by Brill Harper
“She didn’t say anything to me.”
“She’s a good woman. That’s where you get it from.”
I smile because he’s right. But she is still going to chew me a new one.
I ask him to help me pack. I only have a few things left here, anyway. He is getting a kick out of my childhood room.
“It looks like a guest room. Did you never have any rock star posters or anything?”
“I had a Myspace full of emo bands and pink glitter fonts, but my bedroom I’ve always liked kind of plain.”
“Myspace. I forgot about Myspace. You ready?”
I take a good look around. “Take me home, Conner.”
Laid: Epilogue
Conner
Two years later
THE HOUSE IS A DISASTER.
As usual.
But my girls are in the bath with their momma, and my son is asleep in my arms in the rocking chair, and despite the fact that I only got to eat two bites of my German chocolate cake tonight before a meltdown from Hayden of all people, I’m in a pretty damn good mood.
I put the baby down and search out the girls. They’re all three playing tea party in the tub, but it’s bedtime for two of them, so Cassidy and I work as a team getting them into dry jammies and into bed. My wife promised me a birthday blowjob tonight, and I am ready to collect, so I take a quick shower, too.
Of course, she’s passed out when I come back to the bedroom. Who wouldn’t be? Our life is always exhausting. I sigh and tell my dick maybe tomorrow.
As I’m crawling into bed, trying not to wake her, she throws the covers back to reveal some very naughty lingerie.
My dick is instantly hard.
She’s gotten curvier since having a baby, and I fucking love it. Every inch of her is lush, begging to be squeezed. I reach for her, but she shakes her head.
“I know what happens if I let you touch me, and it ends with me not getting to suck you off.”
“Well, what’d you wear that for then?”
She smiles and straddles me on the bed. “Torture.”
The tiny black panties she’s wearing are damp. She’s ripe and ready, and as much as I want that blowjob, maybe her riding my cock would be better. I get a finger into her panties, but she moves away. Pulling me so that I’m sitting on the edge of the bed with my legs spread wide and she’s on her knees in front of me.
Not gonna lie. Part of me is wanting to take her. Just flip her over and claim what’s mine right there on the carpet next to our bed. She likes it when I get a little rough with her. And it’s my birthday, right?
But she’s got her hand wrapped around my cock now, and it’d be a shame to stop her. Cassidy cups my balls in one hand and grasps my shaft with her other. I’m already in heaven. Her long, slow strokes are indeed torturous. The best kind of torture. She adds a twist at the head of my cock, and my body suddenly seizes like I’ve been shocked.
That’s when she adds her tongue, lightly licking me from top to bottom. I groan loudly. It feels so good. Everything feels so good with her. She starts massaging the underside of my cock with that talented tongue, and I am ready to do anything—beg, borrow, steal—if she’d take me all the way in her mouth. But she’s a tease, and her favorite thing to do is drive me crazy. So, she takes her time.
“Sweetness, you’re killing me.”
She just smiles sweetly and goes back to her labor of love on my dick. I’m so hard I could hammer nails, but she’s just licking and wetting me up and down. When she finally, finally, takes my cockhead in her mouth, she just holds it there. My chest is heaving, my hands grasping the sheets, and my wife is just holding her lips in a perfect ring around me, waiting for me to lose control. My cock is pulsing angrily, wanting more friction, more heat. Just more. I’m desperate for her.
“Woman, suck me.”
Nothing.
“Sweetness, I need you so much. Please.”
And then I’m sliding in her mouth. She bobs her head, taking me further every pass. I can’t look at her. If I see her pretty mouth wrapped around me, I’ll come, and I know she’s not done. My fingers dig into her hair, but I resist, barely, the urge to control her head.
I’m feeling it in the base of my spine. It’s coming soon. My balls are drawing up. Shit. I’m not going to last. And then slowly, oh so slowly, she takes me in, all the way, inch by fucking inch until I feel the back of her throat. She’s swallowing me and that’s it. I can’t even tell her I’m going to come. My mind is too foggy to form the words. The world tilts, and I’m shooting in her mouth and down her throat. I open my eyes and God bless her, she’s swallowing every drop I give her, watching my face while she does it.
That’s the hottest thing ever. The eye contact. She absolutely owns my soul. I hold her face gently in my hands while my orgasm tapers off. She plops me out of her mouth and grins. “Happy birthday, Mr. Webster.”
“I need five minutes to recover, and then I’m coming for that pussy.”
“Five minutes?” She looks dubious. She’s not wrong. Even when I was ten years younger, I needed more than five minutes between rounds.
“I’m going to eat you for hours. That will give me plenty of time to recover.”
She grins. And then the baby monitor picks up a not so faint cry.
“I’ll get him,” I say.
No big deal. So, I’ll eat her for hours tomorrow night, I think to myself as I change the baby and bring him to bed. One of the perks of being married is that I can make another play again the next night. Or maybe the next morning, depending on how this goes. I can stick this married dick in my wife as often as we want to. No more waiting for the weekend to hook up with strangers. No more awkward “it’s been nice, but I gotta go,” when I’m done.
I don’t even know that guy anymore. This guy, he gets laid a hell of a lot more, but that isn’t even the best part. This guy gets to roll over and smell his woman’s hair. He gets to look her in the eye and feel something. He gets to go to sleep knowing he’s somebody’s whole world and wake up knowing his whole world is right there.
The baby is still getting weaned, so he latches on to his mama for a feeding, and I crawl into bed next to them. She’s so beautiful. She’s got this glow that attached to her when she was pregnant and just never left. At least not when I’m looking at her.
I’m the luckiest SOB on the planet. If every man loved his wife as much as I love mine, this world would run a whole lot better. Because when you love someone like that, you work real hard being worthy of it. And if everyone just concentrated on being worthy of the person they loved, we’d have a lot fewer problems.
But I can’t fix the rest of the world. It’s enough trying to keep this crazy ship afloat. Three kids, man. Nothing about it is easy. But it’s worth every sleepless night and every dirty diaper and every frayed nerve.
I’ll never be the intellectual in a room. I’ll never be a billionaire or a rock star or a professional ball player. I don’t sparkle in the sun or turn into a wolf when things get dicey. But to my wife and my three kids, I’m a hero.
And that’s all that really matters.
WELL, READER, I HOPE you enjoyed that as much as I enjoyed writing it. Cassidy and Conner were so very dirty—yet ohmygosh—wasn’t he the most lovable hero ever? I mean, c’mon. Conner was all tough guy on the outside, but he had the biggest, sweetest heart ever.
Well, except maybe for the hero of my next book who is retiring from the Army and doesn’t feel like he deserves to be loved. Luckily, I paired him up with Emily who...well, okay, she doesn’t feel like she deserves to be loved, either. But you know I only write happy endings, so I’m sure it will work out. Keep reading for a sneak peek of Tagged. My first Christmas book in the Blue Collar Bad Boys series.
Cheers,
Brill
Tagged
AUTHOR'S CONFESSION: You must know by now that I love my tropes, right? Military romance, older man/younger woman, opposites attracting like whoa, small town, older brother'
s best friend, ugly duckling who's really a swan (though an introverted swan), holiday romance complete with snow, Santa suits, and caroling during a fight scene. Oh, and pudding. Let's get figgy with it.
Original copyright 2017 by Brill Harper
Tagged: Chapter One
Emily
AGAINST ALL ODDS, IT is possible to feel lonely in a room full of people you love.
I’m keeping myself busy-looking by adjusting the pine garland across the mantle of my childhood home. “Busy-looking” is a trick. A trick I’ve honed from childhood. It is my way of hiding in plain sight. If you’re busy, or at least look busy, most people leave you alone. At least for a while.
Bing Crosby croons in the background while I place sprigs of holly berries, pine cones, and baby’s breath evenly down the twelve-foot garland. It has to be perfect. Not because anyone cares—my large, boisterous family isn’t concerned with the concept of perfection—no, it needs to be perfect because I’ve spent so damn long arranging it now that I’d feel stupid if it didn’t look right. Around me, the family is busy with other decorations in the great room and ...beer. Beer is a definite activity, as per usual. My mother is in the kitchen baking more cookies than a Keebler Elf does in his entire lifetime. Judging by the yelling directed at the television, my siblings and cousins are upset with the scores of some game and what kind of intervention the refs needed due to some play or another.
Honestly, I have no idea. Sportsing all sounds the same to me. But it won’t be long before all the joking and conversation rounds the room to me. Who are you dating? Why aren’t you dating? I’ll smile awkwardly and someone will call me shy, and then I’ll blush and that will start another set of discussion points about my appearance. They love me and the teasing is always good-natured. But it is still teasing. I feel silly for feeling like I don’t fit in, but even now, at twenty-five years old, I feel out of place in the bustle of my huge family.
I am child number four of four—two sets of twins for my parents—and one of innumerable cousins. I love them, all of them, I just prefer them one at a time. I’m not shy, not really. I simply feel overwhelmed in groups. Especially during the last few years.
Being the focus of attention has always been uncomfortable for me, but my siblings thrive on it—each of them good at sports and performing. I am good at...being Emily. I like my quiet apartment in town. My quiet job for my grandparents. My quiet life crafted with just the right balance of solitude and family.
But today is a good day. It isn’t Christmas for another week, but today is even better than Christmas. Carter is coming home.
I check the time. Not long now.
Carter Jones, my twin, is the exception to the “family makes me feel weird” rule. He’s just finished his second tour in Afghanistan and this will be his first Christmas home in a few years. Consequently, the celebration of Christmas is slated to be more like a weeklong festival this year. Mom is determined to make up for his lost Christmases.
While having a big family already means lots of traditions, it seems like this year is going to go off the rails into Christmas mania. My mother actually took notes on a legal pad while watching The Santa Clause. Notes. Probably things like “source a reindeer” or “pay the town’s children to dress up like elves.”
Carter will love it. All of it. I suppose a reindeer wouldn’t be so bad. And I like kids. Just not a lot of them in a small space. But I’m not crazy about the figgy pudding. Mom sent an email last week putting me in charge of it. For fifty people. That is a lot of figgy. That is a lot of people.
But I am so looking forward to having Carter home.
It has been hard without him the last few years. Probably good for me in a lot of ways. But he is my twin. My other half. We can communicate without words, and nobody makes me laugh like he does. Skype is a poor substitute.
The game switches to a commercial break, so I slip into the kitchen and take a deep breath. So far, so good for avoiding the awkward dating conversations.
“Just in time,” my mom says. “The cookies are ready to decorate.”
I look at the shapeless cookies lining the counter, holding one up to the light, wondering why it has a hole in the middle of what could have maybe been a snowman. “Mom, they let you cut people open for a living. Why can’t you cut a cookie? These don’t...what are they supposed to look like?”
“I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong either. Every year, I roll the dough, I cut the dough, but by the time I get them into or out of the oven, they look more like Patrick Star than trees and Santas.”
I pick another one up. “This one is more Spongebob than Patrick.”
“Ha ha.”
We’ve been working side-by-side for half an hour when my mom gets the text that the guys are almost home. “Did you put the guest towels out?”
“Yes, Mom.” She’s already asked twice today.
“Not the nice guest towels...the fancy ones.”
I get insta-prickles on the back of my neck. “Why would we put the fancy guest towels out for Carter? I mean, I know we missed him, but he’s still Carter.” Not fancy guest towel material.
“He’s bringing his sergeant home with him. Or ex-sergeant. I’m not sure how that works. He’s the one who saved your brother’s life, but he’s getting out of the army now. Sergeant Warner.”
Fabulous. One more person. And a stranger to make it interesting. Breathe. Just breathe.
I take the bowls to the sink so I can talk without having to look directly at my mother. It might be easier to approach her about the sleeping arrangements without eye contact. “Mom, I’ve been thinking. Maybe I should stay in town this week after all. It sounds like you’re going to have a full house here. There’s no reason why I can’t stay in my own apartment.” Where there are no strangers. “I’ll commute here every day.”
I chance a glance behind me. My mom has that look—the one that says, “What are we going to do with you, Emily?”
“What? I just think—”
“Your father and I are really looking forward to having all of you home. Under one roof. For the week. Like old times.”
I have taken a week’s vacation, and my siblings and I have all “moved” home for the holiday. I miss my quiet apartment already, and I’ve only been here for a few hours. “I’ll come back first thing every morn—”
“Please, Emily. We all need this. As a family. There is plenty of room here, and I don’t want to worry about you driving home late at night.”
“Late at night?” Why would I be up late at night?
My mother takes the rinsed bowls and puts them into the dishwasher. “We have things scheduled every evening this week.”
“Scheduled?”
Mom nods toward the fridge while she adds soap to the dispenser. “It’s on the itinerary. I was going to pass copies of it out later, but there’s one on the fridge if you want a sneak peek.”
“You have an itinerary?” I take the paper off the fridge. “You have a typed itinerary. Mom this is in outline format. With Roman numerals.”
“It needed to be organized. We are having an old-fashioned family Christmas, and you are all going to look back on this time and be grateful we were together.”
Alrighty then. My mother has become Clark Griswold.
“Mom...”
Mom’s phone buzzes, and she picks it up after shooting me a quelling glance. “They’re here.”
Tagged: Chapter Two
Charlie
I’VE BEEN SITTING IN the backseat of the Escalade watching the freeway turn into a highway turn into one single main street that runs through the entirety of Maple Grove, Washington. The gray December clouds make it impossible to tell the time of day, but I know it shouldn’t be dark enough for all the streetlights to be on yet. It isn’t raining, exactly, more like the sky is spitting at the car as we crawl down the street. Some hail, some rain, some mist, maybe even a little snow, but not the kind that sticks.
Mr. Jones—Mark, he s
aid to call him—is driving us home from the airport. Well, he is driving his son home. I don’t have a home or a clue as to whether or not I even want one or how to go about finding one if I decide I do. I haven’t stayed anywhere that wasn’t Army issued in a long-ass time. I’m just tagging along for the ride.
Jonesy...no Carter—I am supposed to call him Carter now—has family connections to Stone Jones, a custom garage in Maple Grove that specializes in restoring muscle cars and has a reputation for quality that is unmatched anywhere else in the country. I put in an order for my dream car, a ‘67 Chevy Camaro. Jonesy got me a great deal with the understanding that I would come home with him and spend the holidays with his family. It was a pity-invite, but Jonesy is a good guy and I want that car.
“On your right is my high school, Sarge. Maple Grove only has two schools—K-6 and 7-12.”
I barely remember high school, but there were probably more kids in my Chicago graduating class than in both Maple Grove schools combined. “Not your sarge anymore.” I am officially out now. Retired. Unshackled. Unmoored.
Adrift.
“I don’t think I can call you Charlie,” Jonesy answered. “Too used to Sarge.”
“Yeah, Carter is going to be a stretch for me, too.”
We laugh, and Carter’s dad fills me in on town trivia as we turn onto Marble Mountain Road. I have heard a lot of the stories before. In the sandbox, home is a popular topic for many of the enlisted men.
We pull into the circular driveway of a large log cabin. Huge windows and glass doors make up the front, and a wide porch wraps around the house like a protective embrace. I whistle out a breath. I knew Jones came from a very comfortable upbringing—his dad is a lawyer, his mom a doctor, and his grandparents own the town car lot as well as the custom garage. They aren’t millionaires or anything, I don’t think, but the house is significant and picture perfect. If L.L. Bean wanted to film a commercial, the Jones homestead would be the perfect place for it. I didn’t realize that there are people who live life like the magazines and catalogs show. Not really.