by some rich twenty-something guy after she batted her eyes at him. She was fifteen.

  She drove her car too fast and rolled it twice. She'd string up a tightrope across the quarry and walk on it for money in the summer. Well, until the owners put a chain-link fence around the place. She went dirt bike racing and dressed like a boy so she could compete. And she won. I was always on edge, always waiting for the call from the hospital or the morgue. Finally, the last straw was the night she graduated from high school.