by KB Winters
Derrick ravished my body as though I was a fine wine or decadent dessert with relish, but slow enough to savor every morsel. When he brought me to the brink, I pleaded with him to let me go, to let me fall, because I knew he’d be there to catch me.
I clung to his squared shoulders for dear life as waves of pleasure gripped me and tugged me under. The soft light in the room exploded into starbursts behind my closed eyes as arched and bucked, fisting the sheets to keep anchored. Derrick worked back up my body with another trail of hot kisses. “Open your eyes, Sophia. Let me see you.”
My lashes fluttered open and our eyes met again. Derrick smiled down at me, bracing his weight on his hands as he hovered above me. “That’s better…” he drawled.
I wove my arms around his neck and tugged him down, the taste of myself still clinging to his lips as they crushed mine. The climax had only made me hungry for more and this time, slow wasn’t what I wanted. My tongue slipped past Derrick’s lips, tangling with his in a fierce battle of wills.
We broke apart only long enough to catch our breath and Derrick’s expression drooped.
“What’s wrong?” I panted, shaking my hair out of my eyes.
“I don’t have anything…I don’t get a lot of action out here…”
I laughed softly. “No worries.”
I squirmed from underneath him and sauntered—bare ass naked—across the room to my purse and tugged out a condom packet. I held it up and watched Derrick’s expression flood with relief. I giggled, but heat flooded my cheeks as I worried what Derrick thought of me carting around spare condoms in my purse. Truth was, I’d bought them before the trip and had even ordered them online to prevent the gossip mongers of the world from getting into my private life. All it would take was a loud mouth drug store clerk to land me on the front page of some lowbrow tabloid. “I wasn’t sure where the trip would take me…” I offered, stalking back to the bed, feeling Derrick’s eyes on every inch of me as my hips swayed.
“Fortune favors the prepared,” he said with a wink, trying to take the foil packet from between my fingers.
I gripped it and shook my head. “Let me…”
Derrick’s eyes went wide, but he didn’t argue. Instead, he reclined back and playfully put his arms behind his head, looking like he was doing some nude sunbathing on a beach somewhere. I gave him a quirky grin before tearing into the package. Derrick’s teasing smile fell away as soon as my fingertips touched his thick shaft. I stroked down the velvet skin with the same feather touch he’d used when exploring my body minutes before. I watched his eyes go big and round as I stroked him. I slid the condom on him, one tantalizing inch at a time, cupping him with my fingers when I reached the base.
Derrick growled and reached for me, trying to tug me back to him. I climbed up his body and straddled his narrow hips. Derrick flashed an approving smile. “A take charge kind of woman?”
I didn’t answer as I slid onto him. He hissed under his breath as I arched back, moaning at the sensation of being so perfectly filled. Whole. Derrick’s hands went to my hips and guided me in tight little circles as I rocked onto him. He rose and fell with each stroke and it was as though our bodies were perfectly coordinated, working together to eke out every last drop of pleasure. His hands moved up to my breasts, teasing my tender nipples as my breasts bounced with each thrust. I groaned out a curse and he rolled us over just as I was ready to crash over the edge again.
My thighs clung to his lean hips and our eyes met as he thickened inside of me. Derrick released and I shuddered into another climax moments later as I tightened around him. I laid a hand over Derrick’s smooth chest and smiled at the way his heart rocketed around inside, following the same frantic pace as my own.
“Damn,” he bit out as he rolled off of me and flipped onto his back.
I laughed softly and grinned over at him. “Don’t get too comfortable there, soldier. Like I said, it’s been a while…”
Derrick gave me a lazy smirk as his eyes drifted over my body. “With you looking like that, it’s not gonna be a problem, baby.”
I smiled to myself and moments later he gathered me back in his arms, pressing himself against me to back up his statement.
When we both had all we could take, we collapsed down in exhaustion and clung together under the sheet. Derrick kept his arm locked around my waist and as our breathing evened out, I wondered if I should just let myself drift off to sleep. “Are you awake?” I whispered in case he wasn’t.
“Mmhmm,” he hummed.
I smiled at his sleepy sounding reply.
He roused slightly, propping himself up on his elbow. “Do you have a show tomorrow night?” he asked, his lips centimeters from my ear.
I nodded, my eyes still half-closed as I tried to absorb every last drop of pleasure at being in Derrick’s arms.
“What are you doing after that?”
“Hopefully more of this…” I replied, a sly smile on my lips.
“Good answer…” Derrick drawled before kissing the back of my neck.
Chapter Seven - Sophia
My eyes fluttered open to find an empty place in the large bed beside me. The place Derrick had occupied all night. I smoothed a hand over the wrinkled sheets and found that they were still warm. I pushed myself up to a half-sitting position and glanced in the direction of the bathroom. The door was open and the interior was dark. With a small sigh of disappointment, I flopped back on the bed. The room was starting to brighten as the sun rose beyond the navy blue curtains. They were thick enough to filter the sunlight, but not so much that it didn’t light up the room. A glance at the clock showed that it was nearly seven o’clock. He was probably at work. I’d never even thought to ask what his work schedule was like.
As for me…other than a sound check prior to the concert, I didn’t have anything on my schedule. I was hoping to spend the day with Derrick, not even thinking he had a job to do. Even before getting out of bed, I knew my muscles were sore from the night before. But I didn’t care. I wanted more.
I wanted Derrick.
I was all too aware of the time counting down in the back of my mind, a reminder that in seven days, I’d be on a plane back to New York and wouldn’t see Derrick again. Possibly ever. Sure, we’d made plans to meet up for New Year’s, but how practical was that really? It would be amazing, but the reality was that Derrick had a family and friends waiting to see him, from the sounds of it they’d been waiting a long time, and I couldn’t bear to get in the way of that, to be the one to steal that time from them. After all, Derrick and I had just met three days ago. I had no right to take up his precious time off duty.
Especially when I didn’t have anything to offer him. At least not long term. My life was a mess. I wasn’t in a position to go around offering promises or building a relationship. Nine months ago, I was trying not to openly cry in divorce court. There was no way I was ready for something real. Something like Derrick. He wasn’t the casual type. That much I already knew. And yet, I’d raced in head first anyways.
Typical Sophia.
Hadn’t I learned anything from my marriage to Roberto? Fools really do rush in.
I sighed loudly, trying to clear the dark thoughts from my mind. I had seven more days to figure it all out. I certainly wasn’t going to be able to come up with a conclusion with a rumbling stomach. I could circle back to it once I had about a gallon of coffee running through my veins.
I rolled over to the side of the bed Derrick had slept on and inhaled his scent. I didn’t think he wore cologne, but he definitely wore some kind of aftershave, and the smell of it drove me wild. As my face landed on his pillow, a crumpling sound stirred me. A note was perched on top the pillow. I’d apparently missed it with my bleary eyes. I swiped it up and flicked on the bedside lamp to read it:
Good morning, beautiful.
Sorry I had to sneak out on ya. Duty calls. I’ll be at work until late tonight. But I’ll call your room when I get done.
I’ll be t
hinking of you all day.
Kill it at your show tonight.
-Your soldier
My heart melted at the message. It had been such a long time since I’d received a love note. Not that Derrick was in love with me…or that I was with him…
I forced myself out of bed before I could delve too deeply into over analyzing the sweet message—or, more terrifying, what it might mean—and took a quick shower, somewhat reluctantly washing away the scent of Derrick that still clung to my skin.
After getting another monster breakfast—once again falling victim to the tempting call of unlimited pancakes—I took my coffee refill to my room to retrieve my laptop so I could finish the blog post I’d started the day before. After getting through my email inbox and finishing updating my website, it was creeping closer to noon. It was still early back home, but I decided to check in with my best friend, Alissa. I knew she’d be awake for her 5 am spin class.
I dialed her number and waited for her to click onto the video call. Sure enough, she answered, and her bright, smiling face lit up my screen. Her blonde hair was piled up in a topknot that was too artful for the gym and from the part of her upper body that I could see, it didn’t look like she was wearing a sports bra top.
“Hey, gorgeous!” she chirped, wiggling her fingers at the camera.
“Hey, Lissa. What are you doing looking so put together at this hour?”
She giggled. “Sunrise photo shoot.” She panned the camera down to showcase the fabulous orange gown she was wearing. Alissa was a fashion model who was represented by the same talent agent I was, which was how we’d met a few years back. She spent her days in thick makeup, fancy hair, and priceless couture, but at the end of the day, she scraped it all off and was happiest with a slice of pizza and a Knick’s game on TV. We were two peas in a low-maintenance pod.
“Sunrise?” I cringed, like the proper sunrise-adverse vampire that I was. “Don’t these people have any respect for sleeping in?”
Alissa laughed. “I’ve been up since three. Still had to get my spin on. Thank goodness for twenty-four-hour gyms, right?”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re seriously asking me that?”
I tended to avoid the gym at any hour. I had a trainer who came to my apartment three times a week to torture me. That was more than enough. If I wanted to look like Alissa, willowy and lean, I would need a hell of a lot more than a twenty-four-hour gym membership. I’d need a team of people that could chase me down the street and slap croissants, pizza, and take out Chinese food right from my hands.
“How’s Baghdad?” Alissa asked, setting the computer back down so the camera re-centered on her sunny face. “Everything you dreamed it would be?”
“It’s actually really pretty,” I said, glancing at the window of my room. The curtains were pulled back now, providing a view of the city. “I actually wish I could go out and explore a little.”
Alissa shuddered. “I’d be staying inside with the AC cranked and no chance of one of those camel spiders carrying me off to its lair!”
I cringed. “Oh yeah…forgot about those things…”
“And scorpions too!”
“All right, all right. No more or I’ll never sleep again!” I wiggled my shoulders as a creepy-crawly sensation slid down my back. A strange smile pulled at my lips before I added, “Although I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night and it had nothing to do with a bug infestation.”
Alissa’s already large eyes went even wider as she leaned in. “Stop it! What happened?”
I laughed at her bug-eyed expression. “I met someone…”
“Oh my gosh, and of course I have like less than ten minutes. Okay, give me the rundown.”
“His name is Derrick. He’s a soldier here at the base. Short version, he’s the perfect gentleman, hot as sin, and we might have gotten a little carried away last night…”
Alissa made a faux swooning sound. “Jealous!”
I grinned at her, resisting the urge to remind her that she could have any man in the city. Hell, probably the world. “I definitely wasn’t planning on meeting someone. I mean really…how insane…but we click.”
“I’m so happy for you! You deserve the best guy after everything you’ve gone through this year.”
I nodded, my smile faltering a little. “Thanks, Lissa. It just feels odd. Like I’m rushing into it.”
“Rushing? Honey, you’ve been single now for nine months. That’s plenty of time! You’re not getting engaged to this guy, you just had a night of fun. What’s wrong with that?”
I didn’t have an answer for her.
“Listen, you were married forever, right? So of course this is new and scary, but you have to let yourself off the hook and give yourself permission to have some fun again.”
I nodded. “You’re right. Besides, it’s not like Roberto hasn’t moved on,” I said, my tone a little terser than I’d intended. “Have you seen the magazines?”
Alissa’s eyes shifted off the camera. A subtle flick but I caught it right away. My stomach plummeted. “What?”
Alissa shrugged. “Nothing. You just have—”
“Alissa.”
She stared at me for a long moment and then dragged in a sigh. “He’s engaged…”
“What?” I belted, rocketing from my seat.
“I’m sorry,” she replied, her eyes downcast. I lowered back to my seat, my stomach rolling in nauseating waves that made me feel like I was in the middle of an amusement park ride. “I saw it on Holly Pepper’s show last night. She had an interview with him and his bimbo. Jackie. Blech. I can’t stand her.”
My finger twitched over the track pad on my laptop, itching to go searching for the whole story. I knew it would only make me cry, but the sick fascination was there all the same. “When did this happen?”
“The day you left. It was her birthday, I guess. The asshole proposed in the middle of her show, on stage, in front of all of her fans.”
What little air that was left in my lungs evaporated, images from the past flooding in faster than I could combat. There I was, nineteen, singing my heart out for a crowd at the Dallas stop on my first nationwide tour. In the middle of the set, Roberto, came from backstage where he’d been with the other dancers, and he dropped to a knee right there. How could he do it again with another woman? Had it all meant nothing to him?
“Liss, I gotta go,” I said, pushing up from my seat at the computer. Without waiting for her reply, I raced to the bathroom and heaved over the toilet. When everything was out of my stomach, the tears raced in, hot and fast, coursing down my cheeks and spilling onto the floor as I curled up on the tile.
How could he? The question rang through my mind over and over accompanied by the image of our engagement playing on repeat.
How could he?
Chapter Eight - Sophia
When I finally scraped myself from the bathroom floor, I had depleted my source of tears and went back into my room, shell-shocked and drained. Alissa wasn’t on the computer screen anymore, but had typed out a long message at the bottom of the empty window. I gave a watery smile as I read her diatribe against Roberto and how I was a thousand times better off without him. She promised to call me back as soon as she finished her shoot.
I closed the window and turned off the computer. I didn’t trust myself not to dive into reading everything I could find about Roberto and Jackie’s engagement. Hell, if I tried hard enough, there were probably videos of the whole thing right there on the internet. That I definitely didn’t need—or want—to see.
When the computer shut down, I gave a lingering glance at my bed, wishing I could crawl under the covers and lose myself to sleep for a few more hours. But there was no point. I’d wake up and still have to sort myself out. Instead, I wandered back to the bathroom and took a long, hot-as-I-could-stand shower and scrubbed away every last trace of my tears.
Roberto wasn’t worth my emotions anymore. I’d decided that a long time ago. The reminder helped some,
but didn’t fully take away the sting of imagining him slipping a ring onto the finger of another woman. Especially when we hadn’t even been divorced a year. Granted, he’d claimed to have been mentally and emotionally checked out of the marriage for a lot longer.
“Ugh,” I groaned, forcing myself to abandon the arguments and teary confessions from the last days of our marriage. I toweled off, dressed in a soft cashmere sweater and a pair of black jeans, and a pair of ballet flats. I didn’t bother blow drying my hair, I just wound it up into a messy bun on my head to let it dry into my signature waves for the show later that night.
It wasn’t that I’d been holding out hope that Roberto would change his mind and come back to me. No…I’d given up on that as soon as the papers were signed and he immediately went public with his relationship with Jackie, leaving me and the rest of the world to speculate as to when their relationship had actually started. Another topic I’d marked as off limits in the back of my own mind. I didn’t want to reconcile with him. All I wanted was the time and space to heal and reevaluate what I wanted out of my life.
My problem was that I’d stalled out somewhere in the middle. Time had helped to ease the daily pain and reduced the number of memories that haunted me, but I hadn’t gone on any dates or given much thought to starting a new relationship…at least, not until I’d ran into Derrick. He’d been a game changer from that first meeting.
Maybe this was kismet, as my mother always said. Maybe meeting Derrick, before I knew that Roberto was engaged, was the perfect timing to show me that it was all going to be okay, to help brace me for the impact of the news that was lurking just around the corner.
A faint smile crept over my lips and I nodded. “Kismet.”
I sighed and leaned back against the bathroom counter. The bathroom was still steamy from my shower and I waited for it to clear so I could put on a little makeup to hide my puffy eyes. Sound check would start in a few hours and I didn’t need people asking me what was wrong. Especially when they all followed celebrity gossip and probably already knew…