by Sionna Fox
“Right.” She kissed him back. “See, vacation is good for you.”
“I thought you might agree.” He pulled her out of her chair onto his lap. “Now hush.” He shut her up by kissing her thoroughly, focusing all of his attention on her mouth, pulling them both into the present.
Kate flexed her hips in his lap, grinding against his stiffening cock below her. “Bed.”
He nodded, sliding his hands under her butt and lifting her out of the chair. “Bed.”
He stumbled around the coffee table and dropped her on her back, following her down with a knee between her thighs, resting on his forearms. He allowed her hands to roam all over him. She pulled down his zipper, and as soon as he shrugged out of his sweatshirt, she snaked her hands under his T-shirt. He’d always run much warmer than she did—her own personal furnace—and she traced her fingers up the warm, smooth skin of his back. She kneaded gently at the muscles in his shoulders, and he groaned into her mouth in encouragement.
He pulled his shirt over his head and shifted them both onto their sides. She focused her attention on the column of his neck, digging her thumb into the muscles right at the base of his skull where she knew his tension usually lived. He sighed in relief. There were good things about their past, in knowing someone so well. If she could hold onto those things, those little displays of kindness and affection, and let go of the rest, maybe they would be okay.
He pulled his mouth from hers. “God, that feels good. Thank you.”
She kissed the dip under his lower lip. “Good.”
She kneaded up and down his neck and along his shoulder blades. He started pressing his fingers to all of her sore spots in her shoulders and lower back, around her hips. It had been so long since she’d done something as simple as kissing and touching another person. She didn’t think they’d ever done this, with no clear destination, making out and rubbing their sore spots. A low thrum of arousal mixed with the simple pleasure of having his warm, strong fingers on her skin, his lips on hers.
“If you keep this up, I’m going to fall asleep.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “You probably need it.”
She shook her head. “I need to clean up. And there’s this.” She palmed his erection through his pants. She’d be fine with not having sex. But she wouldn’t say no either.
“I didn’t come over here intending to have sex with you, Kate.”
“I know. That doesn’t mean you can’t.”
He kissed her, one hand wrapped around the back of her neck. “Is that what you want right now?”
She rolled her hips into his. “If that’s what you want too.”
He didn’t answer. He shifted her onto her stomach and shimmied her pants and underwear down over her hips and to the floor. She wriggled out of her shirt as he took off his pants behind her. She reached up and took a condom from the bedside drawer and placed it on the pillow next to her head.
Ian draped his naked body over hers, warm and relaxed, kissing her cheek and neck and spine. “Spread your legs, kitten.”
She did as she was told, and he slid his fingers along the seam of her pussy before spreading her open. He teased at her entrance and toyed with her clit with his fingertips, running light circles over her, forcing her back to arch, seeking more contact, more pressure. Every time she did, he pulled his fingers away. He slipped two fingers barely inside, flirting with penetration without giving it to her fully. Kate tried to stretch into the touch, but he wouldn’t give in.
Frustration and anticipation simmered under her skin, and when she was about to snap at him to hurry the fuck up, he reached past her to the bedside drawer.
“I already got a condom.” She patted the packet on the pillow.
“I know.” He was rummaging through the drawer one-handed, sifting through loose condoms and the tubes of lip balm and hand cream that floated around in there.
“Then what are you looking for?”
“You might want some lube, kitten.”
“Why?” She twisted at the waist to look up at him. He wouldn’t. Would he? A year ago he would have, and she would have been fine with it.
“Jesus, Kate. I’m not trying to fuck your ass. You’re just not getting that wet. I wouldn’t…not without your permission.”
She relaxed back onto her stomach. “I know. Old baggage.”
He kissed her between the shoulders as he found the small tube he was looking for. Ian spread lube with cool, slippery fingers around her labia and over her clit, finally adding pressure to his touch. He slid two fingers inside her, stretching her carefully, letting her thrust back onto his hand.
“Much better, don’t you think, kitten?”
“Yes,” she whined. “Can you be inside me now?”
He kissed her nape and took the condom from the pillow, pulling his fingers from her body to sheath himself. He put one hand on the back of her neck and slid into her slowly.
“Oh yes, much, much better.”
With one hand resting on her neck and the other propping himself up on the mattress, he fucked her slowly and steadily. With each deep thrust, she was aware of every inch of his body moving in her, with her, as she rocked back against him. How could she not want him, when he could do this to her, make her focus with every fiber of her being on where their bodies met as her arousal spooled tighter.
He dropped to both elbows and thrust harder into her, his breath ragged, the sounds he made more feral. Each rough stroke hit a spot deep within that made Kate’s toes curl with a mix of pleasure and pain. He sank his teeth into her shoulder and the coiled spring inside her released, spiraling out from her center and tingling down her limbs. Kate cried out, muffled by the pillow, as she came undone, clenching around Ian as he came, resting his head against her neck, his last erratic thrusts buzzing her with aftershocks of pleasure.
He nestled up next to her on his side and traced his fingers over the spot where he’d bitten her shoulder. “You’re going to have marks. I’m sorry.” He kissed the marks he’d made and sat up.
“Not where anyone can see this time of year.” She rolled on her back and stretched. “Fuck, I still have to clean up.”
“Let me help.”
She cleaned herself up in the bathroom first, then packed up the leftovers while he took his turn. The bathroom was too tiny to ever accommodate two people at the same time.
Kate shuffled awkwardly on her feet when he came out, dressed to go back out into the cold. “Do you want…”
“I am far too old to attempt to sleep in a lumpy twin bed with anyone, not even you, kitten.”
“Okay.” She kissed him at the door. “Can I ask for one thing, before you go?”
“Of course.”
“Can we keep this between us? I… We’re still figuring this out, and I’m not ready to be like, officially back together, you know?”
He nodded a bit grimly. She knew he wanted it to be settled, but she couldn’t commit to that again yet.
“Okay.” He kissed her one more time, and she tried to put all of her affection into the kiss she gave back. He broke away and cupped her cheek. “Good night, kitten.”
Ten
Ian left. It was true that the last time he’d shared a twin bed he was still in college, and he was too far past thirty that he wouldn’t absolutely feel it in the morning. But he’d regret sharing a bed with her again so soon if they weren’t going to fall back on the same old shit that had made them both unhappy. She needed space.
That didn’t mean it hurt any less that she wanted to keep their attempt at reconciliation a secret. Even if he knew it was more out of a sense of caution and knowing that their friends were an incredibly nosy, meddling bunch of people. He didn’t want to throw a party yet either. But he was in. And she still wasn’t sure.
He’d never stayed at her place when they first started seeing each other. He’d barely gotten a glimpse of it the few times he picked her up there. He vaguely remembered her roommates as people who merely tolerated e
ach other in order to split the rent, a tiny bedroom, a messy kitchen. He’d felt slightly like a dirty old man being there.
She’d eventually confessed that she liked playing house with him, in his grown-up space, with his grown-up high thread-count sheets and king-sized mattress. He’d asked her to move in when her lease was up. They’d spent nearly four and a half years playing house
She’d given him a reason to keep going to work, a set of expectations to live up to. This lawless thing they were doing now would have made him nervous to begin with, but coupled with not knowing if he was going to go back to his boring job, or if there would be a boring job for him to go back to, he lay awake most of the night, staring at the ceiling.
He made lists. Practical ones, like what to do with the office, starting with contacting Sarah about book donations. Selling the unused bookshelves and maybe the desk. He could replace it with something lighter, more practical for working at his computer, with better lighting and an ergonomic chair. He’d clear out the house, make space. He’d accumulated too much stuff. The last year hadn’t helped. Drifts of scribbled notes that he no longer remembered what they referenced had piled up in odd corners. Junk mail he forgot to put in the recycling. Recipe cards from his meal-kits that could be organized into things he would or wouldn’t bother ordering or making again.
He’d never given her enough space. She’d spread out at the kitchen table to work, then stuff everything back into her bag, like she was a perpetual guest and not a person who lived there. There had been precious little for her to take other than the clothes that had taken up the smallest corner of the closet. And most of those had been left in plastic bags with instructions for donations.
And he made lists of the things he wanted to do to her. The things he wanted her to endure for him, and the ways he would make her come when she had. He wanted every surface of the bedroom, the house, to be claimed by her again, by her skin, by her smell. He’d give her everything she wanted.
But he had to prove it to her.
He groggily made inquiries to Sarah in the morning, procured sturdy liquor boxes from the nearest package store to put the books into. Took pictures of the empty shelves to list them online. Dug up the receipts he still had to find out what he’d paid for them ten years ago when he’d bought the house.
He’d been a pretentious ass, trying to fit himself into a mold he only understood from movies and glimpses of the kind of guys who belonged to exclusive fraternities and yacht clubs when he was in college. They hadn’t ever been the sort of people he’d been friends with. His academic scholarship, computer science department self had never mixed with the future inheritors of the family business guys of America. And yet, when he’d had the kind of paychecks that let him buy a decent house in an almost-suburb, he’d tried to be one of them.
That was the person Kate had met and stayed with for five years. Steady, stable job, pretentious house Ian. If he wasn’t that anymore, what was he?
He sat on the floor of the office, surrounded by liquor boxes, head spinning. Dimly, in the back of his mind, he knew it wasn’t good that this was happening again, this feeling of floating six inches above himself, not knowing who he was. He stared at his hand, not recognizing it, hearing breath come faster and not feeling it as his own. There was a word for this he couldn’t remember. It was a response to stress, nothing more, he knew that, but it didn’t make the feeling go away.
He blinked and shifted his gaze to the ceiling, watching the weak shadows of a few straggling maple leaves move in the wind. If anyone else were feeling this, he’d insist they talk to someone, anyone, they trusted. Ian waited for it to pass. It always had before.
He made himself as small as his long limbs would allow—tucking his knees to his chest, wrapping his arms around them—and waited for the world to make sense again, rocking gently forward and back. He had a vague memory of his father finding him like that once, tucked against the foot of his bed, and ordering him to snap out of it and never let him catch him like that again. Maybe he’d been crying. Probably. He couldn’t remember. His father hated the crying, but he couldn’t help it when the world was too big, too loud, too bright, the other kids cruel and incomprehensible.
His parents had wanted him to be like other kids. Like his siblings, outgoing, athletic, moving easily in the world. What any parent would want, really. How could he blame them for not knowing what to do with their son who didn’t understand, who needed it all spelled out for him. Who watched bumblebees instead of the ball.
Remembering, though it wasn’t exactly pleasant, brought him back down a bit. This had happened before and he’d lived. He had never actually floated away on the breeze like a balloon. He felt the floorboards under him, the way his head tapped against the shelf each time he rocked back into it. His knees were his own, knobbly as ever under his faded cotton pants. He felt his chest rise and fall as his breath slowed, his heart pounded less frantically against his ribs.
When he could move again, he reached for his phone and texted Evie.
Ian: I don’t think I’m okay.
His phone rang seconds later.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. I just…wasn’t in my body for a while. Top drop?”
“Oh, honey.” Evie rarely softened, but when she did, her relationship with Sarah made all the sense in the world. She was a born caretaker who had erected the firmest of boundaries around herself lest she be sucked dry. “Where are you? Can you make it until I can get there?”
“I was cleaning out some old stuff. I’m in the office.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can. Do you need me to stay on the phone?”
“I think I’m okay.” He could call her back if he started feeling it again. He could call Kate.
“Ian, I’m going to ask you to do something. Don’t call Kate.”
“I won’t.” Evie was right. He couldn’t let Kate see him like this. She knew that he needed help deciphering people, that he took things too literally sometimes, but she didn’t know about this. He’d never let her see him break.
“Good. I’ll be right there.” A door shut on the other end of the line.
If Evie was coming to him, he couldn’t keep this thing with Kate a secret. Thinking about her, about what a fraud he’d been, how little he knew himself, had set him off in the first place. He would wait for Evie, and he would tell her everything because he didn’t have a choice. If anyone was going to be able to help him figure out what the hell to do, it was her.
Vaguely he heard the door open downstairs and Evie’s light tread up the steps, creaking down the hall to find him. She sat next to him on the floor, not forcing him to meet her gaze.
“You want to tell me what happened?”
“I was putting things in boxes—I’m going to redo this room; it’s too dark and heavy and it makes me feel like a fake. I’m not this guy with his collection of books he’s never opened because they look impressive. I don’t know who bought this stuff. It doesn’t feel like it was me. Like, who is this guy who lives on a movie set? I don’t even know if I like Scotch? Or if I just think it’s something a certain kind of man drinks so I do? That chair is comfortable, though. I’m keeping that.” He babbled, avoiding what had precipitated the project.
“That sounds like a good project for your time off. Clear stuff out physically and mentally, think about your next steps.”
“I don’t know why I freaked out all of the sudden. I think I’m okay now. I’m sorry I dragged you over here.” Now that Evie was here, he didn’t want to tell her anything. He couldn’t bear her disappointment, and he wasn’t sure he wanted her advice. He was fine. He didn’t need someone to pull him out of whatever this was.
“Honey, if you hadn’t noticed, you’re still on the floor in a ball. An upright ball, but still.”
“I was thinking. What to do with all this stuff.”
“All this stuff that makes you feel fake? And like you don’t know yourself?”
> “Uh. Yeah.”
“Do you think you can get up and leave the room?”
His chest tightened, his knees pulled in closer, tucking himself even smaller. “Uh, probably not.”
“Okay. We’ll stay here. Tell me what’s going on when you’re ready, okay?” She picked up a book at random and started flipping through the pages.
It took him several minutes of Evie calmly reading next to him before he could find the words. The connection between his brain and mouth seemed especially slow today. His work life had required him to be quick to respond, to smooth ruffled feathers and make promises, but without those constructs and constraints—without the rules and expectations—he was at a loss to find words.
“I’ve been seeing Kate.” He waited for a response, but Evie kept flipping through the book. “And it’s good, I think. But it’s… We both want things to be different but haven’t figured out exactly what that means. And I realized last night talking to her that since she’s been gone, I stopped caring about the job, because she was the reason for the job, to take care of her and our household, but if it’s me, who the fuck cares if Jim in Texas gets his custom plug-in on time. I don’t want to be a manager. I fucking hate sales. And I don’t know what that makes me.
“Kate keeps saying she feels like she never knew me outside of the role I played for her, and I think maybe I didn’t know me either. Then all of the sudden I was packing up these books that feel like they belong to someone else, and my head felt ten feet away from my body.”
Evie finally looked up when he’d spent his rambling. “And what brought you back enough to be able to call me?”
Ian snorted softly. “Thinking about how it used to happen when I was a kid, and if my dad found me that way, he’d yell at me. I know it’s stress. Too much changing too fast. Or maybe it is top drop. We… I was with Kate last night. We didn’t do anything particularly scene-like. Still, I wanted to stay, but I wanted to give her space. And not sleep in her twin-sized bed.”