The Fear of Falling

by B. Cranford

  Because yeah, the idea of easy access absolutely crossed my mind when I’d dressed that morning.

  “Lenny,” he moaned when he came into contact with my bare skin. “No underwear, sweetheart?”

  I shook my head, smiling wickedly. “I challenged myself to do something daring. What do you think?”

  “I think I love your list.” His hand stroked lower, the tips of his fingers running along the seam where my ass met my thigh. I sighed, hitched my leg higher, mentally willing him to keep going. “But what about the lesson?”

  Attempting a shrug, I aimed for an air of nonchalance. “I’m ready.”

  His hand dipped lower, between my legs, before circling a finger around my opening. “I can tell.”

  “Rowan.” It was a moan, a desperate, nearly unintelligible whisper of sound. “I don’t need to learn how to drive, do I?”

  Pressing his finger inside me, pumping in and out until my legs wanted to give up, he shook his head. “No, no, you really don’t. I’ll drive you wherever you want to go.”

  Nodding eagerly, I kissed my way across his cheek and whispered, “Deal” against his ear.

  He removed his hand—I protested. But then he shoved my dress to my hips and dropped to his knees, and any complaints I might have had died on my lips. “Rowan?”

  “Tell me something, Lenny. Is this on your list?” He looked over his shoulder, left and right, then back up at me. “Sex somewhere wide open”—those words sounded dirty coming from his mouth—“but private. Where we probably won’t be seen . . . but might?”

  I shook my head, nodded, gripped his hair. I was all confusion and need, and I couldn’t form a thought to save my life. “Rowan.”

  “Come on, sweetheart. Tell me.”

  Letting my eyes fall closed, I pictured us doing this, me allowing him to put his mouth on me as I leaned against his car. I imagined him standing and gripping my hips, spinning me around and spreading my legs before sliding his cock into me and making me tremble and scream.

  “I want it. Please.” Not above begging, I repeated myself. “Please, please.”

  He remained still, and I forced myself to remember what he’d asked me. “Is this on your list?” Shaking my head again, I made my confession to the man at my feet. “Not on my list. I couldn’t have put this on there because I didn’t know this existed. I’ve always been t-t-too shy to tell men what I want.” A problem I was willing to bet my sister didn’t have. “Sex is easy, but speaking up for myself is hard.”

  It terrified me, in fact. Now there was a revelation I hadn’t been expecting to have with my dress around my waist, no underwear in sight.

  “It’s not the only thing that’s hard.” Rowan smirked, then rewarded my confession with a long, lingering lick up my slit, his tongue circling my clit, before pulling back. “Add it to the list. Telling my man what I want. When I want it.”

  I mimed writing in the air, biting my lower lip before taking the plunge and telling him what I wanted. “I want to have sex in this public but private place with you. I want your tongue on me. Now?”

  And though it came off less demanding and more like a question than I’d hoped, Rowan obliged.

  And just like that, one more item was checked off my summer to-do list.

  Chapter Eight

  Rowan

  I swear, if Lenny gripped any tighter, her knuckles would pop through her skin, out of her hand and onto the floor of my car.

  Gripped the steering wheel, that is. In case you were thinking I was referring to something else.

  I kind of wish I was referring to anything else, though, because the experience of teaching her how to drive was not easy. Or fun. She was a mess of terror and nerves and insecurities, and aside from the momentary goodness of being able to wrap her in my arms and comfort her, it fucking sucked.

  I’ve never known anyone to exhibit that level of fright in anything, and I’m a dentist. People hate dentists. Like, shaking in my chair, clamping their jaws shut, flinching at every single move I make, hate the dentist.

  “Lenny?” I softened my voice the way you would when speaking to a frightened animal and reached my hand out to cover hers on the wheel. “Hey, we don’t have to do this.”

  She turned her head ever so slightly toward me, a look of fear warring with the determination to just do this. Nodding, she said, “Yes, we do. I do. I just need a minute.” Then, under her breath, she added, “Or maybe twenty.”

  “Take all the time you need.” I surveilled the empty parking lot I’d brought her back to, the barren area holding some damn good memories from her first, very memorable lesson only a couple of days earlier.

  Had I driven hours to see her after cutting my workday short? Yes. Did that mean longer days later in the week? Also yes. Did I regret it? Absolutely not.

  After going down on her during lesson number one—which I would happily repeat for all subsequent lessons if I thought it would help her relax, just FYI—we’d skipped the sex and completed her lesson—getting the car ready to be driven. I’d called upon my decades-old driver’s ed knowledge, silently sending a thank you to old Mr. Law for his comprehensive, memorable, and really boring classes, and took her around the vehicle to learn about turn signals and headlights, and side mirrors.

  I’d love to be able to say that my motivation for returning so soon was solely to build on that initial lesson and keep the momentum going, but I try not to lie, so yeah. Let’s just leave it at that, shall we?

  We’d already accomplished the outside tasks for lesson number two, and Lenny had slid into the driver’s seat with an airy smile that I assume was supposed to say “I don’t have a care in the world,” but instead said, “I die this day.”

  “Lenny?” I ventured again when her knuckles improbably tightened on the steering wheel, and I became even more concerned that she was about to rupture something. “Sweetheart?”

  Something in my voice must have reached her. In a swift but jerky series of movements, she’d released the wheel, opened the car door, hopped out, and circled the back of the vehicle. Peering in at me through the passenger side window, she shrugged helplessly. “I don’t think I can. I’m sorry.”

  Frustration—for her, not at her—hit. It was only lesson two, sure, but I’d had high hopes for her, and I hated the idea that this woman, who was stronger than she gave herself credit for, was on the verge of giving up already.

  Not on my watch, I thought with a surge of heroic passion typically reserved for fictional superheroes vowing to defend their city against the Big Bad. I wasn’t going to let her give up before she ever really got started, not when she’d already proved that she could face her fears.

  Opening my door carefully so as not to hit her, I climbed out to stand in front of her and took a deep breath. “I know you can, Challenger. So if we need some more time to get there, that’s fine.”

  “No, Rowan, you don’t understand. I think I’m going to vomit. Like, throw up all over you and this parking lot and your car. And that would be so bad.” As she spoke, her hands flapped around like one of those inflatable waving men, her agitation and nervousness apparent every time she flailed while talking about vomit through a lip-bite that, given the topic of conversation, shouldn’t have been sexy but somehow was.

  Realizing that I was staring at her in a too-dirty-to-be-appropriate way, I refocused. “It would be bad,” I agreed, placing my hands on her upper arms, stilling her jerky movements. “But it wouldn’t be the end of the world.”

  “Not the end of yours, sure.” I felt a ripple of tension in her arms, as if she wanted to move them about but couldn’t because I’d essentially caged her with my own. “But definitely the end of mine. You’d never be able to look at me again. I’d always be the vomit girl.”

  Chuckling, because she was cute in her stress, but determined to set her at ease because I liked the hell out of her, I shook my head. “No, you wouldn’t. You’d be the brave girl that wrote down her fears, faced them, hit some bumps a
long the way, and still got back on the metaphorical horse, and got it done.” I added a quick nod to the end of my motivational sentence because it seemed appropriate.

  She tilted her head with a frown and said, “Riding a horse would be a lot easier than this and is a legitimate if dated form of transportation. Let’s learn that instead, and I’ll bring us back to the Ole West.”

  “I don’t think that’s going to happen, somehow.”

  “And why not?” She cocked an eyebrow at me, the tension I’d felt in her ebbing slightly as she fell into our back-and-forth.

  “A horse on I-40 would not survive, and you don’t seem like the type to sacrifice an animal all to avoid doing something that scares you.”

  “That’s what you think, but we’ve only been acquainted for, like, two weeks. I could be out here sacrificing animals every other day for all you know.”

  “You’re right, you could be. But somehow, I think not.”

  She frowned at me and said, “I might be a secret animal sacrificer.” This being the hill she was apparently ready to die on. An adorable little humphing noise escaped her as she opened her mouth to rebut me.

  I interrupted her before she could. “Look, we could stand here and discuss your secret satanical tendencies, or we can come up with a plan of action.”

  The air around us changed the instant I said “action.” And not in a “lights, camera, action” way. In a much more sexual way if that wasn’t obvious.

  (It was obvious, don’t lie.)

  “I plan to get some action,” she whispered, her eyes glinting mischief and her hands—those flaily little beasts—reaching out to land on my hips.

  “Are you . . . are you trying to seduce me?” I asked, knowing exactly what was going on and completely happy with the turn of events.

  “I don’t know, are you seducible?”

  “Survey says yes,” I joked, releasing her upper arms only to snake mine around her back and bring her in closer to me. “Do you need to relax before we try again, Lenny? Like Saturday?”

  Her nod was emphatic and the signal for my cock to come to rigid attention.

  “Not here, though,” she said, her voice husky with desire but still holding a hint of the nervousness that had started us down this path. “Can we go back to my place this time?”

  I considered my answer for a whole eighth of a second before dropping a kiss on her lips and practically shoving her into the passenger seat. Thank god I’d picked her up instead of meeting her at the parking lot for the lesson that we’d just agreed to postpone.

  For sex. Just to clarify.

  Moving at a speed somewhere between light and warp, I reached the driver’s side, and had the car running and ready to go before I turned to Lenny and paused, asking, “Are you sure?”

  “So sure. The surest. Couldn’t be surer.”

  That was all I needed. I buckled in and double-checked to make sure she’d done the same (she had), then eased on the gas and headed for her house. As much as I wanted to speed up and get there in half the time, I was also very conscious of the fact that Lenny was a nervous passenger, and aside from wanting to make sure the mood wasn’t lost, I also didn’t want to give her any reason not to trust me. Like she’d pointed out only minutes earlier, we hadn’t known each other for long, so whatever trust I’d already earned, I needed to keep a tight hold on.

  It was the foundation for what I was hoping to build with her.

  “Rowan?” Her voice was still firmly in “I want this and you” range, earning a smirk from me as I quickly turned my head to acknowledge her. “Just wanted you to know that I’m adding this to my list.”

  “What exactly?” What? All I wanted was to hear her say some things out loud that were, you know, kind of hot.

  “Bringing you into my bedroom, stripping you naked, dropping to my knees, etcetera, etcetera.”

  Like that, minus the etcetera, etcetera.

  “Could you perhaps expand on that a little? I really want to be clear on what’s going to happen. For”—I paused, trying to come up with a plausible reason before deciding that I didn’t need one—“reasons. Good reasons.”

  She laughed, my cock got even harder, and I wanted to beat my chest that I’d made her happy like that. From frightened to aroused to amused *and* aroused in three-point-five seconds. Or thereabouts.

  “Hmm,” she murmured, movement in my peripheral telling me she was tapping her chin. “Let’s see. Once I’m on my knees, I’m going to . . .” She trailed off as I slowed to a stop in her driveway—she didn’t need to know that the drive back was little more than a blur to me, my body switching to auto-pilot as mind wandered away with thoughts of having Lenny on her knees in front of me. I turned to face her.

  “Going to what?”

  Her face flamed, her pinkened cheeks against her purple hair giving her a brightly colored aura of sexiness and embarrassment.

  The sexiness I was all for. The embarrassment, not so much.

  “You know what? Never mind.” I leaned in close and dropped my voice to a whisper. “How about we head inside, and you show me instead?”

  Her lips were on mine before I’d even finished, so the last part of my sentence was lost on her, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered at that moment was the feel of her tongue stroking against mine, wet and warm and giving me ideas about what it would feel like on my cock as I gently thrust in and out of her mouth.

  Yeah, we needed to get the hell out of my car and into her house, so I could get the hell out of my pants and into her mouth.

  I pulled back, my breath already coming hard—like I hoped Lenny and I would be before the afternoon was through—and fumbled for the handle. “You, out, now,” I told her, in a totally calm, reasonable, not at all practically yelling way.

  “I’m getting out,” she replied with a laugh that was belied by the speed with which she moved out of the car and to her front door.

  I met her there, grabbing her hand before she slid her key into the lock and spinning her, pressing her against the wood and my mouth against hers. I needed to kiss her, to feel her lips again—it was a craving I wasn’t in any way able to deny.

  She didn’t deny me either.

  Her tongue thrust out, accompanied by a longing moan that made me fist my hand in the cotton of her T-shirt. I was tempted to rip it off then and there, so close to doing so that it took a sharp nip from Lenny to shake loose the thought. “Did you just bite me?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at her.

  Her nod was solemn, almost out of place in the moment, until her mouth curved into a smile that would have made me weak in the knees except for the fact that I was a man, and men don’t get weak in the knees.

  At least, not until they’re in their seventies, or after a lifetime of high impact activity. Right?

  Not the point. “Why, huh? Why’d you bite me? So I’d bite you back?” Mind back in the game, I leaned in close and nipped at her lower lip, swollen and flushed from our kisses, enjoying how her body shifted against mine.

  “You looked like you were about to give my neighbors a show they didn’t ask for,” she replied in a tone that reminded me that she was a schoolteacher and that I had some serious fantasies to act out with her if she’d let me.

  Serious, newly realized fantasies that I would give all my attention to once I’d already had her once, twice, a dozen times, and had snatched back a modicum of control. Because I was becoming concerned that, with her, I’d be out of control forever—and that just wouldn’t do.

  Not if I wanted to prove to her that taking a risk on me was a damn good idea.

  “Earth to Rowan, come in, Rowan,” she added when I didn’t answer her.

  “Come in? Don’t mind if I do,” I joked, easing the key from her hand, and quickly unlocking and opening the door. “Ladies first, of course.”

  “Why do I get the feeling we aren’t just talking about coming inside my house?” She walked backward over the threshold, her smile wide, her eyes lit all the way up.
>
  She looked relaxed and carefree and so pretty—not to get all sappy or whatever, but I swear my heart stopped at that moment.

  And if not in that moment, then definitely in the very next one, when a shrill, “Oh my fucking god, is this the dentist?” sounded from the room right next to Lenny’s entryway and her much shorter carbon copy came into view.

  Chapter Nine

  Lenny

  “Willa?” I spun around, giving Rowan my back and my protection, because honest to God, I love my sister, but I had no idea what she was going to say or do to him. Anything from a handshake to a smacking kiss on the cheek to a cheeky butt pinch was entirely possible.

  “The one and only,” my twin replied, opening her arms and wrapping them around me before I had a chance to react. Not that I would have done anything other than return the hug in kind.

  I mentioned I love my sister, didn’t I? I just wasn’t exactly a fan of her timing.

  “How? Why? What are you . . . ?” My questions were incomplete but coherent, mostly because I was trying to retrieve my mind from within the foggy abyss of want I’d lost it to back at the parking lot. But also because, I’m ashamed to admit, my old insecurities reared their ugly head at the sight of her.

  A petite—at least compared to me—five foot five, Willa was delicate and beautiful in a way that I had never been. Always the clumsy, tall, limbs-don’t-fit-her-body type, middle and high school were an absolute nightmare of self-doubt and misery for me—and the opposite for her.

  For all we looked alike in our faces, there was something so unique and vital about my twin sister that I’d been jealous of for as long as I could remember. And now she was here, standing in front of the man I was elbow-deep in like/lust with, and I couldn’t help but wonder . . . what if he prefers her?

  Willa stepped back, holding up her hand and raising a finger to answer my half-asked questions. “Plane.” Another finger lifted. “That guy I told you about? Not what I was expecting.” A third finger joined the other two. “I needed you and your level head and your advice.”