by Tawna Fenske
Smiling again, Cindy gives a soft little hiccup sob. “You were determined I’d have it down by the end of the day.”
“We did it, too, didn’t we?” Archie’s beaming like a proud papa, and I can’t help feeling my own twinge of pride. This. This is why we’re playing along.
“I didn’t even need the training wheels by the next day,” Cindy says. “You were a good teacher.”
Archie shakes his head a little sadly. “I felt so damn bad when you fell off that time,” he says. “Knocked out both your front teeth.”
A tear slips down Cindy’s face, but she’s laughing, too. “I got two silver dollars under my pillow for that. It was my first visit from the tooth fairy.”
Archie leans conspiratorially over his cake and holds a finger to his lips. “Don’t tell, but I was always the tooth fairy. You kids thought it was Mom, but it was me every time.”
Even Damon looks touched by this bit of news. “Really? You wrote all those notes?”
“Every single one,” Archie confirms, leaning back on the bench. I put a hand between his shoulder blades to steady him, and he turns to me with a smile. The dentures sag to the left again, so I keep my eyes on his. “You helped with the poems sometimes, but the notes were all mine.”
Circling my palm over his back, I flounder for something to contribute. “You were the master of tooth fairy penmanship.”
He laughs and takes a swig from a can of Pepsi. “I was, wasn’t I?”
Jonathan’s smiling, too, caught up in the same nostalgia as the rest of us. “My dad was always the tooth fairy, too.”
I catch his eye and know instantly he means Chuck. The man he wants to be instead of the one he fears becoming. His green eyes hold mine, and I’m seized by the urge to share my own stories of lost teeth and childhood memories. In Ukraine, there’s no tooth fairy. Just a tradition of tucking the lost tooth in a square of tissue and hiding it in the darkest corner of the house.
“Vizʹmy miy staryy zub i prynesy meni novoho,” my mother taught me to whisper, just like her mother taught her. “Take my old tooth and bring me a new one.”
My father, brooding, called out from across the room. “You’re teaching her to be selfish. Some kids don’t have food or shelter or—”
“Some don’t have love,” my mother countered, tightening her hold on my shoulder. “And that’s worse.”
Beside me, Archie heaves a satisfied smile of nostalgia and pats my hand.
“So that’s why I’ve got a box of teeth under my bed,” he continues, still stuck on his own tooth fairy tale. “Not ‘cuz it’s some kind of sick fetish or anything.”
Cindy blanches and dabs her mouth with a napkin. “We’d never think that, Dad.”
“Or that box of ladies’ underthings, size extra-large when Angie here’s a size small,” he continues. “Some things a man keeps under his bed are his own private business, and even when he’s dead and gone—”
“Who wants another soda?” Damon stands up, his dream-killer demeanor looking a lot more sensible now.
Cindy stares at her empty soda can, at a loss for what to do next. Her husband leans down and pries open a cooler, fishing into the icy depths. “Here.” He sets a can of beer in front of her with a touching reverence.
“Thank you.” She pops the top and chugs half of it without coming up for breath.
I glance over at Jonathan to see him watching me with an expression I can’t quite read. “Family,” he says, giving me a look I can’t quite read. “Gotta love it.”
Cindy shakes her head and grips the blue and white can. “God help us,” she says before knocking back the rest of her beer.
“That was nuts.” Jonathan grins, one hand balanced on the steering wheel while the other covers my bare knee through the artfully frayed hole in my jeans. “I seriously had no idea what Archie was going to say next.”
“I guess every family has secrets,” I muse, remembering Cindy’s pained expression as she ushered us to our canoe and thanked us for playing along.
“It’s possible my brother had a point,” she whispered, glancing back to where Archie and Damon waved goodbye from the shore. “Maybe it’s smarter to keep Dad anchored in reality.”
In the car beside me, Jonathan clears his throat. “I suppose that’s true enough.”
“What’s true?” I do a mental rewind through the conversation, then remember where we left off. “Oh, you mean family secrets?”
“Lord knows my family has their fair share of them,” he says. “It’s amazing any of us turned out even halfway normal.”
“You think you’re normal?” His squeeze on my knee has me laughing and wriggling away, but who am I kidding? I don’t want him to stop touching me. His hand feels good there, like it belongs. Like we belong, even though I know that can’t be true.
Daddy issues.
What he said is true for both of us, and it’s the reason we can never work out. I know it. He knows it. We both know it.
Right?
I cross my legs and end up sandwiching his fingertips between my thighs. I expect him to pull away, but he squeezes tighter. He’s still got one hand on the wheel as he turns toward Ponderosa Resort, and I’m suddenly grateful I left my car there this morning. That he’s not taking me home just yet.
“Poor Archie,” Jonathan says. “I can’t imagine losing your mind like that.”
“He actually seemed in good spirits, all things considered,” I point out. “It’s his family bearing the brunt of things.”
“True.”
I shift again, my body following the urge to drift closer to him even though the rest of me knows it’s a bad idea. “What is it with guys who aren’t in their right mind wanting to talk about their sex lives?” I ask. “Something to do with the subconscious, I assume.”
Jon quirks one eyebrow but keeps both eyes fixed on the road. “You’ve been around a lot of dirty-talking dementia patients?”
I look out the window as we move past the golf course, past the main lodge and onto the road leading to the family cabins. “Dementia, anesthesia, same thing.” When he doesn’t respond, I turn back to find him wearing an utterly blank expression. “The conversation in the hospital?” I prompt.
He takes his eyes off the road, brow furrowing as he studies me. “What do you mean?”
It occurs to me we’ve never had a conversation about this. That maybe he recalls nothing of that ten-minute exchange at the hospital.
“You were delirious when you came out of surgery,” I tell him. “Your mom said I should just play along. That you get loopy sometimes with anesthesia.”
“My mom,” he repeats, trying to jog his own memory. “What did I say?”
“Well,” I begin, not sure how much to tell him. “You thought we were married. That we had two children.”
He frowns out at the road, and I can practically hear the wheels turning in his head. “Sinbad?” He glances over at me, one eyebrow lifting hopefully. “And Eloise, right?”
“You remember.” I’m not sure if I’m relieved or nervous.
He laughs and shakes his head. “Not really. I’m getting little flashes of stuff, but it’s fuzzy.”
“You told the nurse that you grow prizewinning zinnias,” I tell him. “And that I bake the world’s best cinnamon-raisin bread.”
“No kidding?”
“For the record, I’ve never baked cinnamon-raisin bread,” I admit. “I’ve never even tried it. I went home and googled to find out what it is.”
He laughs again, green eyes catching the sunlight as he pulls into the parking spot in front of his cabin. “And let me guess.” He kills the engine and turns to face me. “I talked about our sex life.”
“You did,” I confirm as heat trickles into my cheeks. “In front of your mother.”
“God.” He shakes his head, hand still on my knee. “It’s coming back to me now. I said we had a fantastic sex life?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Our sex
life—it’s like—out-of-this-world phenomenal.
Jon grins, and I can tell it’s all coming back to him. “And I asked how soon we could have sex.”
“Yes.”
His eyes lock with mine, fingertips tracing an invisible pattern on the bare circle of flesh at my knee. “I’m still wondering that.”
My heart kicks into a gallop, and I take a steadying breath. It’s more than the intensity of his gaze turning my insides to lava. It’s more than the suggestion of sex, though that’s turning other parts of me to liquid.
It’s the fantasy, the life I know we won’t have together.
But maybe we can have something. Just one small piece, only for a little while.
“Now,” I say softly. “How’s now for you?”
“Now’s good.” His smile spreads slow and sexy, like butter on hot toast. Cinnamon-raisin. I’m melting, I’m dissolving into a buttery puddle, but I don’t want to stop.
“Let’s go,” I say, and reach for the door handle.
Chapter 11
Jonathan
This time, I’m the one leading the way down the hall to my bedroom. This time, I know exactly what’s going to happen.
I think, anyway.
“Blanka.” I turn in the doorway of my room to cup her face in my hands, kissing her softly before drawing back. “I want you so damn much.”
She smiles and drags her fingers through my hair, going up on tiptoe to kiss me again. “I want you, too.”
Her other hand cups my ass, and she presses herself against my fly, leaving little doubt she means it.
“How long?” I ask.
She blinks, probably assuming I mean my dick.
“How long have you wanted this and not gone for it?” I clarify, leaning down to kiss the soft hollow of her throat. “Denial of self-care, as it were.”
Laughing, she tips her head back to grant me better access. Her throat, her shoulders, the soft trail of skin leading between her breasts. I devour it all while she considers the question.
“Since career day at the school.” Her voice hitches as my tongue skims the top of one breast, and her fingers clench in my hair. “Since the first time we met.”
A surge of energy pulses through me. So it wasn’t just me. I wasn’t the only one who felt it, who recognized the lightning zaps of connection the first time we laid eyes on each other.
“Me, too,” I murmur against her cleavage. “Or maybe longer.”
Even before we met, I knew someone like her was out there somewhere. I felt it, even if I had no evidence. I believed in her the way a child believes in the tooth fairy, and isn’t that what love is?
This isn’t love, I remind myself as I edge us both toward the bed. Not love, just lust.
My head might hear the words rattling between my ears, but the rest of me isn’t buying it. Not with Blanka pressed warm and soft against me, tumbling onto the bed with her hair spread like silk on the pillow. Kissing her deep, I come up for air and thread my fingers through hers.
“No balloons this time,” I whisper against her throat. “I want this to be a two-way street.”
She nods, flesh moving under my lips as I roll her onto her back. Releasing her hands, I unbutton the blue chambray shirt until I reach the tails knotted at her waist. I unwrap her like a birthday gift, watching as the fabric falls open to reveal the softness of her breasts under a cotton tank the color of cream. There’s an edge of lace over her breasts, and I take my time dotting kisses across the span of it.
“Jonathan.” She pulls me back up and draws my mouth to hers, as hungry as I am for hot, wet kisses that seem to last for days.
I could do this forever, the kissing, the touching, the soft echo of her sighs filling the room. She’s first to break away this time, lips moving to explore the stubble at my jawline. Her fingers skim my chest as she kisses her way along my temple, her tongue flicking the pulse throbbing there. Hands move down to grab the hem of my shirt, and I roll to help her tug it off.
“You are so sexy,” she murmurs, planting a trail of kisses down my chest, across my abdomen, lower still.
“Wait.” I draw her back up until her mouth is level with mine. I can’t resist kissing her again and almost forget what I meant to say.
“Let me taste you,” I murmur as I draw back. “Please, I want my mouth on you this time.”
She laughs, which is hardly the response I expected. “Pull my arm,” she says.
“What?”
Frowning, she appears to replay the words in her mind. “Pull my finger?”
“Um—”
“No—twist!” She laughs so hard she almost falls off the bed. “Twist my arm.”
She’s still laughing as I kiss my way down her center, pausing long enough to unbutton her jeans and draw them down her legs, along with her panties.
But as my tongue grazes her slippery seam, laughter spikes into a sharp cry of pleasure. “Oh, God.”
I circle my tongue around the sensitive nub of nerves as she cries out again and arches under me. Anchoring one arm under her hips, I angle her up to meet my lips. Jesus, she’s sweet. So sweet and soft and unbelievably wet. The sounds she’s making in the back of her throat are turning me on like nothing I’ve felt before, and I reach down to unhook my jeans and give myself some relief.
Blanka laughs again, but it dissolves into another moan. “Need some help?”
“I’ve got everything in hand,” I assure her, stroking my gratefully freed cock before returning my hand to its proper place between her legs.
Slipping two fingers inside her, I suck her clit into my mouth.
“Ty moe povitria.”
Her words don’t stop me. Nothing could stop me, not even the uncertainty of what they mean. I keep devouring her, letting her voice flow over me. There’s no urgency to know anything, no need to have it all spelled out. It’s enough to feel her moving beneath me, to hear her breath quickening and my own name tangled among the unrecognizable syllables falling from her lips.
Her slick walls clench around my fingers, and she bunches the sheets in a white-knuckled grip. She’s close.
“God, yes,” I groan around her as she cries out and arches into the stroking of my tongue.
“Jon!” She cries out my name again and again as I move inside her, fingers, tongue, a dozen other parts of me that aren’t touching her at all.
She’s gasping as she comes back down, and I expect her to lie still and catch her breath.
But Blanka grabs me by the shoulders and drags me up her body. “I need you.” She’s wild-eyed and beautiful and the sexiest woman I’ve seen in my life. “Make love to me, please.”
It’s a phrase I’ve never used. Having sex, sure. Hooking up or knocking boots or even fucking.
But making love, that’s not something I’ve thought about. Not until now, with Blanka breathless and bright-eyed and looking at me like she sees inside my soul and likes it.
“God, you’re gorgeous.” I can’t look away as I fumble in the nightstand for a condom. I come up with a screwdriver and a pack of matches before Blanka sits up laughing and grabs the foil packet from the drawer.
“Let me,” she says, and proceeds to roll it on.
It’s my turn to groan as I slip between her thighs and push slowly inside. Her eyes go wide as I ease into her, sliding as deep as I can until I can’t distinguish where my body ends and hers begins.
Making love.
My God, is that what this is?
Her thighs clench around me, breath hitching as she murmurs words I can’t understand but know on some primal level. I’m murmuring back, lips against her throat, brain bursting with bright spots of color like the field of zinnias beyond the pond.
I fight my way back through the fog, determined to see to her pleasure. To make sure I give as well as take. Pushing back to slip a hand between our bodies, I find hers already there, fingertips gliding over slick folds.
“God, I love that.” I love that she’s confident enoug
h to touch herself, to take what she needs.
And I love the way her eyes go wide, the way she clenches around me as I drive in deep. Her hands fly to my hips, and she digs her nails in. “Jonathan. Now.”
We shatter together, coming apart at the same time. It’s otherworldly, our breath in sync, hearts drumming to a beat I’ve known forever but never recognized. She cries out and arches tight against me but doesn’t close her eyes. We’re locked together by breath, by body, by something I can’t name.
“Holy Christ,” I pant as we come back down.
We’re both breathing hard as I pull the covers around us. She murmurs something against my shoulder as I draw her against me. I don’t think it’s English, but I understand anyway.
I kiss the spot just above her ear and whisper the words I googled weeks ago, just after our bath. “Ja vas kohaju,” I whisper.
She tenses in my arms. “What did you say?”
“Ja vas kohaju,” I repeat, hoping I read the pronunciation key correctly. Hoping Google didn’t steer me wrong. It’s hard to find phonetic pronunciations, and the Ukrainian alphabet is a mystery.
Blanka says nothing. Just lies there breathing. My urge to crack the tension with humor overwhelms me. “Okay, so right now I’m really hoping I haven’t just asked if I can borrow ketchup.”
She laughs, a welcome sound. And since I’m still hard inside her, I feel the clench of her body around me. “No, but—” she licks her lips, looking into my eyes. “You learned to say ‘I love you’ in Ukrainian?”
I nod, not sure whether I’m happier I got it right or that she hasn’t sprinted screaming from the room. “I love you,” I repeat in English, just to make sure we’re clear. “I know we’re not supposed to, and there are all kinds of reasons we shouldn’t go there, but I can’t help it. I’m crazy about you.”
The smile spreads slowly over her face, like she can’t quite believe what she’s hearing. I don’t expect her to say it back. It’s enough to have her lying here with me, heart thudding against mine as we hold each other tight.