by Nicole Snow
And ever since he proposed, I’ve been rampant. Jumping him every chance I get if the night doesn’t end in him slamming me against the nearest wall.
But today, the start of our honeymoon? Watch the heck out.
I’m addicted to him. Shamelessly hooked to the pleasure he gives, the heat he taught me, the way he touches my body like he’ll make sure I never crave another’s flesh against my skin.
And he shows me how well he knows me as he teases my clothes away, leaving me naked against the silvery-soft embroidered satin duvet of our fancy bed.
This feels more raw, somehow.
More real.
My body more sensitive, more hotly attuned to him.
But it feels like my first time in forever tasting him, touching him, feeling him as his wife.
This is my first time drawing him to me as my husband, kissing him with the knowledge that this man – this strange, frustrating, wonderful, kind, protective man – has promised himself to me and only me for the rest of our natural lives.
The power in that truth is enough to leave me shaken, flayed raw as I kiss him deep, tasting him the way he so often tastes me, only to go limp as his mouth seizes mine and teases me into submission.
I’m helpless beneath him. He pins my wrists to the bed over my head with one broad hand, leaving me at the mercy of his every devouring, scorching touch, kiss, bite.
He once taught me what my body was capable of.
But now it feels like he’s showing me something new all over again, taking me to new heights I never knew existed.
My mind goes blank as pleasure rolls through me again and again.
It’s a tide washing in and out, over and over, eroding my ability to control myself until I’m a writhing mess as Gray gently digs at my throat with his teeth, sucks at my nipples, leaves those sweet, maddening bites all over my breast, my stomach, my waist, my thighs.
My pussy hurts with want. Combusts underneath his touch.
His fingers are cruel in their sweetness, in how he knows every place to caress and probe. He’s mastered me, making me clench my thighs together, then spreads them apart so I beg.
I plead for his touch, for his everything, and as much as he seems to enjoy tormenting me, even he has limits.
There’s a wild glint, a fire in his eyes that says he’s coming undone like me.
And I live for the moment when he finally snaps.
It’s something about the way I say his name when he pushes me to a certain brink.
“Gray!” I taste it, rolling it on my tongue as surely as licking his flesh.
He shudders, growling deep, almost punishing me with the plunge of his fingers inside me and making me cry out, thrashing against the bed, fighting the hand crushing my wrists into the sheets. Oh, holy hell.
I’m liquid. I’m fire. I’m a thousand contradictions in this storm of pleasure and desire, and I want to become the storm itself if he’ll just flipping fill me.
It’s like he knows I can’t take anymore. The thrust of his fingers stops. I still feel him, though.
I still feel that rhythm pulsing through me like I’ve absorbed the sway and flow of the boat, this echo of what I really want. I’m always so shy about asking for what I want, but today, I can’t be.
Today I wrap my thighs around his hips, lift myself against him, and rub my entire dripping-wet slit against the length of his cock, painting him in me, stroking myself with him.
“Fucking hell, Firefly,” Gray snarls. His head falls, hanging between his shoulders, suffering and straining to control himself.
One mighty thrust is all it takes.
He drives himself into me, spearing so deep in a single hard shock that I feel him engulfing my pussy. Pleasure ripples through me from my pulsing core all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes.
I scream. I clutch him with my thighs. I throw my hips and pull him deeper.
And, of course, I remember that animal night under the stars, and the beast that had me then possesses me now as I give myself to him with total abandon.
I’ll always give myself like this.
Everything I have, everything I am, everything I love, it’s property of Gray Caldwell now.
His.
And I show him with my body. My voice. My bright, rolling eyes.
With how I open for him, taking him deeper, begging him for every brutality and tenderness and savagery he can gift to me.
When I say his name over and over again, reminding him with every thrust that tears me open and pierces me deep and marks me from inside, it’s permanent.
I belong to Gray Caldwell. In all his complexity, in all his strangeness, in all the wonder and mystery that his secrets give to me. It doesn’t matter what he hides from the world. It doesn’t matter what’s in his past.
What matters is in his heart, and what’s in his heart is mine, as much as what’s in my heart is his.
That’s how we go down, crashing headlong into ecstasy together. I’m a full body throb as he pins me down, baring his teeth, emptying himself in me with a roar that everyone else on board can probably hear.
No shame. Not even when he pulls me into his arms with a parting, affectionate smack on one buttcheek.
“Goddamn, Firefly. What have you done to me?” It just might be the happiest question in the world. I see how his eyes twinkle as he wraps my hair around his fingers and brings me in for a kiss.
Isn’t that the mystery? The same thing I wonder about what he’s done to me.
Maybe in our long life ahead, together, we’ll figure it out.
And maybe if we ever find an answer, we’ll do the impossible – love more truly, more deeply, more beautifully than this sweetness we share right now.
Is it even possible to do better than perfection?
With Gray, I think the wild, impossible answer might be a yes.
Thanks for reading No Good Doctor! Look for more Heroes of Heart's Edge coming soon.
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Drop Down With The Top Down (Haley)
There’s nothing like a drive across the Pacific Northwest with the top down and the summer wind in your hair to make a girl feel human again.
Sure, it’s a little bit of a cliché.
The typical girls’ road trip, me and my niece in a convertible sipping strawberry smoothies every hundred miles, the sun beaming down on us like Zeus blowing a kiss. It's too perfect.
You'd almost think I'm totally not running away from my problems, darting off to the middle of nowhere to find myself after a colossal heartbreak.
But when you walk in on your ex-fiancé with your ex-best-friend-ex-bridesmaid in a fitting room with the ugly bridesmaid’s dress you paid for hiked up around her hips and his untailored tux down around his ankles...
You earn the right to be a cliché.
I’d say I’ve earned a lot more than that.
Especially after I found my layoff notice sitting in my inbox.
Right-sizing. That's what they called the terminations at the massive faceless mega-corporation I called my day job. I was out the door with an awkward hug and a mumbled half apology from my supervisor.
Then – oh, but then – everything really went to hell in a handbasket.
My side gig – my true passion – got tanked when the gallery I’d been working with practically pitched my paintings in a dumpster.
Low sales, they said. Lack of interest.
They might as well have pulled an Angela Bassett.
Get your shit, get your shit, and get out.
So I got my shit.
I packed it in the back of my sister’s borrowed classic convertible – a pretty midnight blue shimmer 1988 Ford Mustang. I kidnapped my
sister’s ten-year-old daughter, Tara, because she’s better company than some backstabbing, fiancé-stealing best friend anyway.
And now that I’m knee-deep into being a cliché, I wish we were leaving Vegas.
But we're actually leaving Seattle so I can start a new life in Chicago. We'll steal a spare room at my old college friend Julie’s house for a month or two until I can get a new job and pay the rent on a place of my own.
I’ll give the kid back eventually, I guess.
In a few weeks, when her parents get home from Hawaii.
I’ll care about responsibility later.
Right now, I’ve got the mountains on the horizon, tall trees all around, the wind in my hair, the sun on my back, and enough of a grudge against life that I’m good with not making big decisions for a while.
I’ll figure out what to do after I get to Chicago and see what the local job ads serve up. It’s a big city. Lots of opportunities.
Until then, I’ll enjoy the drive. The open road.
Sweet freedom I've prepaid for with a savage bee sting to the heart.
Tara snoozes half asleep in the passenger seat, her dark brown hair whipping across her face. She’s a sun baby, dozing in the heat, curled up like a cat perched on a summer stone.
The radio shifts as we pass out of one zone into another, and she stirs at the crackle, yawning and scrubbing at one eye. “Auntie Hay?” she mumbles.
I hate when she calls me that. Mostly because it makes me feel old when my first instinct is to say hay is for horses, baby – and twenty-five is way too young to be throwing out that spinster crap.
But she’s too adorable for me to twig her about it, so I glance over from watching the road, offering her a smile. “Morning.”
She blinks at me drowsily. “It’s afternoon...isn't it?”
“Not to you, apparently.” I check the GPS.
We’re just past Lolo National Forest and Missoula after a quick pit stop in Glacier National Park for Tara's sake. We swung up to Whitefish to take in the scenery. Next stop should be Billings. There's maybe a day or two of driving to Chicago after that, but it’s not time to look for a hotel for the night just yet.
Tara's little hand goes over her yawning mouth.
“You hungry? There might be a place to stop in the next hour or so.”
Tara scrunches up her nose. “Maybe. I kinda need to pee,” she complains, and I bite back a laugh.
There’s just something about kids and their shameless honesty.
I could use a little honesty in my life again.
I glance back at the GPS. There’s a town up ahead, not even named, just a little dot on the map and an off-ramp marker in about five minutes.
They’ll have a gas station, at least. Hopefully a sanitary one – or some kind of restaurant.
I squint through the windshield, picking out the reflective green sign in the distance, and merge over into the right lane to take the off-ramp that leads down through a dense, tree-lined slope of land.
But just as we’re cruising onto the ramp, the Ford starts to sputter.
My stomach sinks.
Uh-oh. That’s never a good sign.
This beast is still moving, though.
I manage to get to the bottom of the off-ramp where the road curves around toward a little town in the distance, picturesque and dusty and a little too Norman Rockwell. Almost like it’s been plucked out of those ubiquitous paintings in hotel rooms by artists you’ve never heard of but who’ve probably made a killing selling enough prints for every last Motel 6 down every stretch of Highway Americana.
I’m just not sure we’re going to make that Rockwellian little town.
Not when the Mustang keeps coughing and slowing and when I curse, mashing my foot against the gas pedal, all I get is Tara gasping and whispering, “Swear jar!” and not an ounce more juice.
At least we make the turn.
And manage to coast forward about another hundred feet before the last little bit of oomph I get out of the Mustang sends us floating over onto the shoulder like an oversized yacht caught in a current.
That’s what it feels like, trying to maneuver this long, bulky car after its get-up-and-go just got-up-and-went. Exactly like trying to steer a big, heavy boat against the current, but that boat doesn’t want to go anywhere but down.
The Mustang sputters out with a little grunt, like it’s settling in and telling me it’s giving up.
I try the key in the ignition, but the engine only makes a wheezing, rattling sound without turning over. Well, crap.
Craaaaaaaaap.
My sister’s going to kill me if I killed her car. It was a gift from her husband on her thirtieth birthday.
She's one of the lucky ones who found a guy who gets her. Instead of sleeping with her best friend, John buys her gifts that suit her tastes.
She must’ve snagged the last good one. Because I swear every man I’ve met in the last five years – including the one I'd planned to marry – is trash.
Okay. Whew.
I’m bitter. I’m angry. Breathe in, breathe out.
Life goes on.
That's what I keep telling myself, a daily mantra.
And surely my brother-in-law can’t really be the last decent man on Earth.
I have bigger worries right now, anyway.
Clenching my fists on the steering wheel, I stare between them. “Well, kiddo,” I say. “Hope you don’t mind peeing on the side of the road.”
“Why can’t I go there?” she asks. “I bet they have a bathroom.”
She’s leaning over the passenger side door and squinting across the field to the right of the car. I follow her gaze, squinting through the light.
I hadn’t even noticed where we’d pulled off, too focused on trying to make the damn car move.
But there’s some kind of...hotel? Inn?
I’m not sure what it is, but it looks like a vacation lodger’s dream. There’s a tall three-story house set far back in the field, lined with columns in the front. It's surrounded by well-tended greenery. Pretty shade trees are scattered across the manicured lawn, precisely spaced along little cobbled paths leading between a cluster of cottages, some singles, some duplexes.
The entire portrait is set against the backdrop of distant, smoky-looking mountain ranges beyond a steep cliff, and that Rockwellian feeling gets even stronger as I catch the sign hanging from a post up ahead.
Charming Inn.
Huh.
Well, maybe the name fits because it is charming.
Even if a city slicker girl like me probably sticks out like a sore thumb here, I hope the locals will be friendly. At least hospitable enough to let a kid use their bathroom.
I can’t let Tara suffer much longer. She’s squirming around, thighs pressed together, and I flash her a smile and get out of the car, slamming the door and reaching in the back for my overnight bag and her backpack.
“Come on,” I say and offer her my hand. “Let’s go meet the locals.”
We push the quaint little white picket fence open and quick-time it up the central walk to the main house. It’s an old plantation-style building, really strange to see here in Middle America, but it’s been fitted out to be a hotel, it looks like.
There's a little bronze plaque to one side of the door, listing the lobby hours. When we step inside the carpeted, Victorian-furnished lobby, a small bell over the door rings. Behind the broad, glossy front desk, a faint snort sounds.
Followed by a crash, as the sleeping occupant of a tipped-back chair jerks and goes tumbling down to the floor.
Tara gasps with surprise – then squeaks, whimpering, dancing from foot to foot and clutching my hand tighter. “Auntie Hay...”
I glance around quickly, then notice the sign on the far wall with the little male and female symbols and an arrow. “There, sweetie,” I urge, pointing. “Down the hall. Go.”
Tara takes off at a crab-legged trot. I watch her for a moment, then lean over the front desk, p
eeking in tentatively. “Um, hello? Sir? Are you okay?”
A rheumy-eyed older man pushes himself up off the burgundy-carpeted floor, using the toppled wing chair to haul himself upright before grunting and flipping it over to stand properly again.
He spikes his short-cropped silvering hair with one hand, leaning on the chair with the other, eyeballing me as if he's not quite sure what to make of me before grunting and offering a reluctant smile.
“I’m fine, ma'am. Takes more than a tumble to kill this old ticker.” He thumps his narrow, reedy chest. “Something I can help you with?”
“I hope so.” I flash a smile. “My niece needed to use your restroom, sorry. But we’re in a little trouble. Our car broke down right outside your inn, and I'm afraid we're stuck.”
“Well, now...”
He rubs his stubbled chin. He’s very jowly for such a thin, willowy man, like his face is melting. I know that look and try not to let my own frown show. He’s a heavy drinker, and it’s aging him fast.
I'll never forget that look for anything after Dad...
I don’t know if it makes me feel softer toward the old man. Or just more bitter toward the first man who taught me people would always find a way to destroy themselves, and usually they don't have to look real hard to find it.
Dad grabbed the first opportunity when life went sour, one bottle at a time.
But the stranger smiles again, disarming and almost self-deprecating, as if he knows the picture he presents and how people judge. He shrugs. “We’ve got a mechanic here in town. Good ‘un, too. It’s late in the day, and you might get a tow, but you’re not getting a fix to get out of here by sundown. We’re all booked up on short stay rooms...but we’ve got a half-duplex available in one of the extended stay vacation rentals. It’s even got a mountain view.”
I frown. As nice as it sounds, I know it means money.
I’m operating on a limited budget since I basically tossed most of what I own and took off on my last paycheck, plus what I could sell back from the wedding that never happened and ate my entire savings.
I’ll have to pay for the car repair, too. I’m crunching numbers in my head, and it doesn’t look good. “I don’t know if I can afford something like that.”